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On inappropriate reactions to COVID19

(This is a short expansion of a twitter stream-of-consciousness I horked up yesterday.)

The error almost everyone makes about COVID19 is to think of it as a virus that infects and kills people: but it's not.

COVID19 infects human (and a few other mammalian species—mink, deer) cells: it doesn't recognize or directly interact with the superorganisms made of those cells.

Defiance—a common human social response to a personal threat—is as inappropriate and pointless as it would be if the threat in question was a hurricane or an earthquake.

And yet, the news media are saturated every day by shrieks of defiance directed at the "enemy" (as if a complex chemical has a personality and can be deterred). The same rhetoric comes from politicians (notably authoritarian ones: it's easier to recognize as a shortcoming in those of other countries where the observer has some psychological distance from the discourse), pundits (paid to opine at length in newspapers and on TV), and ordinary folks who are remixing and repeating the message they're absorbing from the zeitgeist.

Why is this important?

Well, all our dysfunctional responses to COVID19 arise because we mistake it for an attack on people, rather than an attack on invisibly small blobs of biochemistry.

Trying to defeat COVID19 by defending boundaries—whether they're between people, or groups of people, or nations of people—is pointless.

The only way to defeat it is to globally defeat it at the cellular level. None of us are safe until all of us are vaccinated, world-wide.

Which is why I get angry when I read about governments holding back vaccine doses for research, or refusing to waive licensing fees for poorer countries. The virus has no personality and no intent towards you. The virus merely replicated and destroys human cells. Yours, mine, anybody's. The virus doesn't care about your politics or your business model or how office closures are hitting your rental income. It will simply kill you, unless you vaccinate almost everybody on the planet.

Here in the UK, the USA, and elsewhere in the developed world, our leaders are acting as if the plague is almost over and we can go back to normal once we hit herd immunity levels of vaccination in our own countries. But the foolishness of this idea will become glaringly obvious in a few years when it allows a fourth SARS family pandemic to emerge. Unvaccinated heaps of living cells (be they human or deer cells) are prolific breeding grounds for SARS-NCoV2, the mutation rate is approximately proportional to the number of virus particles in existence, and the probability of a new variant emerging rises as that number increases. Even after we, personally, are vaccinated, the threat will remain. This isn't a war, where there's an enemy who can be coerced into signing articles of surrender.

So where does the dysfunctional defiant/oppositional posturing behaviour come from—the ridiculous insistence on not wearing masks because it shows fear in the face of the virus (which has neither a face nor a nervous system with which to experience emotions, or indeed any mechanism for interacting at a human level)?

Philosopher Daniel Dennett explains the origins of animistic religions in terms of the intentional stance, a level of abstraction in which we view the behaviour of a person, animal, or natural phenomena by ascribing intent to them. As folk psychology this works pretty well for human beings and reasonably well for animals, but it breaks down for natural phenomena. Applying the intentional stance to lightning suggests there might be an angry god throwing thunderbolts at people who annoy him: it doesn't tell us anything useful about electricity, and it only tenuously endorses not standing under tall trees in a thunderstorm.

I think the widespread tendency to anthropomorphize COVID19, leading to defiant behaviour (however dysfunctional), emerges from a widespread misapplication of the intentional stance to natural phenomena—the same cognitive root as religious belief. ("Something happens/exists, therefore someone must have done/made it.") People construct supernatural explanations for observed phenomena, and COVID19 is an observable phenomenon, so we get propitiatory or defiant/adversarial responses, not rational ones.

And in the case of COVID19, defiance is as deadly as climbing to the top of the tallest hill and shaking your fist at the clouds in a lightning storm.

1312 Comments

1:

I gather that "folk psychology" is the flip side of the coin to "folk physics" (for want of a better term). There is evidence that babies have an instinctive set of beliefs about physics built in, such as the persistence of objects. If you show a baby a video of an animal going behind a bush and not appearing from the other side the baby will spend more time staring at this than if the animal subsequently reappears. Babies "know" that things don't just disappear.

Extrapolating from this, humans have two built-in mental frameworks for understanding things. They are the physics model, whereby the thing obeys simple knowable rules in a deterministic fashion, and the intentional model, whereby the thing has a human-like mind with mental states, desires, partial knowledge of the universe, and agency.

When humans are faced with something new they automatically try out both frameworks on it. If the physics model works, fine, its a thing with no mind. But if the physics model doesn't work then people fall back on the intentional model because its the only one they have left.

And by the way, just when you thought people couldn't get any dumber: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/deep-dive-into-stupid-meet-the-growing-group-that-rejects-germ-theory/

2:

It dovetails with the human tendency to not think more than a step or two ahead; if we can fix the COVID-19 issue for me, then that's good for me. Lots of people will stop thinking about COVID-19 here - the problem is dealt with, because it's no longer my problem, and so I can ignore it now. We need, however, to think a bit further ahead - if COVID-19 is dealt with in the UK, what happens when we have international travel to or from an area where it's not controlled?

The human tendency is to say "we'll deal with that problem when it's a problem"; the difficulty is that dealing with it now is so much cheaper than waiting a decade for the problem to get worse and then trying to deal with it locally.

See also air pollution - we've made huge strides in dealing with localised pollution that made it problematic to live in some cities, but we've taken a "as long as the effects on me aren't too bad for now" approach to the issue where it affects the planet as a whole.

3:

In the USA, the problem is not so much that people are viewing the virus itself as a personalized enemy as that they identify the battle as being against their political opponents. The enemy at which the shrieks of defiance are directed are those who want to mandate vaccines or face masks, or those who believe they are being endangered by the willfully unvaccinated. (BTW -- this is not a "both sides equally at fault" case -- the first group is the more unhinged.)

4:

On this matter, I can recommend "Spike: The Virus vs. The People - the Inside Story" by Jeremy Farrar and Anjana Ahuja. It's more relevant to this topic than one would hope :-(

5:

The intentional stance doesn't actually work so well for people either, what it gives us in that regard is conspiracy theories.

6:

The trouble is that, like Lamarck, Bernard was wrong about the sort of germs being discussed but was right about many other 'diseases'. In at least birds and mammals, behaviour and related skills are at more Lamarckian than Darwinian. And most eyesight defects, cardiovascular and many intestinal problems are more Bernardian than Pasteurian.

But it is amazing at how many people in the medical profession don't accept that, even today, and it was a majority within my memory. While this is not the same delusion as the one OGH described, it is very similar, and similarly convert what is a generalised problem into an attack.

I agree with the intentional stance interpretation, but I don't think the blinkered viewpoint is due to that. I think that it's due to the anti-scientific attitude of the majority of people, including most of those in power in many countries (and, in the case of the UK, for centuries). This could be regarded as part of the discrimination against Asperger's people, but I don't think it is - it's another consequence of an underlying cause.

The blinkered viewpoint has been described as both completely unscientific by most of the leading scientists on COVID (see Spike), and actively harmful to the countries that adopt it. No, I don't understand the mindset, but I don't understand the human race in many ways.

7:

I've felt for a long time now that most people want simple answers to problems. Even people who really do know better. Life just can't be this complicated.

So when the only answers provided by experts or those in the know, it must be a hoax, conspiracy, whatever. There MUST BE another answer.

Which takes us know all of the bad paths.

In my few years ago fight against YEC I was plain flabbergasted by how people would rail against the lies being told by scientists world wide while using their phones GPS system to navigate around town. And if you tried to explain that most of the science they were railing against was required to make their phone exist they just refused to believe it.

The world just had to be simpler than it really is.

YEC = Young Earth Creationism. Back by science. In their minds. Oy vey.

8:

"Which takes us know all of the bad paths."

DOWN

9:

Someone (at this blog, maybe) once likened COVID to Romero-style zombies: you can't bargain with them, they're only interested in infecting you.

only tenuously endorses not standing under tall trees in a thunderstorm

I think it was in one of his earlier Discworld novels that Sir PTerry described a person's foolishness as on the same level as someone going out to the top of a high hill in a thunderstorm while wearing copper armour and shouting "All gods are bastards!"

10:

Unfortunately, the precedent for handling diseases in the West argues against you. Since the 1950s, very few diseases have been eradicated. Most have just been eradicated in the developed world, and still linger in the developing world. That is the model I think a lot of world leaders, and a large subset or majority of the Western population is trying to replicate here. As far as they're concerned, "it worked with HIV". There's a reason that I asked on this blog: what do we do if the next new disease is cholera-based? I guess I should expand the question to what if it's malaria based? Both could still mutate.

11:

In this contect it is worth paying attention to how much of an outlier the humanism which gave us the UN Charter of Universal Rights was.

It is not even half wrong to say that happened in, and only because, the heavy haze of post-traumatic shock, as clearly signalled by all the "Never Again!" language.

The subsequent 20-25 years were the largest and most generous handout of quality-of-life improvements in all of human history, which meant that only those outside or on the fringes of the western worlds seemingly endless party, found reason to grow grudges.

But ever since OPEC busted our party in 1973, the usual, by which I mean "as in the last five thousand years", mentality of "us vs. them" has slowly but surely crept back in, but with the very significant twist that telecommunication continuously reminds us of how many "them" there actually are.

WHO was founded on, and in, that "never again" haze, where nobody could even imagine why anybody would not cooperate fully in vaccination plans etc. etc. and like all other UN institutions, including IPCC, this foundational optimism seems terribly quaint the current and much more natural "us vs. them" world.

It is not at all obvious to me that humans even can feel empathy with all the N billion other humans, and since even making it look like they do, again, would require environmentally unsustainable (ie: exponential) growth in free handouts of bread&circus, it's not going to happen.

Both Covid-19 and climate change already are, and increasingly will become, demonstratively blameless instruments of "respectable" political power, precisely like the EU-memberstate coast-guard boats, sailing out to rescue drowning refugees in the Mediterranean, but doing so very slowly.

In the not-even-pretending-to-be-respectable end, we have not quite yet seen facistoid propaganda outlets run celebratory "%f THEM dead from COVID-19" banner headlines, but their coverage of the situation in India got close.

As Charlie points out: "Us vs. them" is a totally stupid strategy against threats not suffering from the same deficient mental modelling, so yeah, it's going to be ugly, but history, always written by the victors/survivors, will surely record that they, 'them', the victims really did it to themselves.

12:

Cholera is unlikely to be a major pandemic threat: we know how it works and we know how to treat it, even without antibiotics. (Oral rehydration -- and correct sanitation to ensure the bacteria don't get into the drinking water supply -- works well. It used to kill millions and it still infects millions, but deaths are through the floor thanks to rehydration treatment.)

Malaria ... Malaria is, summed over time, probably the most lethal disease in human history. But a side-effect of COVID19 has been a massive acceleration of R&D work on mRNA vaccines, and apparently there's an mRNA-based Malaria vaccine with >70% effectiveness in advanced human clinical trials right now.

Really, COVID19 has done for mRNA vaccine research what the second world war did for jet engines (they'd have come along anyway, but the war put them on fast-forward).

I'm more worried that the next pandemic will be something that hits one of our staple food crops just as climate change is hitting agriculture hard. If the planetary harvest of (pick any one) maize, wheat, rye, soy beans, rice, or potatoes got halved then there'd be mass starvation and quite possibly revolutions and civil wars (as happened during the Arab Spring, due to futures speculation in the wake of 2008 causing the price of bread to spike throughout the Middle East). The Syrian civil war is estimated to have killed 2% of the pre-war population -- making it significantly worse as a per capita cause of fatalities than COVID19, albeit only in Syria. A global crop failure would be very bad indeed ...

13:

Damian @ 5: The intentional stance doesn't actually work so well for people either, what it gives us in that regard is conspiracy theories.

That is a very interesting thought.

I'd say that there are two separate things going on here.

  • Applying the intentional stance to distant public figures. The trouble is that our built-in theory of the mind relies on a bunch of cues; body language, choice of words, response in conversation, emotional affect etc. When we are watching the carefully controlled performances that our public figures are forced to put on those cues are either distorted or completely missing. So we get the wrong answers, and it becomes much easier to dehumanise them and declare that "they" are all corrupt, or whatever. This is why even today politicians need to spend time "pressing the flesh" out in their constituencies; meeting a politician in person is a very different experience to seeing one on the TV.

  • Applying the intentional stance to institutions. Institutions are of course made up of people, but the behaviour of the institution is an emergent phenomenon that cannot be explained by looking at one individual within it (including the CEO). This, I think, is where conspiracy theories come from. The behaviour of an institution towards an individual appear to be anything from deeply caring to seemingly malicious, and its quite possible for a single individual to experience both. When you listen to cases of institutional neglect you get the individuals saying things like "We've been loyal customers for many years; how can it do this to us?". This is very much assigning an intentional stance towards the institution. Once you start doing this, it becomes very easy to infer actual malice on the part of the institution, and hey presto, you have a conspiracy theory.

  • There are other drivers of conspiracy theory of course; the feeling of empowerment that comes from the secret truth, the existential validation of being at the centre of vital events in history, and the extent to which cynical individuals can amplify the above for their own profit. But I think the seed is probably the assignment of intentional stances to institutions.

    14:

    By the way, if you want a demonstration of the "folk physics", see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIxYCDbRGJc

    The orang-utan definitely knows how things are supposed to work. (And apologies to any simian librarians who happen to be watching: I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE for the title of the video)

    15:

    The only disease that I can say with any certainty as being Bernardian is diabetes. Even within my own lifetime, another disease clearly Bernardian (stomach ulcers) was confirmed to be Pasteurian. The little corkscrew bugs literally drill into the lining of your stomach. Antibiotics clear them up. While it is doubtful, I can't help but wonder if cardiovascular disease couldn't be similar... it's pretty fringe, but I've read of some who hypothesize smaller-than-believed-possible microbes that cause plaque buildups in blood vessels. And cancer? Woo-boy, who's to say that most of it's not viral in origin. Some types are known to be so.

    Jesus, but germ theory is so obviously correct that there was a Roman who managed to figure it out from first principles before anyone had the technology to know it with certainty. Seriously, wtf.

    16:

    Charlie: "But the foolishness of this idea will become glaringly obvious in a few years when it allows a fourth SARS family pandemic to emerge."

    In the USA, we are clearly in wave 4 and with a new variant. We are far closer to 'a new pandemic' than we should be.

    17:

    No. Why Helicobacter pylori should cause trouble to some people and not others is unknown, but it might well be caused by getting out of balance in some way. Or might be for some other reason - we don't know.

    https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stomach-ulcer/causes/

    Again, diverticulitis and many intestinal cancers are usually (but not always) caused by unsatisfactory diets, which in turn cause unsatisfactory got flora.

    Most cardiovascular disease is definitely caused by lifestyle, including diet, exercise, stress etc. Again, not always.

    I can assure you that it has been definitely known for some decades what causes many cancers, and it's fairly rarely viruses. Others are, and many cancers have unknown causes.

    Vitamin (especially C and D) deficiency makes you much more susceptible to many diseases, including at least some cancers.

    The above is why many public health specialists say that we should be focussing on prevention, not treatment.

    18:

    @Damian, @Paul : we are small tribe (~100-200 individuals) hierarchical apes. Our brain hes not been selected for solving large scale problems.

    It did not have to either, the past 200.000 years have been mostly hunter gatherers with 10000 years of ground scratching and goat herding in smallish communities.

    The real Darwinian pressure at the species level has mostly been surviving crowd illnesses and playing small scale social games to keep enough status to find a mate.

    Even the brightest of us are on full autopilot 90% of their wake up time and following the current fashion (whatever the subject) is the easy way to coast. Thinking is expensive. Many people do not want to think. It's painful.

    I do not think that rational explanation is the way out of our current covid or climate predicaments.

    Making the "right" behavior fashionable is the only way. We need efficient propaganda.

    19:

    Correction: "diverticulitis, at least some intestinal cancers and many other intestinal woes".

    21:

    Lifestyle and cardiovascular disease correlate. Obviously, that means it's lifestyle... it couldn't possibly be that people living modern lifestyles are exposed to microbes that those living non-modern lifestyles see only rarely or never. Gotcha.

    And Heliobacter just happens to be attacking people with poor nutrition. Until they get antibiotics, then it doesn't re-attack them, just... because.

    Also, there exist no plausible mechanisms for microbes/viruses to instigate most cancers.

    Thank you for assuring me, mostly-anonymous internet denizen. I have seen the error of my ways. How much does your newsletter subscription cost? Even if I have to tell my kids there's no money for the karate lessons, I am signing up. (They'll thank me later.)

    22:

    I doubt that OGH is interested, so I shall not respond.

    He and others will notice that I grossly over-simplified, omitting genetics and many other known complications. Possibly a mistake.

    23:

    There are also many, many actors, at all scales, deliberately abusing this cognitive bias (assumption that viruses have intentionality) but also rest of the full set of tools for manipulation of humans, to affect ("effectorize") various aspects of the pandemic response for their own reasons. There is no vacuum free of such (attempted) manipulation. (There are many active efforts to counter such malignant manipulation.)

    The US is particularly stark; much of the resistance to effective anti-pandemic measures is driven by propaganda relentlessly produced and distributed by political partisans, and the net effect is so obvious in COVID-19 statistics that a few R states have stopped or slowed down their reporting. But there are also less obvious operators, like commercial real estate interests, organizations of small businesses, that are all advocating for making the crass trade of mass death and disability for improved profits. And orgs like pro-pandemic (anti-NPIs/anti-Vax) churches are also active, for varied reasons.

    If I wanted to rile up the paranoid anti-Chinese right wing, I'd start mainstreaming the notion that China is taking draconian measures that eliminate outbreaks because they've analysed the long-COVID data (possible long-term or lifelong heart/lung/brain/fertility damage, at the very least) and have decided that it will be in their national interest to minimize the percentage of their population that has been infected by SARS-CoV-2 relative to other countries, especially the USA. (Many think that the Chinese are lying about their numbers. They may be a little, but they are VERY serious about suppressing outbreaks.) The line of attack would be that some anti-vaxxer/anti-masker propaganda is Chinese-backed and motivated by an attempt to improve the long term relative population health of Chinese citizens relative to other countries. Bonus; if the Chinese are actually doing this, they might stop. (Yes, there has been talk in China very recently about shifting the suppression strategy because Delta is so infectious. So far, no significant shift.)

    24:

    Here in the U.S. it's not all of our leaders who are acting so selfishly. There's a strong divide between those who want to do the best that science can tell them is the best response and those who want to follow leaders - false messiahs.

    I am still mystified by what the anti-vaxx assholes hope to gain by spreading their falsehoods & misinformation.

    I've been told various things, but none of them make any sense?

    25:

    possible long-term or lifelong heart/lung/brain/fertility damage, at the very least

    You mean like this?

    https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/difficulty-thinking-after-covid/116556/

    https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/covid-19-associated-with-long-term-cognitive-dysfunction-acceleration-of-alzheimer-s-symptoms-800060091.html

    De Erausquin’s team assessed the patients three to six months after they were infected with the coronavirus, measuring factors such as cognitive abilities, emotional reactivity, motor function and coordination. For example: Could the patients recall names and phone numbers, or where they put things? Could they retrieve the right word at the right time?

    He was most struck by three findings: One, he said, was the frequency with which people who had been exposed to the coronavirus had subsequent problems with memory. About 60 percent had cognitive impairment, and for 1 in 3, the symptoms were severe.

    Second, his findings indicate that the severity of a covid-19 patient’s illness does not predict cognitive problems. “What puts you at risk of having the cognitive problems is just having been infected, regardless of how badly ill you were,” he said. “You may have had very mild covid, but if you were infected and you are older, you are at risk of having these issues.

    And, third, losing the ability to smell, which has been commonly reported among covid-19 patients, is correlated with cognitive troubles. “They track together quite well,” de Erausquin said. “The more severe your lack of smell, the more severe your cognitive impairment.” (The olfactory nerves, which control your ability to smell, are the only ones directly connected to the cerebrum, the largest part of the brain. Nerves for the other senses go through the thalamus, which relays their signals to the cerebral cortex.)

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/dementia-alzheimers-covid-research-link/2021/07/29/bccef096-f07d-11eb-a452-4da5fe48582d_story.html

    I confess the part I bolded bothers me. If being vaccinated helps prevent hospitalization etc but not infection, which may be the case with Delta+, then that doesn't bode well for the Anglo-American "herd immunity by letting infections run wild" strategy.

    26:

    Paul @ 1: And by the way, just when you thought people couldn't get any dumber: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/deep-dive-into-stupid-meet-the-growing-group-that-rejects-germ-theory/

    But where did this come from? Did these idiots just wake up one day and reject the whole history of Western Science? Or were they motivated in some way by lies & disinformation?

    If the latter, where did it originally come from? Cui bono?

    27:

    I am still mystified by what the anti-vaxx assholes hope to gain by spreading their falsehoods & misinformation.

    According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the originators of at least 65% of the antivax disinformation on the Internet are gaining money, in some cases lots of it, and Big Tech gets up to $1.1 billion in advertising out of it…

    https://www.counterhate.com

    https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_b7cedc0553604720b7137f8663366ee5.pdf

    https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_00b2ad56fe524d82b271a75e441cd06c.pdf

    28:

    Charlie: It's the Politicos, posturing & lying, even ( particularlry? ) idiots like BoZo who have had the bug....

    Paul That last link is terrifying - I'm expecting it to really take off in the USA -as LAvery notes.

    David L Life just can't be this complicated. Oh yes, it can! Has anyone else here come across the US-based Q-&-A session called "Quora" - there's a persistent subset of Cretinists in there, fucking it up, for everyone else.

    P H-K WHO was founded on, and in, that "never again" haze, where nobody could even imagine why anybody would not cooperate fully in vaccination plans etc. Yeah, right KILL ALL the Taliban & Da'esh, OK? [ Yes, I know, stupid US arseholes using vaccination programmes a cover - kill them too! ] Reminds me - In a "liberal" society - what does one do about people deliberately spreading lies that kill people? Like, especially the Anti-Vaxxers. There must be some way, short of killing them all, to shut them up, for all our sakes? ]

    Barry BUT - that is "intentional". Intentional by the Rethuglican know-nothings who crawl to IQ45

    EC Spot on. I had worsening gut problems for years, in spite of a a healthy diet - until I was unintentionally "cleaned out". Since then, nary a twinge. Something truly 'orrible had made a home in my guts ... until.

    JBS I am still mystified by what the anti-vaxx assholes hope to gain by spreading their falsehoods & misinformation. Can someone help clear this up? ... Ah Rbt Prior has it .. Personal Profits at the expense of little people's deaths. Nothing new to see here.

    29:

    Charlie Stross @ 12: Cholera is unlikely to be a major pandemic threat: we know how it works and we know how to treat it, even without antibiotics. (Oral rehydration -- and correct sanitation to ensure the bacteria don't get into the drinking water supply -- works well. It used to kill millions and it still infects millions, but deaths are through the floor thanks to rehydration treatment.)

    FWIW, there IS a Cholera vaccine. I got it in 2003. The immunity it confers appears to be good for about a year.

    The big news here in the U.S. yesterday was the Pentagon announcing that all Armed Forces Service Members are required to be vaccinated by September 15.

    That gave me a kind of WTF moment, because they didn't do it that way when I was in the Army. If the Army (or any other branch of service) thought you needed to be vaccinated against something they just lined everyone up and vaccinated them. Refusing to be vaccinated was an UCMJ Article 92 violation (Failure to obey a lawful order).

    It can and has led to courts martial and BAD CONDUCT DISCHARGES.

    30:

    Reminds me - In a "liberal" society - what does one do about people deliberately spreading lies that kill people? Like, especially the Anti-Vaxxers. There must be some way, short of killing them all, to shut them up, for all our sakes?

    Two points. Firstly, killing people is generally wrong, even if they're murderous fuckwits: it's far preferable to de-escalate the roots of conflict and then work on de-programming them. This seems to have born fruit in Northern Ireland: I hope it can be applied elsewhere, too, although I'm not terribly hopeful in the case of the Taliban (who have acquired the status of a national liberation movement thanks to repeated foreign invasions since 1979) ...

    Second point. Prisons, with restrictions on contact/communication with the outside world, are one solution. In the UK and the EU, the European Convention on Human Rights provides an exception to the right to freedom of speech specifically for public health -- its drafters based it on the UNCHR, and the drafters of that document remembered the 1919-21 flu at first hand. It's clearly what it's there for: we should work out how to use it.

    Americans tend to take a fundamentalist view of their first amendment right to free speech, which is somewhat stronger, but the US Supreme Court during the first world war also put a limit on the 1st amendment: hark back to "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre". At that time, it was used explicitly to suppress political dissent in time of war -- but if you reframe the principle as "free speech ends when the speech in question consists of malicious falsehoods that will lead to mass fatalities", it becomes a bit clearer (and a lot closer to the ECHR yardstick).

    I'd want to see a formal legal test before locking people up for speech crimes -- connect the malicious falsehoods to a direct profit motive (marketing chloroquine or anal bleach would be good examples, as would boosting commercial rental receipts). But encouraging other people to die to boost your profit margin is utterly reprehensible and should be easy to explain as a crime to the general public.

    As for duration/punishment? I'm not advocating locking anti-vaxx opinion shapers as punishment, even though many of them deserve it -- I'm advocating it as a public health measure. They can get out on parole if they agree to publicly recant, then shut up about the subject: yank 'em back inside if they don't stick with the deal. Otherwise, they stay in detention without access to social media, phones, or email until the pandemic is officially over. That may take a long time, thanks in part to their own efforts ...

    31:

    That gave me a kind of WTF moment, because they didn't do it that way when I was in the Army. If the Army (or any other branch of service) thought you needed to be vaccinated against something they just lined everyone up and vaccinated them.

    The reasoning behind the COVID vaccines being optional previously was that they were deemed experimental, and being rolled out on an emergency product license waiver permitted by the FDA without the full mountain of regulatory compliance paperwork being filed.

    Remember the disease has only been A Thing for 20 months at this point. Normally it takes multiple years -- decades, even -- for a vaccine to be approved as safe.

    Also remember, we do not conduct medical experiments on unwilling subjects. (Per the Nuremberg protocols: Nazi doctors were hanged for violating them.) Civilians don't get the vaccines involuntarily, you have to agree to the jab. Military personnel, under orders? Not really legal if the treatment is still officially experimental.

    The picture has changed now, thanks to hundreds of millions of doses being delivered: what the safety filings lack in terms of duration of follow-up they make up for in breadth of application. So if the FDA formally granted approval for the vaccines for routine (non-emergency) human use, that'd make it legal to order armed service members to be vaccinated.

    32:

    In some cases, the latter. In others, it's the conscious refusal to admit to facts that contradict their prejudices. The open and flagrant denial of science is a new social ill, associated with 'social media', but I remember otherwise intelligent people denying proven knowledge in the 1960s. They just denied they did it, and refused to check up - as still happens today.

    It's not helped by scientists and experts (even real ones) overselling their favoured dogma, which is where I came in. We have seen examples of that on this blog, time and time again - e.g. the dogma that FTL communication necessarily implies breaches of causality.

    33:

    John Oyler @ 21: Lifestyle and cardiovascular disease correlate. Obviously, that means it's lifestyle... it couldn't possibly be that people living modern lifestyles are exposed to microbes that those living non-modern lifestyles see only rarely or never. Gotcha.

    I'm pretty sure those "modern lifestyle" diseases were with us all along. But in former days, say up to the mid 19th century they were masked by other now preventable diseases. People died before those "modern lifestyle" diseases manifested to kill them.

    34:

    What you say has more history behind it than just the legal aspects.

    According to my uncle (who was a medical officer of health), more people died from the old TAB (typhoid etc.) vaccine than were saved by it; I used to have it every 6 months, and can witness how bad it was. With what I know now, he was referring to the direct benefit to a person who was exposed, rather than to the general one of preventing an outbreak; in terms of the population as a whole, it was highly beneficial.

    The belief that it is unethical to consider the population benefit (rather than just the individual one) was the reason for original decision in the UK not to vaccinate boys against HPV, which was a pretty clear epidemiological mistake, and has now been reconsidered.

    35:

    Robert Prior @ 27:

    I am still mystified by what the anti-vaxx assholes hope to gain by spreading their falsehoods & misinformation.

    According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the originators of at least 65% of the antivax disinformation on the Internet are gaining money, in some cases lots of it, and Big Tech gets up to $1.1 billion in advertising out of it…

    https://www.counterhate.com

    https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_b7cedc0553604720b7137f8663366ee5.pdf

    "https://252f2edd-1c8b-49f5-9bb2-cb57bb47e4ba.filesusr.com/ugd/f4d9b9_00b2ad56fe524d82b271a75e441cd06c.pdf

    Yeah, I know that part, but it still mystifies me.

    Don't these people ever do any kind of market research? Every old fashion snake oil salesman knows that killing the "marks" is bad for repeat business.

    36:

    https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/moderna-may-be-superior-pfizer-against-delta-breakthrough-odds-rise-with-time-2021-08-09/

    This is a summary article by a news organization.

    It reports findings by the Mayo Clinic that vaccine effectiveness in the US is down in July (= vs Delta); to 76% for Moderna and 42% for Pfizer vaccines.

    It reports an Israeli study finding an overall breakthrough infection rate of 1.8% in the fully vaccinated. They further report that the "hinge", time-wise, is five months; if you received your second dose more than five months ago your risk of breakthrough infection rises. (Risk of breakthrough infection is also correlated with age.)

    I don't think the next several months are going to involve a surge of autumnal normalcy, somehow.

    37:

    Don't these people ever do any kind of market research? Every old fashion snake oil salesman knows that killing the "marks" is bad for repeat business.

    That hasn't stopped people selling vitamin cures to cancer patients…

    38:

    Charlie your point # 2 - the EHCR exception in prisons for liars who kill people, if indirectly is one I definitely hadn't even heard of. I like it. I also like the tying to a "Profit" motive, too. As you say - now comes the difficult bit - applying it & jailing the bastards ( Without creating "martyrs" )

    39:

    I don't think the next several months are going to involve a surge of autumnal normalcy, somehow.

    They might, if enough people decide 'fuck this' and just proceed with business as usual, accepting the higher risk of disease (mostly suffered by older/sicker people, so not their problem).

    I was told by someone last year that Covid wasn't such a big problem because it was mostly the "dead wood" dying, who would die soon anyway, and it wasn't right to make everyone else suffer. I keep hearing that from Canadians deep in the Republican bubble…

    Or at least the appearance of normalcy. Look at Alberta, for example…

    40:

    It appears to me that we have a ton of diseases already. When I was young, there were not a hell of a lot of folks with diabetes. Then, one that seems to have hit a lot of people I know, mostly women, is fibromyalgia, which, again, did not seem to be anywhere near as prevalent back then.

    My SO tells me that it hit her in her thirties, under extreme stress, and got a virus.

    41:

    I'd tend to agree; certainly the group of people I know (of) who have the highest Covid infection rate are Con party politicians.

    42:

    Kind of young in the thread about the immense damage being caused by belief in the agency of "small obligate intracellular parasites", so will keep it terse: here's a recent take (with refs) on the not-well-known-enough story on peanut allergies being caused by pediatricians recommending (based on theory not grounded in data) strict avoidance of peanuts among infants. The peanut snack that triggered a fresh approach to allergy prevention (nature outlook, 02 December 2020)

    Literally, the incidence of peanut allergy is 5-10 times higher among children who were oh-so-carefully protected from exposure to peanuts when young. Was discovered because a researcher noticed a difference in the incidence of peanut allergies among UK and Israeli children.

    43:

    Charlie Stross @ 31:

    That gave me a kind of WTF moment, because they didn't do it that way when I was in the Army. If the Army (or any other branch of service) thought you needed to be vaccinated against something they just lined everyone up and vaccinated them.

    The reasoning behind the COVID vaccines being optional previously was that they were deemed experimental, and being rolled out on an emergency product license waiver permitted by the FDA without the full mountain of regulatory compliance paperwork being filed.

    The BioThrax Anthrax vaccine was still considered "experimental" and under "Emergency Use Authorization" in 2003 when I was lined up to receive it.

    AFAIK, it was STILL under that "Emergency Use Authorization" when I got the other five shots in the series. I don't know if it EVER received final approval from the FDA. But that didn't slow the Army down from vaccinating me in the least.

    The need for vaccinations to combat the threat from Covid-19 is obviously greater than the need for the Anthrax vaccinations ever was.

    Even if I had been sent over there to clean pigpens & sheep corrals, there was never a risk of developing a life threatening case ... and likelihood of my spreading it along to my fellow soldiers was NIL. There's good reason why the military does (and should do) such things "by the numbers".

    Military readiness. If they need you, they need you NOW. And they don't need you to be infecting other soldiers1. Covid-19 is a much greater threat to military readiness than Anthrax ever was.

    New England Journal of Medicine: An Outbreak of Covid-19 on an Aircraft Carrier

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_USS_Theodore_Roosevelt

    Also remember, we do not conduct medical experiments on unwilling subjects. (Per the Nuremberg protocols: Nazi doctors were hanged for violating them.) Civilians don't get the vaccines involuntarily, you have to agree to the jab. Military personnel, under orders? Not really legal if the treatment is still officially experimental.

    The vaccine was safe enough to release to the civilian population under "emergency use authorization", so vaccinating soldiers against the pandemic IS NOT conducting "medical experiments on unwilling subjects", so that argument doesn't hold up.

    I haven't heard a single good argument for why the Pentagon didn't already have vaccinations in train. I will accept that it was important to prioritize older people & persons with high risk conditions who were most vulnerable, but we're well past that now, with vaccine doses expiring & having to be discarded UNUSED.

    At the very least the military should have begun mandatory vaccinations when the uptake among the civilian population stalled out and more doses were becoming available.

    1 Plus it's an ALL VOLUNTEER force. You weren't drafted. You chose to join up. But when you did join up and took the oath, you voluntarily gave up some of your freedumbs.

    44:

    And, third, losing the ability to smell, which has been commonly reported among covid-19 patients, is correlated with cognitive troubles. “They track together quite well,” de Erausquin said. “The more severe your lack of smell, the more severe your cognitive impairment.” ( Yep. Very concerning. Thanks for the links; hadn't seen all of those. I've posted a link or two about research results in this area (brain damage) here before; easy to find with scholar.google.com. (And have been avoiding getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 since before February 2020 because long term neurological sequelae were clearly possible. (Also SotMNs warned back then. :-)) Mask up, with a good mask/respirator like an N95. With Delta (and any variants of it that retain the high viral load) reducing the inoculum levels to where vaccine-stimulated antibody levels in the nose can have a good chance of clearing the virus quickly is perhaps important. I'm not waiting for "science" on this.

    45:

    "When I was young, there were not a hell of a lot of folks with diabetes."

    Beware of sampling bias!

    I do not know your age, but it is very likely that, people suffering from diabetes lived significantly shorter and much less socially active lives then.

    Even though the Nobel Price for Insulin was handed out in 1923, it took half a decade before the quality of life for the affected even approached normal.

    That said, yes, there is no doubt dietary intake of refined sugars has made the prevalence much worse.

    46:

    You appear to be confusing Type I diabetes (an autoimmune disease that kills off islet cells, reducing insulin production: mostly arrives in childhood or adolescence, or in the wake of acute pancreatitis) with Type II diabetes (reduced sensitivity to insulin: mostly arrives in middle-to-old age, correlates with abdominal fat deposits).

    Despite both being called "diabetes" (which is actually a symptomatic diagnosis) these are very different diseases with different treatments.

    47:

    The same people who deny climate change, think Covid-19 is a hoax, that the election was stolen, and obsess over Qanon are the same people who thought fluoride in water was a Commie plot, were reading the Left Behind books and deciphering the Book of revelations, denying evolution, and collecting Jack Chick religious pamphlets.

    The exact same people, the exact same mind set.

    48:

    The other relevant difference is that we are completely baffled why Type I should be increasing in prevalence, but have a fairly good idea why type II is.

    49:

    I agree with you on the dangers of sampling bias.

    And yet....

    I don't recall as a kid in the 60s ever meeting or hearing about any other child with T1 diabetes, autism, developmental issues, physical handicaps, cancer, etc.

    Yes I know people did not talk about such things back then (for example, breast cancer was a taboo subject until first lady Betty Ford's diagnosis) and children were kept ignorant about such things. And yes, autism as a concept didn't exist back then (and you could make the argument that it may be over diagnosed today).

    And yet...

    We have several children just in our neighborhood alone with the above maladies.

    Has there ever been a definitive study showing an increase in the rate of childhood maladies over time - and not just improvements in diagnosis?

    Microplastics, forever chemicals, glyphosates, pesticides, etc. have all been shown to reduce sperm counts and fertility, cause Parkinson's and lower IQ levels in adults.

    So are our children today sicker than children 50 years ago? And is it due to chemical pollutants?

    50:

    I believe that insurance companies will save us by denying coverage to businesses, organizations and even people who refuse to get vaccinated.

    The worst thing the anti-vaxxers have done is give the Covid-19 virus opportunities to mutate further.

    The Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox and goes after kids.

    The Epsilon variant could ignore the vaccines.

    The Zeta variant could be as deadly as Ebola.

    51:

    Remember the disease has only been A Thing for 20 months at this point. Normally it takes multiple years -- decades, even -- for a vaccine to be approved as safe.

    The various vaccines in use today are safe, they wouldn't BE in use if they weren't safe. Effectiveness is another matter, several vaccine candidates have been abandoned at trial level because they were not as good as the current crop of in-use vaccines. Merck lost a bundle of cash on their V590 and V591 vaccines after they pulled the plug a few weeks ago, not even attempting to put them forward for EUA. Hell, even the Russian Sputnik V vaccine product is safe, it's based on a couple of existing coronavirus vaccines even though its efficacy is questionable.

    What the FDA is trying to do is to rigorously confirm that the vaccine manufacturers can continue to make their vaccines safely into the future, years and decades from now since they are expecting to produce, sell and dispense these vaccines for a long time to come. For that to happen there's a large amount of t-crossing and i-dotting, precursor supply chain guarantees, QA testing protocols, documentation and batch tracking and a hundred other things I don't know about or wouldn't consider unimportant but are seen as essential by the FDA.

    52:

    My pet theory: Covid-19 is the product of gain of function research performed at the biolab in Wuhan.

    It is NOT a bioweapon and the lab does NOT engage in biowarfare research (it would be pretty stupid to put such a dangerous facility in the downtown of a major population center).

    In general, gain of function research is a good thing in that it allows us to anticipate future diseases.

    Provided it stays in the lab.

    Someone at the Wuhan lab got sloppy with the containment protocols.

    53:

    "we are completely baffled why Type I should be increasing in prevalence"

    Probably environmental factors (comment #49).

    https://www.jdrf.org/blog/2020/02/18/more-people-being-diagnosed-type-1-diabetes/

    A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows a nearly 30% increase in type 1 diabetes (T1D) diagnoses in the United States, with youth cases growing most sharply among diverse populations.

    The CDC’s 2020 National Diabetes Statistics Report, cites that in the United States, T1D diagnoses included 1.4 million adults, 20 years and older, and 187,000 children younger than 20.

    That totals nearly 1.6 million Americans with T1D—up from 1.25 million people—or nearly 30% from 2017.

    54:

    Speaking as a rational animist...

    I'd point out that you're largely programmed by a society that rather pointlessly derides animism. This is, again, the Scala Naturae speaking, where Atheism is supposed to be on the top, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are on the second rung, animism is at the bottom, and atheists often love Taoism and Buddhism and ignore the fact that they're explicitly animist.

    In other words, figure out how much is programming and how much is rationality.

    Now, here's the rational animist part.

    I have no problem segregating out different levels of life: viruses, cells, organs, organisms. Fine. They all have that spark of creativity that some animists call a soul, as does everything else, in single and in aggregate.

    The question for a rational animist isn't what a soul is, because that's endless recursing bullshit. Animistic religion wasn't (and isn't) about that stuff, it's about being aware of the relevant parts of the world using your limited human brain, that weirdly adapted organ that remembers songs and dances better than long stretches of words (Darwin got it wrong: music is adaptive for memory), and deals with interpersonal interactions in part by using specialized cells called mirror neurons.

    Anyway, humans have mirror neurons that help us predict the behavior of others. How do you engage those neurons? By seeing the other as a person, animated by a soul. Just as a memory palace tries to engage human's bizarre memory for other purposes, rational animism tries to engage mirror neurons for data processing it by transforming inputs into "human" interactions.

    So you want to predict the behavior of a virus? Start by treating it as a really, really stupid person that only interacts with your cells, and see if that gets you anywhere. It's not that "the" virus is a person. What's relevant is to test if personalizing covid19 data helps you deal with it better. If it does, great. If not, abandon that approach and try something else.

    Nothing irrational about that.

    Note that this has precisely nothing to do with authoritarian followers demonstrating their devotion to their Leader Figures by engaging in stupid and dangerous displays. That's bog standard cult behavior, nothing more.

    55:
    "My pet theory: Covid-19 is the product of gain of function research performed at the biolab in Wuhan."

    This is probably not true. Reasons why are laid out briefly (but with references if more detail is needed) in The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 as preamble to more probable theories of origin. Most of the article is technical, but I think the relevant paragraph (under Theories of SARS-CoV-2 origins) is accessible enough.

    56:

    As has been pointed out, humans anthropomorphize everything. This is probably hardwired (or as close to hardwired as higher cognitive functions get). Even biologists seem unable to discuss natural selection without using euphemisms like "advanced" vs "primitive" or an organism "seeking to adapt". We know what they really mean, but the constraints of language and thought force us to communicate in terms that humans can most easily relate to (ever curse the weather?).

    Experts know better, but policy makers do not, cannot, because policy makers are not experts, they are representatives of constituencies.

    Axiom: An elected official can only be as intelligent as the people who elected them.

    "Intelligent" is here defined as "defining a problem, and weighing possible solutions, primarily using objective criteria."

    How intelligent policy can be depends on how objective the constituents wish to be. This is a choice, which is based on motivational criteria. What do people want? There is no reason that I am aware of to presume that most people regard physical survival as their highest value in all situations, even in emergencies.

    Were I to attempt to adopt the mental framework of people who resist vaccinations (I am not an anti-vaxxer) I would probably suggest that freedom of choice trumps risk when the risk is low enough. Most people do not know anyone who died or were hospitalized due to covid, so they can conclude that the odds of themselves or anyone they care about actually getting it are low enough to be acceptable, when weighted against other things they want to keep, such as employment. Plus, most people probably think that once vaccinated, you are safe regardless of what anyone else does, so why force people to vaccinate (few members of the general public understand natural selection well enough to get the mutation threat that Charlie mentioned).

    If you're safe, and my employment is at risk, how dare you force me to vaccinate? Once this gets framed in an us vs them orientation, tribalism takes over, and people start getting stupid.

    I once heard a woman being interviewed who had lost her husband to covid, and still refused to vaccinate herself. "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

    The problem reaches it's crux, at least in the US, with school mandated masking requirements, and the pushback, sometimes legal, and sometimes from elected officials. Children cannot give informed consent, therefore someone must decide for them. But using which values?

    Of course this is the US we are talking about, so lawsuits to follow. That might provide a resolution, but not quickly. Children may die.

    The real problem we have here is the amount of empathy we have with people who do not have as much empathy as we do (the problem they have with us is our lack of in-group loyalty). We value reducing suffering, they value individual autonomy. Conflict ensues.

    This doesn't have an objective answer, so expertise wont help.

    57:

    Axiom: An elected official can only be as intelligent as the people who elected them.

    I know a bunch of elected and formerly elected people pretty well, since I'm an environmental activist.

    To put it bluntly: this ain't true.

    The basic problem is that it assumes there's a one-dimensional something called "intelligence" that all people can be ranked on. This is manifestly not true. Intelligence is multidimensional, probably extremely multidimensional. That's why, say, Greg Tingey, Elderly Cynic, Nojay, and I can all think each other are idiots, and be right in some regards and dead wrong in other regards. We're all very multidimensional beings here. Inevitably, on some of those dimensions we're closer to zeros than others are. That's humanity for you.

    Politicians, like engineers and doctors, have a highly unusual set of skillset, based on both innate talent and learned (and practiced) skills. As with doctors, engineers, and plumbers, they do stuff I can understand and influence, but I could no more do their job than they could do mine.

    One big part of their job is taking shit from people without having it destroy them. If you think this is easy, go listen to the open mic part of any city council meeting, and imagine sitting there taking this crap for hours every week, if not every day. They're up there with waitresses in their ability to handle crap, especially since most people think they're stupid and/or corrupt and treat them accordingly.

    Another big part of their job is making complex decisions about stuff they're not expert on. Again, this is harder than it looks. It's tremendously easy to look stupid in this role (especially if all the choices are bad) and it's extremely easy to just do what your major donors tell you to do (e.g. corruption). Finding compromises that work well is hard. Doing it ethically is harder.

    Then there's the high stamina, good people organizing skills (they all have offices) and so forth.

    Now yes, there are a lot of politicians I have utter contempt for, Bojo and IQ.45 being only two. But I've learned that even ones I think are idiots can do stuff I can't, and I genuinely respect them for that. Well, I don't respect IQ.45, but that's because he has an almost perfect reverse Midas Touch.

    58:

    We value reducing suffering, they value individual autonomy.

    Well, they value some people's autonomy. They are quite happy to shit all over my nieces because their skins aren't pink enough, interfere with their control of their bodies, dictate who they can date and marry, and police what they wear (to name just a bit of the "autonomy" my nieces won't have, if 'they' get their way).

    They don't value autonomy. They value control, as long as they have it.

    59:

    "You appear to be confusing Type I diabetes ..."

    No, I certainly do not, being nailed by genetics to the bulls-eye for Type2 risk myself.

    But for the precise issue of "I saw no diabetics when I was a kid" the distinction is not relevant, because both types cut your life short.

    60:

    "I don't recall as a kid in the 60s ever meeting or hearing about any other child with T1 diabetes, autism, developmental issues, physical handicaps, cancer, etc."

    Most likely because such children were sequestered away from society in specialized institutions.

    As a child I knew several families which had children in such institutions, and we were not allowed to play with them, when they were visiting home, and everybody agreed that "it was best that way".

    Later in life I got to know senior staff at one such institution, and learned more than I ever wanted to know, about the postwar society's intolerance of anything abnormal, and it's total disregard for the value of humans who would be unable to "contribute to society."

    61:

    "Intelligence is multidimensional, probably extremely multidimensional. That's why, say, Greg Tingey, Elderly Cynic, Nojay, and I can all think each other are idiots, and be right in some regards and dead wrong in other regards."

    Absolutely. I have often said that's why I scored sky-high on a Mensa test; it tested PRECISELY those abilities I was best at. But I am not so stupid as to be unaware that they are not the only ones - just the ones that are easiest to test.

    62:

    I did, and am 73, so am in a good position to say. You have confused a huge number of unrelated things, which have different properties. In terms of the non-diseases, Poul-Henning Kamp (#60) is correct for some of the extreme cases, but I can witness that the general solution for most cases was to often beat the child into line (including for physical handicaps). It still is, to a great extent, as many of us can witness :-(

    In terms of Type I diabetes, we know it's more common but not why. Duffy (#53) misspelled 'possibly' :-)

    In terms of allergies and other auto-immune diseases, we know they're more common, Bill Arnold (#42) has pointed out one factor, but it's pretty certain it's not the only answer.

    In many cases, sanitation (in many places), vaccines etc. have eliminated or vastly reduced old childhood diseases (e.g. TB) and, in others, they were diagnosed reliably only recently, so we don't know.

    Yeah - it's complicated.

    63:

    It's almost certainly not true, though it looked awfully like a bioweapon when it was first analysed. Pretty well every scientist who thought that was a plausible hypothesis has accepted that what we know now (not then) makes it extremely implausible.

    And, even if it was a bioweapon that first emerged in Wuhan, why should it have been China that created it? Why not some rogue elements within the USA's military-industrial complex, specifically trying to stir up anti-China hatred? It's even on the borderline of feasibility for a well-funded terrorist organisation.

    64:

    " It's the Politicos, posturing & lying, even ( particularlry? ) idiots like BoZo who have had the bug...."

    With no discernible change in cognitive capacities ? ;)

    65:

    This describes exactly what I was referring to. Should we vaccinate for the benefit of the individuals, or the population? It's a separate aspect of 'inappropriateness', and people's views depend entirely where they are on the socialist / individualist spectrum.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58170048

    66:

    Also worth noting that tests, including the MENSA intelligence test, measure not just what is easy to measure, but also what the test creators thought was important to measure.

    And they suffer from the usual problem with metrics - once a metric is deemed "important", people will tend to do things that improve the metric regardless of whether they improve the underlying thing - and thus your teachers and mentors will almost certainly have trained you in ways that improve your test score, even without any active attempt to "cheat the system".

    67:

    OF COURSE its on Facebook OF COURSE its mostly populated by USAians

    68:

    Smart people solve problems. The MENSA test and IQ tests in general are problem tests. Smart people get good marks in problem tests. Quelle surprise. And yes, I know there are all sorts of cultural and social things in such tests, language, visual comprehension etc. but statistically speaking the problem-solvers are the ones we look up to as smart.

    We admire squirrels who work out how to get through puzzle trails, crows who can use sticks to get at food in a bottle and we call them smart because they solve problems but put them at a desk with a MENSA test on it they're not going to get anywhere.

    69:

    The bioweapon hypothesis has two key weaknesses, to my mind, leaving aside the actual genetics of the pathogen in question.

    If it's a bioweapon, then it was obviously released either deliberately or accidentally. (Pick one, but not the other.)

    Deliberate release: well, who the fuck would be stupid enough to release something with the properties of COVID19 without being prepared to (or already have) vaccinate(d) their own population? It serves no reasonable strategic goal and the potential for political blowback if a planned release was exposed is enormous.

    Accidental release: bioweapon development laboratories can't afford to be sloppy. If they get sloppy, they slaughter their own population. See also the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak -- no surprise that it happened in the USSR in the twilight Brezhnev era (the same period that ultimately gave us the Chernobyl disaster). I find it hard to imagine that the authoritarian technocrats of the Chinese Communist Party wouldn't have learned the harsh lessons that process control failures when handling self-replicating weapons might possibly be problematic.

    Finally: as bioweapons go, it's a bit shit. Yes, it's plausibly non-lethal to soldiers, but the incubation period and time to maximum morbidity in serious cases outstrip the likely duration of a modern high operational tempo war, and the age-stratified mortality would make it far more lethal among their own political leadership than among enemy combatants.

    COVID19 as a bioweapon would have been an excellent choice during the first world war in Europe -- or maybe the second. But in modern conflicts, it's both obsolescent and dangerous.

    70:

    I agree with your first paragraph, and your second might well apply to some people, but my education was not like that, not at all. Yes, I was taught basic mathematics, vocabulary and use of English, but the vast majority of the skills I used in that test were either innate or I had learned on my own (usually from reading).

    But my point stands - I happened to have a near-perfect skillset match with the things they were testing for. I can think of things they they did not test for (usually because they are harder to measure) where I would NOT do well!

    71:

    With no discernible change in cognitive capacities ? ;) Well, we are talking about Bozo here.. ;-)

    72:

    I found this on the EBC - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-58066767 which tl;dr says "Covid may cause diabetes in Indians".

    73:

    Unsurprising: COVID19 binds ACE2, so plugs into the renin-angiotensin system which modulates blood pressure and lipid storage/obesity regulation. Type II diabetes as a side-effect would be totally peachy, but ... as I said, unsurprising.

    If we're really lucky, research into COVID19 may clarify how metabolic system emerges and even point the way to a vaccine against it -- as it's a major killer these days (and I for one suffer from it) this would be very welcome.

    74:

    because they didn't do it that way when I was in the Army.

    This one is a bit of an odd duck. If a vaccine is fully authorized then yes, they just do it.

    But since this one is not they (the armed forces of the US) need a Presidential waiver before they can order it done.

    Basically they are saying the waiver is coming so shut up and get ready for it.

    75:

    paws @ 71 Even so, I think he's got even worse & even wobblier & unfocussed & inconsistent since he emerged from hospital? The mouthing off on any subject at all, with no follow-up or policies actually detectable ..... Or is that just me?

    76:

    There's also survivor and recall bias with childhood diseases and fatal accidents. People our age (I'm around Charlie's age) and older will say things like "kids didn't have those dangerous allergies when I was a child," by which they usually mean "nobody I knew was worried about things like anaphylactic shock when I was a child." But nobody worrying about it didn't mean people didn't have allergies: it meant that "the child just stopped breathing and died, we have no idea why" [with optional "God works in mysterious ways"] was sad, and fortunately rare. And even if someone thought "maybe if he hadn't been stung by that bee, he'd be okay," it wasn't talked about as "this allergy killed my nephew."

    Or people will insist that their family's pool didn't have a fence, or nobody had seatbelts and it didn't hurt them, because the people who drowned in unattended pools or were killed in car crashes aren't here to say "well, you're OK, but I drowned and was buried at age 3."

    77:

    Absolutely, though it wouldn't rule out an insane terrorist group, but that's implausible on other grounds. That is in addition to the data in the Nature paper (and elsewhere) posted by Luke McCarthy pointing out that either the "gain of function research" or bioweapon (which result in very similar organisms) theories are implausible on genetic grounds.

    The most interesting hint I have seen are the indications (and they are little more) that there was a precursor active in humans before November 2019. If so, that would strongly imply that their second origin hypothesis ("Natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer") is correct, and the initial virus that spread around the world was the first major variant with increased transmissibility (i.e. the sequence of those variants goes that one, Alpha, Delta).

    Anyway, that's the hypothesis I think is most likely.

    78:

    There's also survivor and recall bias ... "kids didn't have those dangerous allergies when I was a child"

    What you say is true, but in fact there has been a considerable increase in food allergies over the past few decades. We don't know why (although there are lots of guesses). And I'd also be interested to know why we don't know why. Is it lack of research, or is it a particularly difficult question?

    79:

    Some things, yes, but others were easily distinguishable, many countries have good records going back a long time, and the increase in (say) Type I diabetes is clear. Yes, people had allergies (and I am over 15 years older), and anaphylaxis has been recognised for over a century, but I take your point. There is a lot of fashion in what goes on a death certificate, which applies especially to those who die of anno domini, and there certainly used to be for infant deaths.

    80:

    I haven't tracked down the original article, but here is a link to one of the indications:

    https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-timing-idUSKBN27W1J2

    81:

    "The bioweapon hypothesis has two key weaknesses, to my mind, leaving aside the actual genetics of the pathogen in question."

    Besides almost all the military reasons for not using chemical weapons by modern armies apply to biologic weapons, even more so, so I highly doubt there is any serious, well funded, research in this domain.

    See Bret Devereaux : "Collections: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?"

    https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/

    The answer is not because of morality. It's because it is inefficient when compared to modern weaponry, unless maybe if your are a terrorist group.

    82:

    I think the lab leak hypotheses have been given undue weight due to having a really noisy PR team that's been working on it since at least early 2020. While the mere fact that some very sketchy people have been heavily promoting variations of the lab leak hypothesis doesn't mean it CAN'T be true, when the average epidemiologist says one thing and Bannon's people say another... I'm gonna bet on the epidemiologists.

    There doesn't seem to be any genetic information in the virus to support artificial gain of function. At the same time, it's an unfalsifiable hypothesis - no matter how natural the origin looks, there's no way to PROVE that it wasn't somehow guided by human hands. The behavior in the wild (jumping to a wide variety of mammalian hosts with varying success), however, is a trait that would be likely in a natural zoonosis.

    From a strategic perspective:

    • Initial containment response isn't very different whether it's a lab leak or a natural outbreak. Since we can't know which it is, the logical strategy is to treat it more like a natural outbreak. (Why? Because you need to be ready for possible outbreaks at other locations. Acting as if it's natural means you blanket the area around the first detection AND try to trace other patients back and be ready for outbreaks elsewhere, while a lab leak focuses all resources on Wuhan.)

    • If you manage spies, you should absolutely consider the bioweapon and leak hypotheses and look for information that would help test those. IF it was the result of modification in Wuhan, somebody HAD the receipts. (HAD, because if one of MY scientists had accidentally released a deadly plague I'd be very tempted to introduce them to a firing squad.).

    • A spymaster is also going to be looking into possible false flags (Did someone fabricate evidence to implicate their enemies in the plague?) and opportunistic biowarfare - the people handing out torches, pitchforks, and lists of scientists they claim are responsible for the plague COULD be attempting to punish those they see as the plague's architects... but they could ALSO have been attempting to disrupt the response and maximize plague damage. And to top matters off a spymaster has to consider the fact that 'insiders' don't necessarily have accurate information. There may be insiders who THINK they made the virus when they DIDN'T, for instance.

    • If you manage a biolab in the region, you absolutely should do the 'how do we figure out if this is one of ours?' protocols when you first become aware of it. This will create false positives for suspicious-looking internal investigations, of course.

    We're being misled by the fact that an honest scientist who thinks there is an 0.1% chance of it being artificially enhanced is going to say "I can't rule it out but it's probably natural" and the media is going to present it little differently from "60% chance it's natural".

    83:

    @Heteromeles #57: "The basic problem is that it assumes there's a one-dimensional something called "intelligence" that all people can be ranked on. This is manifestly not true."

    Normally true, but you aren't taking into account the definition of intelligence that I used for my post. This deviates somewhat from the standard definition--on purpose. I believe that the reliance on objective solution criteria subsumes all the dimensions that have been documented so far. What constitutes "intelligence" in the brain is somewhat a matter of definition, but here I'm focusing on the external behavioral aspect of the process.

    In other words, it doesn't matter how intelligent the public official is in their own head, the policies they can support can only be as intelligent as the constituents who elected them want them to be. Usually, this isn't very much.

    Besides, even using the standard psychometric criteria, you seem to overlook the fact that a very large proportion of almost anyone's constituents (even conservatives) also qualify (maybe not in the specific skill domain of politicing, but each within their own professional sphere).

    Finally, my main point regarding the emotional motivation behind most policy making stands regardless.

    @Robert Prior #58: "Well, they value some people's autonomy."

    You aren't thinking this through. It is a necessary corollary of valuing personal autonomy that you focus on the autonomy of yourself and those you are close to, and neglect the autonomy of other people, because that isn't any of their damn business (in their mind).

    Of course the qualities of autonomy and empathy are not necessarily in opposition to each other, but given constraints on human mental processes and the contrary social functions that the expression of each of these emotions serves in modern Western society, and the fact that people are lazy, they usually are.

    Racism and sexism are very real, but they don't explain why they wont vaccinate themselves, which was the original question posed by our gracious host. Not to devalue your nieces' experience (go girls) but that doesn't address this specific aspect of the problem.

    Something else is going on, in addition to the normal shit they give out.

    84:

    "kids didn't have those dangerous allergies when I was a child,"

    When I was a kid we were always warned to be careful eating peanuts, because a lot of children apparently didn't chew them enough and choked to dead with a peanut in their throat.

    I wonder how many of those deaths were actually caused by allergies, rather than insufficient mastication.

    85:

    the lab leak hypotheses have been given undue weight

    It panders to xenophobic impulses and allows incompetent leaders to blame someone else for their mishandling of the pandemic.

    86:

    Normally true, but you aren't taking into account the definition of intelligence that I used for my post. This deviates somewhat from the standard definition--on purpose. I believe that the reliance on objective solution criteria subsumes all the dimensions that have been documented so far.

    " The Humpty-Dumpty Principle in Definitions: In dealing with empty concepts, we came across the issue that if somebody uses a term that potentially has an unintelligible definition, they are likely to defend themselves by quickly making up some kind of definition." http://definitionsinsemantics.blogspot.com/2012/03/humpty-dumpty-principle-in-definitions.html

    87:

    Michel2Bec @ 64:

    " It's the Politicos, posturing & lying, even ( particularlry? ) idiots like BoZo who have had the bug...."

    With no discernible change in cognitive capacities ? ;)

    Suppose for a minute that BoZo was suffering from persistent long-term cognitive decline ... how would you know? What symptoms would he be manifesting now that he didn't show before?

    He was already stupider than a box of rocks. How would you know if the got stupider still? What's the measurable difference between 100% stupid and 150% stupid?

    It's the same problem we have in the U.S. evaluating Trumpolini's latest crazy antics.

    88:

    With moldy peanuts, concerns about aflatoxin even made their way into children's songs. But yes, I also wonder when peanut allergies became a serious thing, and why.

    89:

    I don't recall as a kid in the 60s ever meeting or hearing about any other child with T1 diabetes, autism, developmental issues, physical handicaps, cancer, etc.

    I did. I guess living in a low population area made it more known.

    But I learned later in life how much was "hidden" or just not talked about.

    My cousin had T1 d, and I know of several adults who died of cancer. And there were kids I went to school with who got bad grades and by most teachers were considered of lower intelligence but a few recognized them as just severely socially challenged. Back then they were dumped into the "special" classes or just at the bottom of the grade curves.

    90:

    Trump's a great example of intelligence. As a leader he was an utter failure. Couldn't plot a coup, couldn't use a short, existing playbook to beat back a plague that everyone was predicting would come, that he actually had a month's warning on, and so forth.

    However, as a conman he's a genius, and as an authoritarian douchebag, he's not half bad either.

    This is why it's so terribly, terribly dangerous to think there's one thing called "intelligence." It makes you underestimate threats like Trump, and that's not at all healthy in the long run.

    91:

    @Robert Prior #58: "Well, they value some people's autonomy."

    You aren't thinking this through. It is a necessary corollary of valuing personal autonomy that you focus on the autonomy of yourself and those you are close to, and neglect the autonomy of other people, because that isn't any of their damn business (in their mind).

    My possibly too sarcastic point is that the same people claiming that their autonomy means they can act how they want are perfectly willing to deny my nieces the ability to act like they want, on the grounds that my nieces existence/behaviour offends them. In other words, they want the autonomy to interfere with my nieces' autonomy.

    The same Billy-Bob who claims a personal right to stay unvaccinated wants to ban my niece kissing her girlfriend (actually, ban her having a girlfriend), gets his shirt-less self all in a knot because another niece's top actually exposes her navel, feels free to publicly scream at yet another niece for marrying a white guy, etc.

    It's like the old 'states rights' canard.

    92:

    They bioweaponized as a political ruse the virus, and there They are, making money out it, willing to kill Their own kind. But as long as Their own kind kill Us too, it’s all good.

    That’s how this all began. Kushner & Co. were convinced it was only people of color, the poor and blues who get covid. The more sick, dead and invalided the fewer voters for blue issues.

    Frackin’ jerkwaddies. Virii do not care what color you are or which column you vote.

    Yet, Their refusal to be vaccinated, refusal to follow any of the recognized safety protocols to minimize the opportunity for infection by the virus has taken over the entire health care system so that people with other conditions can't even see doctors proactively, cannot schedule surgeries, cannot get emergency room treatments and beds.

    In wars and battlefield injuries there is the traumatic practice of triage: the medical people have to make split second decisions over whom may live and who is unlikely to live, in order that those more likely to survive with treatment do survive, which means not treating those most severely hurt. Now, due to Their choices, those who would be most likely to survive, cannot get medical care because what little health system we have is overwhelmed by Their choices. I am living with the consequences of this very up close and personal over the course of the last two years, including two people literally dead of cancers that they'd likely survived if they'd been able to see a doctor in the winter of 2020. More and more health care heroes and saints are wondering among themselves why they are doing all they can to save the lives of Those who chose to do this, endangering the whole world – while they continue the battle to save Their lives.

    In other words, we are the ones being medically punished by Them, and not only medically: our employment, our friendships, our professional lives, everything is negatively affected by Their choices. They, on the other hand, aren't affected at all -- except when They get ill and / or die -- and They still hold us responsible. No hard lessons learned, as some keep saying, despite all evidence being to the contrary. They expire cursing us and the government and blaming both us and the government, because Their Selves’ identities as superior, due to Their identification with the Con(s) and Big Lies, cannot endure the knowledge they were conned -- and an ever increasing number of Those They listen to, are making ever larger amounts of money out of conning Them.

    There is no healing the nation of this, ever, one thinks, even if the virus finally recedes.There will be more pandemic illnesses, as well as famine, flood and fire. We seem to have entered a planet-wide 6th-7th century when the horsemen of the Apocalypse trampled most of what became Europe under hoofs. A terrible time to have tried to live. With climate change and all the other self-destructive, toxic, abusive and wantonly cruel beliefs They hold, we still will be punished by the earth no longer able to carry us -- any of us. Not that this matters a whit, as the 0.01% who are the only ones who matter, believe They shall escape into space. Ha!

    Perhaps this explains why so many have joined the Death Cult, happy to be suicide domestic terrorists even to destroying themselves and their own families. O Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Orange Shoggoth, O the woes and miseries you all have wrought, rubbing yourselves gleefully the entire time with the money you raked in from the marks.

    93:

    I happened to have a near-perfect skillset match with the things they were testing for. I can think of things they they did not test for (usually because they are harder to measure) where I would NOT do well!

    Back in the early 70s when I took such tests I scored 99th percentile in math and 95th in English no mater which test I took. But before computers and a backspace key plus copy and paste to let me turn that page length sentence into something readable I could barely pass a writing course. But due to the testing I'd always be put into the classes where you were expected to write at near Shakespearian levels. And barely pass.

    94:

    More and more health care heroes and saints are wondering among themselves why they are doing all they can

    Certainly true in Alberta. No raise for five years, UCP now imposing 3% pay cut, no more public health measures, one of the lowest vaccination rates in Canada…

    95:

    This is why it's so terribly, terribly dangerous to think there's one thing called "intelligence." It makes you underestimate threathics like Trump

    I tend to want to call him an idiot. But I also realize he's an idiot when it comes to things I value.

    I do not value the skills of anyone who is a "great" con man and thief. Which is the phrase my father used to describe a cousin.

    96:

    I grew up in a very big city (Philly). I vaguely remember hearing of maybe one or two kids with a peanut allergy, but I can't be sure. I certainly did not know any kids with diabetes.

    And until the nineties or oughts, never saw so many people have food allergies.

    97:

    Charlie Stross @ 69: The bioweapon hypothesis has two key weaknesses, to my mind, leaving aside the actual genetics of the pathogen in question.

    If it's a bioweapon, then it was obviously released either deliberately or accidentally. (Pick one, but not the other.)

    Up front I want to say it was NOT a bio-weapon1, but ...

    Consider a third possible scenario: An accidental release followed by deliberate release.

    That would answer the objection of why someone would release a bio weapon when they didn't already have their defensive measures in place.

    IF it got out and infected the population of the lab's "host" nation, it might cause a spasm by the Powers That Be prompting them to release & spread it as rapidly as possible in opposing nations - with intent that the opponents should also find themselves suddenly deep in the kimchi, so they couldn't take advantage of the "host" nation while it was down ... or something like the purpose behind the doomsday device the "Soviets" had in Dr. Strangelove

    I don't believe for a moment that IS what happened, but it makes a serviceable Science FICTION plot point.

    OTOH, I can see how it might be possible that a lab doing medical research to identify possible future threats with the intent of preventing them could have a big Oops moment, especially with something that has a fairly long asymptomatic incubation period. It might be out and spreading in the population before lab researchers realized it had escaped.

    That's not bio-weapons research, it's simple prudence. But if that's what happened in this instance, Prudence got screwed by Murphy.

    I can also see how in such a scenario the "host" nation's PTB might be tempted to clamp down on sharing news & information about the new plague hoping to keep hostile nations from taking advantage of the situation.

    1 I am not a doctor, but I was an NBC (Nuclear, Biological & Chemical) Operations NCO in the Army. I have had fairly extensive lay training in the characteristics of bio-weapons & how to deal with them. SARS-CoV-2 does not have enough of the required characteristics to be a bio-weapon.

    98:

    Or maybe they're as "intelligent" as the median, or the average, of the people who elected them, and for whom they depend on for their jobs.

    How many politicians got vaccinated in secret?

    Also note that it is an old truism, esp. referring to Hollywood (and everything Former Guy does is related to Hollywood), that the IQ of a committee is the median intelligence divided by the number on the committee.

    99:

    Let's see. Why do these people refuse to believe in Covid, vaccines, science, etc...

    I was raised by a mother who was there. I was born in 1954. No profit motive there. Some of it we saw growing up. Much of it came out in full force when my father died. 15 years before my mother. She complained he was holding her back. And yep, he was. He kept the crazy down to low levels most of the time.

    Where did she get it? Her childhood was a mess. Not cruel but a totally dysfunctional marriage between her parents. This was in the 30s and 40s in the US. Not a nice time to be in a weird situation. Plus while not destitute or hungry they were barely above poor while she was growing up.

    Then her first child was born with what they called polycystic kidneys. In 1952. No dialysis. No transplants. Docs tried everything they could then said there was nothing more they could do. My mother heard "we give up, let her die". My mother was headed to a totally fraudulent chiropractic hospital 1000 miles away that promised to cure nearly everything that could ail someone when she died. My mother was convinced the snake oil hospital would have cured her if she had not wasted so much time with the "real" doctors.

    So doctors are evil. Science is crap. And you can't trust experts. That was her life for the entire time I knew her.

    She would be refusing the vaccine if alive today.

    GNC was her favorite store till her death.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNC_(store)

    100:

    And bioweapons are truly miserable as weapons. They're more like a Doomsday Device. Unless you can vaccinate your people - and there is clear evidence China did not - they kill everyone.

    Back in the sixties, the CIA was experimenting using psychedelics as weapons. They even developed their own, whose street name was STP - like LSD, but it lasted 24 hours, rather than just 8, and no, don't argue with me, I have personal experience with both, and if you don't, you don't know what you're talking about, you've only read propaganda). They dropped it... because all of them gave too unmanageable/unpredictable results.

    101:

    Special classes was a good thing. The idiocy of "mainstreaming" means the slow kids, who need extra help, don't get it, and the fast kids are bored out of their gourd. Oh, and the average kids will happily pick on both groups.

    Socially-challenged - I trust that assumes "they're "fill-in-the-blank", in the US mostly Black - and so assumed to be stupid.

    When I went into either kindergarten or first grade, don't remember, the first Black kid came into my school. By fourth grade, I was the 26th white kid left in the school. My Black teacher had a meeting with my mom, and she was trying hard to bring kids who'd had nothing up to grade level, so I was getting stuff I'd learned in 3rd and even 2nd grade. My teacher recommended me registering under a relative's address and going to another school, which happened. And I was rapidly bored out of my gourd, with the average readers in class....

    102:

    Vicki @ 76: There's also survivor and recall bias with childhood diseases and fatal accidents. People our age (I'm around Charlie's age) and older will say things like "kids didn't have those dangerous allergies when I was a child," by which they usually mean "nobody I knew was worried about things like anaphylactic shock when I was a child." But nobody worrying about it didn't mean people didn't have allergies: it meant that "the child just stopped breathing and died, we have no idea why" [with optional "God works in mysterious ways"] was sad, and fortunately rare. And even if someone thought "maybe if he hadn't been stung by that bee, he'd be okay," it wasn't talked about as "this allergy killed my nephew."

    Tangent to that thought I ran across an article just yesterday that said researchers were suggesting a possibility that more people are allergic to peanuts now than in times past because when they were babies the doctors told their parents to keep them away from peanuts (and vice versa) resulting in them not having natural immunities they might have otherwise developed.

    So, in addition to "survivor and recall bias" there may be an increased incidence. I think likely from environmental causes. Global warming is not the only byproduct of our societies chemical dependence on fossil fuels.

    I've long thought there might be an actual increase in the number of autism spectrum disorders due to cumulative exposure to chemicals in the environment before and during pregnancy. Sure we have better testing that allows children affected by autism spectrum to be identified, but I think there are literally more of them (in relation to the general population) and SOMETHING causes it. But I'm not a research scientist & I don't know how I might test my supposition.

    Another thing is I think there's bias in research because they're looking for a single cause and my suspicion is that this is combination of multiple factors coming together so there is no single cause to find.

    This also NOT about lifestyle choices, because how can you choose whether or not you're going to be exposed to chemicals you cannot see, taste or smell and don't even know they exist.

    We can detect chemicals in our environment like we never could before, but can we tell whether those chemicals have always been there or whether they're recent (last few decades or centuries) introductions?

    103:

    The other problem with the bioweapon scenario is that coronaviruses from bats were basically #1 on everyone's expected list of viruses to cause the next pandemic. They'd been working out strategies to deal since SARS-CoV-1 popped up in 2006. As a potential bioweapon, this was stoopidly obvious.

    Speaking of which, the reason we had so many good vaccines so fast was two-fold: 1. People had actually prototyped a vaccine for SARS-CoV about 5-7 years after that virus first appeared, but the work had been shelved due to SARS-CoV disappearing from humans. Covid19 is, what 85% similar to SARS-CoV? Basically all the groundwork had been done on the previous coronavirus. 2. IIRC, the success rates for novel vaccines are low, around 5%. From in the pipeline, well over 100 Covid19 vaccine programs were started. Almost all of them failed, generally quickly. Out of that we got, what 5 good vaccines? Ten? This with prototype vaccines and a decade of work on coronaviruses, because the virologists were pretty sure one was coming.

    So even before we get into whether there are any signs of SARS-CoV2 being engineered (there aren't), it's a terrible choice for a bioweapon, sort of like going to war armed with 0.22 rifles when everyone's expecting gunfire and prepping body armor.

    If some dictator had wanted mass death in a virus, they'd have weaponized a hantavirus, or something for which there is little or no vaccine research. But as others have said, at best this is a doomsday weapon like a nuke, and the only reason to have it is to keep other nations from messing with you.

    To finish on a brighter note: if I wanted to cripple America and its allies with a bioweapon, I wouldn't engineer a human bioweapon at all. I'd spread coffee blight. Speaking of which...

    104:

    In the UK, the difference is between "setting", "streaming" and "special school".

    Special school is usually the worst option absent exceptional circumstances - you take children with additional educational needs and put them in their own school. This is the traditional option, and often resulted in kids with issues being "left to rot".

    Streaming is where you split kids in a year group by attainment across the entire curriculum, and have each attainment group go to the same classes. Doesn't work well if you have a specialist subject; if you're great at Maths, useless at Chemistry, and average at everything else, you'll end up in the "average attainment" class for all subjects, and struggle in Chemistry while finding the Maths class too simple.

    Setting is where you split within a subject and year group - so you can be in the "top" class for Maths, and the "bottom" class for Chemistry, while staying in "average" classes for everything else.

    The issue with all three is getting the children in the "bottom" classes the help they need to do well. We only really know how to split by attainment, not ability, and thus the "bottom" class mixes kids who are perfectly able, but refuse to work (and thus need one set of interventions to get their standard up) with kids who genuinely struggle to understand, but are willing to work hard on it (and need a different set of interventions to benefit from school).

    The ideal state is well-understood, but damn expensive; you need enough decent teaching staff that, on a topic-by-topic basis, the ones who are struggling to keep up with expected attainment can have one-on-one tutoring, reserving the "bulk" teaching to an entire class for those who are keeping up, and having staff who understand the topics well enough that they can ensure that the kids who find the expected level of attainment easy to reach simply dive in deeper and deeper on the same topic. If you let the advanced kids race off onto new topics, then you develop the issue that you have kids who've done this already, and kids for whom it's new when you teach them the thing the advanced kids raced off onto.

    Most teachers (all good teachers?) would love to be in the ideal state, but we refuse to spend that much on teaching, hence all the issues with bad schooling.

    105:

    Michel2Bec @ 81:

    "The bioweapon hypothesis has two key weaknesses, to my mind, leaving aside the actual genetics of the pathogen in question."

    Besides almost all the military reasons for not using chemical weapons by modern armies apply to biologic weapons, even more so, so I highly doubt there is any serious, well funded, research in this domain.

    See Bret Devereaux : "Collections: Why Don’t We Use Chemical Weapons Anymore?"

    https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/

    The answer is not because of morality. It's because it is inefficient when compared to modern weaponry, unless maybe if your are a terrorist group.

    There is A LOT of "serious, well funded, research" in this field. Not because we want or need new biological weapons, but because we need to be prepared to counter (defend against) anything the OTHER GUYS (doesn't matter if they're terrorist group or nation state) might come up with; OTHER GUYS who might not share our view about the inefficiency of chemical/biological agents.

    It's mostly kept deep dark secret because we don't want to give the OTHER GUYS ideas, just in case they haven't noticed the potential in some bug we're already working to defend against.

    This goes on in parallel with the openly acknowledged gain of function research that has already been mentioned. There's no such thing as being too prepared for defense when it comes to bio-weapons.

    106:

    Nevertheless, the fascists grabbing with glee turning the virus into a political bio-weapon has been extremely effective -- at least here in the USA of Freedumb -- for destabilization and suicidal domestic bioweaponry terrorists.

    So many ways this Freedumb bioweaponry works:

    "TEXAS GOVERNOR GREG ABBOTT REQUESTS EMERGENCY MEDICAL HELP FROM OTHER STATES WHILE CONTINUING TO BLOCK MEASURES TO SLOW COVID PANDEMIC"

    Though governors and mayors are starting to ignore the anti-masking mandates, and filing lawsuits too, as in Texas and Florida.

    They have felt so safe coz, you know, libs are effete cowards -- you can tell because they wear masks and get vaccinated -- so they obey our rules. They are not noticing the utter fury the vaccinated are building toward those who have chosen not to vaccinate. Because, you know, what can we do?

    They may be surprised out of their thinking that it's still biz as orange shoggoth convinced them was usual.

    107:

    Heteromeles @ 103: To finish on a brighter note: if I wanted to cripple America and its allies with a bioweapon, I wouldn't engineer a human bioweapon at all. I'd spread coffee blight. Speaking of which...

    God will get you for that ...

    ... and if SHE doesn't, I will!

    108:

    Cognition. Bozo. Somehow they don't seem to go together.

    In my view, the most ignored (and perhaps most important) aspect of intelligence is whether you USE your abilities - and not just when you are doing something that formally needs them. The number of scientists, engineers etc. who (outside their actual job) do not check their facts, do not look at the whole problem, do not think of the consequences and alternatives, and don't use their logical and mathematical skills, is legion.

    It's damn-near untestable, and is one of the ways that we people with Asperger's (and even some people with autism) score extremely high. Bozo does not.

    109:

    I'd spread coffee blight

    There was a short story published around 1980 (±5) where the British engineer a bioweapon against the French, affecting grapes and the wine supply, and the French retaliate with a devastating blow against the world's tea plantations…

    110:

    The issue with all three is getting the children in the "bottom" classes the help they need to do well. We only really know how to split by attainment, not ability, and thus the "bottom" class mixes kids who are perfectly able, but refuse to work (and thus need one set of interventions to get their standard up) with kids who genuinely struggle to understand, but are willing to work hard on it (and need a different set of interventions to benefit from school).

    In the last century, when I was doing one of my teaching practicums, I was sent to a school that (of its own initiative) solved this problem.

    They split off all the students who needed specialized interventions into targeted small classes, taught by experienced special education teachers. This meant that remaining classes were much bigger* but no longer had disruptive students. I taught one of the lower-ability math classes, and it was a dream. It was as large as the typical 'high-ability' class, but all of them were focused and eager to learn, would ask for extra help and work…

    In my years since I've taught that level many times, and it's honestly heartbreaking because I know that half the class is full of kids like that, but I'm spending all my time dealing with behavioural issues and they just fall farther and farther behind…

    *The pupil-teacher ratio is set by the government

    111:

    Here in Ontario the conservative government is resisting the push for vaccine passports because it would be an undue burden on business, while business groups are pleading with the government to institute vaccine passports…

    And anger against those who are refusing vaccination is steadily rising.

    https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorial_cartoon/2021/07/30/theo-moudakis-the-unvaxxed.html

    (The red hat isn't coincidental. Despite red-and-white being the colours of the Liberal Party*, our covidiots wear the red MAGA hats. Pre-Trump the idiot would be wearing a blue hat, to show they were a conservative supporter.)

    *Centre-left by Canadian standards, so a bit left of Bernie Sanders by American ones.

    112: 75 - You reckon? I honestly thought that was normal service when he wasn't reading prepared speeches. 87 - We're clearly thinking on similar lines here. 109 - Like it; and in escalation, India could develop a bioweapon against hops...
    113:

    fascists grabbing with glee turning the virus into a political bio-weapon has been extremely effective

    According to PenceNews, the pandemic is simultaneously nothing to worry about and so bad because of Biden's poor leadership.

    114:

    "but because we need to be prepared to counter (defend against) anything the OTHER GUYS "

    And the difference between this defensive research and (civilian) research against, say Ebola is ?

    I was speaking of offensive bioweapons. They are Doomsdays device weapons by design. Not worth it for the major powers. Which China is.

    115:

    @109 -- alas, like coffee blight this is a true thing. Predictions are that wine production in France alone this vintage year will be down at least 30% due to climate wreckage -- with the additional collateral low production to halted migration and the pandemic.

    The price of tea has continued to increase nearly every 6 weeks since even before the pandemic thanks to shoggoth's tariffs and trade wars with China (and France too!), whereas until just recently our coffee emporium said the price of coffee increased only once. That has changed too.

    Partner is madly coffee dependent. I drink tea -- it doesn't have to be the truly pricey Chinese oolong I generally prefer. But I really do like wine with my meals, and for cooking.

    Also grain shortages due to droughts and wildfires globally. This, They Say, bodes badly for the beer supply.

    We are talking within this year, not 2 or 3 years from now. All the more about which the Fascist and their cadres of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers and climate/covid deniers, and those who have weaponized their gullibility (looking at MURDOCH!) for their enrichment and power are to be held responsible

    116:

    With regard to coffe blight I’d just like to remind everyone that as long as I get enough coffee, nobody will die too slowly

    117:

    Yes, and wildfire smoke isn't any good for wine flavor either (cf: Napa, Greece, etc.)

    That's part of the misery of civilization in a time of climate change: get us addicted to the good stuff from around the world, set it up so that our supply chains are unsustainable, then force us onto the ultimate paleo diet of eating whatever's available this year: crickets, kale, amaranth, dandelions...Sucks all the joy out of life. Heck, the last time the climate changed this fast, our ancestors at least ate the occasional mammoth.

    On a less amusing note, the US and other countries have been doing grain diplomacy for years, undercutting local food production so that other countries rely on our subsidized food exports. That's going to lead to more Arab Spring-type unrest if grain harvests fail. While I think that semi-compassionate food redistribution has a place in a climate changed world, profiteering and hardball politics can easily turn this into a cause for war.

    118:

    Coffee blight/rust is already an issue with Guatemalan refugees who used to be coffee growers until global warming end the cool evenings that would stop the rust from spreading:

    https://www.ncronline.org/news/earthbeat/climate-effects-hit-coffee-crops-guatemalan-farmers-become-migrants

    119:

    other countries rely on our subsidized food exports

    America doesn't subsidize food production. Absolutely not at all. That was the foundation of your government's long-running campaign against the Canadian Wheat Board: that Canada subsidized grain farming while America didn't.

    You have price supports and crop insurance, but these are in no way price subsidies and have no place in trade negotiations.

    (Yes, sarcasm.)

    120:

    Re: COVID-19 deniers/anti-vaxers

    A few ideas about barriers some people might have wrt to COVID-19 and vaccines.

    1- SCALE - A virus is extremely small - almost unimaginably small in comparison to what humans are used to interacting with. At the same time, a virus can replicate much, much faster than anything humans can ordinarily see - including that mess at the bottom of a college dorm fridge. I'm guessing that the absolute 'size' trumps reproduction rate on the scare/relevance meter among these folks. (Also suggests that these folks don't know/remember what exponential growth means.)

    2- DOGMA trumps DISCOVERY - I'm guessing that folks in these groups believe that being able to memorize and spit out a bunch of 'facts' is the same as being intelligent/educated. To them, this also means that once they finish their education they no longer have to or are expected to keep 'learning' and that anyone who does choose to keep 'learning' is a cretin/shmuck and probably hasn't mastered his/her real-world ABCs. Media (and history books) usually discuss 'DISCOVERY' as some discrete identifiable and unique moment in time rather than a process of poking/probing, testing and retesting. Nobody talks about all the 'failed' experiments/trials, dead-ends - why?

    3- NARRATIVIUM - 'The simplest answer is the best answer', Occam's Razor, etc. We've been told to expect scientists to simplify the world for us - compartmentalize things into smaller and easier to grasp ideas - ideally as one-line math/formulas. Problem is that this doesn't work so well/at all when it comes to understanding complex systems (biology, climate).

    4- PERCENT vs. NUMBERS - Relates to NARRATIVIUM above ... we've been taught and become accustomed to thinking that anything under a certain percentage level is meaningless/trivial regardless of the number of factors involved*. But we can relate to population sizes in numbers of a benchmark city/town. So why aren't people/media talking about this pandemic in terms of towns/villages? (See wildfire coverage - mortality vs. COVID-19 deaths.)

    *There are approx. 30,000 genes in the human genome which to me suggests that there are probably some 100,000+ different chemical reactions taking place simultaneously/in parallel in my body. Hopefully someone can figure out how to present such info at different scales and levels of interaction. - with animation to show speed and spread of interactions/reactions.

    5- MOLECULE vs. VIRUS -- Kinda tough to explain that a virus is a self-replicating molecule when the person you're talking to thinks 'H2O' is the standard form/size of a molecule.

    121:

    subsidize food production

    This and farming in general is why people of all political stripes want to move the first US presidential contest OUT of Iowa. To eliminate the issue from electioneering that keeps subsidies going for no other reason than the keep Iowa farmers happy.

    Oh, and also get rid of the terrible caucus system.

    122:

    Occam's Razor

    Occam's Razor is total crap. It gives license to people who don't want to understand something to throw out anything too complicated for them to understand. Or want to understand.

    123:

    Nobody talks about all the 'failed' experiments/trials, dead-ends - why?

    Oooh, oooh, I know this one! :-)

    Most people get all their knowledge of science in school, mostly junior levels because senior science is not required for most post-secondary programs. The curriculum at that level is stuffed too full to finish, and teachers at that level focus on things that teachers of senior science classes want students to know (because if they don't then they will get railed at by their usually senior colleagues).

    This means that there is no time to "waste" teaching things that aren't true.

    It gets worse.

    Entire chunks of the curriculum are often dropped because they are 'dead ends' with no senior classes — ignoring that most junior students aren't going into senior classes anyway. (In Ontario, that would be astronomy in for 14-year-olds and climate science for 15-year-olds*.)

    *Yes, our children need to know nothing about climate science. It's not nearly as important as memorizing the first 20 element symbols and balancing chemical equations.

    124:

    A virus is extremely small - almost unimaginably small in comparison to what humans are used to interacting with.

    Viruses are small. You just won't believe how incredibly, amazingly, mind-bogglingly small they are. I mean, you may think your ex-boyfriend's package is tiny, but that's gigantic compared to viruses.

    With apologies to Douglas Adams, and acknowledging I've comforted too many heart-broken nieces :-/

    125:

    we've been taught and become accustomed to thinking that anything under a certain percentage level is meaningless/trivial regardless of the number of factors involved

    Except in certain categories. Rob Ford won a Toronto election by eliminating a 0.1% property tax increase, which was apparently too big for taxpayers.

    Last year I thought of a demo that I couldn't actually do in the classroom. If someone claims that the amount of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere is too small to have an effect, offer them a litre of beverage and add a drop of urine (or vomit or some other disgusting substance). See if they can drink it. The concentration of the disgusting substance is the same as the anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, so they should have no problem doing it, right? :-)

    126:

    Have them do all the climate change work in Kelvin temperatures, instead of Celsius. A 1% change in the temperature in Kelvin can be pretty noticeable in Celsius, yet look trivial in Kelvin. But without the sun warming the Earth, the Earth would be around 3 K plus escaping crust heat, so getting warmed by the sun is quite critical, even without doing those lovely black body calculations.

    127:

    "2- DOGMA trumps DISCOVERY"

    I think you are missing the status angle.

    Refusing the vaccine has become a tribal marker for a number of right leaning people, especially in the USA.

    People (and especially men) are ready to die to preserve status among their peer group, this is the basis of small unit training in the military.

    Some will try to get vaccinated secretly, but the majority is going to hang out as long as they think that the other members of their tribe are doing the same.

    I have a feeling, it has nothing to do with logic or knowledge it has become a flag.

    128:

    Simon Farnsworth @ 104: In the UK, the difference is between "setting", "streaming" and "special school".

    Personal story here:

    When I was 8, at the end of my first year in primary school (i.e. 4th year of formal schooling) my parents had a meeting with the headmaster. He told them that I was mentally subnormal and needed to be sent to the local "special school".

    My parents predictably hit the roof. They tried to explain that I was really quite bright, but I just had difficulty with writing. He showed them a picture I had drawn of my sister where I had forgotten to include the arms, explained that this was clear evidence of mental subnormality, and said they were "over-reacting".

    At the time I was already in what would now be called the special needs class. I can only assume that the headmaster had not bothered to talk to the teacher there, because the individual attention meant that I actually did quite well. The fact that the school bully was in the same class didn't matter because he was happy making and painting his papier-mache head, while I was putting together display projects on Skylab and the solar system, and learning how to add fractions.

    My parents had my IQ tested by an independent psychologist, who found that it was well above average, as was my vocabulary. On the strength of this they got me a scholarship (i.e. some assistance with the fees) at a local private school. It wasn't great, but it was a vast improvement over the disaster of primary school (where a day without being beaten up was an unusually good day). Whenever my parents wanted to really motivate me about school work they would threaten to send me back to the state system if I didn't get on with it.

    Later on I joined Mensa, which also made a big difference. I'd always known that I had odd interests that nobody else shared, and now I had an explanation.

    Today I know that my real problems were dyspraxia and face-blindness, but neither of those were recognised back then. The education system was still in thrall to the concept of "g": the idea that intelligence is a single factor. "Specific learning difficulties" like mine were invisible to a system that didn't accept they could exist. Even the existence of dyslexia was still mildly controversial. A few clinicians were starting to talk about "clumsy child syndrome" as a possible thing, and at one point my mother tried to talk to the doctor about this. I remember the evaluation. He asked me to walk down a corridor and do a few other gross motor tasks. From this he concluded that there was nothing wrong and basically told my mother to stop bothering her silly little head with nonsense. (My mother was a secondary school teacher, BTW).

    These days things have changed. "General intelligence" is still recognised as important, but much more attention is given to specific difficulties because mitigation of a specific difficulty can have an impact out of all proportion to the effort required. There are also much more effective anti-bullying policies these days; back then it was regarded as the victim's problem to sort out (yes, really).

    So to sum this up, my experience with "intelligence" as a social construct has been mixed. First it almost destroyed me, then it saved me. Since then I have seen it subsumed into a much more sophisticated model of mental capabilities. I can see a lot of myself in my son, but when he went through school we had the language and references to engage with our doctor and the special needs departments, and they had the institutional systems to cope effectively. His experience was radically different from mine, for which I am profoundly grateful.

    I've always wondered what would have happened if my parents had been a bit less effective, and I had wound up at that special school. Would they have figured it out, or would they have just put me in the remedial shoelace tying class? Thanks to my parents I didn't have to find out.

    129:

    Ireland now has 78% 16+ pop fully vexed, and horsing it into the 12-15y olds before school opens next month. Thankfully, for a variety of reasons, there is little anti-tax sentiment here. It a combination of a reasonable level of education, a vibrant local radio/newspaper setting which is generally reasonably sane wrt climate etc, a national media which is very science oriented (just now the main morning radio program has hosted a 25m talk between a oceanographer, a climate scientist and a Man from the Ministry on how the IPCC report is a wakeup call) and a population with has folk memory of Bad Things health wise - TB was a massive scourge until the 1960s and the folk memory of the famine with cholera and typhus lies deep. So we are used to and pro public health. For all his many many faults we were lucky to be led by Leo V in the early days of the pandemic. As a trained GP he had the scientific and public health skills to go with the science. Sure, we may have overshot the runway a few times, often quite badly but thats life. By contrast with the USA .....

    130:

    John Cristopher's Death of the grass? OMG. perchance, was a grandparent of yours named John and lived in Patmos? :-)

    131:
    the French retaliate with a devastating blow against the world's tea plantations…

    I remember that one too.

    It was anthologized in one of Jerry Pournelle's endless "There Will Be War" series.

    132:

    Special classes was a good thing.

    Into the 70s (I don't know when things got changed.) "special" classes were for those considered "mentally retarded" (the term of the day I know). It was mainly for people with Down's Syndrome. But in hindsight it also got the socially un-adept. Which thing tarred them for life as being "slow", "stupid", or whatever.

    133:

    was a grandparent of yours named John and lived in Patmos?

    Definitely not!

    134:

    Attention conservation notice:

    Dead Lies Dreaming is shortlisted for the 2021 Dragon Award (best Fantasy).

    The trademark snag holding up my next Laundry novella appears to have been resolved: it's now on course for publication in March 2022, under the (new) title Escape from Yokai Land.

    (And I'm just waiting for confirmation that the third New Management book -- after Dead Lies Dreaming and next January's Quantum of Nightmares can be titled Season of Skulls.)

    135:

    My school experience had some similarity to many of the above. In my case I was preternaturally good at tests, but spent most classes reading a novel below my desk.

    The result was that my grades were good but my teachers were exasperated beyond measure. Couple that with social incompetence and I somehow ended being put up a grade. Where I did the exact same thing.

    Because my skillset correlated almost exactly to what and how the school system measured success, I was able to have good grades while spending most of my time reading novels in class. I remember everything I hear and absolutely everything I write down. When I start a test the world disappears and I focus entirely on it until finished.

    My father was a schoolteacher and spent some time teaching me how to write essays and critical articles. This time in 8th grade learning the structure of an essay more or less carried me through graduate school.

    I distinctly remember handing in a paper that I was distinctly unhappy with because I had effectively bullshitted the entire thing. My grade was top of the class, largely because the paper had structure and grammar. I shudder to think of the unreadable dreck my classmates must have disgorged for my own pile of garbage to seem like a ray of light to the poor instructor.

    Getting very good grades can give one big ideas about one's intelligence. Harsh reality has done plenty to remind me that those talents were uniquely suited for doing well in school, but in many other realms my talent is effectively zero.

    136:

    Before college I could get a B+ or A- by just paying attention. And a consistent A if I tried. And taking notes that I never referenced. Like you if I wrote it down I remembered.

    EXCEPT for essay writing of any kind. Reading was no problem. For a while if it tried I could read fiction at 800wpm. (College engineering classes killed that off.)

    Anyway my grades put me around 35th out of 230 or so students when I graduated from high school. If I could have thrown out any grades from writing I likely would have been in the top 10.

    As for reading novels, I did that in Algebra I in the 9th grade. It was one of those "everyone not a dummy" classes. So the first 5 or 10 minutes of a class a friend and I sitting on the back row would pay attention then grab a library book from the stash we kept on the back shelves and read. I was in the class because 2 years earlier I had nearly straight A's in math but was utterly bored and thus didn't get placed in the advanced track due to attitude.

    I left high school realizing just what a crock it was that merit and ability was what counted.

    137:

    Congratulations on the nomination. IIRC The Dragon Awards were originally conceived to be the Puppies' awards, but they are headed towards the median as quickly as a crowd composed of the usual suspects can carry them there.

    138:

    I see - you lucked out with your father. Mine graduated high school, and wound up as a factory worker (he should have been a poly sci prof). My mom got her GED after I graduated high school.

    After I transferred schools for fifth grade (see previous post), I was bored out of my gourd again. They read the textbook out loud in class, while I had read it, and was well into the next chapter, and didn't want to get too far ahead. So what I was reading was inside my textbook, not beneath the desk.

    Now let's talk about school in the US in the fifties and sixties. The story that I've told ever since: as above, until one day, I look up, and my 5th grade teacher is standing over me, and the whole class is watching. She takes the book I was reading away from me, and says to see her after class. Luckily, I had another book, but didn't get so involved.

    Now, let's look at the same situation from the omniscient PoV: the kid in 5th grade who transferred in is reading a prose translation of The Odyessey inside his social studies textbook. What do you do with him? Put him in a special class (what are those? Who has them?) Move him up? No, why, you give him the book back after class, and tell him not to do it again.

    I went through school on a low C, bored most of the time, not doing a lot of my homework... but doing well on exams. I was labelled an "underachiever", and got to see my counselor in jr. high, but that was it. Went to the best public HS in Philly (Central), and most of the time, more bored. A few classes were interesting, but....

    139:

    Is the father reference to Rocketpjs?

    140:

    This thread is too long and I'm too tired to go through the whole thing, but...

    Any rational response to COVID in the US (and the UK, more or less) was doomed to failure as soon as our not-so-glorious former President decided to make it a political issue.

    For whatever reason, Cheetolini decided He Kew Better™, not only about the source of the pandemic, but also its impact and how to ameliorate same.

    And now he has all his lovely acolytes not only refusing to do the rational thing but actually passing laws to make it ILLEGAL to do so. All to appeal to a rabid base stirred up by xenophobia and paranoia.

    And now, thanks to these self-serving smegheads, all the gains of this summer are wafting away on the breeze. I actually had to start working from home again this week because of the numbers in my area. shrug

    141:

    For whatever reason, Cheetolini decided He Kew Better™,

    Naw. He just demands that everything important or in the news be centered on him. Then he BS's until caught then changes the subject or throws the dissenters out of the room.

    142:

    Based on the recent stuff from his niece, it also terrified him, because he had no idea what to do, would not use anything the Obama admins had come up with, and so treated it like it was a movie.

    144:

    Robert Prior @ 111: Here in Ontario the conservative government is resisting the push for vaccine passports because it would be an undue burden on business, while business groups are pleading with the government to institute vaccine passports…

    And anger against those who are refusing vaccination is steadily rising.

    https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorial_cartoon/2021/07/30/theo-moudakis-the-unvaxxed.html

    (The red hat isn't coincidental. Despite red-and-white being the colours of the Liberal Party*, our covidiots wear the red MAGA hats. Pre-Trump the idiot would be wearing a blue hat, to show they were a conservative supporter.)

    *Centre-left by Canadian standards, so a bit left of Bernie Sanders by American ones.

    I've got a RED hat too, but it don't say MAGA

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/dan-savage-impeach-trump-badges-t-shirts-merch-funding-a7702276.html

    145:

    Got it. BTW, and at this time MZN have just e-mailed me that they're still having problems sourcing "Escape from Puroland". In which context, am I on the right lines with Yokai meaning the Japanese spirit?

    146:

    Yes, you're on the right lines.

    Tor.com are going to try to roll the existing pre-orders over onto the new title/delivery date, but there's a risk (Amazon being Amazon) that big river co. will just cancel all pre-orders. If they do that, I'll let you know here on the blog.

    147:

    So, the cover designer was unable to source a font that allowed them to spell "Yōkai"? :-P

    148:

    You'd think they'd run the title by legal BEFORE putting it up for pre-order.

    149:

    Alas poor yokai! I knew him Kitaro.

    Personally, I think Yokai are western spirits who slipped into Japan on western trade goods starting during the Edo period. They diversified from there, largely displacing the indigenous Mononoke.

    150:

    Michel2Bec @ 114:

    "but because we need to be prepared to counter (defend against) anything the OTHER GUYS "

    And the difference between this defensive research and (civilian) research against, say Ebola is ?

    Not sure how to phrase this, but ...

    China might be one of those "OTHER GUYS" ... or it might not. But China IS capable of doing secret bio-weapons DEFENSE research and it's not beyond the realm of possibilities something could go wrong.

    I DO NOT BELIEVE that's the case with SARS-CoV-2 for REASONS, but the idea has to be carefully examined even to disprove it.

    That's SCIENCE!!!

    As far as I can tell, Ebola already exists in its most virulent, damaging form and doesn't hold much promise for development as a bio-weapon. There are other diseases that might have that promise, but if the "OTHER GUYS" have NOT YET recognized the possibilities, we don't want to give them any nasty ideas.

    So the civilian researchers get Ebola (which doesn't look like a good candidate for a weapon) and the defense guys do secret research against the others to hedge against unpleasant surprises.

    I was speaking of offensive bioweapons. They are Doomsdays device weapons by design. Not worth it for the major powers. Which China is.

    And I was talking about both; offense - those "OTHER GUYS" - and defense.

    China is not the only "major power" able to do bio-weapons research. You don't even have to be a "major power" to do bio-weapons research ... or even a Nation State.

    China ain't the only threat. Might not even be a threat at all1.

    But among those who DO have the capability, who are threats, are some people who don't give a shit that it's a "Doomsday" device because God or Allah or Jesus or Overlord Xenu (insert your preferred bugaboo here) will protect the faithful and THEY KNOW it's not going to affect them.

    Or they don't have a power base to protect and if everybody dies, then so be it, at least they've protected the purity of their ideals.

    Some of them are just criminals or madmen who might release it for fun & profit if extortion didn't work.

    1 But I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that China DOES conduct secret research into bio-weapons DEFENSE. They'd be stupid not to.

    151:

    I doubt defensive medicine even needs to be that secret. It's like cryptography: public research on things like antibiotic resistance and emerging viruses is a) a public good (which is useful in international prestige and so forth) and b) gets more eyes on it through public review than a purely secret program would.

    The secrecy is in the production phase, and it's pretty universal. Pfizer hasn't given away how it makes the adjuvants for the Covid19 vaccines, after all. Sharing information on the virus is fine. Sharing trade secrets is already protected by international norms.

    I'm with OGH, though: when I spend my scarce adrenaline scaring myself about real threats, I worry about epiphytotics, not human diseases. The reason is that at least in the US, we've largely dismantled the epidemiology and public education functions that we used to have for crop pests and diseases. We've even dismantled university plant pathology programs all over the country, because they don't bring in big-enough grants to meet administration funding goals. When you couple that with a general lack of warehoused food, that's a disaster waiting to happen sometime. Add on climate change for the extra "Zombies on a Plane" special scariness.

    152:

    This is UK-specific. On the matter of inappropriate responses to COVID, PHE and some other gummint advisory borg started publishing data on known variants early in 2021. I have started tracking it, but nothing of interest has shown up yet. Alpha dominated initially, to be replaced by Delta about mid-May, but we knew that.

    The first and most serious inappropriate response is that sequencing has been replaced by genomic analysis; very likely for good reasons, but the latter appears to have been outsourced (probably to one of the usual culprits). Anyway, the data described as being of a particular date correspond to the sequenced data of 20 days earlier. My wife says that genomic analysis takes longer than sequencing, but not THAT long. And is DAMN shoddy statistics and epidemiology to date samples with when they were analysed, not when they were collected.

    So it seems that the gummint and PHE will be acting on the basis of three week old data. Farrar correctly points out that hours can matter in an epidemic, and days assuredly do. Given COVID's fast doubling time, an immunity-bypassing variant that occurs in 0.1% of cases could easily occur in 90% three weeks later. This is just what we wanted to know. Anyway, I will post updates if anything happens and I notice before the press does. But, if our elf secretary were half-competent, he would light a fire under the genomic analysers.

    In addition to that, the gummint has archived all of the genomically analysed data before May 20th. Following a FOI, I have the links, but they seem to have taken pains to ensure that the Web pages look the same, but are much more hostile to anyone wanting to do any statistical analysis. Saving the Web page gets JUST the boiler-plate, and the actual data is hidden behind an indirection (UNLIKE on the original PHE Web pages). And, yes, I checked one that is on both.

    153:

    Agreed. The UK used to be a world-leader in this area, but bloody Thatcher demolished most of our not-for-profit organisations that did it, and massively cut the funding for the others. It's unfair to assign all the blame to her, though, as the Department of Total Incompetence had been gunning for the area since at least the early 1960s.

    154:

    David L @ 132:

    Special classes was a good thing.

    Into the 70s (I don't know when things got changed.) "special" classes were for those considered "mentally retarded" (the term of the day I know). It was mainly for people with Down's Syndrome. But in hindsight it also got the socially un-adept. Which thing tarred them for life as being "slow", "stupid", or whatever.

    Fortunately for me the late, un-lamented Durham City School System didn't have those in the 50s & 60s while I was attending there.

    I am reasonably smart, reasonably well educated, but socially un-adept" fits me to a 'T' ... then and now.

    As a side note, I was much smarter, even a genius, when I was in school ... or at least I thought I was. Schools should NOT tell children where they rank on IQ & Assessment tests.

    155:

    They did run it by Legal before putting it up for pre-order. Legal took about six months to notice ...

    156:

    JBS @ 154:

    The same thing happened to me in the early '80s.

    I literally went from being in a remedial class to "gifted" in the space of two years.

    157:

    "COVID19 as a bioweapon would have been an excellent choice during the first world war in Europe -- or maybe the second. But in modern conflicts, it's both obsolescent and dangerous."

    Now there is a premise for a story. Covid-19 as a bioweapon to be used for a time-travel attack during WWI, but it got released now by accident. I guess after this mess, they decide to go back to the drawing board and give influenza a boost instead.

    159:

    Both my children were labelled as poor readers in infant's school. They were both bored with the school reading schemes. My daughter, born in 1975 was only interested in non fiction. She wanted to read about animals, machines aircraft and making things. Her teacher was also upset because she refused to play in the Wendy house and wanted to use their construction toys instead ( a sort of giant plastic Meccano). She now has a civil engineering degree. My son, born in 1978 was bored with his reading scheme because he wanted exciting stories. Later, at the age of seven, his teacher complained of poor reading comprehension. I got out our copy of Catch 22 and gave him the passage about Orr where catch-22 was first explained. He laughed and told me exactly what it meant. He's now a marine biologist. My wife dealt with both teachers.

    160:

    whitroth @ 138: I see - you lucked out with your father. Mine graduated high school, and wound up as a factory worker (he should have been a poly sci prof). My mom got her GED after I graduated high school.

    I believe from some of the other things you've written, that we are close in age. And I suspect your parents are the same generation as my parents. If that's the case, your Dad's job working in a factory may have been a good paying job. And your Mom didn't need a diploma to be a "wife & mother" because your Dad's factory job paid enough to support a family.

    My Mom graduated from high school, but didn't go to college because she was told "women didn't need a college education". I think she might have actually been offered a partial scholarship at the time, which she had to turn down because "women didn't need ...".

    After I transferred schools for fifth grade (see previous post), I was bored out of my gourd again. They read the textbook out loud in class, while I had read it, and was well into the next chapter, and didn't want to get too far ahead. So what I was reading was inside my textbook, not beneath the desk.

    Now let's talk about school in the US in the fifties and sixties. The story that I've told ever since: as above, until one day, I look up, and my 5th grade teacher is standing over me, and the whole class is watching. She takes the book I was reading away from me, and says to see her after class. Luckily, I had another book, but didn't get so involved.

    I went through school on a low C, bored most of the time, not doing a lot of my homework... but doing well on exams. I was labelled an "underachiever", and got to see my counselor in jr. high, but that was it. Went to the best public HS in Philly (Central), and most of the time, more bored. A few classes were interesting, but....

    My Dad was on the School Board (later Chairman of the School Board), so THEY were always watching me like a hawk (like how the community is always watching the preacher's kid, salivating like Pavlov's dogs hoping to catch him screwing up). There was no way I could have hidden reading another book from my teachers for even a minute.

    I went to the same Elementary School, Junior High School and High school my Dad had attended. Many of the teachers I had in school had been teachers when my Dad was there and had taught him, so I was always being measured against him ... and found wanting.

    My Dad was frequently riding me about my poor grades. They took me to a child psychologist in the 4th grade, who told them the "problem" was that I was bored. I had read all of the text books all of the way through by the second week of class (even the math text, although I hadn't worked all of the practice problems).

    I did well in the enrichment summer school that the Ford Foundation funded for one year (summer 1960). But there was no followup, so when fall came around and school started back up it was back to the same old routine - read all the books the first week or so and daydream my way through the rest of the school year.

    My dad died a long time ago, but after my Mom died I inherited a bunch of the old papers he'd saved and then she saved after he died. Among them were old school report cards - mine AND his. Turns out he had a 'B' average in High School and so did I. On a numeric scale, I had a 3.2 and he had a 3.1.

    161:

    whitroth @ 142: Based on the recent stuff from his niece, it also terrified him, because he had no idea what to do, would not use anything the Obama admins had come up with, and so treated it like it was a movie.

    He treated it like every other "problem" he's ever had to deal with; a distraction from the adulation of adoring masses for his awesomeness; something he could make go away by ignoring it & just wishing it to be gone.

    I can recommend a good book:
    Nightmare Scenario - Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History

    The Peter principle doesn't appear to apply to the politics of elected office, because Trumpolini isn't the only example of someone rising to a level far above the level of their incompetence. In fact, it often appears to me that competence is likely a barrier to higher elected office.

    162:

    I had read all of the text books all of the way through by the second week of class

    By the end of my 10th grade a group of us had convinced the new band director that year that we wanted to learn music theory. So he setup a new to the school class for the next year.

    First day of class the next year. "Good news, the school system has a book approved for us to use. Bad news is they've never ordered it so we have to wait till it comes in. In the mean time I'll teach from my college notes."

    5 weeks later.

    "Good news, the books are here. Bad news, we'll be done in 2 weeks." So we continued with no books for the rest of the year. Final exam, write a 32 bar baroque style piece. We had an hour.

    One of the best classes I ever had in high school. The people in the class were VERY self selected which helped.

    For those outside of the US we were mostly 16/17 years old.

    163:

    Now there is a premise for a story. Covid-19 as a bioweapon to be used for a time-travel attack during WWI, but it got released now by accident. I guess after this mess, they decide to go back to the drawing board and give influenza a boost instead.

    Yeah maybe. Unit 731 releases "Chinese Bat Flu" against the Chinese and Soviet armies during the close of WW2, to try to slow them down. It doesn't, but Covid39 gets loose in Asia, then spreads to Japan with troops returning from Manchuria, then spreads to the US via occupation troops and to the UK in India, literally ad nauseum. It replaces polio as everyone's nightmare. Given the slow development of vaccines and the viruses' rapid mutation rate, it outruns all efforts to vaccinate people against it, and becomes a more lethal version of the flu, with new forms flaring up every fall when kids go back to school.

    164:

    Given what's happened this week, with the release of the IPCC 6th report, here's my suggestion for alt-history (Paging Bruce Sterling and his clone army):

    Big Oil does something really stupid (fill in blank) and royally pisses of Richard Nixon around 1972. Maybe Nixon gets his hands on the climate change doomsday file and realizes that there's someone more evil than him out there.

    So he decides, in a fit of rage, to take down Big Oil and deal with this cocksucking climate change thing.

    And he does. And he doesn't resign either, because this is more interesting than Watergate.

    After much chaos, he's given a Nobel Peace Prize sometime in the 1980s. Meanwhile, the Cold War rages on, but now that the Soviets know that climate change is a capitalist conspiracy and that they were had by the Koch family cozying up to Stalin et seq., the decarbonize too.

    Anyway, plant tongue firmly in cheek and describe the new millennium in this bizarro world where Tricky Dick actually saved civilization.

    165:

    Pay: not hardly. Before he retired, he was elected shop steward, and pissed off the union by standing up for his men. But all the time, my mom was working as a secretary. There were three years in the late fiftes that he was out of work, because the steel plant ran away to the South for cheap, nonunion labor.

    I grew up in an apartment building in what became a slum.

    And my folks kept a low profile, given Joe McCarthy, and my father's politics.

    Around the same age, yes. But both my folks died last millenium. They're a long time gone.

    166:

    I fear to express this, even to myself, but I am feeling a sense of tipping point. Between Delta hitting the international market profits, holding back again the US economic recovery from the first wave, and children, even babies, here in the US, in overflow emergency rooms, hospitals, in all the states where the anti-vaxxer bs is strongest, while the same states (TX, AL, FL, MS) try to mandate anti-masking and anti-vaxxing, while demanding assistance and medical care from the feds and other states, the ever-rising fury of the rational (and vaccinated, coz, you know, rational) has risen to the point that it is maybe beginning to drive back the fascist insanity, at least as far as covid goes, here in the US, with mandating vaccines and masks. Schools all over these states are rebelling, and judges are upholding. Please, PLEASE PLEASE!

    But it is taking the disease hitting children to do this, just like it seems its taken wildfires all over the globe to get some people to finally admit that climate catastrophe is real, and it is here -- the fire burned down my house and my whole town/city, so ya.

    167:

    I was actually alluding to the fact that the Spanish Flu was first majorly spread at an American Military base in Kansas towards during WWI.

    168:

    Ah, missed the turn. Sorry about that.

    The weird thing about your scenario is that years ago they actually recreated the Spanish Flu as an experiment, to see what was different about it. There was a big controversy about how much of the research to publish, because they didn't want terrorists releasing it again. Very few people have any immunity to it, for obvious reasons.

    More generally, the problem is that in any time when smallpox is on the loose, releasing something like Covid19 is small beer in comparison. For infectiousness and lethality, variola was hard to beat.

    That's why I'd go for loony instead: if you've got a time gate, scoop up a million passenger pigeons and let them loose in the Upper Midwest. De-extinction, or releasing a literally huge crop pest in a starving world?

    169:

    "Trumpolini isn't the only example of someone rising to a level far above the level of their incompetence."

    If I may quote one of the greatest thinkers in my lifetime: "The role of the president was not so much to wield power, as to draw attention away from it".

    170:

    DigiCom I literally went from being in a remedial class to "gifted" in the space of two years. In my case, about 3 days ... I went to a state selective ( "grammar" ) school & somfink went 'orribly worng at the beginnig of the 4th form ( age 14-15 ) ... just for once, I moaned about this at home ... at the start of the next week I was transferred to the "special fast stream" which was doing 5-7 "O" levels in 1 year flat. I strongly suspect that my father went & "had a few words" ... later I left school with 11 "O's" & 4 "A's"

    Ah yes, reading ... fortunately, I don't think I was ever subjected to the "Janet&John" bollocks ... but I read my Father's copy of Last & First Men" at age 9, followed by his copy of the first volume of Sayers' translation of Dante, which has always left me interested in the failed Renaissance of the early 1300's [ I once astounded a medieval-history PhD by asking intelligent questions about Frederick II Hohenstaufen! ]

    Foxessa Meaningless if the "R's" manage to suppress the vote next year & the US goes really fascist

    171:

    "(it would be pretty stupid to put such a dangerous facility in the downtown of a major population center)."

    Like this P4 here for instance ?

    https://www.google.fr/maps/place/21+Av.+Tony+Garnier,+69007+Lyon/@45.7279749,4.8226894,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x47f4ea2ae86d3f97:0xe4977b1506ec7664!8m2!3d45.7279712!4d4.8248834

    Context :

    https://www.laboratoirep4-jeanmerieux.inserm.fr/

    https://www.lyon.fr/lieu/centres-de-recherche/laboratoire-p4

    It is like 300m from the Rhône, one of France biggest rivers, in the 3rd city of France. Quite possibly in a floodable area.

    172: 164 Have you read Watchmen?
    173: 155 - Well, it took me more like 2 minutes, and another 2 to find it on MZN and pre-order a copy based on author and title alone. 159 - Plastic Meccano (note capitalisation) was very much a thing in the UK, in the 1960s and 70s. 160 - One of my secondary school teachers (I think 9th grade) once said at a parents' night "I sometimes think I'm boring Paws." My mother replied "Well, if you will make him go over stuff he covered in 5th grade!"
    174:

    I guess that precedes the Exxon file, but not sure by how much.

    175:
    That's why I'd go for loony instead: if you've got a time gate, scoop up a million passenger pigeons and let them loose in the Upper Midwest. De-extinction, or releasing a literally huge crop pest in a starving world?

    The passenger pigeons would scoop up a lot of food at first. But I think they'd all be dead in a few years.

    What killed the passenger pigeons was not so much overhunting (though that didn't help) but habitat loss. Not sure if there's any of their preferred nesting habitat has rewilded since 1914. If not, they're all kaput.

    Anyway, plant tongue firmly in cheek and describe the new millennium in this bizarro world where Tricky Dick actually saved civilization.

    Heh. Tricky Dicky is one of those strange people. LBJ was monumentally corrupt, but he brought in civil rights. One of Nixon's biographers said that Nixon's career was one of the best examples of a tragedy you could take from USA 20th century politics. Tragedy in the sense you get in English class, that is.

    Here's a guy with amazing good things going for him. He's smart, physically brave, loves his wife, is an excellent organizer. Yet he thought because he was smart he could fool everybody all the time. This hubris - along with his utter indifference to the suffering his policies caused - brought him crashing down.

    Giving Nixon a slight push in the 1930s to respect African Americans - as his parents did1! To give him the wisdom to see that although he was smart, there was always someone smarter. To give him the compassion and sense of justice to keep him away from HUAC - and who knows? RMN, vice president, 1953-1961, president 1961-1969, continuing the policies of Eisenhower with some of LBJ's Great Society thrown in.

    I can't see it happening, of course. Unless you scoop the real RMN up and drop a properly-prepped doppelganger into his place at the right time.

    1RMN's classmates at Duke University (NC) were amazed and appalled that he'd actually sat at the same dinner table as African Americans when he was growing up at his parents house.

    176:

    Mass education is unfortunately one of those systems where scale conflicts with individual needs.

    If you fall within 1 or maybe 2 standard deviations from the mean on various learning scales you will probably manage a decent educational experience. Further away from the mean and you will either be bored silly (and thus not benefit) or over-challenged.

    Of course, everyone has their own suite of skills and talents. In my case I was years ahead of the school system with reading and writing, roughly close to the mean on mathematics and science, and utterly hopeless at other things. My talent for testing well got me through school, but about 80% of it was effectively warehousing. My behaviour in high school reflected my awareness that much of what I was doing was bullshit. I calculated the minimum grade necessary to get into a community college, did the precise amount of effort to make that grade, and focused on being a teenager otherwise.

    A significant number of my 'intelligent' classmates did similarly - it is hard from a teenage perspective to participate in things that are actively and obviously bullshit because it will help you fit into a bullshit system later on.

    Once I arrived at college I had a 4.0 GPA (out of 4) for the first 3 terms, largely because of the option to pick what you study (and a little bit of false consensus motivating me to work hard).

    Educating hundreds of thousands or millions of children presents a challenge when they are all annoyingly individual. The vast education machine churns out a lot of people who have learned how to keep their heads down, do what they are told and learn the minimum to pass. The machine also wastes a lot of human potential by failing to support the needs of anyone too far away from the mean.

    The cost of building an education system that did support kids to their full potential would be enormous and gives politicians and stupid people indigestion. The cost of boring millions of children into stupefaction may well be higher, but harder to measure.

    177:

    Remember, Nixon's gone, and this is a tongue-in-cheek counterfactual.

    The basic points that might appeal in this Alt-World: --What-if #1: the initial environmental movement, and all the creativity that flowed from it, didn't get killed off in the 1980s. Could we have gotten to where we are now with wind, solar, and batteries that much sooner? I'm guessing probably, but it's a story point. --What-if #2: New-Kewl-yar power! Seriously, the world goes big on nukes, with all the problems that portends. Unlike today, sea level rise is not a serious problem, although having too many dams is. --What-if #3: Civil rights are for democrats, environmentalists are all Republicans of the Teddy Roosevelt/Nixon flavor. This isn't at all far-fetched. Conservation organizations are currently wrestling with a heritage of racism that goes back to Muir. The ideal of preserving untouched wilderness has some unpleasant bigotry feeding its roots. --Novelty: Cli-Fi is generally disaster porn. This is averted disaster farce. If someone could sell a story with a west Texas rancher grumbling about the cost of getting rid of oil pumps, while bragging about the number of wind turbines on his spread, this would be it. Having Chinese and Soviet spies swiping the latest solar panel technology...that sort of thing.

    This isn't the Watchmen, because superheroes didn't make the world safe for Nixon. Rather, this is the same president who created the EPA, signed NEPA and the Endangered Species Act to mess with the Democratic party going on to screw over companies that were trying to screw him over. And getting lionized for it.

    Or postulate Dick Cheney and Company pushing American solar on the world, Nixon hardball style. That could be interesting. Especially if the idea is that nukes are for research reactors and nuclear powers. All the non-pink countries get wind and solar to save the ecology and be good little client states. That sort of thing.

    178:

    You'd need a couple things driving the story. First, an early solar/wind type breakthrough of some kind; better batteries in 1969, better solar panels... something.

    Second, someone with money to out-lobby the oil companies.

    You might be able to substitute a social or political event that makes everything necessary; maybe the attempt to install the Shah of Iran in 1953 is a failure and touches off a war/revolution of the kind we don't want, or maybe OPEC does a better job with their boycott in 1973... Maybe Exxon's super-sekrit climate papers come out in 1972 and that crisis substitutes for Watergate in the fictional narrative. Whatever.

    179:

    Rocketjps it is hard from a teenage perspective to participate in things that are actively and obviously bullshit because it will help you fit into a bullshit system later on. In my case that was "Skool Spurts" & "Team Games" - shudder. Fortunately, that accelerated course at age 14, meant I HAD to drop out of "sports", oh dear, how sad!

    180:

    I strongly disagree. Tricky Dick was "smart", but had no sense. LBJ, over the decades, I have come to see as a Greek tragedy. He wanted the Great Society, Civil Rights, etc, to be his legacy - remember, he was from Texas, and the Great Depression hit Texas hard.

    Instead, thanks to that Iago/asshole/MacNamara, he got 'Nam.

    I've thought - actually, started a short story - where MacNamara did tell him the truth when it mattered, and we did not go into 'Nam with half a million men, and he got re-elected. And Kruschev kept power, and eased out of Stalinism. And Apollo-Soyuz was only the beginning, a joint US/Soviet space station in the eighties....

    181:

    I just kept reading, though was more careful about not getting so involved in reading that I got caught.

    Plus, goals for me, when I got around to thinking about them (not something that was talked about at the dinner table, not in our social milieu), everything was second best, since at 6', back then, I was 2" too tall to apply to be an astronaut.

    By 12th grade, I had figured to major in physics (if I couldn't get into a college with an astronautical engineering program)... and had a dreadful physics teacher. Mid-sixties, all the amazing stuff going on... and I could practically count the dust motes (there was no a/c), as the teacher, late sixties or early seventies, read from the textbook, worked some of them, and then gave us homework, period.

    182:

    On the "Environmental Nixon" timeline:

    You would have to do something about the environmental movement. This has always been a mixture of deep red ("capitalism is destroying the world, so we need to abolish it") along with a definite strain of hair-shirt thinking ("we have sinned against our mother and must do penance"). Nixon had a visceral loathing for both those.

    So you need an alternative Nixonian vision of environmentalism. Something involving market forces; perhaps pollution permits or green taxes. Lots of space for big business to come up with solutions. Nixon's actual environmental record was pretty progressive for the time, so this isn't a big reach. But it would need to be spelt out.

    This Economist article (sorry, paywall) imagines a future 2024 pivot by the Republicans, with carbon taxes and/or government investment in low-carbon technology.

    183:

    Second, someone with money to out-lobby the oil companies.

    Wind turbines, solar power and electric cars are all growing fast, and want to keep on growing. They are now getting big enough to start putting serious money into lobbying.

    I also have an optimistic take on the Trumpist right. They stand a good chance of making the Republicans unelectable; there may be 35% of the US who will always vote Trumpist, but there are probably more who will vote for anything else. There is already a steady demographic shift towards the Democrats, and the Republicans are increasingly having to stick a thumb on the electoral scales to stay in the running. Eventually their capacity for tilting the scales is going to be exhausted, at which point the Democrats will be able to permanently remove that thumb (and possibly tilt it the other way by using the same tactics). This could result in a long time in the wilderness for the Republicans.

    Which sounds like a good thing. Unfortunately monopolization of power by one party is never good for sound government.

    184:

    A) ...provided USA does not elect Tucker supreme leader for life before then.

    B) Why do you refer to the Democrats as "one party" ?

    185:

    David L @ 122:

    Occam's Razor

    Occam's Razor is total crap. It gives license to people who don't want to understand something to throw out anything too complicated for them to understand. Or want to understand."

    It's not crap when used responsibly. You're complaining about people who won't use it the way it was intended, as a tool to validate alternate EQUAL solutions to a problem. That's their fault, not Occam's.

    186:

    First, I'll note that the Democrats had a large majority, but lost the supermajority that year. The Dems were pro-ecology (see Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern).

    Second, the GOP pivoting? How odd - it's not an April 1 issue of the Economist. That's about as likely to happen as I am to become a good pal of IQ 45.

    187:

    Heteromeles @ 151: I doubt defensive medicine even needs to be that secret. It's like cryptography: public research on things like antibiotic resistance and emerging viruses is a) a public good (which is useful in international prestige and so forth) and b) gets more eyes on it through public review than a purely secret program would.

    It's not defensive medicine. It's research into biological organisms that could be weaponized, figuring out HOW they could be weaponized and developing countermeasures for them BEFORE some asshole thinks to weaponize them.

    As I pointed out, keeping the research secret is primarily intended to keep from giving said assholes any bright ideas about what they might be able to develop into a bio-weapon.

    Frequently the research produces negative results ...
    You can't make a bio-weapon from Germ A, so there's no need to worry about it." or ...
    "Even IF some crank tries to weaponize Germ B, our medical knowledge base already has the necessary information to combat it"

    The payoff is when the defense research establishment identifies Germ C and recognizes that it COULD be made into an effective weapon if one of those "OTHER GUYS" gets ahold of it.

    We don't know how to defend ourselves from something like Germ C ... YET, so let's NOT tell those "OTHER GUYS" that here's something they should look into for developing a Germ C bio-weapon.

    The SECRET so we don't tip off the "OTHER GUYS" while we try to figure out how to defend against it.

    188:

    Paul Eventually their capacity for tilting the scales is going to be exhausted UNLESS they grab power in 2022 & make sure their thumb is till pressed down in 2024 in enough US states ...

    189:

    I don't think the idea of a GOP pivot is completely outrageous. Most of their base is rural, and they'll have heard plenty from farmers in the next couple years. Also, the writing is on the wall about energy pricing and a couple scientific advances and the wind/solar types are starting to have serious money.

    I don't think the GOP as a whole will pivot - that's too much to ask for - but the idea that they will lose a couple congresscritters to wind/solar, then lose more in each of the following elections isn't outrageous, and it won't take that many for U.S. energy policy to undergo a major change.

    The GOP's larger problem, and it ties into this, is that they've lied too largely and many times, and that chicken will come home to roost sometime in the next decade. This will be easy to miss, because it won't be explained to pollsters with a phrase like "The GOP lied all the time so I stopped voting for them" but you'll see it if you dig. It will be more along the lines of "I was going bankrupt, but that nice ecofreak bought me out and put solar panels where my crops used to grow" or "they did such a bad job on COVID..." or whatever.

    190:

    You would have to do something about the environmental movement. This has always been a mixture of deep red ("capitalism is destroying the world, so we need to abolish it") along with a definite strain of hair-shirt thinking ("we have sinned against our mother and must do penance"). Nixon had a visceral loathing for both those.

    At that point, the environmental movement had 2, maybe 3, major strands: --The hippies and the back to the land types. These tend to break hard Boomer/Left. --The hikers and hunters in the old TDR mode. These tended to be Roosevelt Republicans until the mid-1990s when the Neo-Cons booted them out of the party. --Then there's the minority environmental justice vote that went democrat with LBJ. They weren't big players then the way they are now.

    I agree that Nixon loathed hippies, but I think he got along reasonably well with the others.

    So back to Environmentalist Nixon...

    Here's another way it could play out: --The Pentagon Papers broke in 1971, the Watergate Scandal was 1972-1974.

    Posit a couple of things: 1. The Pentagon is currently the #1 petroleum user on the planet. However, in 1971 they were getting their teeth kicked in for Vietnam, getting downsized, and weirdness like the First Earth Battalion was happening.
    2. The whole Watergate break-in was discovered by accident. The simplest solution is that it wasn't discovered, and Nixon finishes out his second term.

    Now, how to get Nixon to become a climate warrior. Posit: 3. The Doomsday Papers, a long series of studies done by oil companies on global warming, showing that it's a critical problem. These more-or-less exist.

    Let's assume Nixon got his hands on them around 1971-1972. To take the heat off from the Pentagon Papers, instead of declaring a War on Drugs (1971), Nixon releases the Climate Papers and launches a huge investigation. He then drums up support for an Apollo-style program to free the US from petroleum before it destroys civilization, using nukes and the sun. And, heh heh, perhaps a bit of hydrogen from natural gas.

    This gets even more embarrassing for Big Oil when it comes out that Koch Industries was perfectly happy to work with Stalin. Oil increasingly becomes seen as a (communist/fascist?) plot to profiteer while destroying civilization, whether through the Military-Industrial complex in Vietnam, or getting everybody hooked on oil.

    Anyway, the decarbonization moon-shot works well enough, mostly because Big Oil gets knocked on its heels and for once its normal supporters in the military can't save it. In defense, they rally around hydrogen from natural gas.

    The technological breakthroughs Whitroth wanted start coming out in the mid 1970s. These plausibly include lithium batteries (and possibly better FeNi ones or something), better hydrogen fuel cells, and better wind turbine designs (the last two from NASA). Oh, and more nuclear power plant designs.

    In the Mid-1970s, the "next ice age stuff" scare tactics get revealed as a Big Oil propaganda ploy, and nukes proliferate through the industrialized world, along with solar and wind subsidized on rural ranches throughout the West. Ronnie Raygun campaigns from the back of an electric jeep while wearing a cowboy hat under a spinning windmill, while Big Oil tries to retool to sell "Hydrogen to the People" in the big cities.

    191:

    Oh yeah, I forgot about the 1973 OPEC Oil Embargo of countries that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War. That could easily play into this.

    I should note, at this juncture, that I'm goofing with a setting. Someone else wants to use it for a story, go right ahead. Aside from real work, I'm goofing around with an alt-history where Reconstruction succeeded, and some former slave turned out to be geniuses...

    192:

    whitroth @ 165: Pay: not hardly. Before he retired, he was elected shop steward, and pissed off the union by standing up for his men. But all the time, my mom was working as a secretary. There were three years in the late fiftes that he was out of work, because the steel plant ran away to the South for cheap, nonunion labor.

    Still, factory wages in the 1950s - compared to the cost of living in the 1950s - were fairly good. One breadwinner could support a family on those wages and women generally did not HAVE to work outside the home UNLESS THEY WANTED TO.

    My Mom started nursing school just about the time my youngest sib entered the first grade. She worked for many years as a Licensed Practical Nurse before going back to school to become a Registered Nurse. She was considering going back to school again for a Bachelors Degree in Nursing when my Dad died, but gave that up for work (supporting 2 of my siblings who still lived at home).

    She didn't have to work, but she needed to (if you understand the difference). Her work gave meaning to her life.

    Around the same age, yes. But both my folks died last millenium. They're a long time gone.

    Dad died in 1977 at age 54. I'm almost 18 years older now than my Dad was when he died. Mom lived on until 2013 when she died at age 92; not quite a year to the day from when her last surviving sibling died.

    193:

    Getting back to the original topic: with my usual warped humor, I started wondering about the Cult of Santa Rona, The Fixer of Stupid (You can't fix stupid, but she can). Turns out that cult doesn't exist, but prayers have been going to Santa Muerte since the start of the pandemic. Just goes to show.

    194:

    Heteromeles @ 168: Ah, missed the turn. Sorry about that.

    The weird thing about your scenario is that years ago they actually recreated the Spanish Flu as an experiment, to see what was different about it. There was a big controversy about how much of the research to publish, because they didn't want terrorists releasing it again. Very few people have any immunity to it, for obvious reasons.

    More generally, the problem is that in any time when smallpox is on the loose, releasing something like Covid19 is small beer in comparison. For infectiousness and lethality, variola was hard to beat.

    That's why I'd go for loony instead: if you've got a time gate, scoop up a million passenger pigeons and let them loose in the Upper Midwest. De-extinction, or releasing a literally huge crop pest in a starving world?

    Why not go back to 1908 and bribe the proctors at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna to admit a certain prospective student despite the deficiencies of his portfolio?

    195:

    I sometimes find myself offering up an agnostic prayer to the saint of Amazon deliveries, Saint Expedite. Supposedly, the story goes, shipments of plaster saints destined for the faithful would arrive at the railway station at New Orleans marked "Expedite" and the folks buying the statues thought that was the name of the saint(s) inside the crates.

    196:

    Why not go back to 1908 and bribe the proctors at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna to admit a certain prospective student despite the deficiencies of his portfolio?

    That's how you end up with the German National Workers' Party being run by Fritz Lang, while Adolf Hitler simply paints the tromp l'oeil backdrops for the spectacular flats behind the Nuremburg rally.

    (Lang's pre-1919 career eerily mirrored Hitler's, although Lang was in the Austro-Hungarian army rather than the German one, and Lang was a lot less likely to succumb to rabid anti-semitism.)

    197:

    As far as I know, my mom had to work. I've no idea what my father was making, but I think we would have moved out of the apt building that had become a slum long before I left home.

    198:

    Two corrections: first, boomers/hippies breking hard left. Wall, true... unless you read any mainstream media, who were desperately trying to sell hippies == apolitical.

    Second, 1971, the Pentagon getting downsized? Huh? Nixon was increasing it - 69-72 was when we were going into Laos, and Cambodia. After the '72 election, he started winding it down, and going to "Vietnamization". I assure you the B-52s were carpeting Vietnam in '71.

    199:

    Yup, that's a big correction, alright.

    Anyway, Imagine Hizzoner Nixon The Unwatergated yanking the US Military-Industrial Complex out of Vietnam, then kicking it while it's down in its vulnerable petroleum storage sacs, and telling it to make future war with nuclear power, solar, and hydrogen, or else.

    I'm sure that would go down real well. But we are talking about tongue-in-cheek alt-history.

    And, of course, Keith Laumer imagined just such a weapons system, suitable for anti-communist landwar in Europe. Even if it had to mount a Davy Crockett and be twice the weight of an Abrams tank.

    Combine such weapons systems with something like the First Earth Battalion, aim the resulting story at Baen, and you're in business.

    200:

    Alt history with Nixon as hero? Easiest sales job in the world!

    201:

    I'll hork up another Cli-fi scenario, just so we can get back to Inappropriate covid19.

    Here's the elevator pitch:

    Pharma-bro in the near future has his company assemble a virus based on the smallpox genome. He also bought up the patent rights to brincidofovir, an antiviral that's supposed to work on smallpox. He decides to release his Frankenstein'ed Variola into the wild, so that he can corner the treatment market and get filthy rich. So he bribes some ecofascists to release his monster at airports, while he does the dirty at Davos, or a drug company conference.

    Anyway, turns out that brincidofovir doesn't work all that well on his smallpox, which due to the manufacturing process isn't exactly Variola major any more. For similar reasons, it turns out that the old vaccines don't work very well either.

    Smallpox historically has about a 3% fatality rate. Covid19 has a 2% fatality rate. You can make this into a cli-fi story if smallpox spreads through the air lanes, and the combo of covid and variola actually do cause humanity's population to stabilize rather abruptly. Add in Wheat Rust, and you've got the 2020s in a horrorshow.

    *Note to NSA: A) I'm not planning this, B) I don't have the means or desire to do this, and C) this is because I figure that horror fiction occasionally needs real-life monsters. Problem is, some PharmaBro might think this is a playbook, instead of a cautionary story.

    202:

    You could always take out a business-process patent on the idea. That way if someone does follow-through they've got to pay you.

    203:

    ...What he doesn't anticipate, though, is that chickenpox turns out to give immunity against his modified version just as well as cowpox did against the original :)

    "But we are talking about tongue-in-cheek alt-history."

    The religion of the Middle East considers natural petroleum seeps to be far more sacred than Islam as we know it does Mecca. They guard an exclusion zone around them against unbelievers so assiduously that the outside world has no idea what they're guarding (but, people being people, are inclined to suspect it involves sex). Consequently, early oil exploration concentrates on the belt of oilfields from Romania to the Caspian. Free passage of the Bosporus becomes existentially critical to the British navy...

    The shock of the news from Sarajevo does Franz Josef in. Carl is in, Conrad is out...

    or: The Black Hand decide on a different method after reading some contemporary SF. They collect a bucket of gunge from people with smallpox and chuck it into FF's car from an upstairs window. The resulting spread of infection more or less decapitates the Austro-Hungarian leadership and knocks the stuffing out of much of the Balkans. King Peter gets a hard-on...

    or: Wittgenstein's efforts to get himself shot at more often bear early fruit. He survives having his leg shot off but can no longer serve in the field. Instead he goes into military R&D, and invents the jet engine...

    or: ...instead he becomes a staff general. He analyses the existing corpus of military doctrine and concludes that it's all fundamentally bollocks. He devises instead a new set of methods which are totally correct and cover all possible contingencies, but which nobody else can understand...

    204:

    How about this as a counterfactual: Nixon beats JFK in 1960 (very possible, it was a razor close race and the press just had to report on one of JFK's sex scandals).

    How do the 60s turn out?

    First off, no Bay of Pigs. Nixon thought it was a stupid plan. And no Cuban Missile crisis either. Khrushchev thought that Kennedy weak when they met in Vienna and thought he would accept Soviet missiles in the western hemisphere. He never thought that about the red-baiting Nixon who stood up to him in the famous Kitchen Debate.

    No Civil rights or voting rights bills, however. Can't see Nixon ever doing that. The South stays Democratic. Cities burn brighter and hotter with ghetto riots. Nixon rolls out the tanks. White suburban America applauds. Race relations much worse.

    But no insane right wing craziness growing like a cancer in the GOP (which has come to fruition today) since Goldwater does not run in 64. The John Bircher stuff stays on the fringe.

    Probably wins re-election. Who does Nixon beat in 64? Bobby Kennedy? Does Nixon, grateful for Teamster support, keep Jimmy Hoffa out of prison?

    But big improvement on the environment, he did create the USEPA by executive order.

    Hippies, counter culture, sex-drugs-and-rock and roll? He gave us the fake war on drugs (really a war on black males as admitted by Haldeman) so yeah he tries to stop it early - and fails.

    But the sexual revolution happens on schedule with the invention of the Pill - no stopping that.

    Whether the Woodstock counter culture ever emerges depends on whether Nixon gets us into Viet Nam like LBJ did. While staunchly anti-communist he was also a cold blooded geopolitical realist not willing to spend American blood and treasure on a strategically unimportant piece of real estate. I see him keeping it low key with just advisors, no major military commitment - just enough to ensure that SVN does not fall until after his reelection.

    Probably does not play the China card. Sino-Soviet border clashes showing the split between the two communist giants did not occur until 1969, after Nixon's hypothetical second term. Until that happened everyone assumed a big monolithic commie conspiracy to take over the world.

    Probably not have an arms deal with the Soviets either. That required satellite imaging technology that could allow us to accurately count Soviet missiles, and that tech would not be available until after Nixon's two terms.

    No Watergate, his paranoia didn't set in until later. But he always played very dirty politics so expect very nasty elections with the Left still hating him.

    If Watergate had not happened, Nixon might have gone down in history as a great president - hence the Tragedy aspect of his life.

    But if he gets the presidency 8 years earlier, he'd probably just be remembered as an ordinary transitional president trying to preside over a turbulent changing America, failing and succeeding in equal measure.

    206:

    Health Warning Sourced through MSN from the Daily Nazi BUT: I do hope this is not true - and just a scare story. Information?

    Land lines stay working when the internet goes down And a LOT of us are still using Copper "land-lines" for our Internet access, anyway!

    207:

    Health Warning Sourced form MSN - itself from the Daily Hate But: If true this is scary ... A LOT of us are still using Copper "Land-Lines" for our Internet access. And in emergencies, the Land-Lines tend to saty "up" longer than the Internet.

    Information & Opinions, please?

    208:

    Welcome to the modern world.

    In the US most copper lines don't go back to the Central Office (CO). And haven't for a decade or few. For 25 years or so anytime they could the telcos here would replace a huge pile of copper bundles with fiber to a pod and the pod would have power, some batteries, and copper from that to the end point. And later on fiber to the curb or premises. (The AT&T fiber splicing barrel for homes around me is above my driveway just off the edge of the street.)

    Those huge stacks of lead acid batteries in the COs went away and were replaced by a battery or few in the pod.

    Removing the batteries and mechanical switches freed up huge amounts of data center style floor space around the country. Some times they sold it off. Now some of it is being repurposed to be caching servers and such to bring data closer to the customer.

    Welcome to the present. It's not too bad a place to live.

    209:

    UNTIL you get a major or minor power cut - then you have lost everything. In the "Great Storm" ( Hurricane ) of 1987, even in London, the only thing working was the telephone system .... Will I need a new actual fibre feed to my house, because, at the moment it's Copper out-up-the-top, to a street-pole & Cu certainly as far as the junction box on the next street corner, if not to the exchange, about a km away .... And, I assume, as usual, we will be forced to pay for this?

    210:

    Greg Tingey @209:

    Re: Power and telephone lines...

    Until you go to something like the NBN we now have in Oz.

    Ignoring the mistake in not delivering Fibre-To-The-Premises thanks to Rupert, it's all VOIP, so even if you do have FTTP and the battery back-up box, you've only got four hours until it runs out.

    And the lusers say, "But you can still use your mobile", they tend to look puzzled when it's pointed out that the power to the base stations will also have been cut, and respond with, "No, you can charge your 'phone from the car". Sigh.

    211:

    That only seemed to affect Larndarn and "Home Counties Sarf".

    2 weeks later, the Stornoway Gazette carried the following paragraph:- "Last week, 100mph winds were recorded at Butt of Lewis. A national state of emergency was not declared".

    212:

    Duffy @ 204: Hippies, counter culture, sex-drugs-and-rock and roll? [Nixon] gave us the fake war on drugs (really a war on black males as admitted by Haldeman) so yeah he tries to stop it early - and fails.

    Do you have a cite for that? I'm aware of this article in Harpers quoting another Nixon aide, Ehrlichman, which is often cited as evidence that the WoD was actually a pretext to attack the civil rights movement. However that version of events doesn't seem to have much to back it up. Both Erlichman and Baum (the reporter) are now dead, and Ehrlichman doesn't seem to have said this to anyone else.

    A better understanding of the Nixonian policy can be found in the relevant oval office tapes. Nixon believed that alcohol is drunk by strong races, and it makes them stronger, but "drugs" are used by weak races and lead to the downfall of nations. He believed that the growing use of these drugs was being pushed by the USSR as a strategy to weaken America, while the USSR maintained its strength through having a strong anti-drug policy. He believed that homosexuality was another part of this same strategy. And he also believed that Jews were a big part of the push for drug legalisation, although he couldn't see why.

    In short, he and his advisers showed all the intellectual sophistication and self-awareness of a bunch of guys sounding off in the bar after work. The Nixonian WoD was not a really clever way of sicing the FBI on the civil rights movement and Nixon's political opponents, it was just Nixon's personal fears and prejudices being turned into policy.

    213:

    You are correct sir. I confused Haldeman with Ehrlichman.

    214:

    The 2025 date seems to be for shutting down the POTS equipment at exchanges. Individual lines will be left as they are until a change in service or provider is made at which point they'll be switched to full fibre. It is already not possible to order new copper in several areas of the country.

    Effectively everyone who isn't already on FTTP will land up on FTTC rather than the wire going all the way back to the exchange. The entire change-over is expected to be a 30 year job.

    The Register does articles on the progress every so often and is probably a better source than Adolf's blog.

    215:

    Yes, it did, and that wasn't just because we aren't prepared for it (unlike Stornoway!) I keep telling people from the Sarf (including Americans) that 60 MPH winds are common there, but it's not a problem (even camping) if you are properly prepared. My tent is a Hilleberg Nallo 2, NOT a quick pop-up dome :-) I haven't encountered 100 MPH, and would rather not ....

    http://wiki.dtonline.org/images/4/45/UK_Wind_Map.gif

    216:

    And no Cuban Missile crisis either. Khrushchev thought that Kennedy weak when they met in Vienna and thought he would accept Soviet missiles in the western hemisphere.

    This is how you get a full-scale nuclear war in 1962.

    Kruschev and the Supreme Soviet didn't put missiles in Cuba for shits and giggles, they did it because they were terrified of the USAF Thor IRBMs based in Turkey, with a flight time of around five minutes to Moscow. They looked like a credible set-up for a first strike, and only the perception that Kennedy would let them maintain a balance of terror with missiles based on Cuba held them back from pre-empting.

    (Remember that Curtis LeMay was arguing for a first strike back then, and he wasn't alone: a lot of US opinion-shapers thought it was essential to nuke the USSR until it glowed in the dark before they had a chance to catch up.)

    Now, Nixon knew there was no missile gap (a major element in Kennedy's election campaign) because he presumably knew about the findings from the CIA's U-2 overflights and OXCART program. But he would still have been feeling the pressure, and in all likelihood he'd have lent a friendly ear to those voices -- and the Soviets would have known this.

    End result: denied the option of moving IRBMs into Cuba and then negotiating a stand-down of intermediate forces, Kruschev's Supreme Soviet could easily have succumbed to the same Abilene paradox dynamic that caused Kennedy's cabinet to go all-in for the blockage (and nearly caused a nuclear war).

    Upshot: there is no 1964 presidential election, instead Nixon's successor (whichever one survived the 3 Day War) continues on pro tem on emergency powers. Side effects: there is no UK. There is no France. There is no Germany. The rump of the USSR is ruled from some small town with a number designation that nobody ever heard of. At least 200 million people died in the prompt exchange, but that was before the fallout and famines.

    217:

    In the "Great Storm" ( Hurricane ) of 1987, even in London, the only thing working was the telephone system ....

    That was a third of a century ago: times have moved on.

    Modern cell base stations cover a relatively small geographical area and have their own backup power via UPSs. They talk to the main switches via fibre or microwave link. I'm reasonably certain that there's some resilience there -- the emergency services run on packet-switched radio networks too, these days.

    But there's a much wider problem in the UK with successive governments paying less (or no) attention to resilience -- for example, when property developers bung a couple of thousand quid to the Tory party in return for smoothing the way to planning permission to build a thousand new homes on a flood plain. Which in due course is going to bite us much harder than a reduced battery back up duration on our phones.

    218:

    Effectively everyone who isn't already on FTTP will land up on FTTC rather than the wire going all the way back to the exchange. The entire change-over is expected to be a 30 year job.

    I'm currently on FTTP but hopefully being switched to FTTC in a couple of weeks. Which means going from 60mbps incoming/16mbps outgoing to 300/60 (I didn't feel like paying for 900/200 because my household wired ethernet isn't fast enough to use it and I don't feel like rewiring the house so I can download an ebook purchase in a couple of milliseconds rather than a couple of dozen milliseconds).

    NB: my "home" broadband is actually a BT Business account. Costs about four times as much, but I get unmetered data, no throttling, contention ratio of 1:1 (as in: it's all mine), and a static IP address. Indeed, I might even think about canning the colocated server and moving this blog in-house ...

    219:

    Placing the missiles in Cuba was more political than military.

    The Soviets already had Hotel-class K-19 SLBM submarines each armed with a half dozen medium and short range nuclear ballistic missiles parked off both coasts.

    Few would survive an encounter with the US navy, but they only needed a few to take out enough coastal cities to destroy America as a viable nation state.

    In October 62 there were only about 6 to 8 operational Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba (though many more were coming).

    So it wasn't just fear of our missiles in Turkey (Reagan would later deploy Pershing II missiles with better capability), since the Soviets already had an effective counter with their SLBMs.

    So there being no real military reason to put missiles in Cuba, Khrushchev's motivations were political and diplomatic. A bastion of Soviet nuclear power in Cuba would have collapsed the Monroe Doctrine, crippled American foreign policy credibility, and spread Communist revolution throughout Latin America. It was a gamble for political high stakes. The highest stakes.

    And his mistaken evaluation of JFK's "weakness" led him to believe that he could get away with it. As Khrushchev told the Politburo, JFK was like a peasant who may not like sheltering a cow in his house during winter, but he would have to accept it because he had to - and in time would get used to the smell.

    He wouldn't make that mistake with Nixon.

    220:

    Biggest question about a Nixon presidency from 1960 to 1968:

    Does he get us involved in Viet Nam?

    Which rules, his anti communist heart or his cold and calculating geopolitical brain?

    221:

    Er, no. I can't tell you how those fitted in, but I read both an authorised British history and a semi-authorised USA one that referred to the nuclear 'defence' situation in 1962. Both said the following:

    If the USSR launched a first strike, it would seriously damage the USA, but the USA's retaliation would reduce the USSR's military and industrial capabilities to rubble.

    If the USA launched a first strike, it would destroy enough of the USSR's retaliatory capabilities that the USA would survive the retaliation with at least 70% of its industrial capabilities intact. Militarily, that's survivable. No, they didn't bother to describe what would happen to the USSR.

    There were a lot of influential hawks in the USA who were actively lobbying for just such a first strike, and the balance of power was such that they might well have won out.

    The USA, UK and USSR knew all that, each knew that the others knew, and so on recursively.

    No, Kruschev was running scared, and for damn good reason.

    222:

    they did it because they were terrified of the USAF Thor IRBMs based in Turkey

    Two different people I talked with in the 70s/80s who were involved in US military missiles at the time of such said it was an open secret that these were version v0.1 of such and the likelyhood of a majority of them launching AND getting to their intended target was slim.

    223:

    I'm currently on FTTP but hopefully being switched to FTTC in a couple of weeks.

    OK. I'm confused. I thought: FTTP was fiber to the premises. FTTC was fiber to the cabinet. (Neighborhood)

    How would a fiber run that is not into your home be faster than one that is into your home?

    Or do the terms mean something else?

    224:

    The two views are not mutually exclusive.

    Soviet doctrine was essentially "the best defence was a good offense."

    225:

    The Cuban crisis was 1962, and the technologies were completely different from those used in 1970 onwards.

    226:

    It is a common mistake to assume that fibre is any faster than copper - it is actually slower. One reason that fibre is used is that it maintains its speed over long distances, whereas 'fast' copper doesn't. Another is that it causes less chaos when hit by lightning. And, of course, nowadays, it is cheaper.

    227:

    I'm not sure I really agree that services were out in London. I lived in London and looked out the window at about 6am (the windows were rattling)to see the neighbours young silver birch prostrate across our garden.

    But the electricity, water and phone were fine.

    At 8am I walked 3 miles to work - the main road was blocked by fallen scaffolding from a bulding restoration, so the commuting traffic queue was off in to the distance.

    I did a normal day at work and the site I worked at announced at midday that anyone who had not come in would have a days wages docked - despite the police and government pleading with everyone to stay home.

    By the evening I went to evening classes in Malet St, apart from a couple of trees down in Byng Place it was business as usual.

    Kent, near Deal, which I visited two weeks later was a whole different story.

    228:

    I had the convrsation with BT:

    "When you take away the copper connection we will have no connectivity if theres a power cut!"

    To which they responded: "Use your smart phone"

    To which I responded: "We can't get a text without going upstairs and hanging out the front window"

    their response: .....

    I'm still waiting, backup power supplies were muttered about but, no info provided. If I want to call an ambulance or the fire brigade I need to drive a mile first.

    229:

    Charlie @ 218 Have you got that backwards? You're saying you expect to be switched AWAY from Fibre-to-the-Premises back to Fibre-to-the Cabinet? Really?

    Grant 😡

    230:

    Don't want to derail the thread below 300 so I'll be brief, but it was good old Alexander Shulgin who first synthesized 2,5-Dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine, aka STP. Credit where it's due and fuck the CIA.

    231:

    Got the acronyms reversed.

    Anyway: I'm getting about 6x the UK's entire trans-Atlantic internet bandwidth in 1990, ALL TO MYSELF.

    232:

    The Cuban crisis was 1962, and the technologies were completely different from those used in 1970 onwards.

    Please read what I said. I TALKED with them in the 70s/80s. They were on duty in the 50s/60s.

    233:

    Not sure of your point. But the telcos in general want the conversion from fiber to copper to take place as close to the customer as possible. And in conditioned space. And while pristine copper CAN be fast, the faster you want it to be the more expensive the bit at each end. And the more protection against the real world. And again the telcos (at least in the US) don't want to put such things in cabinets. In the weather. Where cars run over them every now and again.

    234:

    And to tack on a bit more.

    In the US what I saw was 25 or so years ago the telcos started replacing fiber to the larger neighborhood pods and to buildings with large numbers of lines. Then to the smaller neighborhoods and smaller buildings. And for the last 5-10 years to individual customers.

    Copper can do wonderful things. But long term and long distance it sucks.

    And in the US most telcos have ditched microwave to the extent possible and as fast as possible.

    235:

    In the US the big 3 (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) will now give you a cell hot spot to put in your home if your signal sucks. I have 2 at this time for my T-Mobile account for 2 locations on my account.

    While free if it goes away for more than a month you get an email saying use it, return it, or pay for it. :)

    And you need to remember that the traffic is no routed over your home internet connection with whoever you get that from and you'll need to watch if you have data caps.

    236:

    I think that you have the dates wrong - certainly, Wikipedia thinks so. Interestingly, it says that Turkey (and Italy) had the Jupiter, and that was pretty accurate; only the UK accepted the Thor. And, as I said, I am relying on one authorised and one semi-authorised history; none of the three countries I mentioned felt that those missiles would fail badly enough to prevent a successful first strike, and what they BELIEVED is more important in determining their motives that what the actual bits and bobs would have done if used in anger.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-17_Thor

    I agree with OGH in #216.

    237:

    Charlie Stross @ 196:

    Why not go back to 1908 and bribe the proctors at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna to admit a certain prospective student despite the deficiencies of his portfolio?

    That's how you end up with the German National Workers' Party being run by Fritz Lang, while Adolf Hitler simply paints the tromp l'oeil backdrops for the spectacular flats behind the Nuremburg rally.

    (Lang's pre-1919 career eerily mirrored Hitler's, although Lang was in the Austro-Hungarian army rather than the German one, and Lang was a lot less likely to succumb to rabid anti-semitism.)

    I don't know. Would a German National Workers' Party without the rabid antisemitism have been as bad as the one we actually got?

    238:

    What I said in #226, principally cost and because engineers have to be trained and carry spares for only one technology.

    If you need an explanation of WHY copper is (slightly) faster, I could give one, but it's boring. As far as distances go, even 10Gb Ethernet can handle 100 metres, which is fine for most cabinet to premises. Note that you can multiply that up by simply having repeater boxes every 100 metres.

    https://kb.wisc.edu/ns/page.php?id=7829

    Re #235, that helps with making a telephone call after a power cut exactly how? Your digital telephone line and internet connection use exactly the same technologies, and often share most of the infrastructure (in our case, all of it).

    239:

    Trying to start an argument?

    Yes I can dig out my old texts and notes and figure out the math behind propagation down a copper twisted pair inside a building. But that is NOT what we're discussing. We're talking about getting the signal from one building to another. Mostly miles away. And 10 gig along outdoor copper that needs to stand up to weather and splicing is just a royal PITA.

    My comment about cell spots was about how to get a cell signal if inside your house the signal sucked. Most people I know have a $50 to $100 UPS stuck on their modem and router just to deal with such. And you'll not get an argument from me this is a grand universal solution.

    240:

    EC ASSUMING that BT are running fibre to my road Box: - ... then the distance of Copper from there to my socket is 215-220 metres. Now - when the switch happens, does anyone have an idea if that last Cu bit will remain, including the 25 metres of wire hung across the road from a pole? OR will they run fibre under the road/pavement in conduit & then up the side of my house to a (new) socket?

    241:

    I upgraded to FTTP in January, no data cap, 20 ms ping and 217Mbps down and 192Mbps up according to an actual speed check. (I could get faster tiers up to 900/900 for more money but I thought 200 was more than enough for my present needs) I also have a static IP and got to transfer my old landline number to the VOIP. My Panasonic DECT phone base station just plugs into a phone socket on the new router and works, caller ID and everything.

    242:

    Nope. Nixon's whole career (whatever you call China) was as the anti-Communist warrior, and https://www.thehistoryreader.com/military-history/nixons-bay-pigs-secrets/

    Suggests he would have gone with it. I mean, all the Batista supporters and the Mafia (proprietors of Havana) were all anti-commie, and hot under the collar.

    I also suspect he would have ramped up Vietnam sooner if not with .5M to start with.

    Meanwhile, as Charlie pointed out, the Cuban Missile Crisis was all about the US missiles in Turkey. And what anyone here says now, what the Soviets knew in 1962 is a completely different story.

    I think the riots would have gotten worse in the later sixties, and more whites, esp. younger, would have been in, just like the BLM demonstrations.

    The '68 election would have been, ahhh, interesting, with Nixon putting draftees in 'Nam. Could be JFK running for a rematch, or Bobby. MLK - Nixon might have let Hoover jail him.

    243:

    Yeah, I'm unhappy. We have FIOS, so fiber-to-the-home, meaning we only have two ways of getting out - Internet/phone, and cell phone. Power goes out... and your backup battery goes out (and the phone company installs the battery backup... but it's on us to replace the batteries), and the cell towers will be overwhelmed.

    244:

    Ike already involved us, and Nixon would have gone beyond, Cold-Warrior that he was, so yes.

    245:

    The question is whether he could have been stopped from using a nuke.

    246:

    Perhaps, but it was the CIA who was experimenting with it, and word got around on the street....

    247:

    "I don't know. Would a German National Workers' Party without the rabid antisemitism have been as bad as the one we actually got?"

    A fascist party that wasn't infected with the insane conspiracy theories would, if they had gained power, been vastly more dangerous.

    The Wehrmacht was modern and powerful but had a critical weakness - in the words of Dan Carlin, it was infested with Nazis. People in authority who were chosen for their loyalty to party rather than ability.

    Imagine a Luftwaffe without Goering. Good planes, good pilots, competent leadership would have been much more effective.

    The Nazis declared war on the US (which they didn't really have to do, the US might have stayed out of Europe altogether) because their insane ideology imagined the US to be part of the huge Jewish conspiracy against them. Not doing that might not have changed the final outcome for the Germans, but I suspect a lot more of Europe would have ended up behind the Iron Curtain.

    248:

    @204 [ "....No Civil rights or voting rights bills, however. Can't see Nixon ever doing that. The South stays Democratic. Cities burn brighter and hotter with ghetto riots. Nixon rolls out the tanks. White suburban America applauds. Race relations much worse.

    But no insane right wing craziness growing like a cancer in the GOP (which has come to fruition today) since Goldwater does not run in 64. The John Bircher stuff stays on the fringe...." ]

    Well a lot of that would be due to no eraduation either, then, of the racially based immigration quota system, which happened right on the heels of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts passages in 1965 with the passage of The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

    However, if "...the sexual revolution happens on schedule with the invention of the Pill - no stopping that.." a whole lotta crazies still would get violently and publicly crazy about all the same things they are violent and publicly crazy about women in these very days -- see, the Plymouth shootings just yesterday in the UK -- not even the USA, where this is so common as to hardly be noticed now. Sexual mores change create 'culture' and 'identity' wars all by themselves. Don't Mess With Gender Roles! Beautiful young women MUST GIVE ME SEX ON DEMAND, still a thing, ya know? And the USA would be a nation of the very old right now, staying a white nation without all the immigration from the previous decades, which is why the last census showed for the first time the proportion of white people dropped below that of 17 something or other for the first time.

    That we are currently deep in labor shortage, incidentally is due to the shoggoth etc. to have essentially stopped immigration, and the massive deportations of same in the Obama previous administrations, and not really changed under Biden either, though Biden refuses to return to Obama's relationship with Cuba, preferring to keep Menendez's vote to allowing Cubans to get food and syringes. By the way, Nixon lurved Havana and Batista, who always saw to it that Nixon won at the races and the gambling tables.

    249:

    I don't know. Would a German National Workers' Party without the rabid antisemitism have been as bad as the one we actually got?

    It might have been more successful militarily: certainly there wouldn't have been an exodus of Jewish nuclear physicists from Germany, and possibly not from places like Hungary. Imagine the Manhattan project without Szillard, Fermi, Von Neumann, et al. And with Einstein sitting the war out in Switzerland. They might conceivably have ended up with nuclear-powered U-boats, which would have changed things drastically. Or with Von Neumann working on cryptanalysis systems.

    On the other hand, it might have been more successful economically in which case it wouldn't have gone on the insane looting rampage spree around the neighbourhood. Remember, Hitler sidelined the economists then adopted a crude Napoleonic strategy of filling his coffers from his enemies' treasuries.

    And then again, by being less rabid and more realist, they might have ended up not getting into power and leaving a vacuum that would have been filled by the Spartacists. In which case, could Germany have conceivably gone Trotskyite, setting the scenes for a war with the USSR on about the same schedule but for entirely different reasons?

    250:

    That we are currently deep in labor shortage, incidentally is due to the shoggoth etc. to have essentially stopped immigration, and the massive deportations of same in the Obama previous administrations

    I'm going to politely disagree here. The labour shortage is due to companies not being willing to let the law of supply and demand work on the labour market. Companies that are paying a living wage are able to pick-and-choose from applicants.

    251:

    Depends on what you're paying for, but the standard BT offering is based on copper to your house; we're near Glencoe and on their 45Mb service which has been reasonably reliable over the last 18 months or so, although it occasionally drops for a minute to two during the heavier horizontal rain storms. Previously we were in a city with a similar setup except with Virgin and 200Mb, and for most purposes we haven't noticed the drop in speed. Fibre to the house speeds are typically between 300Mb and 1000Mb symmetric, i.e. same up & down, with the usual "dont push your luck" data cap.

    252: 201 Smallpox case fatality is 30%, not 3% https://ourworldindata.org/smallpox
    253:

    Another unplanned test of managing Covid: The Glasgow to Edinburgh train due in at 23:35 Friday evening arrived at 03:40 Saturday morning. As preparation for an evacuation which in the end didn't happen, passengers from all 8 carriages were moved into 2 (for over an hour); fewer than 10% of them were wearing masks.

    254:

    Or just ignore the standards, which are the required minima, not what you might expect. The last 20 metres of my telephone and internet is over an UNtwisted copper telephone cable that has probably been there since the 1950s. I have no problem, and get a reasonable bandwidth.

    255:

    Try rereading Grant's post of #228, to which you were responding.

    256:

    Rbt Prior ( Labour shortage ) - happening here - but nothing to do with wages, but a lot to do with Brexit insanity ... Not come home to roost - yet

    257:

    Given the treaty of Versailles, some degree of revanchism was inevitable but, beyond that, I can't guess.

    258: 201 Smallpox case fatality is 30%, not 3% https://ourworldindata.org/smallpox

    Thanks for catching that. I thought 3% was low, but I was in a hurry.

    259:

    Which labor shortage is still due to halting immigration, since so many here will not work the conditions and shytty pay. But all around restaurants and hotels, etc., don't have that great pool of labor to draw on, which like universities dependent upon cheap - non-paying labor of students and grad students (and immigrants, too, documented and not), are addicted to that. Or prison labor -- such as California was fighting wildfires, and didn't have it when covid had so many prisoners released, and then, because former prisoners cannot be hired for state government jobs, couldn't even hire them back at higher wages.

    260:

    To no one in particular:

    General pattern:

    --Let's try to imagine a world where we actually do something about climate change.

    --Okay, how could we possibly do that?

    --Semi-plausible scenario.

    --Okay, let's argue about the details.

    --Fine. Details get more plausible.

    --Someone: I KNOW, LET'S REFIGHT THE COLD WAR IN ALT HISTORY! TRAINS! GRUMBLING!

    --A bunch of people: Yeah, that's more fun, LET'S REFIGHT THE COLD WAR! TRAINS! GRUMBLING!

    Not talking about the future is a strange attractor around here now.

    Just to point out, we can actually hit the Paris Agreement if we get our butts in moonshot mode and do something about emissions. That's per the IPCC 6 Working Group I report that came out last week.

    Basically, we're in the Singularity right now: we're at a point in history where we can either retain some influence on Earth's climate (by seriously decarbonizing), or lose control as the tipping points tip, glaciers melt, forests burn, permafrost gets into a positive feedback of blowing methane, and we're along for the ride for the next 100,000 years, or however much our species survives of it.

    So can we start talking about the Climate Singularity, at some point, maybe? I seem to remember OGH being known for writing about such things, back in the day. Deaccelerando time?

    261:

    Re: Not-so-Nazi Nazi party alt-hist: They might conceivably have ended up with nuclear-powered U-boats, which would have changed things drastically.

    Energy. The Germans never had enough energy to make anything nuclear work other than some basic lab experiments. The US had the Tennessee Valley Authority electricity generating complex which powered the uranium enrichment plants that supplied the reactors with enriched uranium fuel that made the plutonium for nuclear weapons.

    They MIGHT have managed enough electricity to enrich uranium if they had diverted all their coal production into power plants but that would have crippled their steel industry and other war-making capabilities. Any enrichment plant(s) and its ancillaries such as hydrofluoric acid production facilities would have been a priority target for bombing during the war, not surprisingly and something that big would have been easy to disrupt -- the gaseous-diffusion plant at Oak Ridge Tennessee (located there because of the TVA) was for a long time the largest single building on the entire planet.

    Nuclear U-boats, not going to happen unless they could build much bigger subs -- a late-war Type XXI U-boat was 1800 tonnes, the first nuclear sub was the USN's Nautilus at 4,000 tonnes. Stores, especially weapons such as torpedoes limit the cruise duration of nuclear subs even today and small hulls mean short range never mind the propulsion systems employed.

    It's all moot anyway -- without outright anti-Semitism there's only Bolshevism for the German right-wing hate-mongers to coalesce around in that inter-war period and left-wing Communism was intimately tied into the concept of the International Jew anyway. Protocols was a big seller back then regardless of who was in charge of rabble-rousing.

    262:

    So can we start talking about the Climate Singularity, at some point, maybe?

    Sure. And my feeling after the discussion here about EVs made me feel a bit better. Then I was reading a local newspaper series about NC State Highway 12 which is the road along the Outer Banks. And what to do about it. The article talked about rational choices and what to do if there was a decision to abandon parts or all of it. But in looking at the aerial pics in the article it became obvious that the state and feds will continue to pour money into the highway no matter how much the ocean washes parts away. Even if they have to haul in rocks and dirt to build it up as if a levee. Way too many people have way too many $1mil + homes, hotels, B&B's, restaurants, etc... there to allow it to wash away.

    EV's are noise in this discussion.

    HW 12 is basically a road with some bridges along the sand bars that form the coast of NC. With more bridges replacing the road as time goes by. Even without sea level rise these sand bars used to move and shift. But now with all those homes, mostly second and vacation that, there we have embarked on a stop the sand from moving effort. No matter what the cost. Or at least until maybe 2 more zeros are added to the end of the cost numbers. And planning by state law cannot assume climate change induced sea level rise.

    Waivers to environmental laws are written into annual budgets or the laws just ignored.

    263:

    So now I'm curious. Unrelated to the discussion here I was checking out local AT&T FTTP prices.

    Consumer 300/300 $45/mo 500/500 $55/mo 1000/1000 $70/mo

    Includes a first year $20/mo discount. There is a current promotional rebate of $150 that you get after 2 or 3 months. And just this minute (things can change daily) there is a waiver of the $100 installation fee.

    Now some of us around here flip every year or so (if not wedded to a TV package) between things like this and Spectrum coax or fiber into the home depending and maybe Google Fiber to keep getting the first year discounts.

    I just helped someone get Spectrum coax 200/10 for a two year intro price of $30/mo + $100 install. Which goes up to $50/mo or more when the discounts run out. AT&T was showing only 25mbps copper to their address just a few months ago. Now they show the fiber option. The 25mbps is the minimum you should get. Likely more depending on how close you are to the pod that services your address.

    Curious as to the costs in other places on the planet.

    264:

    Davidl #262

    EVs may be noise in the discussion, but presumably at some point the feds will stop bailing out waterfront homes no matter how rich their owners might be.

    Of course we will all flail and stomp our feet about giving up our little bit of privilege. That is very human and something we haven't yet figured out how to address effectively.

    I suspect insurance companies will lead the way. It is already pretty hard to get private insurance for places that get routinely flattened by hurricanes and flooding. So far they have been covered by disaster relief, but I suspect that at some point a rational government will have to assert something along the lines of 'here is your relief, if you rebuild in the same spot there will be no further relief'.

    Here in BC we are seeing various small towns and rural homes being burned in fires. They will get relief I'm sure, but insurance will be tough to get, and hopefully future bulding will either be fireproof or not covered by anyone.

    The point is that the privileged wealth living along that highway might pull all the levers they can, but at some point the ocean will ignore their demands.

    265:

    The US had the Tennessee Valley Authority electricity generating complex which powered

    And the Columbia River on the other side of the country. Which used huge amounts of water for cooling and such.

    I tend to think that without the US fighting in Europe and the antisemitism of Germany nuclear things in general would have been 5 to 10 years later than what happened. If not more. The time lines were accelerated during WWII by war time dumping mountains of cash into the project.

    And without that accelerated time line the "cold war" would have been a very different thing. Ditto westeren Europe. I do agree that Germany would never win with the USSR but the lose would look very different without the US fighting in Europe.

    266:

    LET'S REFIGHT THE COLD WAR IN ALT HISTORY! TRAINS! GRUMBLING!

    NUCLEAR DIRIGIBLES! STEAM-POWERED MECHA! NAPOLEONIC SPACE NAZIS IN SPAAAAACE!

    Oh and MOAR GRUMBLING, MMOOAARR!

    Will that do?

    267:

    You might like this video on Nazi nuclear research (they did have a reactor model with a strange cube based design) and America's effort to capture German nuclear scientists after the war.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrCc9XfNoBE

    Hunting Heisenberg: Capturing Germany's Atomic Secrets

    I recommend all of his videos.

    Sensationalist reports of a Nazi a-bomb test on the island of Rugen notwithstanding (eyewitness accounts indicate a behemoth incendiary bomb, not a nuke) at most they could have developed what we call a dirty bomb that could have scattered radiation over the D-Day beachheads, downtown London or advancing Russian spearheads.

    268:

    butts in moonshot mode

    I was looking for the right snippet my more serious response from, but I was struck that this part doesn't convey the image any of us were quite expecting... anyways.

    I'm not sure we ever exhausted what the outcome for power generation when suppliers just go ahead and massively overbuild in renewables (solar, wind, pumped-or-not hydro, etc). We've talked about it a bit, and I think there's general recognition that once this has happened, the current problems with storage and demand cycles still exist but many of them become different challenges that are perhaps quite a bit more solvable. I guess this counts as a singularity: we're not sure what that world will look like, even just confining it to electricity grids (and non-grids, or private islands).

    So let's spell out the question: everything else equal, we now have a massive oversupply of renewable power worldwide, albeit distributed unevenly so some places have some of their own but a local undersupply, while interconnects might not currently have capacity to bring it from elsewhere. What happens next?

    269:

    Serious decarbonization means everyone (not just Texas, Russian or Saudi oil oligarchs) gets poorer since renewables, especially when you add in energy storage requirements, are more expensive than fossil fuels as measured by levelized cost of energy (LCOE) factoring in all up front construction and operational lifetime costs) which allows for apples to apples economic comparisons.

    Renewable energy costs have fallen, but nowhere near enough. In fact, LCOE says natural gas is still the cheapest and coal is still king according to this brutally honest video (you can see the disappointment on the narrators face - he really wanted renewables to be economically viable, but the harsh facts say otherwise):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6PTKXz_2r0

    Note: Oil is almost exclusively for transport, only rarely for energy production, so it is not included.

    LCOEs costs per kWh are:

    Natural Gas: $0.02 to $0.08 Coal: $0.04 to $0.15 (mature tech, not much room for improvement) Hydroelectric: $0.01 to $0.28 (relatively few locations to build dams, and they've all been built on)

    On Land Wind: $0.04 to $0.12 Off Shore Wind: $0.10 t0 $0.21 (much bigger up front costs than on-land wind) Solar PV: $0.06 to $0.56

    Concentrated Solar: $0.06 to $0.25 Nuclear: $0.05 to $0.13 Geothermal: $0.05 to $0.15 (new advances in deep drilling and applying fracking techniques could be game changers)

    OTEC: $0.10 to $0.17 Tidal: $0.15 to $0.40 (even fewer possible locations than hydro)

    Summary chart shown on the video at 16.27.

    The apparent winners are wind, hydro, natural gas, coal and nuclear.

    But none of the LCOEs sited for renewables include their necessary energy storage facilities (li-ion batteries, air batteries, pumped hydro, etc.) so total system LCOEs are even higher. So scratch wind.

    Hydro power can't be expanded because all of the practical places to put hydro dams have already been built on. So scratch hydro.

    Coal is dirty, deadly and causes global warming. So scratch coal.

    Nuclear is almost impossible to build and permit these days (much as I would have it otherwise). So scratch nuclear - unless we see a serious development in easy to install plug and play small modular reactors (SMR).

    So that leaves natural gas, which creates less than half the GHGs that coal does per kWh and is so insanely cheap due to fracking advances it's almost free. And it is the reason America is going to become the second largest fossil fuel EXPORTER after Saudi Arabia later this year - and why we no longer give a rat's ass about the Middle East.

    My ideal solution - if I were king - would be to go balls to the wall with nuclear, especially new advanced and inherently safe technologies like pebble bed reactors and SMRs, and use the off peak kWhs to electrolyze as much hydrogen as you would want for a true hydrogen economy with hydrogen fuel cells for transportation.

    Alas, we don't live in an ideal world.

    So my realistic solution is to frack natural gas until it comes out of our ears, with side bets on deep geothermal (made possible by fracking and drilling technology advances) and SMRs. What's left of GHGs are to be dealt with by other means (planting forests, fertilize the oceans, sequestration underground, etc.)

    The harsh truth is that if we continue to use fossil fuels, global warming will kill billions.

    A harsher truth is that if we go fully renewable, real energy costs will increase and billions (not just oil oligarchs) will be thrown into poverty.

    The harshest truth is that humans will choose to avoid immediate poverty even if it ensures death decades or generations hence.

    In fact the rich white art of the world responsible for the bulk of GHG emissions will be least effected by global warming while the non-white peoples of the equatorial regions who did not cause the the problem will suffer the most. And we will watch it on TV and eventually ignore it due to compassion fatigue (Anybody notice they had yet another massive earthquake in Haiti? It was barely in the news. Think there will be any celebrity telethons this time to raise money for the victims? Probably not.)

    270:

    The point is that the privileged wealth living along that highway might pull all the levers they can, but at some point the ocean will ignore their demands.

    Agreed. But in the mean time the privileged and many of the not so privileged control the state legislature and they will keep bailing until the ship sinks. And many on the non-R side of politics around here, especially the eco minded upper income, very much prize their multiple week long trips to these beach houses every year.

    I have seen estimates that 20% to 30% of the property insurance premiums in the state subsidize the shore line losses. The state is flat rated.

    271:

    (Anybody notice they had yet another massive earthquake in Haiti? It was barely in the news. Think there will be any celebrity telethons this time to raise money for the victims?

    Well for one thing as things are just now it seems the death toll will be under 1000.

    For the one in 2010 the estimates of deaths range from 100,000 to over 300,000.

    Not enough deaths to make it HUGE NEWS NOW.

    272:

    Okay, so you've made your statement of faith, which is that you cannot visualize a future in which decarbonization happens.

    That's nice. So don't play this game, play something else.

    There were a bunch of Romans who couldn't imagine the empire without a deified emperor, yet that turned out to be most of its history.

    Now, again, let's ask the science fiction question: what does decarbonization look like?

    The point here, for anyone else who actually wants to play is that science fiction is a genre for playing with ideas, especially about the future. This is opposed to sitting here glumly going "we're all gonna die man. Game over."

    One thing we need, badly, are more images of what a livable future looks like.

    It's not particularly hard. Look up the change in western Europe from the falling-apart western Roman Empire to the medieval systems, which after a few centuries had a higher standard of living and even technology than the Romans had. ACOUP.blog is full of details that can be co-opted. And then look at how the Eastern Romans made out as the Byzantines (lasted another thousand years, and would have done longer if they hadn't made some silly mistakes early on).

    How might this work? For example

    Abandoned western Roman provinces=managed retreat from coastlines, the Colorado River-fed cities, and lethal humidity levels.

    Corrupted polytheism=Consumerism, wretched excess, and short term profit maximization.

    Rising Christianity=squabbling versions of sustainable living systems, all aiming for the blessed future of +1oC in a century, maybe two.*

    Battling Empires=China, Russia, and the US

    Switch from infantry to cavalry=hybrid warfare with space war and drones.

    Shall I go on? If you're looking for a vision, this is an easy one. I suspect that if I knew more about Chinese dynastic history between the Han and Tang regimes, I could make a different setting. Someone should, actually.

    *Note, if you read a little, you'll find a superficially noisy split between the ardent, loud Christians and equally loud, ardent Polytheists. A more thorough reading of history finds that most people came down in the middle between the two extremes and got on with life. In the sustainability vs. consumerism split, there will obviously be the vegan ascetics versus the Trumpian Double-Downers, but meanwhile there will probably be a shift in economic focus to long-term warehousing and long-term survivability, simply because these two measures are required for any firm to survive the really chaotic future we're aiming for.

    For example, if you can store grain for seven years, you can deal with six years of bad harvests, so long as there's a bumper crop every seven years or so whose surplus can be saved for the bad times. So long as we can warehouse and ship, we can save surpluses and move them to where they're needed. Control of storage and shipping processes will be the keys to power in the 21st Century.

    273:

    Question that I'm guessing you might know the answer to.

    What are the fossil fuel costs to mine lithium. From both brine and rock. My quick searching tended to turn up generalized articles.

    A relative posted a picture of a huge open pit mine on FB saying see the cost of lithium means that EVs cost more in fossil fuels than ICs. (I suspect the picture of the mine was generic but he and his friends don't care about such details.)

    274:

    LCOE estimates are closer to lies than truth. Notably, they do not factor in in any realist way serious externalities due to global heating. (e.g. human gigadeaths, mass extinction, possible collapse of technological civilization.) (Also, the discount rate is just ... shockinginteresting.) (Agenda-driven lecture videos are dead to me at least without an independent description.)

    e.g. LAZARD’S LEVELIZED COST OF ENERGY ANALYSIS — VERSION 14.0 (October 2020) "This analysis also does not address potential social and environmental externalities,"

    For instance, see this recent Mortality Cost of Carbon paper, which at least is trying, though probably underestimating the mortality cost of carbon by at least an order of magnitude because it just covers heat-related deaths. The mortality cost of carbon (29 July 2021, R. Daniel Bressler, open access.)

    Or, if one prefers, what's the expected probability of death by elite assassination squad for major fossil carbon extraction owners/executives/billionaires and their families( + wealth/asset seizure), and government leaders covering for them, 20+ years from now? (KSR's (optimistic/hopeful!) "Ministry For the Future" covers this, gingerly. It starts with a 20M black flag kill event in India which provides a long-term driver for change. A 5M kill by COVID-19 is being dealt with by denial by an army of Indian ruling-party propagandists, so not sure about that.)

    275:

    Keith Laumer imagined just such a weapons system, Making me re-read(skim) the Bolo stories (and some of the Retief stories, and a few others.) Not complaining :-); haven't revisited Laumer in a couple of decades.

    276:

    Was it the facebook thing described in this article? Lithium mining meme digs itself a hole with deceptive photo (AAP FactCheck, February 11, 2021) A reverse image search reveals the mine photo has been used in articles from as early as 2011 to show one of the world’s largest copper mines, Escondida, located in northern Chile. ... Jake Whitehead, an electric vehicle researcher at the University of Queensland, said while it was true that manufacturing EVs required more energy and produced more carbon dioxide emissions than making a fossil fuel-powered car, the long-term benefits swung the other way.

    (I often use https://tineye.com/ for reverse image search. It has a sort-by-oldest-first.)

    277:

    EV's are noise in this discussion.

    They're a pilot project. We get EVs right and that gives the greens a lot of room to ask for the next thing. The whole process is going too slowly, mind you, but get EVs right and lots of stuff becomes much more possible in political terms.

    278:

    Was it the facebook thing described in this article?

    Nope. Seems to be generic open pit mine. Maybe iron ore.

    https://tineye.com/search/f23cf1d8c950316e46418c63da66326b67c310e3?sort=score&order=desc&page=1

    Thanks for the tineye.com link. I figured there were some of these site floating around.

    Ditto the aap fact check.

    279:

    but get EVs right and lots of stuff becomes much more possible in political terms.

    Personally I'm not so sure.

    I connected to someone on FB who was a couple of years behind me in high school. I don't remember him that much (nearly 50 years later) but he is a very successful architect in the Galveston Texas area. He designs those 2 or 3 story houses on stilts for millionaires. Seems to do well at it.

    Yes based on his FB posts and comments he is thoroughly a D and eco person.

    For those who don't know, Galveston is one of those towns that needs to be abandoned. Like 30 years ago. But it is to Texas what the Outer Banks are to NC.

    280:

    What are the fossil fuel costs to mine lithium.

    My first thought here is a reminiscence/anecdote, which probably says more about how I respond to stuff like this than anything else. When I studied ecology at university in the early 90s, which actually involved studying forestry with people who wanted to be foresters, I'd often hear about how odd it is that so many "greenies" smoked and that smoking tobacco is surely at least as bad a cause of pollution as ICE vehicles. I think that "what is the carbon of mining the lithium" is on a similar level to that. It's a similarly cynical construction that relies on the fact that most people are functionally innumerate for its spread and propaganda appeal.

    The proper response is different: how does it compare with steel and aluminium smelting? What measures might be available to decarbonise all three? The answers there are just as important as switching to EV.

    At the moment we think we can influence the rate of change of emissions, but most of the things we are talking about are the first derivative of that (the increase in the rate of increase of emissions). But temperatures will continue rising for decades after we have net negative emissions. We still have to get the rate of increase in the rate of increase of emissions negative, and then we have a long way to go get the actual rate of increase of emissions negative, and then further till we actually have negative emissions. But we need negative emissions by what, 2030, we think, maybe, to turn around warming before we hit a major tipping point, and even then it's still possible. So anything with any operational carbon footprint just has to go for that scenario to be broadly possible. We're definitely facing some different scenarios and most of them are going to involve living with a lot of serious impacts of warming, even if everything from now on is ideal.

    281:

    Nojay "the Protocols" is still on sale in Britain today - you just have to go into a "muslim bookshop" ( Well, some of them, anyway ) YUCK

    David L The lesson is over 990 years old & the idiots still won't learn? ( Cnut the Great died in1035 CE ) As for And planning by state law cannot assume climate change induced sea level rise. Suicidal stupidity, presumably from "R's" since we are talking one of the Carolinas here?

    Troutwaxer ... but get EV's right ... EXACTLY Except they are fucking it up by the numbers I would love to convert the L-R to electric, but at £30k+ a pop? Or here, the lying hypocrites of our tories bleating on about decarbonisation & COP25 & won't even string ONE MILE of knitting on the railways ... So it goes as someone used to say ( I do know whom! )

    282: 261 - A lot of alt history where Germany does (or only just doesn't) develop a uranium bomb revolves around Norwegian hydro-electric plants. 268 - Generally speaking, having a significant surplus of generating plant over what is required to meet the evening peak is a failure of planning. 269 - You have, of course, got a working pebble bed reactor stashed away somewhere. Personally I only know of them in some near future milSF series. 271 Failure of English BC again. I only found out about this as a 5 minute piece on their breakfast news, which was mostly "5 people murdered in Plymouth: gunman then shots himself" and Covid-19 in England. 273 - Mining the ore is only part of it; you then have to refine the ore, manufacture LIon accumulators, and transport them somewhere useful... 280 - We don't have to make cars out of "all metal". For example, the Lotus Elite Type 14 (1957 - '63) had an all grp monocoque body/chassis, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_(car) descrubes a car with a GRP or wooden body... 281 - As other discussions, we've already done some of this in Scotland, even through tunnels.
    283:

    Cnut the Great died in1035 CE

    OK. So I skimmed hit widipedia page and still don't get the reference.

    As to D's and R's and ocean front property. You're mis-reading. Abandoning such brings out all kinds of D and R coalitions.

    Sure I'll buy an electric car, recycle and compost till my trash is almost empty, and put solar on my house. GIVE UP our homes on the coasts that keep being washed away???? But that's where I have my beach house.

    284:

    a GRP or wooden body

    Interesting problem space to think into a bit. If we're not using petrochemicals for fuel, how long does it remain viable to use them for plastics and resins? Are existing plastics purely a byproduct, does it make sense to continue to produce oil to feed the plastics industries or have they only ever been viable as a byproduct of producing petrol? Are there any viable alternatives using renewable sources, like plants? I'm aware of at least one venture into a plant-based epoxy alternative (years ago now, I forget any details, I'm sure a bit of Google fu will reveal it).

    We're actually doing quite well with plantation timber products these days, all over the world. Doesn't mean there isn't a lot of ecological harm being done to make way for plantations, though AIUI that is mostly focused on palm oil (in the SEA region) or beef (in the Americas).

    Anyhow it means that traditional woodworking skills are nice things to acquire and maintain. Into the future it is potentially very useful to power woodworking machinery from localised renewable power. It fits a model of local production, the tradeoff is in terms of the cost of consumer goods, which must inevitably increase, although there may be a corresponding increase in robustness and longevity simply because that would a marketable feature, in a way that just isn't the case right now. To be clear, equivalent consumer goods are cheap now because slavery and "free" energy and plastics, so there's a big question mark about the labour portion of costs and whether that might be absorbed into more slavery.

    285:

    I know/believe EVs are a much better long term bet. I've read the numbers in the past. I just couldn't find any references in a bit of searching earlier tonight to other than "of course".

    And I don't like to debate against "obviously" / "of course" with the same.

    286: 283 - You may know the individual better as "King Canute". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great#The_story_of_Cnut_and_the_waves for Greg's reference. 284 - No arguments except that this is why I don't like the "oil extraction bad" environ mentalists. They conveniently ignore all the "other stuff" we do with oil, like making the PC they're posting from and insulating its net connection...

    I was just making the point that a steel or aluminium unitary body (or even chassis in the case of the cited Lotus) is not essential to a usable vehicle.

    285 - My "big issue" with EVs and hydrogen fuel systems is "Where does the fuel come from?" and how often the actual answer (except in Norway and possibly Switzerland) turns out to be "CO2 generating thermal power stations".
    287:

    Are existing plastics purely a byproduct, does it make sense to continue to produce oil to feed the plastics industries or have they only ever been viable as a byproduct of producing petrol?

    Plastics are a big issue in my mind. Both for tech and for food distribution. I don't see any way around them in a short term. At all.

    There are likely 500 or more specific plastic type things in the laptop I'm typing one. While maybe 1/2 of them could be swapped to something else in a hurry, the rest would be hard to rapidly switch out.

    Ditto food storage and transportation. Going to the butcher and baker ever other day would upend the first world food system. Maybe for the better but push back here would be fierce. More so than against ocean front vacation homes and cities already below sea level.

    288:

    If we're not using petrochemicals for fuel, how long does it remain viable to use them for plastics and resins? Are existing plastics purely a byproduct, does it make sense to continue to produce oil to feed the plastics industries or have they only ever been viable as a byproduct of producing petrol? Are there any viable alternatives using renewable sources, like plants?

    1) Unknown, but see below. 2) That depends I'm afraid. It's not a hugely satisfactory answer, but lighter crudes (eg North Sea) are better for making lubricating oil and plastics than a heavy, tarry Middle Eastern crude. 3) In which context, has there ever been an EP caster oil? Serious question; EVs still use EP oils in their gear trains.

    289:

    I tried to look up the true costs of electric motoring, and could find little but competing propaganda. Even the basic efficiency (generator to charge point to battery and back to motor) was very like that. The same is true of the petrolheads' claims, of course, but there's more data and it is just possible to make plausible guesses.

    Even claims like those of Jake Whitehead are dubious, because it isn't clear what he is assuming. What lifetime mileage is he assuming, and is he allowing for EVs to be double the weight of the cars they are replacing, for example?

    This is a large part of why I believe that (especially in Europe and the urban parts of the USA), the key is to cut the size of the vehicles used rather than increasing it.

    290:

    I believe that castor oil is an EP oil, though I am pretty ignorant of this area and could easily be wrong.

    291:

    they do not factor in in any realist way serious externalities due to global heating

    The owners, operators and investors in fossil fuels and their derived power sources don't pay for externalities. That's passed on to society as a whole.

    To make them pay for externalities would require political change.

    And they already own the political process.

    292:

    Castor oil is definitely a high temperature tolerant lubricant and I suspect that its EP rating is not bad. It was used extensively in WW1 era rotary engines for crankcase lubrication, generally on a total loss basis so never get between a pilot just back from patrol and the nearest loo.

    293: 289 - I agree with you about vehicle weights, which is partly why I posted about the plausibility of making vehicles that don't contain a tonne of mild steel plate!

    I presume you know about the track damage caused by a vehicle being proportional to the 4th (fourth) power of axle weight.

    290 - I don't know either; in particular I don't know how (if at all) a castor oil would stand up in a modern EV gearbox. What I do know is that at least one Tesla owner (video recently posted) felt it beneficial (maybe even necessary) to change the transmission oil after 2 years and about 24_000 miles, which is twice (or more) the frequency you need to change a petroleum transmission oil at.

    Perhaps gasdive or Moz can comment on how castor oil does, or doesn't, perform in an epicyclic bicycle gearbox?

    294:

    the key is to cut the size of the vehicles used

    Limit the length to the railway loading gauge, bring back motorail and your self driving car can drop you at the main line station entrance, load itself (cross-wise, hence the length limit) onto the car wagon of your train, and collect you at the far end. As a bonus, upgrade the electrification capacity and it will be fully charged when you arrive.

    295:

    These are well thought out examples, yes societies can and do change.

    But only after disasters occur.

    The transition from the late empire required the sack of Rome itself by barbarians, destruction of the Roman army at Adrianople, multiple plagues gutting the highly urbanized population of the empire, civil wars between rival claimants to the imperial purple, etc.

    A similar transition from late capitalism will require similar death and destruction.

    And you are neglecting to mention that the first stage of the transition was the even more repressive regime of Diocletion's tetrarchy were taxpayers were tied to their jobs, unable to change locations or professions.

    Before late capitalism collapses, its too will become more repressive in an attempt to preserve the status quo. You can see the first inkling of this in Republic state legislatures passing voter restriction laws.

    296:

    Are there any viable alternatives {to plastics} using renewable sources, like plants?

    Yes, increasingly so, and the matter is being treated with some urgency. Fortunately we have enough plastics lying round unused to substitute for mining new oil for quite some time. Sadly we have enough unused plastics lying around that that is a major problem completely separate from the climate catastrophe.

    As with most of these things the exact answer is "we don't know but we hope so". We've discussed here before whether it would be worse for the waste plastic to just keep piling up, or for something to develop that eats plastic (you might remember that much coal and oil arises from a similar problem in the past with lignin).

    The realpolitic answer is that producing plastics isn't a problem, we know how to do that and if we really need a particular plastic we can mine oil to make it if we have to. The current problem is that we give so much power to the producers of oil and plastic that we may not be in a position to reduce how much oil and plastic is produced.

    297:

    Limit the length to the railway loading gauge Yes, but which one? Not trolling, there are 9 different loading gauges in the UK, and even more if we add in European and North American loading gauges, and that's confining ourselves to the standard 4'8.5" track gauge!

    298:

    If we are going to discuss the end of late stage capitalism and its civilization, we may as well talk about Toynbee.

    According to Toynbee there are only remaining "civilizations": Western, Islamic, far Eastern and Hindu. Each existing and extinct civ goes through a predictable cycle of growth and decay:

    Challenge and Response- causing the birth of a civilization. For the West that would be the “stimulus of new ground” caused by barbarian volkwanderung at the end of Hellenic Civilization (fall of the Roman Empire).

    Cultural growth – led by a creative minority that spurs a civilization to greater heights of artistic, scientific, cultural, economic and political advancement. The majority willing emulates this creative minority. For the West, this stage started in the so-called Dark Ages and really gathered steam during the Renaissance, Age of Exploration and birth of Science.

    A Time of Troubles – when war and the struggle for power leads to destruction of cultural creativity as the leading minority stops being creative and becomes a dominant minority which forces the majority to obey without meriting obedience. The West has seen a time of troubles since the Napoleonic Wars through the World Wars and the Cold War. We can see the continued mutation of the new dominant minority as the uber rich establish an oligarchy which controls the economy and the political process.

    Creation of a Universal State – as one competitor (like Rome) achieves total dominance and defeats all rivals to create an empire encompassing its civilization. In the West that is obviously the United States (for good and bad).

    Cultural decay – the establishment of a Universal State creates an alienated internal proletariat resentful of being under the thumb of the dominant minority and an external proletariat of barbarians.

    YOU ARE HERE.

    Hordes of the external proletariat would have to be created by catastrophic climate changes turning them into into hordes of refugees (which was what may of he barbarians migrating into the Roman empire were, their mass migrations were also triggered by climate change). The refugees from Syria entering Europe to escape ISIS and war, which was caused by a prolonged drought, which in turn was caused by climate change may be the first of many.

    A Universal Church – created by the alienated internal proletariat as an outlet for its dissatisfaction with its political and economic lot under the dominant minority. It’s no accident that Christianity spread through the Roman Empire via slaves, the poor, women and other oppressed minorities and disenfranchised.

    Fall of the Universal State – As Toynbee noted, a universal state empire is not a golden age so much as an Indian Summer, a brief rally in an inevitable downward spiral. As the empire finally unravels politically, militarily and economically the external proletariat launches another volkwanderung and the internal proletariat creates a Universal Church which then forms the chrysalis of the next civilization.

    299:

    Speaking of collapsing civs, has anyone else read "1177 BC the Year Civilization Collapsed" by Cline concerning the still mysterious Bronze Age collapse?

    300:

    Steel is recyclable - GRP is not. No, we have to cut the juggernauts down to size. The fourth power rule is misleading, because the situation is a lot more complicated (I looked up the reference once), but is a good enough guideline to use for highway planning purposes, given how many other major factors there are.

    Bicycle gearboxes do not need or use EP oils, and can used anything from light oil to medium grease (I have done that). Castor oil is rather heavy for most people's taste, but has been used, and is reported to work perfectly well.

    301:

    Moz would know this stuff better, probably, but I think I've wondered aloud before about combining a crank motor and a Rohloff hub. Other than "expensive for the outcome" I mean. The outcome, obviously, is avoiding difficult chain angles while keeping full use of the gearing. But I bet there are gotchas.

    302:

    No - it's straightforward, because the bicycle hub motors use a standard chainline. Some companies market the combination (e.g. ICE trikes with Shimano STEPS), and there is a Bosch/Rohloff integrated system. Both are OEM-only, but people have used Bafang and other add-on motors with Rohloff.

    I hope to try one this autumn, and will buy it if it meets my requirements.

    303:

    Smallpox case fatality is 30%, not 3%

    Smallpox infection confers immunity. It looks like Covid doesn't, so that complicate the math a bit.

    A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation doesn't get Covid to 30% but it's more than 3% long-term.

    304:

    Bicycles I am almost certainly going to buy an electric-assist bike, probably from "Volt" & probably with Shimano STEPS, if only because a crank-located motor makes more sense. But, almost all 'leccy-bike makers seem to avoid or frown on multiple front chain-wheels ( I found just one, with otherwise unsatisfactory specifications. ) And a trolley/carrier/trailer device, for small loads & "town" travelling up to 10 miles radius & maybe, for longer without the trailer, to keep money out of Khan's pocket. Any comments, or better still, advice? Feel free to e-mail me off this blog: fledermaus AT dsl DOT pipex DOT com

    305:

    Which labor shortage is still due to halting immigration, since so many here will not work the conditions and shytty pay.

    Proximate case, not ultimate. The real problem is having a business model dependent in importing desperate people to exploit.

    Canada has the same problem too. Our hospitality industry is screaming about the CRB and how the government is paying lazy workers to not work. Workers who have changed careers talk about how the pause (during which the CRB kept food on the table and rent paid) helped them realize that 60 hour weeks for $35k a year wasn't how they wanted to spend their lives, and time to decide on other careers. Not surprisingly, restaurants paying a living wage are having no trouble attracting workers.

    306:

    I have seen estimates that 20% to 30% of the property insurance premiums in the state subsidize the shore line losses. The state is flat rated.

    Is that the case with other insurance, like car or health? I rather doubt it.

    So socialism for the rich?

    307:

    So socialism for the rich?

    Nope. Not possible.

    The rich would never agree to anything based on socialism.

    308:

    We had a once in a life time (maybe century) chance to abandon New Orleans after Katrina. But it would not just happen. Too many poor folks of the wrong skin color would have revolted.

    Similar to Princeville NC after Fran. But it was a town with a history of being run by minorities. So it got rebuilt. And again. And will be again and again.

    For an interesting read on just how bad New Orleans and the lower Mississippi situation is and gets worse every year as "we" fight against the inevitable.

    Link is to part 3 which is the money conclusion. https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/If-Old-River-Control-Structure-Fails-Catastrophe-Global-Impact All 3 parts are worth reading.

    As to a topic Heteromeles brings up a lot, global consequences for almost all of industry in general and food in particular if things go wrong. And they likely will once we fail to keep up with the spending of an ever increasing amount of money fighting the river.

    309:

    You just can’t stop yourself, can you? EVs are not generally twice the mass was of the vehicles they replace. GRP, at least in the context of the form used for large wind turbine blades, appears to be surprisingly recyclable.

    310:

    “The rich would never agree to anything based on socialism.” They seem to have spent a lot of time making the system behave as socialism for them, rabid libertarianism for everyone else.

    311: 300 - Well, I wasn't sure either way because the load from the drive is lower, but the cogs are a lot thinner, so there were factors increasing and reducing the sheer pressure on the lubricant. 304 - Test message sent. 309 - Well, IMO everything is unnecessarily heavy...
    312:

    Unfortunately, no - sometimes they're more :-( OGH may be right that replacements for modest-sized utilitarian cars (THE most common type in the UK) will be available by 2025, but there are assuredly none today.

    My car takes two people of over 6' with stiff knees fairly comfortably, AND over 1,000 litres of luggage space, AND a full-size spare wheel, AND does 400+ miles on a tank, AND weighs less than a ton, unladen, AND is still one of the more common cars on the road. I rely on all of those (except the last), though (as I have said) I could tolerate 200 miles between charges with difficulty. Now why don't YOU suggest a replacement, because I would be genuinely interested?

    313:

    I left off the sarcasm tags.

    Here in North Carolina it's socialism if laws helps the non rich. If it helps the richer then it is free market capitalism boosting.

    314:

    We had a once in a life time (maybe century) chance to abandon New Orleans after Katrina. But it would not just happen.

    New Orleans was the place the barge traffic of the Mississippi river met the open sea for international shipping and it's expanded from that historical basis with additional road and rail transport links over the centuries. The city was never going to be abandoned, indeed over the past 15 years since Katrina the port facilities in and around the city have expanded massively.

    Next you'll be telling us the American Mid-West should be abandoned because of the increasing threat of tornadoes, or the South-West (aka the Great American Desert) because of drought.

    315:

    Well, I think we're in the position where the autophobes are looking at price and maybe mass but ignoring actual range, where others, like you and I, start by looking at acceptable range, and then look at the price and mass of anything that actually fits the range criterion without requiring us to plan journeys around "where can I get a mid trip charge?"

    For example, an early Nissan Leaf (which might fit my budget) would reduce plausible routes from my house in the Western Isles to my Mum's from 4 direct, and one less direct, all of which I've driven, to one, and that one requires a mid-trip charge at 1 specific establishment. If I was stopping in that village, there is another place I'd rather eat and/or have coffee in, but it's uncomfortably far to walk unless the weather will remain dry for 90 minutes.

    316:

    It's past 300, so I hope y'all will indulge my whimsy. I hope these stories will lighten someone else's burden the way they lightened mine.

    Feel Good Story from the Czech Republic. There are apparently OVER 12,000 centenarians living there: https://twistedsifter.com/2021/08/centenarians-then-and-now-by-jan-langer/

    No actual cats or dogs were harmed in the production of this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4y54TXsSKc&t=55s

    317:

    Haiti: yes, the earthquake is all over the news.

    318:

    Summer homes on the ocean - thanks, I may add that to the novel I've almost got finished, set between 58 and 105 years from now. Real eco-terrorists... in small boats, with night vision, firing rockets and blowing up vacation homes in colder weather, when no one's there.

    319:

    If you've read the articles fine. If not you should before commenting. I've been watching this for 2 decades.

    If the Old River Control Structure fails the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to the ocean will become a salt water estuary. And the main channel will move west. And it has almost failed more than once. And keeping that section of Big Muddy open for river traffic will make current efforts look trivial. Sediment dropping into the river there will increase rapidly.

    And there's a lot more going on that makes this all a big mess. That Congress has basically told the Corp of Eng to "deal". And a major problem is that the daily / yearly efforts tend to counter the long term needs.

    Should the lower Mississippi be abandoned. No. Should we deal with what the river is demanding. Yes.

    320:

    Next you'll be telling us the American Mid-West should be abandoned because of the increasing threat of tornadoes, or the South-West (aka the Great American Desert) because of drought.

    … and California because of lack of water …

    Well, most of the US should be abandoned, probably. The only question is: who'd be willing to take in all the climate refugees? [/sarcasm]

    321:

    Oh, and after I hit submit, I realized... that's probably not covered by insurance (act of terrorism/war).

    322:

    Nah, plastics are made primarily, not as a by-product.

    However, making them reusable would help a lot.

    For example, when I was working, I reused the ziplock baggie I put my sandwich in for weeks, at least, and that's five days a week.

    A question: I read about not being able to recycle some plastics... ah, but that, presumably, is for the same purpose. Now, suppose you recycle baggies into harder plastics for longer-term storage?

    323:

    Yes, though I would call them extremist autophils! You are I are NOT unusual in going for the cheapest/smallest/whatever car that meets our functional requirements. Most people who are not into prestige spending or penis extension do that, and most people don't have a lot of spare cash (I am not typical there). There are plenty whose requirement is 5 (3+ adult-size) people and enough luggage for a fortnight's self-catering and seaside holiday at the distances we are describing. And so it goes.

    I don't know why the weight of the same model of petrol car has increased so much over the past few years - a conspiracy theorist would say that it is softening up the public for the forthcoming juggernauts - I would not go so far, but can't think of another rational explanation!

    Incidentally, the average age of cars on UK roads is about 7 years, the average lifetime about 14, and the average replacement age about 6 years, so the correct comparison is new cars with ones of 6 or 14 years ago, depending on whether you are doing a personal or overall average calculation.

    324:

    There are several answers. For one, more use of hard plastics, reusable, for food. For another, there are existing technologies.

    Say, why the hell did they replace the waxed paper bags for my graham crackers with plastic?

    325:

    As I think I posted: ban freakin' SUVs. Altogether. They get far worse milage than a non-SUV. My 13 yr old minivan, 2wd, gets the milage that many new SUVs do.

    And the majority of SUV drivers have no frickin' idea how to drive, much less drive a vehicle that big and heavy.

    326:

    They don't like multiple front sprockets?

    Oy! What do you do on a 5 or 10 or more degree grade?

    327:

    Whitroth My point, exactly. In other news .. 1. Trudeau is hoping for an absolute majority - snap election in CAN 2. Religious Primitives re-take a country - how bad is it going to get? And how badly will it infect neighbouring Pakistan, which is already half-way there to total stupidity ...

    328:

    Bicycle motors: I just looked at what I could buy to add a motor to my bike. They look like they all expect you to replace the hub. I remember, years back, that the motors used friction, I think, to move the wheel from the rim (which would give a lot more leverage).

    Are those still around? Any cmts, please. Feel free to email me offlist (link from https://mrw.5-cent.us)

    329:

    Now, suppose you recycle baggies into harder plastics for longer-term storage?

    When I looked into this a decade back or so, the problem was that different plastics would melt and solidify at different temperatures and/or pressures. Which means that you can't process the input unsorted or you get a mess of slug mixed with chunks or a solid with globs of sludge in it.

    And everything I've read or seen since says the same thing.

    330:

    Say, why the hell did they replace the waxed paper bags for my graham crackers with plastic?

    Shelf life and packing efficiency.

    331:

    I think the defiant stance, in the case of COVID, is as much about anthropomorphizing as it is about (and maybe more about) the fact that mitigation encroaches significantly more on human behavior & society than, for example, hurricanes it lightning do. And of course that adhering to mitigation strategies were to one extend or another in many countries ::cough USA cough:: made badges of tribal allegiance.

    If a class 4/5 hurricane is headed toward your home, you may anthropomorphize it, but most people also get out of the way. Hurricanes don't require a change in lifestyle though. Even actual human-based pervasive amorphous threats like terrorism don't require dramatic lifestyle changes on this scale.

    I think it's those much more disruptive mitigation strategies, combined with the (false) appearance to many people that danger isn't imminent (until it's too late) are what combine here with our tendency to humanize any threat to produce such larger defiance compared to other threats. It's a bit of a perfect storm, both viral in biology and memetics cognitive bias, the psychological attack vector weakening our desire to strengthen ourselves socially and biologically against the biological attack vector.

    332: 322 Para 3 - Likewise.

    Para 4 - The "film" on a lot of ready meals and prepackaged cold meats isn't actually "a plastic" but layers of 2 or 3 chemically separate plastics.

    323 - I pretty much agree there, with the note that I could use a smaller vehicle than I own for a 12 mile commute on quiet country roads, but needed the extra space and cruising ability of an Octavia TDi (closest equivalent in some markets is a VW Jetta/Vento/Bora, which uses the same floor pan) up to 10 times a year. 325 - I'd normally agree, but 2 Saturdays back a Dacia Duster got me and my taxi driver out of a very sticky situation involving no fewer than 10 stretches of flooded road that we needed some of.
    333:

    "Neighboring Pakistan"? Oh, I thought you were talking about the US' primitive "Christians".

    334:

    I'll send Email to you and Greg, because OGH has shown dislike of bicycle discussions in the past.

    The executive summary to #326/#327 is that, IN THEORY, a decent EU/UK road-legal crankset motor will push 250 KG up a 10% hill. Whether that is true in practice, I don't know, but I am planning to test that later this year.

    335:

    Rocketpjs @ 247:

    "I don't know. Would a German National Workers' Party without the rabid antisemitism have been as bad as the one we actually got?"

    A fascist party that wasn't infected with the insane conspiracy theories would, if they had gained power, been vastly more dangerous.

    The Wehrmacht was modern and powerful but had a critical weakness - in the words of Dan Carlin, it was infested with Nazis. People in authority who were chosen for their loyalty to party rather than ability.

    Imagine a Luftwaffe without Goering. Good planes, good pilots, competent leadership would have been much more effective.

    "The Nazis declared war on the US (which they didn't really have to do, the US might have stayed out of Europe altogether) because their insane ideology imagined the US to be part of the huge Jewish conspiracy against them. Not doing that might not have changed the final outcome for the Germans, but I suspect a lot more of Europe would have ended up behind the Iron Curtain.

    I get that, but would there have even been the World War we know about under this alternative "GNWP"?

    Would the Wehrmacht & Luftwaffe be under the thumb of the "GNWP" the way they were with the Nazis?

    Would COMPETENT military leadership have stood up to The Leader and told him that invading Poland was Nucking Futs; an unmitigated disaster that could only end in tears? Might there have been anyone in the German High Command who wouldn't want to repeat the folly of August 1914?

    Would there have been a Sudetenland crisis or Munich? Would there have been an Anschluss?

    For that matter, would the German Government have fallen under the spell of The Leader of such a NON-anti-Semitic "GNWP"?

    What might the politics of a NON-anti-Semitic "GNWP" been? Surely they would have had some domestic political priorities. What might those have been once you remove "kill all the Jews" from their political platform?

    What might their international diplomatic goals have been and how might Germany under a NON-anti-Semitic "GNWP" have sought to achieve them?

    336:

    Next you'll be telling us the American Mid-West should be abandoned because of the increasing threat of tornadoes, or the South-West (aka the Great American Desert) because of drought.

    I party agree about parts of the Southwest. They've only been inhabitable for the 20th Century because we've been mining groundwater and/or building dams without maintaining them (or only maintaining some) or having a good idea how much water can be extracted.

    For the Midwest, I'll point to the Southern/Central Plains and the Oglalla Aquifer as having similar problems. I'm not worrying about the rare tornados, but about the lack of water for agriculture.

    There are a lot of ruins in the world, and I'd be happily surprised if the US doesn't start leaving even more ghost towns than it already has. And there are a lot of dead and dying towns throughout rural America as it is.

    The normal pattern for big cities for the last few thousand years is for populations to fluctuate by several orders of magnitude. So that's the safe bet if we can stick with the Paris Agreement. It's hard on the people living through it, but it's perfectly normal in history. What's less normal are what happened to the Classic Maya and Angkor, where huge cities depopulated and were mostly or entirely abandoned. That's quite possible in the 21st Century, especially if we don't stick to the Paris Accord.

    As for where people go in North America, I'd guess the Great Lakes, with work to upgrade the Saint Lawrence Seaway and to keep shipping possible from Chicago and Duluth to the Atlantic*. Again this sounds like heresy, but two and three generations ago, a bunch of members of my family immigrated from Europe and worked in the new auto plants around the Great Lakes. My parents moved to California chasing jobs. People moving in the US is a normal thing, and I'd expect people to move when they can't afford houses or fire insurance.

    As for New Orleans, I actually agree that it's going to be really hard to abandon. All the ports are. Unless we all (including LA and San Diego) don't start seriously copying the Dutch, both in technology and in politics**, I'm not sure we'll be able to keep any of the big ports in working order for the rest of the century. And that, quite honestly, sucks.

    *Not to deny the Canadian ports. I'm thinking of maximum distance, not maximum transshipment capacity.

    **The San Diego Port Commissioners don't seem to be entirely stupid. However, there's a kind of politics around here called "The San Diego Special" where readily solvable problems become insoluble due to dunderheaded maneuvering by the electeds. Maybe it's happy ignorance, but I don't think the Netherlands are similarly stupid, especially about water issues?

    337:

    What I'm saying is that there will be a large city at the mouth of the Mississippi to act as a trans-shipping port between ocean-going ships and river, road and rail transport inland. Abandoning New Orleans would mean having to build New New Orleans somewhere nearby to provide infrastructure, homes for workers, shops and offices and all the things that makes up a a city capable of supporting such a port. Making efforts to keep the existing New Orleans and its associated port facilities viable will cost less in terms of effort and money, at least for the moment. The alternative is to start making plans to build New New New New New New Orleans some time next century.

    Abandonment has happened in the past for various reasons - port cities such as Thonis-Heracleion have been lost as the sea encroaches or retreats or for more spectacular reasons, like Pompeii. The slow meandering of the Mississippi river delta isn't, I think, an overwhelming reason to consign New Orleans to the tides of history.

    338:

    Speaking of inappropriate Covid19 reactions, I keep hearing "MAGA 'Rona" popping up to the toon of "My Sharona." Similarly creepy, but I haven't figured out the rest of the lyrics. Probably just as well.

    339:

    The alternative is to build up capacity within the Mississippi basin to take oceanic traffic. I mean, technically you should be able to use the Chicago Canal to get from the Mississippi Basin to the Great Lakes.

    Now obviously that's not going to work for super-max ships, but scaling up (for silly example) Natchez, Vicksburg, Greenville, and Rosedale might be a partial solution to losing New Orleans. They're not great choices, but they're better than no choice.

    340:

    Now obviously that's not going to work for super-max ships, but scaling up (for silly example) Natchez, Vicksburg, Greenville, and Rosedale might be a partial solution to losing New Orleans. They're not great choices, but they're better than no choice.

    Oil and gas. They can be piped from the Louisiana and Texas production headers and the Gulf onshore terminals to New Orleans and immediately trans-shipped for export from there. That production alone guarantees the existence of New Orleans for the next couple of hundred years and/or twenty-five COP conferences, whichever comes first.

    341:

    Charlie Stross @ 249:

    I don't know. Would a German National Workers' Party without the rabid antisemitism have been as bad as the one we actually got?

    It might have been more successful militarily: certainly there wouldn't have been an exodus of Jewish nuclear physicists from Germany, and possibly not from places like Hungary. Imagine the Manhattan project without Szillard, Fermi, Von Neumann, et al. And with Einstein sitting the war out in Switzerland. They might conceivably have ended up with nuclear-powered U-boats, which would have changed things drastically. Or with Von Neumann working on cryptanalysis systems.

    On the other hand, it might have been more successful economically in which case it wouldn't have gone on the insane looting rampage spree around the neighbourhood. Remember, Hitler sidelined the economists then adopted a crude Napoleonic strategy of filling his coffers from his enemies' treasuries.

    That's one thought I had. If the Nazis had not come to power; if there had been an alternative "GNWP", would Germany have resorted to military adventurism?

    And then again, by being less rabid and more realist, they might have ended up not getting into power and leaving a vacuum that would have been filled by the Spartacists. In which case, could Germany have conceivably gone Trotskyite, setting the scenes for a war with the USSR on about the same schedule but for entirely different reasons?

    I'm wondering how that would work? Without invading Poland how would Germany have gone to war with the USSR?

    Would Germany have been able to invade Poland without the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact? I believe (from what European History that was included in American public schools) that Poland had the military strength to hold off the Wehrmacht by itself. Stalin stabbing Poland in the back played a major part in Germany's military success against Poland in September 1939.

    If Germany invades Poland to get to the USSR, they're still faced with the two front war against the USSR and Poland in the east and Poland's French & British allies in the west.

    Poland & the USSR in the east and France & Britain in the west? That war probably would have been "over by spring!" even with the "Sitzkrieg" on the western front during the winter of 39/40.

    The only way I see a direct war between Germany & the USSR taking place is if Poland INVITES the Germans in or allies itself with Germany to attack the USSR. How likely is that?

    And how might the British & French governments have reacted to Poland being a part of a German coalition against the USSR? From the U.S., I think the response would have been increased isolationism.

    The little I know about the "Spartacists" is they split from the Social Democrats over Imperial Germany's declaration of war against the Russian Empire in 1914. Would they have supported an imperialist war against their coreligionists in the USSR a generation later?

    342:

    Nojay @ 261: Re: Not-so-Nazi Nazi party alt-hist: They might conceivably have ended up with nuclear-powered U-boats, which would have changed things drastically.

    Energy. The Germans never had enough energy to make anything nuclear work other than some basic lab experiments. The US had the Tennessee Valley Authority electricity generating complex which powered the uranium enrichment plants that supplied the reactors with enriched uranium fuel that made the plutonium for nuclear weapons.

    They MIGHT have managed enough electricity to enrich uranium if they had diverted all their coal production into power plants but that would have crippled their steel industry and other war-making capabilities. Any enrichment plant(s) and its ancillaries such as hydrofluoric acid production facilities would have been a priority target for bombing during the war, not surprisingly and something that big would have been easy to disrupt -- the gaseous-diffusion plant at Oak Ridge Tennessee (located there because of the TVA) was for a long time the largest single building on the entire planet.

    OTOH ...

    Supposing the "Not-so-Nazi Nazi party" doesn't follow the path of military adventurism that leads to Germany starting a NO-WIN war against the rest of the world, might the electricity generated from the Möhne, Eder, Sorpe and Ennepe Dams have been sufficient to enrich enough uranium sufficiently for them to begin building POWER reactors?

    Nuclear U-boats, not going to happen unless they could build much bigger subs -- a late-war Type XXI U-boat was 1800 tonnes, the first nuclear sub was the USN's Nautilus at 4,000 tonnes. Stores, especially weapons such as torpedoes limit the cruise duration of nuclear subs even today and small hulls mean short range never mind the propulsion systems employed.

    Instead of Nuclear U-boats, how about nuclear powered commercial cargo ships? I'm sure they would have gotten around to nuclear powered warships sooner or later. So would the British, French, Japanese & the U.S.

    It's all moot anyway -- without outright anti-Semitism there's only Bolshevism for the German right-wing hate-mongers to coalesce around in that inter-war period and left-wing Communism was intimately tied into the concept of the International Jew anyway. Protocols was a big seller back then regardless of who was in charge of rabble-rousing.

    I want to be sure I understand what you're saying, but do you mean that "left-wing Communism" (aka Marxism, Bolshevism, Trotskyism) were also propagators of anti-Semitic, so that even without the Nazis there would have still eventually have been a holocaust?

    343:

    almost all 'leccy-bike makers seem to avoid or frown on multiple front chain-wheels

    That's because most people who buy cheap ebikes use them in flat areas and want the assist because they want or need to avoid exercising. The more expensive ones tend to have hub gears with a wider range than you probably expect, so two chainrings would get you 9 effective gears rather than the 8 you get with the hub. Even derailleur systems have often gone to a "1x" (one by) setup, where the rear cassette is ridiculously wide ranging - my ex girlfriend has more range in her 1x12 setup than my Rohloff offers, and it's cheaper, lighter and more efficient (just needs more maintenance, doesn't last as long, and is more fragile... but all of those are "compared to a Rohloff", it's still a lot more reliable etc than an old school 3x7 setup). I suggest looking at the actual gear range you want, and consider carefully the weight of the loaded bike when the e-assist is off and whether you really want to be pushing it, before getting excited about wanting to do that.

    https://ebiketips.road.cc/content/advice/advice/9-of-the-best-electric-cargo-bikes-103 seems like a useful overview.

    In Australia we get cheap "eMTB" toys which have multiple chainrings but they are to be avoided with extreme prejudice. We also get non road legal "electric motorbikes with pedals" of various sorts but they cost over $AU10k and are pointless for you.

    I would find your local ebike dealer and talk to them about what you want. My local one definitely sells various electric load bikes and they definitely cover a the "light-ish flat bar road bike with trailer" end, but I suspect you might actually prefer the "modern load-capable ebike" because those are wildly popular meaning there are a lot of options.

    And a trolley/carrier/trailer device, for small loads & "town" travelling up to 10 miles radius

    Again, there are two grades here: lightweight toys for people with no idea, and expensive things that work. There's no regulatory process to create a "safe mass market" version so the better stuff is all made in the thousands rather than millions. I'd look for a load bike first, and a $500-$1000 trailer as a second option. It might be cheaper for you to build or have built a two wheel trailer that's cheap and heavy but solid and capable. My design, or one or the many others online.

    344:

    To make them pay for externalities would require political change. And they already own the political process. How about a modest carbon tax, like $2000 per ton of carbon burned without CO2 capture. (Not per ton of CO2; we're not unreasonable! :-) How does the possibility of such taxes (or even 10 percent of such taxes) change the calculations? (Perhaps with threats of military annihilation clandestine sector-targeted ratfucking severe sanctions against countries that do not enact them, or do not enforce them.) Fossil fuel interests do not have enough power to reduce the probability of such taxes to close enough to zero to ignore. Not even close. (Many will ignore such possibilities anyway, because they suffer from the cognitive biases that manifest as arrogance.) There are other measures that could have similar effects.

    345:

    Moz I was looking at medium-size trailer with seat post attachment ( "up-&-over" ) There are many on the UK market - some are obvious crap, others need looking at.

    346:

    I tried to look up the true costs of electric motoring, and could find little but competing propaganda. A lot of propaganda out there, agreed. The piece I linked has a few interesting links. Have not read them yet. A GLOBAL COMPARISON OF THE LIFE-CYCLE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS OF COMBUSTION ENGINE AND ELECTRIC PASSENGER CARS (Georg Bieker, July, 2021, International Council on Clean Transportation, 86 page PDF) Net emission reductions from electric cars and heat pumps in 59 world regions over time (2020 Jun, 24 pages) Here, we analyse current and future emissions trade-offs in 59 world regions with heterogeneous households, by combining forward-looking integrated assessment model simulations with bottom-up life-cycle assessment. We show that already under current carbon intensities of electricity generation, electric cars and heat pumps are less emission-intensive than fossil fuel-based alternatives in 53 world regions, representing 95% of global transport and heating demand.

    347:

    Thanks very much. You are good at finding data that is actually worth looking at!

    348: 339 - Supermax no, but 2 minutes in Wikipedia told me that the largest Great Lakes bulk carriers are around 1_000 feet long, 68kton cargo capacity. 342 - The Möhne, Eder, Sorpe and Ennepe Dams might have generated enough power for running uranium enrichment, but that power was being used to manufacture steel, and German steel making methods of that period needed the electricity from 10 tons of water to make 1 ton of steel. 343 - This all makes sense to me except that I don't have 5 grand to spend on a bicycle.
    349:

    One design I saw for a bike trailer from a Hacklab was based on a pair of hub-centre-motor bike wheels which could be powered from a battery pack. The linkage to the bike had a load sensor to engage and set the power levels of the drive motors so the pedalling load of the bike pulling the trailer was muchly reduced, even up hills. It was a work in progress though, lots of hacking and tweaking of the assist programming going on and I don't know how far it progressed in the end.

    350:

    p>David L @ 262:

    So can we start talking about the Climate Singularity, at some point, maybe?

    HW 12 is basically a road with some bridges along the sand bars that form the coast of NC. With more bridges replacing the road as time goes by. Even without sea level rise these sand bars used to move and shift. But now with all those homes, mostly second and vacation that, there we have embarked on a stop the sand from moving effort. No matter what the cost. Or at least until maybe 2 more zeros are added to the end of the cost numbers. And planning by state law cannot assume climate change induced sea level rise.

    Highway 12 started out as a local road for the FULL TIME residents of the outer banks. It ran along the sound side, behind the dunes that held the islands in place. The Outer Banks have always moved, but they didn't really move that much. Most of the connections connections between the islands were by ferry ... before the Bonner Bridge. I vaguely remember visiting Cape Hatteras National Seashore before the Bonner Bridge was built.

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

    The short bridge is "complete" now, and I don't know how long it's going to last. It's almost certain that the long bridge was the better long term "solution" and should have been built instead.

    Beginning in the 1930s tourism became an "industry" in eastern North Carolina and the islands started being developed. Much of that development included building beach front before the primary dune lines & bull-dozing the dunes. That's when the banks really began to move.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf0kR79U6KU

    Those houses at 1:37 are sitting where the "primary dune line" used to be before development began.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYCgh6ph-sU

    Look at 35.254967, -75.520704 in Google Maps. This is the original location of the second (current) Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. When it was built in 1868 it was approximately 1,000 feet from the shoreline. It was still 900 feet inland in 1950.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfLIgmg35kI

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFFJc0CUOsI

    I wish I could tell y'all how to fix it.

    351:

    The alternative is to build up capacity within the Mississippi basin to take oceanic traffic.

    This led me into a minor geography rabbit hole, particularly poking around google maps up and down the Ohio River, but this article is relevant to many discussions here:

    https://www.legendsofamerica.com/il-cairo/

    Town is on a funny little peninsula that would once have been a semi-ideal rail-to-or-from-barge transhipment hub, when such things were more significant than they are now.

    352:

    I want to be sure I understand what you're saying, but do you mean that "left-wing Communism" (aka Marxism, Bolshevism, Trotskyism) were also propagators of anti-Semitic, so that even without the Nazis there would have still eventually have been a holocaust?

    The common understanding among German nationalists and others was that Bolshevism was the creation of the International Jew as part of a secret plan to dominate the European-slash-Aryan white races. Of course the Communists of the Soviet Union were notably anti-semitic themselves but rationality and sensibility wasn't the point. No-one on the Continent was really free of this sort of thinking, the French had just been through their Dreyfus Affair for example.

    353:

    David L @ 313: I left off the sarcasm tags.

    Here in North Carolina it's socialism if laws helps the non rich. If it helps the richer then it is free market capitalism boosting.

    Socialize the costs, privatize the profits - same as it ever was.

    354:

    whitroth @ 325: As I think I posted: ban freakin' SUVs. Altogether. They get far worse milage than a non-SUV. My 13 yr old minivan, 2wd, gets the milage that many new SUVs do.

    And the majority of SUV drivers have no frickin' idea how to drive, much less drive a vehicle that big and heavy.

    And as I've posted, such feel-good "panacea" proposals harm people, while doing noting to alleviate any real problem.

    Why stop with SUVs. Why not ban ALL new-fangled MECHANICAL transportation devices? Everybody can go back to using ox-carts. They were good enough for serfs & peasants, they should be good enough for you.

    355:

    Heteromeles @ 338: Speaking of inappropriate Covid19 reactions, I keep hearing "MAGA 'Rona" popping up to the toon of "My Sharona." Similarly creepy, but I haven't figured out the rest of the lyrics. Probably just as well.

    Email whatever you do have to Randy Rainbow along with a copyright release.

    356:

    paws4thot @ 348 #342 - The Möhne, Eder, Sorpe and Ennepe Dams might have generated enough power for running uranium enrichment, but that power was being used to manufacture steel, and German steel making methods of that period needed the electricity from 10 tons of water to make 1 ton of steel.

    I don't know all about German steel manufacture pre-WW2, but it occurs to me that a significant portion of that capacity went to armaments manufacture. Suppose a NON-anti-Semitic "GNWP" eschewed military adventurism for the reasons I've already outlined, mainly recognizing that picking a fight with the whole rest of the world the way Hitler did is a NO WIN proposition.

    Eschewing militarism frees up a lot of steel manufacturing capacity from procuring armaments, giving them the opportunity to use the power involved for other things.

    357:

    Nojay @ 352:

    I want to be sure I understand what you're saying, but do you mean that "left-wing Communism" (aka Marxism, Bolshevism, Trotskyism) were also propagators of anti-Semitic, so that even without the Nazis there would have still eventually have been a holocaust?

    The common understanding among German nationalists and others was that Bolshevism was the creation of the International Jew as part of a secret plan to dominate the European-slash-Aryan white races. Of course the Communists of the Soviet Union were notably anti-semitic themselves but rationality and sensibility wasn't the point. No-one on the Continent was really free of this sort of thinking, the French had just been through their Dreyfus Affair for example.

    Thank you for clarifying. Stalin had quite as many people murdered as Hitler did, but not specifically because they were Jews. But I hadn't thought that a Bolshevik/Trotskyite regime would have specifically singled out Jews for murder.

    I read Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism", but I'm not sure I understood everything in it. It was a difficult read & I kept drifting off while trying to read it.

    I had to check it out from the library 4 times (could only keep it for three weeks at a time & only renew it once before I had to return it & wait a day to check it out again) to get all the way through. But I am somewhat familiar with how modern anti-Semitism developed along with the rise of nationalism.

    But I persevered and got through to the end it.

    358:

    Why stop with SUVs. Why not ban ALL new-fangled MECHANICAL transportation devices? Everybody can go back to using ox-carts. They were good enough for serfs & peasants, they should be good enough for you.

    Because, to put it bluntly, I'm not a fan of famine. I dug out Hot Earth Dreams again, because I covered the point.

    The basic unit is miles, but it's actually (payload ton miles/ton fuel), or how many miles a transportation mode can carry a ton of cargo for a ton of fuel.

    With ox-carts and humans, it's in the range of 250-300 miles, give or take. With the Concorde jet(!), it's 467 miles. So if you're traveling across a continent, it's actually more fuel efficient to take a Concorde than to walk, although food and jet fuel aren't the same thing.

    Semi-trailers run at 18,500 miles, freight trains at 63,000 miles river barges run at 160,000 miles, and Bulk cargo vessels run at 1,300,000 miles.

    One problem is if you limit all travel to shanks' mare, if someone has a crop failure 500 miles away, you literally cannot get food to them. You can start out with a full cart, but the horses or oxen (or humans) will eat it all getting there, then have no food to get back out. The other problem is that, if walking is the only mode available, everybody's stuck with one of the most inefficient methods devised. And the 21st Century needs to be about efficiency.

    This is why Nojay and I actually agree that ocean ports are really, really, really important. Trucks and trains are important too. The trick, going forward, isn't to eliminate them, it's to find ways to power them that keeps their cargo mileage as high as possible with out emitting greenhouse gases.

    But even if electric cargo ships turn out to be half as efficient as the current bunker oil burners, they'd still be almost 2,000 times more efficient than using ox-carts.

    Now if you want to eliminate wasteful travel modes, I'd look at cruise ships (4 times worse than jets), suborbital rocket ships, and gas-guzzling, single passenger cars. And the best alternative for single passenger cars, in some cases, is to work from home.

    359:

    Paywalled, but extremely relevant epidemiological calculation regarding Delta seen nowhere else which demonstrate the irrelevance of boosters vs the necessity to vaccinate the UnJabbed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/coronavirus-vaccine-booster-shots/2021/08/11/aefec5dc-fae0-11eb-9c0e-97e29906a970_story.html

    360:

    "Next you'll be telling us the American Mid-West should be abandoned because of the increasing threat of tornadoes, or the South-West (aka the Great American Desert) because of drought."

    This is an incredibly interesting topic.

    To say archaeologists are a bit puzzled by the lack of ruins in N.A. from large(-ish) settlements at the "naturally suitable locations", by which they usually mean river confluences, is almost an understatement, and the explanation that the indigenous population "just liked to move around" is no longer taken seriously.

    The climate in the last thousand years have been almost unnaturally stable, and yet that area is barely survivable without post-1800-technology, and the loss of human life to weather was crippling until the modern computer-based forecasts.

    We tend to assume that with modern technology we can survive anywhere.

    Assuming needed supplies are ferried in, that is more or less true: We've kept a space-station running for a generation, it doesn't get much more difficult that that.

    So current thinking is that fixed settlements in that area of N.A was simply not economically sustainable prior to the stable climate from approx the iron-age forward: A settlement can survive only some relatively low rate of crop-failures and natural disasters, before it disintegrates or migrates.

    Of course that part of USA can be kept inhabited in pretty much any future climate by technological means, provided there are good economical reasons to do the necessary ferrying-in.

    "It's our ancestral home!" is not enough, it only works as long as charity has no bigger problems elsewhere.

    Today those areas are kept populated mainly by two economical phenomena: Fossil fuel extraction and federally funded jobs (ie: the military-industrial complex) which is located there primarily as a second-order effect of the two-senators-per-state rule in the US constitution.

    Mechanized large-area agriculture requires only a skeleton crew, and it is not even obvious it is profitable without the subsidies to begin with.

    Renewable energy wont do it either: Once the kit is installed and the electricity flows through the wires, very little staff is required.

    So it is not really a question of "should be abandoned" as much as "will be abandoned", if the second-order effects fail to hold.

    ...which is why there is no chance that USA can reduce the objectively insane military expenditures or for that matter enact equitable and fair tax-reforms.

    361: 356 - Yes, as far as it goes. Civil projects of the period might include the original VW Type 1 (Beetle, Bug, Kafer...). 358 - I actually agree with most of your analysis; my main reservation is that you actually lose muscle mass on food animals by making them walk the several hundred miles, and I'm not sure you've allowed for that as a factor with carts (ie, I think they may be even worse than your figures suggest if the target population want meat).
    362:

    On meat: I think we (globally) really need to start eating less meat. As I understand it, animals used to be much more valuable in other respects (for example beasts of burden) than just meat to eat.

    After all, it's kind of wasteful to feed plants to animals and then eat the animals, if you can eat the plants yourself. Feeding plants inedible to humans to pigs and goats is a different thing, but it's not a solution for current amounts of meat we eat.

    363:

    That's a separate argument to where I was going, which was that specialist road (or rail, or even ship) haulage of livestock is a more efficient means of transporting live meat 100 miles or more than a "old West cattle drive" is. That will remain true even if we reduce meat consumption. There are medical reasons why this doesn't work for everyone.

    364:

    I have some book questions (might be obvious stuff, might have been answered before, but anyway):

  • In DLD, a Baroness Sanguinary is mentioned. Is that Mhari? Will we learn how she became notorious?
  • Iris' sacrifice of Bob, it seems the SA knew about it, and had his blessing. Is that correct? Does Bob know?
  • In Annihilation Score, Mo tells the SA Lecter's name twice. Anything particular with that?
  • 365:

    The only way I see a direct war between Germany & the USSR taking place is if Poland INVITES the Germans in or allies itself with Germany to attack the USSR. How likely is that?

    If we're going back to someone other than Hitler running the NDAP, then in all likelihood there will be other significant historical changes.

    Trotsky gets a relatively clean pass in the history books mostly because he wasn't Stalin: but Trotsky's policies -- had he succeeded Lenin -- would have led to another large-scale war (albeit a different one). Trotsky was all for exporting communism globally, rather than keeping it inside the former Russian empire, and it's hard not to see one or more of the European great powers rocking up for a re-run of 1919-21, even if he settled for modernizing the USSR and funding overseas missions, rather than full-on invasions.

    366:

    In DLD, a Baroness Sanguinary is mentioned. Is that Mhari? Will we learn how she became notorious?

    Yes: as noted in "The Labyrinth Index" the New Management gave her a peerage and stuck her in charge of a House of Lords Select Committee.

    Iris' sacrifice of Bob, it seems the SA knew about it, and had his blessing. Is that correct? Does Bob know?

    Bob did not know: the Iris/SA connection is a plot point for a not-yet-written book.

    In Annihilation Score, Mo tells the SA Lecter's name twice. Anything particular with that?

    I don't even remember that.

    367:

    might the electricity generated from the Möhne, Eder, Sorpe and Ennepe Dams have been sufficient to enrich enough uranium sufficiently for them to begin building POWER reactors?

    Yes. Remember the US bomb program consumed stupefying amounts of electricity because they used calutrons for enrichment -- a technology everybody abandoned as soon as possible. Ultracentrifuges date to the 1920s; an ultracentrifuge enrichment cascade running on UF6 by the late 1930s is not totally inconceivable. Also, enrichment to 3% (reactor fuel) is a lot easier than enrichment to 70% and up (necessary for bomb making). The bomb comes later, by way of plutonium.

    Indeed, an alt-Reich "dash for nuclear" to build civil power reactors in the 1940s seems quite plausible, just as historically France went full-bore for nuclear power in the 1970s.

    Nojay's objection to nuclear powered U-boats doesn't hold up to examination, either. Yes, the existing U-boats were far too small. But big-ass submarines were a thing -- look at the Japanese I-400 class, which overlaps in size with early SSBNs. Germany was certainly able to build big lumps of floating metal (hint: Tirpitz, Bismark, etc). The real limit on U-boat size wasn't engineering, it was tactical purpose (they only needed to get to the middle of the Atlantic and back to carry out their mission).

    368:

    You have now puzzled me. There is a strong SA/Iris plot point in The Delirium Brief, indicating that Iris infiltrated the cult under orders (as well as from inclination) - do you mean beyond that?

    I noted the duplicate Lecter explanation, too. If you were collecting things to clean up in a rewrite, it would be worth adding.

    369:

    Of course the Communists of the Soviet Union were notably anti-semitic themselves

    The anti-semitism really caught on in the 1930s, under Stalin. If you look at the composition of the Bolsheviks in 1917-24 or thereabouts a lot of the leaders were secular Jews: Bolshevism attracted them because it offered a way out of the institutionalized state anti-semitism of the Tsarist (Russian Orthodox Christian) regime.

    Then Stalin started purging his perceived rivals ...

    370:

    The climate in the last thousand years have been almost unnaturally stable,

    I am gradually coming to the conclusion that the reason a small island nation managed to build a world-wide Empire and ruled a quarter of the world's land mass was in part due to the Gulf Stream.

    Britain doesn't routinely experience the sorts of truly disastrous weather events which get reported daily from around the world, hurricanes and monsoons and typhoons and droughts and famines and tornadoes and extreme heat events (or extreme cold either). 'Temperate' was pretty much the word created to describe our climate, at least over the past 20,000 years or so after the ice retreated. Add to that a severe lack of earthquakes and other geological disasters and what you've got is a nation that didn't have to dig its way out of one natural disaster after another and could spend that accumulated capital going out in ships and conquering the world.

    371:

    And as I've posted, such feel-good "panacea" proposals harm people, while doing noting to alleviate any real problem.

    It's an incentives problem.

    I think the answer is probably to tax passenger vehicles by axle weight, and make it a non-linear relationship so that heavy vehicles go up sharply -- there's no reason a Cadillac Escalade should be as cheap to pay annual tax on as a Smart ForTwo or a microcar.

    People who need a pickup or SUV for work will pay more. Simple.

    Does this discriminate against people who live in far suburbia/exurbia? Of course it goddamn does. We should be moving to a more urban lifestyle as a matter of urgency: this is just an additional incentive.

    (How you fund the shift from suburbia back to urbia is a more specific and different question. Hint: I think socialized housing is a big part of the answer, as is universal basic income and a huge dose of policies that the conservative/right wing will scream at as Godless Communism, never mind Socialism. But that's a whole 'nother argument.)

    372:

    The I-400 was an engineering disaster. I read a report of the US officer who was given command of one of the two examples the Japanese managed to complete as he sailed it across the Pacific to America. He stayed on the surface for the entire transit and never submerged, the hull was in appalling condition and the likelihood of it coming back to the surface again was low. There were other problems with the I-400 like the ship's monkey which, he was assured by the Japanese crew, was necessary to keep the cockroach infestation down to an acceptable level (a bit like a ship's cat and rodents). It wasn't that funny in reality, cockroaches got squished between hatch seals and let water in at the most inappropriate times...

    Building large lumps of metal that were supposed to stay on or above sea level all the time was well-understood by the 1940s. Large submarines were still a problem, a very large submarine with a novel power plant was a step too far for 1940s tech. I did see a nuclear sub described in the rather worrying Luftwaffe 1946 comics series though.

    373:

    The places where we should be producing meat are places like the hill farms of the Yorkshire Dales - land where the only thing that grows well is grass, moss, and other things that humans don't eat.

    And that does imply not much supplementing of feed - as you say, no point diverting human feed to animals just for meat. At least, not until education etc results in the human population falling naturally to a sustainable level.

    374:

    Actually, I think that's too one-dimensional. There are people who need to live in rural areas (including rural towns and villages), and that discriminates against them as well. A lot of the problem with rural social demise is due to that effectively being a policy for the past 70 years.

    I remember when most people who lived in rural areas got on pretty well without using a car much, and CERTAINLY without using a multi-ton juggernaut. Packing everyone into dense conurbations is neither necessary nor desirable - though I agree the current fashion of commuting for over an hour in a SUV is worse.

    It's the same with meat. We should abolish ALL forms of battery production instanter, but traditional grazing and similar is critical to many ecologies (e.g. downland), and MUCH less ecologically harmful (indeed, sometimes beneficial). Yes, the prices for meat, dairy and even eggs would go back to what they once used to be, but eating more pulses etc. and less of them is beneficial in so many ways.

    Other UK factors to tackle the SUV problem include hammering the manufacturers' cartel in the goolies until they produce small utility vehicles again, and hammering the insurance cartel in the goolies until they make the hire of such vehicles feasible again. When I have been moaning about being unable to get a car for my use, lots of people have told me that I need a SUV. I need a SUV like a sodding hole in the head! But that's very close to all that I am offered :-(

    375:

    Then Stalin started purging his perceived rivals ...

    I think the only people sure to not get on that list were the ones JS didn't see when looking in the mirror.

    376:

    Remember the US bomb program consumed stupefying amounts of electricity because they used calutrons for enrichment -- a technology everybody abandoned as soon as possible. Ultracentrifuges date to the 1920s

    Yes. And gaseous diffusion took it down to "holy crap that's a lot of power". Like 500 to 1000 megawatts for a production plant. Maybe you could stop at 500 megawatts for a wartime situation.

    Ultracentrifuges to me in my not so deep reading, were a thing but we (the planet) didn't have the control systems to make it work at scale. Sort of like flying the first stage of a rocket back for re-use. Without modern computers/control systems it wasn't really a feasible thing to do prior to 2000/2010 or so.

    377:

    Greg, I'd suggest heading over to https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/#pedelecs-forums.1

    I've had some good advice there. I'd be interested to hear how you get on - I really need to start cycling again but my knees are knackered and complain even cycling in Cambridgeshire.

    378:

    I will break my rule, because I may be able to help.

    A lot of people have that problem because the modern UCI-derived fashion is to cycle with very bent knees and high cadences, which is something we have not evolved to do. Raising the saddle so that your knees are straight at the bottom and toes pointing down at a modest cadence is far more natural, how people used to cycle, and is less problematic in general (everyone's anatomy is different, so some people find it is worse). Do it GRADUALLY, though.

    379:

    The rich would never agree to anything based on socialism.

    Well, socialism for other people.

    If it benefits them, it's not socialism, because by definition socialism is evil, right?

    380:

    Arr. Double negatives.

    381:

    Nojay & Charlie No-one has mentioned the two (?) insane submersible cruiser(s) the French Built: Surcouf

    382:

    Yes, there's a deeper game in progress.

    There won't be a rewrite of the Laundry Files novels: there's about 1.5 million words of them at this point, so it'd take years, and there's zero commercial rationale for it. (If I even suggested it my editors would take out a restraining order.)

    383: 369 - This may be "teaching my granny", but Russian pogroms go back hundreds of years into the Tzars rather than starting with Stalin, 374 - And for people who require stomas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoma_(medicine)? They may, not always but may, be on a low fibre diet, which is the complete opposite of a pulse-rich one. 378 - Well, FWIW that's how I used to ride, before I had this feeling that about half of motorists would knock you off as soon as look at you. 381, or the British b>steam-powered K boats, and their M-class brethren (aka "mutton boats").
    384:

    The I-400 was an engineering disaster....

    My question is:

    Was this due to the pitiful state of ship construction near the end of the war?

    I suspect by then the only high grade steel they had available to them was what they could salvaged from wreaks in Tokyo Bay.

    385:

    I missed a spacebar in a hotlink, so it's broken by a redundant or non-existent "?" character,

    And an opening brace on a HTML tag; "steam-powered" should be bold face.

    386:

    #369 - This may be "teaching my granny", but Russian pogroms go back hundreds of years into the Tzars rather than starting with Stalin,

    That might just have something to do with why my paternal grandfather's family emigrated to the UK in 1906 ...

    387:

    I did sort of realise the fact if not the actual date.

    388:

    It doesn't make sense to orient an (inter-)national strategy around a small number of people with particular problems. That does NOT mean that we should follow the current strategy of shafting people for whom the dominant solution does not work. Yes, some people would need financial or other assistance, but much of the current animal food industry is inhumane, unsustainable and socially harmful.

    389:

    Thanks. I had rather assumed the latter from some of your posts!

    390:

    Yes, that's what I meant, though it also applies to downland etc. (for ecological reasons) and traditional mixed farming; pure arable farming relies on providing a lot of fertiliser from outside. We would use more (often hard) wool, and most mutton and beef would be from sheep and cows at the end of their productive (for other purposes) lives.

    391:

    Not really.

    This is a matter of time scale: There was nothing inevitable about England's rise, and when it did grow big, that didn't last for very long (100-200 years, depending on how you count it). The nothing inevitable is a reminder that a lot of critical stuff happened during the Elizabethan era, and a different outcome of the Spanish Armada would have us all speaking Espanol if there were an internet at all. Having a lot of easy-to-get coal during the first Industrial Revolution, and controlling the Ganges Delta when there the world was critically short of nitrates, explain a lot of the rest.

    Incidentally, the USA and Russia are in the same boats. Big empires seldom never very long.

    As for why there weren't big cities in North America when the first European explorers arrived, there were: Tenochtitlan in Mexico (est. pop. 140,000) and Cahokia (est. pop. 14,000, which was bigger than London at the same time). Maize and beans can feed a lot of people. As to why there weren't more big cities, Indians riding bison and fondling guns, and so on, I think Guns, Germs, and Steel hit it on the head. But that's only half the story.

    Most people, when they met the European colonizers, thought "These men are fucking insane and heavily armed." The problems with exploitative capitalism were quite obvious to those observing the initial wave, as recorded by the colonizers who talked with the colonized. The idea that colonization in a capitalist regime would be ruinously destructive isn't a new notion, but a very old one. The surprise has been how very long and how thorough the destruction has been. If you don't believe me, see the discussion on how to adapt to climate change, where phrases like "mass extinction," "human extinction," and "radical transformation" are norms that are considered boring and dismissed by many.

    Civilization, as we've done it, is basically everyone trying to be Donald Trump, colossal mismanagement and greed fed by looting everything else, doubling down instead of adapting, and trying to silence anyone who says otherwise or points to more survivable alternatives. This is also known as progress, the pinnacle of human achievement, and many of the other best words. But it's worth looking at how much we've wasted and how fast we've done it, and asking whether those words, --uttered by fine people, the very best people--are anything other than self-serving bullshit.

    392:

    My family left Russia in 1912 and came to the U.S.

    393:

    Thanks. After reading your comment I made the issue of how much you have to feed your draft animals a minor plot point in the book I'm currently rewriting - the oxen now eat through 2000 pounds of grain while hauling five wagons 200 miles. (Half the oxen will be slaughtered at the end of the journey as well.)

    394:

    Civilization, as we've done it, is basically everyone trying to be Donald Trump, colossal mismanagement and greed fed by looting everything else, doubling down instead of adapting, and trying to silence anyone who says otherwise or points to more survivable alternatives.

    The terrible thing is, at least in my own case, that I've known about those alternatives for decades. Presumably that's also true of the policy-makers. What we need, but don't have, is a political party based on best practices instead of ridiculous amounts of greed.

    395:

    @391:

    Cahokia is pretty much why there even is a discussion about the "missing cities" on the North American continent.

    First, because it comes very late for a pre-iron-age city, but mostly because it only lasted at few hundred years, and show very little technological progression during that time.

    The simplest explanation for both facts is that the climate in (much of) North America has too many extreme events to make it beneficial or even viable, to put all their eggs in one stationary basket.

    396:

    Diamond may have got the 'what' right, but his explanations of why it was necessarily western Europe are a load of horse-puckey. I agree with you that it was simply a matter of timing - though not as obviously as it was in India.

    As Troutwaxer says in #394, some of us have been trying to march to the beat of a different drum. The signs were sodding obvious half a century ago and, no, you didn't need to read the now classic disaster-prediction books to see them. It's not nice having the curse of Cassandra, unless you are completely lacking in empathy.

    397:

    Hmm. This is where I channel Mencken. A great deal of the belief that North America has a lot of extreme weather events comes from the dogma that everything there is more so than elsewhere. The Fertile Crescent has never been particularly stable in that respect, for example. While some of the extreme events could take out a small area, as far as a particular point on the map is concerned, they are pretty rare.

    Furthermore, while technology does depend on a certain population density, the lack of progress indicates a social cause.

    398:

    The I-400 submarine had an aircraft hangar carrying three light bombers with a hatch on the front that had to be kept watertight under several dozen bar of water pressure when submerged. The American officer skippering an I-400 during its transit to San Diego mentioned the hatch had warped and was never fully watertight against its seal. Even cruising on the surface the bottom edge was lined with sandbags to keep most of the water out.

    A 4000-tonne sub hull has a lot more "must be perfect" welds in its construction than a submarine half its displacement. Surface ships, or "targets" as submariners like to call them, can cope with slight leaks below the waterline using pumps and packing but submarines have it harder in that regard. The larger the sub the more total force it has to cope with and this has to be factored into the design, hopefully before catastrophic failure at sea costs you a prototype or two plus the crews.

    Certainly the problems of designing big submersibles could have been worked out, they obviously were after the war but just designing and integrating a new type of power plant was going to take years and the Germans didn't have those years or even the slack manufacturing and supply capacity to complete such a project in a timely fashion. They managed to get the large-ish Type XXI U-boats off the drawing board just before V-E Day and they were possible game-changers in the Atlantic if they had come into service in quantity even eighteen months before.

    399:

    just designing and integrating a new type of power plant was going to take years

    Yeah, well: the USS Nautilus was authorized in 1951: construction began in 1952, the boat was launched in January 1954, and delivered to the Navy in 1955. You may argue it was a prototype and test-bed (as was its successor, SSN-575 Seawolf), but between 1955 and 1959 the US built four Skate class SSNs, an actual production class of hunter-killer submarine. They displaced 2300 tons on the surface, so only about 20% more than a type XXI U-boat, on which the Soviet Whisky-class and USN Tang-class submarines were both based.

    400:

    Right. But this all happens after the technological breakthroughs to build a working nuke plant had been achieved, and the U.S. by then probably had samples of both German and Japanese larger subs, and had spent some time dealing with the Surcouf, so they weren't anywhere close to starting from scratch on the problem - quite the opposite, particularly if they had access to German and Japanese plans and personnel.

    In contrast the German and Japanese engineers were starting from scratch on the problems, doubtless had failures and problems along the way, then the Americans leveraged their work.

    401:

    The US wasn't fighting an all-out war at the time the Nautilus was designed and laid down, they weren't resource-constrained or limited in manpower or energy or finance. That helps a lot.

    402:

    Yes: and your point is ...?

    Remember that Germany was one of the leading submarine powers prior to 1918, and while Versailles forbade them from doing that no more, they began breaking those restrictions from 1933 with minimum blowback until they began invading other countries. While the treaty forbade Germany from building submarines, in practice they continued R&D efforts during the interwar period by funding a design bureau located in the Netherlands. It's not clear when U-boat construction started -- it was kept secret, concealed under other projects -- but by September 1939 the KM already had 65 U-boats.

    By keeping the research arm going, and being able to recall experienced officers (from WW1) to train the newbies 20 years later, they got a head start. It's not obvious that they could have developed SSNs significantly earlier than the USN managed to -- but it's not obvious that they'd have been a lot slower, either. (Especially if they weren't kneecapped by Hitler's approach to divide-and-conquer within the Party, which we've just seen eerily replicated by the Trump administration.)

    403:

    Agreed, with the note that the type XXI U-boats were not really bettered as diesel-electric designs until the UK's Upholder class were launched.

    404:

    The US wasn't fighting an all-out war at the time the Nautilus was designed and laid down

    Remind me again what the polite disagreement in Korea was about, the one where General MacArthur was demanding nuclear release authority and got into a pissing match with the Chinese People's Liberation Army as a proxy for the USSR?

    What was that whole Cold War thing about, anyway?

    405:

    No serious historians believe Stalin killed more people than Hitler any more. There was a vested interest in inflating his kill count during the cold war, and the Soviet archives only became (briefly) available in, I think, 1991 to revise things. Here's a good summary by Timothy Snyder of more or less current thinking - https://web.archive.org/web/20160306142141/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/03/10/hitler-vs-stalin-who-killed-more/

    Had to use the archive because the New York Review of Books now wants a registration.

    406:

    Uncle Stinky Don't really believe that, unless you want to lay the whole total of deaths in the European theatre in WWII at Hitler's door, which is plausible. As for "internal" deaths of your own population, Stalin is the clear "winner" Again I recommend Alan Bullock: "Hitler & Stalin: Parallel Lives"

    407:

    Stalin started out with a bigger nation (population wise), and was in power for 30 years, to Hitler's 12. The fact that we're even arguing over who killed more should highlight the fact that Hitler killed people faster, and a higher per-capita proportion of those under his control.

    So I'm going with "Hitler was worse (but you didn't want to live under either of them)".

    408:

    Why America didn't have a copper age:

    We did. The Old Copper Complex started up around the Great Lakes ca: 7500 BCE (contemporaneous or older than in Eurasia). Lasted until 1000 BCE, and the people who built Cahokia were casting copper.

    So why not a bronze age? The nearest sources of tin to the Old Copper Complex are in Alaska and just east of Los Angeles (and not much in the latter mine in Azusa). Compare this with Asia Minor and China, where tin and copper were a few hundred miles apart.

    Then there's kiln technology: making really hot fires is useful for a lot of things: pretreating chert to make better edges, better pottery, porcelain, smelting ores, and working with metals, among other things. North Americans really didn't get into kiln technology in general, whereas around Syria, there's good evidence that the maker-types were grinding up any weird rock they could find, in pure form or in compounds, then heating it as hot as they could get it to see what happened. Smelting copper and tin ores aren't the easiest things in the world, and so they had to experiment to get the right recipes. In North America, conversely, Great Lakes copper comes in big lumps of pure metal, and there's nothing much to clue people in that it should be melted with other rocks to make it harder.

    As for weather, I'd point to Charles Manns' 1491. There's an interesting point in there about food production in Mesoamerica. Farmers aren't stupid on average, and they plant their milpas (corn, bean, etc. fields) in areas where they get the highest yields. Decades ago, a grad student talked to some modern peasants about how much they thought a field should produce, and how they went about choosing the land. She then did some calculations, looked at archaeological data, and noticed that Olmec culture (the mother civilization of Central America) popped up in the areas and at the times when crop yields hit the "good range" as defined by modern peasants. What triggered civilization in Central America was having good enough maize to trigger a population explosion.

    Long story short: people can live on a lot of things. Having enough surplus to support a stratified society takes not just excellent crop plants, not just excellent soil, but also reasonably stable weather. And note that civilizations only tend to last for a few centuries before something goes haywire and there's a catastrophic regime change. This is true even in the really, really, really good spots like Egypt. What has kept civilization going as a phenomenon seems to be that catastrophic failures are more often regional than global, so even if someone's crashing out, their essential knowledge is shared elsewhere. When things get better in Crashland, some poor god-ridden psychopath can get annointed by heaven and resurrects civilization in the old spot and inflicts leading them on his heirs. For awhile.

    But let's look at the places where civilization never launched. A place like California, for example, has been settled for 15,000 years, and the Central Valley 50 years ago was an agricultural mecca with what used to be pretty decent soils. Why didn't the Indians develop agriculture? Well, the Central Valley has this really bad habit of flooding (yes, the entire valley) every few decades and getting bad droughts. It's a big reason why we have massive dams and aqueducts. If you don't have the wherewithal to pour millions of cubic meters of concrete, you've got to plan on losing a crop to flood every few decades and to drought rather more often. And even with the floods and droughts ameliorated, too much California ag depends on groundwater and is going away. So if you're planning on living in California for more than a few decades, agriculture isn't the greatest option. It's not entirely stupid, but you don't bet your life on one crop in one place every year, if that's all you have to live on.

    Going forward, if we want civilization to stay in California, we've got to maintain our martian canals dams and aqueducts, get much, much, much smarter on managing groundwater, diversify crops as the climate permits, and get really good at storing and redistributing surplus production, rather than doing futures and just-in-time deliveries. None of this is impossible, but it is a real transformation of business as normal.

    409:

    The Type XXI boats were scary. Put a few wolfpack veterans of the first or second Happy Hunting Grounds periods in command and the slaughter would have been immense. However they arrived too late on the scene and although a couple of them sailed on combat missions they never engaged any targets, and that late in the war there weren't that many veteran U-boat commanders left.

    410:

    I noticed the tin problem a long time ago - ore beds are definitely not common, and there were surprisingly few in Europe. But the lack of kiln technology is definitely not down to lack of resources.

    As I said, the Fertile Crescent got and gets a lot of floods and droughts; you might also like to look up the frequency of crop failures in mediaeval Britain, and just how few calorific crops grew at all reliably. It's a serious problem, agreed, but I have seen no evidence that north America had it to a massively greater degree.

    411:

    One big reason things in the Americas went differently is no draft animals.

    Cattle (and near relations), horses, camels, and similar just didn't exist there/here.

    412:

    Ok, so the answer to N'awlins is obvious to me: put the whole city on a float, and move it as necessary. I mean, if we could consider moving, say, Manhattan with a spindizzy, and putting it under a mile-diameter dome....

    413:

    Interesting story, related to this, on slashdot today: https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/08/15/0435227/the-worst-5-of-power-plants-produce-73-of-their-emissions

    Shut down/replace 5% of the plants, and we massively cut emissions. But then, that would mean putting money into capital plant, rather than ROI (with results like the great NE blackout in the US, and Texas this year, and wildfires in CA started by PG&E equipment....)

    414:

    You made me look at askhistorians. It looks as if Bullock's book is slightly out of date. You know what historians are like. Key quote that touches on why- "[W]hat has changed in Soviet historiography would be how we understand the Soviet leadership's thinking/motives. Bullock's depiction of Stalin tends to underplay the ideological aspects, which was common at the time - Stalin was often seen as a master manipulator and opportunist rather than a a dedicated Communist. Stephen Kotkin suggests that one of the great revelations from the opening of the archives has been that Soviet leaders spoke in private much the same way as they spoke in public. So rather than discovering a bunch of cynical people grabbing for power, it seems we found a group of true believers whose policy was motivated by ideology rather than gain. So Bullock's depiction of Stalin amassing power and ruling for his own benefit (or out of some kind of psychopathic behaviour) isn't really in line with current interpretations, which would tend to situation Stalin as acquiring power in order to lead the party along what he saw as the correct/necessary path."

    A bit more here- https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/450v5l/how_accurate_is_alan_bullocks_account_of_the/

    415:

    Why is there a disagreement here? Food, etc, gets moved in ships, rail, and trucks. SUVs are none of the above. SUV, with all-wheel drive, get lousy milage, and allow the drivers to feel "safer" by being able to wreck (and hurt/maim/kill) drivers in less-heavily build vehicles.

    And I used to have a sig, from 20 years ago, quoting an unnamed Ford exec that "the only time 90% of the owners ever go offroad is when they miss their driveway at 3 in the morning, when they come home drunk.

    416:

    The real issue is industrial ranching of meat. Let them forage, on land that is not suitable for farming without imported water and petrochemically-created fertilizer.

    The old west cattle drives ended when rail lines were brought nearer. According to U. Utah Phillips, those big drives only lasted about 20 years until they weren't needed any more.

    There would be a lot of advantage to returning to forage: better feed (and a better life) for the animals, a huge amount of crops, water, and fertilizer that could go into raising human food. For that matter, the animals provide natural fertilizer, improving the soil.

    417:

    Well, yes. Socialistm had been intended to be international all along. Otherwise, as we've seen from the USSR, the capitalist countries will do everything in their power (without directly starting a war and attacking the socialist country) to destabilize and destroy it.

    Same is true for the Christian communes in the US.

    418:

    Now, I don't want to start a fight, but about that famine issue, I should point out that there was some little belt-tightening right across the Irish Sea around 1849....

    419:

    And more: in '04, I was working on the Kerry campaign in FL (after Faux, illegally giving "in-kind" free advertising to the GOP, killed the Dean campaign), I was talking to a dentist. She told me her accountant was pushing her to get an SUV, since she could get tax breaks for a "work-related vehicle". In Florida. On the Space coast (can you say "flat"?).

    420:

    Very bent knees? What? In the mid-seventies, we knew that the proper seat height on a bike was where, when the pedal was at the bottom, your leg was straight, but not locked.

    Anyone bending knees more has no clue.

    421:

    Pogroms? I strongly urge reading China Mieville's October, esp. the first few chapters, and the massacre of Jews in 1905.

    But then, the whole "Christian" west had only started letting them be citizens in what, the 1700s? 1800s? and regularly kicked them out or murdered them when the wealthy owed too much money to them.

    422:

    Both of my grandfathers came in 1914, for some obscure reason.

    423:

    One question: how fast do they need to be moving, and will they have time to forage?

    424:

    The way I remember it is the old Chinese proverb, "Don't sell your grain beyond 500 li (a bit over 250 miles)." Obviously, if you can graze your oxen as they move, you're fine. If you're feeding them off what's in the cart, you won't have anything to sell after 250 li...according to the proverb.

    This is especially a problem with famine, when there definitely won't be anything to eat in the famine-stricken country. Walking food into such an area is hard, whatever is doing the walking. It can be done, but you've got to set up a big supply pipeline fast (food for the animals, plus to alleviate famine), and be defended (so the victims don't eat your supply chain and doom themselves).

    425:

    The potato famine period that started in the mid-1840s covered most of Europe, it wasn't just a case of "the Redcoats a'stealin' all of our potatoes oh" but the Oirish do like to blame someone other than themselves for all their ills. Some estimates put the excess death toll in Europe in the mid-1840s at over a million people, mostly due to malnutrition and other diseases. These famines were also the triggers for revolutions and instability across Europe in that time period which didn't help.

    The potato blight (Phytophthora infestans) is though to have arrived in Europe from America a few years before on imported seed potatoes.

    426:

    I figured for a two-hundred mile journey they'd start with five wagons of grain, each pulled by two oxen, and deliver four (except that they get attacked by bandits.)

    427:

    One big reason things in the Americas went differently is no draft animals. Cattle (and near relations), horses, camels, and similar just didn't exist there/here.

    Let me introduce you to Harvey Wallbanger, a racing bison who had a short career in the 1980s and 1990s as a novelty on the racetrack before some jackass accidentally laced his hay with oleander and killed him.

    Bison do interbreed with cattle. Also, horses and camels evolved in the Americas. And llamas and alpacas are camelids and draft animals.

    The third problem with this idea is that an Amerindian milpa (multi-cropped field of corns, beans, squash, etc.) is at least as productive as a medieval wheat field, probably more so, with only human labor. Draft animals are not required for high output agriculture, as the Aztecs demonstrated by having 400,000 people in Tenochtitlan and no draft animals, at the same time that Paris had around 225,000 people. And draft animals.

    Anyway, if you want to start a really fun alternate history, start by proposing that some reasonably eccentric characters in the Old Copper Complex figured out how to domesticate bison as both draft and riding animals, and take it from there.

    428:

    Mongo conquer world!

    430: 408 Para 3 - And the UK; Cornish tin and North Welsh copper, and a convenient direct sea route to link the two. 412 - Given how completely Blish ignored the physics, surely the spindizzy is a McGuffin? 415 Para 2 - In the UK, SUVs used to be described as "Chelsea tractors", and it was an article of faith that the only time they went off road was parking with 2 wheels on a sidewalk. 416 - Agreed, although I did approach it from a different angle. 421 - Thanks but no thanks. I have been very unimpressed both by China's writing and by the man himself when I met him at an Octocon.
    431:

    Raising the saddle so that your knees are straight at the bottom and toes pointing down at a modest cadence is far more natural, how people used to cycle, and is less problematic in general (everyone's anatomy is different, so some people find it is worse)

    Thank you for the part in parenthesis, because to me what you described is not just "worse", it is effectively impossible. I get muscle spasms almost immediately.

    432:

    Nojay @ 314: Next you'll be telling us the American Mid-West should be abandoned because of the increasing threat of tornadoes, or the South-West (aka the Great American Desert) because of drought.

    Missed this first time through, but thought I'd drop back to add my 2¢.

    The "Great American Desert" doesn't refer to the south-western U.S. Those territories hadn't been added to the U.S. at the time the phrase was coined (1830).

    The Great American Desert IS the American mid-west; the western prairie from the 100th meridian to the Rocky Mountains. Some of the U.S. south-west is part of it, and some is not - West Texas, eastern New Mexico, Oklahoma panhandle, western Kansas, eastern Colorado, western Nebraska, eastern Wyoming, western South & North Dakota, eastern Montana ... and it extends north into Canada; into south-western Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan and south-eastern Alberta.

    Doesn't extend much down into Mexico because the mountains that form its western boundary mostly run along just west of the Rio Grande, which I think is why the Rio Grande makes its turn to the southeast near the U.S.-Mexico border, although a small part of Northern Chihuahua - west from Cuidad Juárez is part of it (mostly north of 31.33353 lat). And maybe a bit of north-eastern Coahuila.

    But it is a Great American Desert, not just a Great U.S. Desert.

    433:

    whitroth Ah the old myth There was a lot of belt-tightening ALL ACROSS EUROPE in 1848/9 it's just that Enlgand & Belgium were least worst hit, though even there, people starved to death in England ... The whole thing was "Weather-controlled" in fact - worsened by the then accepted politico-economic theories SEE ALSO Nojay @ 425 ... EC: - principally monetarism - with a side-order of anti-catholicism ... folk memory from 1550-8/1605/1655-8 principally

    434:

    Charlie Stross @ 365:

    The only way I see a direct war between Germany & the USSR taking place is if Poland INVITES the Germans in or allies itself with Germany to attack the USSR. How likely is that?

    If we're going back to someone other than Hitler running the NDAP, then in all likelihood there will be other significant historical changes.

    That's what I'm getting at. I don't know enough about post-Great War politics in Germany to identify the players; the possible alternative leaders & where they might have taken German politics in an UN-Nazi Germany.

    Trotsky gets a relatively clean pass in the history books mostly because he wasn't Stalin: but Trotsky's policies -- had he succeeded Lenin -- would have led to another large-scale war (albeit a different one). Trotsky was all for exporting communism globally, rather than keeping it inside the former Russian empire, and it's hard not to see one or more of the European great powers rocking up for a re-run of 1919-21, even if he settled for modernizing the USSR and funding overseas missions, rather than full-on invasions.

    Don't know that much about what Trotsky favored, only that he was on the outs with Stalin. But I don't think that was ideological, just a power politics rivalry.

    The "odd thing" I know about Trotsky is how many of his former self-described "Trotskyite" adherents back in the 60s ended up as full-blown, rabid, Reich-wingnut Neo-CONS. You can't throw a rock1 at any white-nationalist Think Tank without hitting a whole gaggle of former "Trots".

    1 Or if you wanted to be more in context with their politics, fire a gun into ...

    435:

    Charlie Stross @ 371:

    And as I've posted, such feel-good "panacea" proposals harm people, while doing noting to alleviate any real problem.

    I think the answer is probably to tax passenger vehicles by axle weight, and make it a non-linear relationship so that heavy vehicles go up sharply -- there's no reason a Cadillac Escalade should be as cheap to pay annual tax on as a Smart ForTwo or a microcar.

    People who need a pickup or SUV for work will pay more. Simple.

    That I can agree with. It's the "ban everything I don't agree with" bullshit that sticks in my carw.

    Does this discriminate against people who live in far suburbia/exurbia? Of course it goddamn does. We should be moving to a more urban lifestyle as a matter of urgency: this is just an additional incentive.

    I disagree with that part. I don't think it's discriminatory at all. Isn't it one of the basic "conservative" talking points that people should pay the costs of government services? Larger, heavier vehicles cause greater wear & tear on the highways (and on the environment) so I think they should have to pay proportionally larger taxes to pay for it.

    (How you fund the shift from suburbia back to urbia is a more specific and different question. Hint: I think socialized housing is a big part of the answer, as is universal basic income and a huge dose of policies that the conservative/right wing will scream at as Godless Communism, never mind Socialism. But that's a whole 'nother argument.)

    The only thing I have against "socialized housing" is the petty bureaucratic nit-picking the residents have to endure. It's bad enough around here, and I OWN the damn house.

    If I were to have to live someplace like that THEY wouldn't let me keep my little dog. I'd rather die.

    436:

    Nojay @ 372: The I-400 was an engineering disaster. I read a report of the US officer who was given command of one of the two examples the Japanese managed to complete as he sailed it across the Pacific to America. He stayed on the surface for the entire transit and never submerged, the hull was in appalling condition and the likelihood of it coming back to the surface again was low. There were other problems with the I-400 like the ship's monkey which, he was assured by the Japanese crew, was necessary to keep the cockroach infestation down to an acceptable level (a bit like a ship's cat and rodents). It wasn't that funny in reality, cockroaches got squished between hatch seals and let water in at the most inappropriate times...

    Building large lumps of metal that were supposed to stay on or above sea level all the time was well-understood by the 1940s. Large submarines were still a problem, a very large submarine with a novel power plant was a step too far for 1940s tech. I did see a nuclear sub described in the rather worrying Luftwaffe 1946 comics series though.

    Having their entire industrial establishment subjected to aerial bombardment every day probably didn't account for any of the engineering shortcomings.

    437:

    Greg Tingey @ 381: Nojay & Charlie
    No-one has mentioned the two (?) insane submersible cruiser(s) the French Built: Surcouf

    That sounds like a quest worthy of Robert Ballard's talents.

    438:

    Troutwaxer @ 392: My family left Russia in 1912 and came to the U.S.

    My ancestor left England ca 1664 to come to "Virginia". He didn't bring any family along with him.

    439:

    Charlie Stross @ 402: Charlie Stross @ 402:

    Remember that Germany was one of the leading submarine powers prior to 1918, and while Versailles forbade them from doing that no more, they began breaking those restrictions from 1933 with minimum blowback until they began invading other countries. While the treaty forbade Germany from building submarines, in practice they continued R&D efforts during the interwar period by funding a design bureau located in the Netherlands. It's not clear when U-boat construction started -- it was kept secret, concealed under other projects -- but by September 1939 the KM already had 65 U-boats.

    By keeping the research arm going, and being able to recall experienced officers (from WW1) to train the newbies 20 years later, they got a head start. It's not obvious that they could have developed SSNs significantly earlier than the USN managed to -- but it's not obvious that they'd have been a lot slower, either. (Especially if they weren't kneecapped by Hitler's approach to divide-and-conquer within the Party, which we've just seen eerily replicated by the Trump administration.)

    Has nothing to do with whether in the absence of that asshole Hitler, Germany might have been able to develop nuclear powered U-boats (I'm glad they didn't and wish they'd never needed U-boats), but did y'all know that Georg von Trapp (patriarch of the "Sound of Music" von Trapp family) was a decorated Austro-Hungarian U-boat commander during the "Great War"?

    440:

    My ancestor left England ca 1664 to come to "Virginia". He didn't bring any family along with him.

    My ancestor left England in 1966 bringing his family with him (including me), because in Canada he had the chance of becoming a research scientist.

    Which he eventually became. It was mildly embarrassing at his PhD convocation when he stopped to talk to the chap giving him the diploma, who was the same chap who had welcomed him to Canada* — former Prime Minister Diefenbaker!

    *Or possibly congratulated him when be became a citizen — my memory is fuzzy and I can no longer ask for clarification :-(

    441:

    The 1912 date is for my father's side of the family. My mother's side goes back to Hans Herr, who arrived in 1710 as the first Mennonite Bishop in the colonies.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Herr

    442:

    Charlie Stross @ 404:

    The US wasn't fighting an all-out war at the time the Nautilus was designed and laid down

    Remind me again what the polite disagreement in Korea was about, the one where General MacArthur was demanding nuclear release authority and got into a pissing match with the Chinese People's Liberation Army as a proxy for the USSR?

    "What was that whole Cold War thing about, anyway?

    The Korean Conflict was NOT an all-out war on the U.S. (U.N.) side. Its economic impact on the Home Front was minimal. The U.S. military was basically just using up the surplus arms stockpile left over from the Second World War.

    If anyone can find a link to how much it cost to build the USS Nautilus (SSN-571) please post a link. Especially if it includes the overall USN budget for 1951-52 & 1953-54 so I can get some idea of what percentage of USN resources were devoted to building that one ship. How many OTHER ships did the USN acquire while the Nautilus was being built?

    443:

    Having their entire industrial establishment subjected to aerial bombardment every day probably didn't account for any of the engineering shortcomings.

    The Type XXI design had some shortcomings -- for a sub meant to use mostly electrical propulsion underwater, running the battery cables to the motors in the bilges was probably a bad design decision that might have been rectified in the Mk2 given that the large lead-acid battery pack evolved hydrogen while charging. There were a few more bugs of that sort which could have been fixed in time, something the Unterseeboot Kreigsmarine ran out of. Even so it was a very capable sub.

    As for the aerial bombardment problem, yup. One unfortunate skipper of a brand-new Type XXI U-boat was sailing it down the river from the construction yard[1] heading for the ocean when it got bombed and sunk since it wasn't able to dive in the shallow water. He went back to the boatyard with most of his surviving crew, got another brand-new boat the next day and sailed down the same river to the point where the bombers were waiting for him again. Oops.

    [1] the Type XXI subs pioneered modular construction with sections of each sub being built in inland fabrication plants and then barged to a dockyard near the coast for final assembly, a process that happens a lot these days for warship construction.

    444:

    JBS, If you can lay your hands on a copy of Jane's Fighting Ships for 1953-54 or 1954-55 it is quite likely they will have construction costs for Nautilus. Plus you can go through the US section and catalog the ship construction in the same period. The introduction to the US section may also discuss annual budgets. There are "reasonably" priced copies on ABEBooks if you want to purchase a copy, otherwise you will have to find a library which retains 70 year old copies of Jane's, since libraries tend to discard "old" books, making research difficult.

    Enjoy!

    Frank.

    445:

    "A lot of people have that problem because the modern UCI-derived fashion is to cycle with very bent knees and high cadences"

    Unintended side effects of propaganda, no. 8478756897860460475: Giddling along like a mad monkey with your knees up round your ears.

    See also: people who decline to cycle in to work because they "don't want to arrive all sweaty", because the relentless cycling! sport! cyclingsport! cycling! sport! sport! sport!!! bollocks has somehow programmed them to think that riding a bicycle has to be, of necessity, a strenuous activity, and to forget that an activity is only strenuous if you choose to do it in a strenuous manner. As far as I'm concerned the whole point of cycling is the gain in efficiency: it is less effort than walking, but nevertheless quicker. Or, even worse, "because there's nowhere to get changed", because they have been programmed to think it's actually not possible to ride a bicycle without dressing up like a ballet dancer and can no longer remember when they were a kid and used to do it in their normal clothes.

    "Raising the saddle so that your knees are straight at the bottom and toes pointing down at a modest cadence is far more natural, how people used to cycle, and is less problematic in general"

    ...and has potential to be adapted as physiotherapy for (the right sort of) knee injuries.

    Both my knees are knackered, as the cumulative result of various clouts and falls over the years, with the eventual consequence that after going up Wetherlam one day I could barely walk at all the next, which pretty much buggered the holiday. When they didn't get much better I saw a doctor and was given some physiotherapy exercises to do. These were really bloody boring, so I analysed which muscles were being tensed during the exercises and which relaxed and what this was actually doing to the knee joint, and realised that I could avoid doing specific exercises entirely by slightly altering the way I held my legs during a couple of everyday activities so as to tense and relax the muscles in the same pattern.

    These activities were going up the stairs, and riding my bicycle. (Not in Cambridgeshire, but in Bedford, so basically the same.) A short cycle journey was equivalent to many more than the due number of repetitions of the exercise. It also meant that holding the muscles in that way became habitual, and was no longer something I had to think about setting up deliberately. The result was very good, and these days all I get in my knees is the odd twinge now and again, of negligible significance.

    446:

    "In the UK, SUVs used to be described as "Chelsea tractors""

    Used to be?

    "and it was an article of faith that the only time they went off road was parking with 2 wheels on a sidewalk."

    When parking, yes, all the time. But absolutely not popping two wheels on the verge to get out of the way when meeting an oncoming vehicle in a narrow country lane, even if the oncoming vehicle is bigger.

    I have long thought that the Matra Rancho was a great idea - it looks like an off road vehicle but without the superfluous losses of a 4wd drive chain half of which never gets used. (It didn't have to be powered by a special quick-perishing elastic band.) And I believe current manufacturers are to some extent beginning to realise this: at least some models of the well-known mobile roadblocks are, I think, now available in 2wd versions, or the 4wd is an optional extra on a normal version, or something like that.

    447:

    "Does this discriminate against people who live in far suburbia/exurbia? Of course it goddamn does."

    No, it only discriminates against dickheads who live in far suburbia/exurbia and think that that point on its own necessarily mandates driving an inappropriate vehicle, so that's all right :)

    (Actual farmers can have an exemption, like they do at the moment for driving any old heap of shit from one field to another.)

    The need to have a lorry which calls itself a car is not correlated with whether you live in the town or the country. If you find a VW Golf adequate for living at 22 Grope Lane it'll be adequate anywhere else that has tarmac as far as the gate. On the other hand you might need the young lorry even living in the city if you often need to move half a ton of actual shit.

    448:

    "...a nation that didn't have to dig its way out of one natural disaster after another..."

    Hardly unique in that position. In particular, in the usual comparison of our history with that of the rest of westernoid Europe, the exposure to natural disasters is pretty much the same: the only one that really happens is plague, and everyone gets that.

    Far more significant I think is the incidence of artificial disaster. Once our monarchy had got over its obsession with the throne of France, we mostly managed to take advantage of that handy strip of water to stand aloof from the various wars and devastations that the Continent continued to enthusiastically indulge in, or at least only get peripherally involved. What we didn't have to put up with was the neighbours constantly deciding to come into our garden and pull up all the plants and shit everywhere.

    Furthermore, we knew all about Spain and understood that to maintain that position it wasn't enough just to rely on the water being there, we needed to put ships on it as well. So we evolved the Navy, partly out of what you might call our home defence fleet and partly out of our pirates. This then gave us a ready-made tool to go into government-backed piracy on a global scale and get rich pinching stuff off people who couldn't fight back, while the chaps on the other side of the Channel were still into fighting each other.

    It also meant that we could manage happily without producing enough food, by going and grabbing someone else's, so it didn't matter if lots of people stopped making food and came into towns to make things in factories instead. We could therefore get into industry ahead of those who otherwise might have started getting into it around the same sort of time.

    449:

    Pigeon cycling! sport! cyclingsport! cycling! sport! sport! sport!!! bollocks Yes, well, quite. I determinedly refused, idled & dragged my feet between the ages of 11 &14 ... at which age I still could not swim more than about half a length ... Simply because it was promoted as TEAM SPURTS. Since then I did actually learn to swim properly, for, you know actual NON-COMPETITIVE FUN, shock, horror. Could do 50 lengths at one point. What did skool NOT tell us or emphasise? That swimming is a vital survival skill. Fucking spurts_idiots

    Returning to cycling - I've been told at acrimonious local meetings about "cycle-friendly" ( Read - crap on the local car-owners who want to get in & out, without sitting in traffic jams, causing needless pollution ) policies that "YOU are not a proper cyclist!" even though I had arrived by bike - but I'm not a MAMIL. Not a proper cyclist, been cycling since 1957, yeah. Arseholes.

    450:

    Yes: as noted in "The Labyrinth Index" the New Management gave her a peerage and stuck her in charge of a House of Lords Select Committee.

    Yes, I just thought about why the Lost Boys would fear her. Do they even have a reason to know what she is?

    Bob did not know

    He did not know, but does he figure it out? (I'm guessing no, since he doesn't have a reason (yet) to suspect anything.)

    While I'm posting meaningless questions that nobody cares about, is the endgame of Annihilation Score a Batman gambit? I'm thinking they can't be sure that Mo brings the violin.

    451: 435 - Well, here in Dumbarton a local housing association have just built about 200 new social rental houses, at one end of the High Street (capitalisation does apply). 437 - Based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_submarine_Surcouf I'd agree, since we first have to find the wreck. 439 - Yes, his recall in the film is based on actual historical fact.
    452:

    You can't throw a rock1 at any white-nationalist Think Tank without hitting a whole gaggle of former "Trots".

    Very true.

    This is because of the split between Trotsky and Stalin, basically.

    Stalin was all about consolidation and building socialism in one state (okay, in one hemisphere-dominating empire and its satellites).

    Trotsky ... there are few people more dangerous than a journalist with a gun and a cause, and he's the type specimen that proves the point. He built the Red Army. He was a vehement proponent of spreading the revolution globally. And his plan to do that was to seed the reactionary states with internationalist-minded revolutionary cells who would work underground to increase the strains on the capitalist system until it crumbled into weak authoritarianism, which would serve to drive converts to the socialist revolutionary cause. These days we call this tactic "accelerationism", and it also works for fascism: disrupt, spread polarization and chaos, radicalize your base, and mobilize them.

    Big irony: the anti-communist witch hunts of Joe McCarthy, Nixon, and the other red-baiters in the USA were motivated by terror of this sort of spread -- of Trotskyism -- at a time when being a Trotskyite in the USSR would get you a bullet in the back of the head. (Stalin really did not approve of disruptive accelerationism: he was an instinctive authoritarian.)

    453:

    The only thing I have against "socialized housing" is the petty bureaucratic nit-picking the residents have to endure.

    It used to be a normal, unexceptional form of housing in the UK, between 1945 ("homes fit for heroes") and 1980, when Thatcher decided to privatize the hell out of it and push the nation towards home ownership or usurious private rentals.

    The idea that bureacrats would nit-pick the residents is very American, and seems from over here to arise from that strain of US politics which holds that government can't do any good, so any good ends it tries to follow must be sabotaged. (Hint: Republican efforts to justify "shrinking the government so we can drown it in the bath tub".)

    There were problem council housing estates in the UK, but the problems largely emerged from regional systemic neglect: there were also good council housing estates (my wife grew up on one) that were more or less indistinguishable from any private sector new-build housing estate of the same vintage.

    (Pet ownership was/is taken for granted.)

    454:

    is the endgame of Annihilation Score a Batman gambit?

    I don't even know what a Batman gambit is -- at least by that name.

    455:

    It's TV Tropes lingo for a plan that relies on other people doing exactly what you expect they would do.

    (TV Tropes is a web site collecting a lot of media tropes, and has its own terminology which seems to pop up in unexpected places. It has its problems, but for me it provides the occasional fun moment.)

    456:

    I am far more familiar with TVTropes than I am with Batman ...

    (For lulz, look up the Laundry Files on TVTropes: last time I did that, it had spilled across four wiki pages because apparently there's a size limit for entries.)

    457:

    Charlie Trotsky ... there are few people more dangerous than a journalist with a gun and a cause BoZo ??? Surely not, perish the idea! Or maybe, given that you also said: ... and it also works for fascism: disrupt, spread polarization and chaos Oh shit, right.

    Third thoughts: Mein Kampf

    458:

    I call TV Tropes the "Troutwaxer attention-sucking black hole of death."

    459:

    Interesting. Most of those predate television, of course, but what else is new? TVTropes has also spotted the gun you have placed on the mantlepiece several times - surprise, surprise!

    460:

    The Trot to Neocon pipeleine is not that well supported as a claim- https://indefenseoftoucans.gitlab.io/2021/02/01/trotneocon.html

    In Britain we do have those Wankers over at Spiked, I'll have to concede.

    461:

    Hint: Republican efforts to justify "shrinking the government so we can drown it in the bath tub".) I like to cheer myself up by remembering that (most of) the repugnants saying this are already of a suitable size.

    462:

    Regarding the reception of Socialism, Marxism and Trotsky here in the USA, from the beginning, in the 1840's -50's, IMMEDIATELY in the slave states Socialists and Marx were identified as anti-white, pro-abolition, pro slave insurrection, and BLACK. The Victorian era in the US saw a great migration out of the Germanies of progressive labor, anti-monarchy, pro-revolution intellectuals. They settled predominately in what came to be known as middle western cities, like St. Louis, and set up printing presses, newspapers, clubs and community education groups. They even did so in cities such as New Orleans. They were viewed with rage and terror by slaveocracy sorts, and of course, by the first large wave of emerged US industrial capitalists. Recall how much money was being pulled in by those who could finance the ships of the African slave trade -- which continued even after the War of the Rebellion was finished -- taking up 'cargo' from Africa's west coast and sailing to the lucrative ports in Cuba and Brasil and some other places.

    Then, after the Russian Revolution and the shackles of Jim Crow, black intellectuals and artists were indeed attracted by Russia and communism. Many went there, at least for a while. So, thus, communism/marxism/socialism - BLACK DANGER!

    This has been revived yet again by the fascist political movements here right now, branding the Black Lives Matter protests as the first stages of a communist revolution here.

    463:

    Up here fascists have convinced my government to spend millions on a monument honouring Nazi collaborators under the guise of anti-Communism. Started under a Conservative Prime Minister, but Trudeau has kept it going.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/victims-communism-memorial-fascists-1.6112809

    464:

    But of course knowledge of swimming is a critical survival sport in Britain.

    I mean, after you've been pressganged into the Navy, and your ship is shot out from under you by Napolean's Navy, surely you want to be able to swim to safety, correct?

    465:

    Public housing, as it's called here, has a bad taste... because it rapidly became housing for "those people" (African-Americans), and "maintenance" and "security" was the same it was in schools in Black neighborhoods - no money, and somewhere to dump the kids.

    But there's also the idea that public housing must wind up like that... as opposed to private rental property.

    Right. Like the rental property that hedge funds started buying up after 2008. And by people who haven't spent a lot of time in rented appts or houses.

    Hell, I put a deposit on an apt once, changed my mind within a day (weeks from moving in) (the owner had shown it to me... along with something like three other people, and told us we had to get a plastic basin and soak dishes, and I decided this was way too intrusive) and had to get a friend to write a lawyer letter to get my deposit back.

    466:

    whitroth Hardly ever happened .. But, we have some surprisingly dangerous rivers, with undertows & whirlypools ... and just-off-the coast tidal races. Every year people drown in rivers & lakes & just off beaches.

    Meanwhile ... IS "Domino Theory" going to make a political comeback, after the ultra0mulim-nutters takeover in Afghanistan? There is a possibility that Pakistan is next, given their stupidity in cosying up to said nutters in the past .. & so on. Thoughts, or am I "Off-piste"?

    467:

    Kruschev and the Supreme Soviet didn't put missiles in Cuba for shits and giggles, they did it because they were terrified of the USAF Thor IRBMs based in Turkey, with a flight time of around five minutes to Moscow.

    IIRC Memoirs (Kruschev's?) suggest the Cuba deployment was a red herring intended to result in the withdrawal of the missiles in Turkey, and that they were afraid the yanks would overreact to learning the R7 icbm was operational ..

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-7_Semyorka

    468:

    Not quite so shure, in the heyday of council houses it wasn't the poorest in society that had access to them, really poor people lived in slums or "summer lane"

    And based on conversations with my parents if you did not keep your garden up to scratch the corporation would evict you.

    "The Corporation" is for non brummies Birmingham city council

    469:

    Charlie Stross @ 453:

    The only thing I have against "socialized housing" is the petty bureaucratic nit-picking the residents have to endure.

    It used to be a normal, unexceptional form of housing in the UK, between 1945 ("homes fit for heroes") and 1980, when Thatcher decided to privatize the hell out of it and push the nation towards home ownership or usurious private rentals.

    "Home ownership" in the U.S. is a legacy of Jim Crow. The best book I've found to explain what happened here is Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law"

    The idea that bureacrats would nit-pick the residents is very American, and seems from over here to arise from that strain of US politics which holds that government can't do any good, so any good ends it tries to follow must be sabotaged. (Hint: Republican efforts to justify "shrinking the government so we can drown it in the bath tub".)

    It doesn't have to be GOVERNMENT bureaucrats. It only rarely is.

    There are plenty of self-righteous, self-appointed busybodies who will tell you all the things you're doing wrong and forbid you to do them. They aren't bureaucrats in the sense of being employed by the government, although you'll frequently find them in elected office as school board members, county commissioners and running Homeowners Associations (HOAs). They make the rules the bureaucrats are required to enforce.

    Reich-wingnut "plans" grew out of this rather than than the other way around. And "government can't do any good" is coded language for the government won't let us tell you how to live your life.

    There were problem council housing estates in the UK, but the problems largely emerged from regional systemic neglect: there were also good council housing estates (my wife grew up on one) that were more or less indistinguishable from any private sector new-build housing estate of the same vintage.

    (Pet ownership was/is taken for granted.)

    I don't think we've ever had that kind of housing here in the U.S. All of the "public" housing was meant for "poor people" and poor people don't have any rights. If they want rights, then they should stop being poor.

    It's systemic neglect from the get-go and it's not regional (although some regions may be worse).

    It's not just pets. If you're poor enough that you have to live in public housing, you're not supposed to have any of the small amenities that alleviate the aggravation of daily life ... like a functioning automobile so you can go to work or a washing machine so you can wear clean clothes or nutritious food to feed your children or decent public schools so that maybe your children aren't condemned to a life of misery like you are ... or even children.

    470:

    Greg Tingey @ 457: Charlie
    Trotsky ... there are few people more dangerous than a journalist with a gun and a cause
    BoZo ??? Surely not, perish the idea!
    Or maybe, given that you also said: ... and it also works for fascism: disrupt, spread polarization and chaos Oh shit, right.

    Third thoughts: Mein Kampf

    I don't believe having worked for a newspaper at one time actually makes you a journalist.

    471:

    climate crisis

    Okay: 1 cubic mile of pulverised Olivine Rock will absorb about 1 year's worth of CO2 emissions; ie. about 35^6 tonnes.

    Thats around 15km * 15km * 1km deep.

    472:

    whitroth @ 464: But of *course* knowledge of swimming is a critical survival sport in Britain.

    I mean, after you've been pressganged into the Navy, and your ship is shot out from under you by Napolean's Navy, surely you want to be able to swim to safety, correct?

    Don't forget your brace & bit

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ham4KJc3FOk

    473:

    Nope. I mean, the right (or rather the wrong) may pull that out, but Pakistan is already there.

    474:

    I understand that swimming was not considered to be a particularly useful skill for sailors back in the day.

    1970s public information films do depict an apocalyptic death toll arising from children playing near ponds, power lines, farms and school sporting events involving railways though.

    Drowning and power lines were relatively boring ways to go out, but the farmers and sports are sinister.

    Helpful search terms* "spirit of dark and lonely water", "apaches" and "the finishing line".

    All good wholesome entertainment from my childhood

    *append "public information film" to all titles".

    475:

    My computer doesn't do sound, but surely you mean bib and brace? Brace and bit is what you use for carpentry.

    476:

    There was a superstition that, if you learnt to swim, you would die by drowning.

    477:

    Interesting. i knew swimming wasn't valued but didn't realise it was actively discouraged.

    478:

    That is why there has been serious concern about command, control, and (calling it out), physical security of Pakistani nuclear weapons since Pakistan became a nuclear power. (Probably more than a bit justified and also a bit Islamophobic.) The word "beards" re this subject area mean (possible) Islamic radical fundamentalists (not besmirching bearded men, pious or otherwise, to be clear. Though masks don't work well on bearded faces. :-): Pakistani barbers receive Taliban-style beard threat (2007)

    See also (researchgate link, sorry): Evolution of Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapon Programme (Winter 2021, Tahir Mahmood Azad, Hina Shahid) In particular the section "Command and Control System" starting on page 4. Not a lot of (public) information. IIRC there were stories in the 2000s of weapons been stored disassembled with parts at different sites; don't know what is done now or whether they followed through with their plans for (reasonably secure/tamper responding) permissive action links. (The "Pak-PAL", plus a two-man rule for arming.) Probably they have (that link was 2016). (Flight times between India and Pakistan are alarmingly short for human decision making processes.)

    479:

    Pakistan has the bomb and so have neutralized any attempts to limit them outside of constructive engagement. North Korea is making/seeking effective bombs for much the same reason, as presumably are the Iranians and others.

    The invasion of Iraq showed every wannabe and actual strongman that merely having a big military is not enough to prevent being stepped on when a few right wing Americans and Brits want your stuff. North Korea and Pakistan have been consistently not invaded for a long time now - small skirmishes notwiststanding.

    Other countries that haven't been invaded or even bombed for a very long time include every single nuclear weapon armed power in the world. Said powers also spend a lot of time trying to make sure nobody else gets nuclear weapons.

    Of course, nukes are bad and I'd as soon they were extirpated entirely.

    480:

    There are solutions for beards and masks. This is one:https://www.iglobalnews.com/newsviews/british-sikh-surgeons-beard-band-meets-the-nhs-covid-safety-test

    Another is the one which my daughter used when training men to wear breathing equipment in confined and underground spaces - lots of Vaseline. Not a good idea for medical use though.

    482:

    I just put on a mask - we have cloth ones, including some my SO made. My beard's not large and bushy, but a little peaks out around the mask. It's still 90% or so of what I breath that's going through the mask.

    483:

    Elderly Cynic @ 475: My computer doesn't do sound, but surely you mean bib and brace? Brace and bit is what you use for carpentry.

    I've never seen a computer that couldn't do sound even if the only speaker it had was that little POS that does the POST beeps.

    Even if you couldn't listen to it, it says "Golden Vanity" right there in the title. If you Google that you'll find find out it's a variant of Child Ballad 286 and take a look at the lyrics.

    How would you drill a hole in the hull of a wooden ship with a pair of overalls?

    There was a lofty ship, and they put her out to sea
    And the name of the ship was the Golden Vanity
    And they sailed her on the lowland, lowland, low
    They sailed her on the lowland sea.

    And she had not been sailing but two weeks or three
    When she was overtaken by a Turkish Revelry
    As she sailed along the lowland, lowland low
    As she sailed along the lowland sea

    Then boldly up spoke our little cabin boy,
    Saying: "What would you give me if the galley I destroy?
    If I sink her in the lowland, lowland low,
    If I sink her in the lowland sea."

    "To the man that them destroys," our Captain then replied
    "Five thousand pounds, and my daughter for his bride
    If he'll sink them in the lowland, lowland low
    If he'll sink them in the lowland sea."

    Well, the boy he made ready, and overboard went he,
    And he swam to the side of the Turkish enemy
    As she lay along the lowland, lowland low,
    As she lay along the lowland sea.

    And he had a brace and auger made for the use,
    And he bored nine holes in her hull all at once
    As she lay along the lowland, lowland low,
    As she lay along the lowland sea.

    ...

    Brace & bit, brace & auger - same thing. Thanks for ruining the joke.

    484:

    I'm sure that's OK for general use but it wouldn't pass an NHS face fit test or be useful for breathing apparatus in a contaminated atmosphere. My daughter's business partner spent a lot of time at his local hospital doing staff face fitting for N95 masks. People wearing normal surgical masks had to be shown how to use Covid protective masks.

    485:

    Um...

    Currently carbon dioxide emissions are around 35 gigatons, that's 3510^9 tonnes.

    1 cubic mile is around 1.6^3 cubic kilometres, which is around 2 * 2 * 1km.

    Not sure what the actual predicted rate for "forced weathering" mineral absorption is (one article says $10/ton of atmospheric carbon, which isn't really an answer), maybe you've a better link you can share. The first thing to wonder is whether there are enough olivine deposits on earth to make the numbers work out, and only after that what is the carbon cost of doing the forced weathering.

    Currently, the rate of increase of emissions is itself increasing. It's unclear whether stopping emissions altogether will lead to an immediate drop in atmospheric CO2 concentration, as the oceans have absorbed a large amount and it's unclear how much of that is forced by high emissions/ppm. But stopping emissions altogether and removing the last 50-60 years of emissions would be the path back to a liveable world.

    • Safari keeps trying to autocorrect gigatons to rigatonis, and that is making me hungry.
    486:

    Bill Arnold "Islamophobic" - BUT A Phobia is, by defintion an irrational fear of - whatever. Suppose one has an entirely rational fear, based on actual evidence of - whatever. Like rational teachers in fear of their life, in England ( Batley) because they showed their pupils copies of the "Charlie Hebdo" cartoons in an English school I have a rational fear of RELIGION - & currently, "islam" is the number one prospect, with US "christian" millinarianism the next up ....

    Mike Collins "Lots of Vaseline" has lots of OTHER USES, shock, horror, involving sexual pleasure & we can't be having that, can we?

    487:

    Returning briefly to the original topic...

    One possible way these responses can be a Good Thing is if they encourage a willingness in people to tolerate restrictions and sacrifices in order to defeat what is thought of to be an enemy. We are seeing a bit of this here in Aotearoa right now, as we go back into (temporary, we hope) lockdown to try and stamp out another outbreak.

    Of course this does not work with those whose response to a perceived threat is to attempt to intimidate it into surrender.

    JHomes

    488:

    "What did skool NOT tell us or emphasise? That swimming is a vital survival skill."

    That was actually one thing my school didn't fuck up. I got my Gold survival badge... Not that I can now remember much of what it entailed; the only thing that has stuck is that they made a big deal out of tying knots in the ends of your trouser legs then popping underwater to exhale into the crotch, to inflate them and make them into a float. I also remember thinking at the time "all this shit is all very well in a nice warm calm swimming pool, but a perishing cold and stormy sea would be a different kettle of fish..."

    The way they did swimming made it an escape from the competitive sprots crap rather than just another instance of it; sometimes they would spend twenty minutes or so making us do races, but not every time, and most of the time they just let us fuck about. I guess there was just too wide a spread of abilities for them to treat us as a sproting unit without drowning people. I was already a good swimmer before I went to that school, while my best friend (who chose swimming for much the same reasons that I did) couldn't get his feet off the bottom the whole time I was there. Trying to do anything with us beyond bouncing around in the shallow end meant people like him just having to sit it out.

    489:

    Vaseline and sexual pleasure. Yes you can coat the doorknobs with it so the kids can’t interrupt you.

    490:

    Back on the "inappropriate reactions" topic... a friend has just admitted that he's gone full antivaxx:

    I am deeply skeptical about the safety and efficacy of RNA-modifying vaccines.   And suspect the ulterior motives of many of the key players.  And feel the global response is an overreaction. I'm not hysterical, or "anti vax", or conspiracy theorist.  Just skeptical and cautious.

    Yep, 18 months into a global pandemic is still not sure whether any of the vaccines are safer than the disease. I love the "I'm not..." stuff, immediately reminds me that "I'm not racist but" is a tell for racism.

    I sent him the snippet below and only barely managed to refrain from asking whether perhaps he's already had the disease and that's why he's struggling to understand the point of vaccines.

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00324-2/fulltext

    People who had recovered from COVID-19, including those no longer reporting symptoms, exhibited significant cognitive deficits versus controls when controlling for age, gender, education level, income, racial-ethnic group, pre-existing medical disorders, tiredness, depression and anxiety. The deficits were of substantial effect size for people who had been hospitalised (N = 192), but also for non-hospitalised cases who had biological confirmation of COVID-19 infection (N = 326). Analysing markers of premorbid intelligence did not support these differences being present prior to infection.

    491:

    Dude, I'm really sorry about your friend.

    492:

    "does anyone have an idea if that last Cu bit will remain, including the 25 metres of wire hung across the road from a pole? OR will they run fibre under the road/pavement in conduit & then up the side of my house to a (new) socket?"

    Both, by the look of it. At least, I think so. I had no idea this crap was happening at all, but from the comments here I guess that must be what's behind all the fucking around making holes in the road and ripping up pavements that's been going on in the streets round me over the last several weeks.

    Must be nearly two months now since a BT van turned up, parked next to the pole feeding my house and others nearby, and later buggered off again leaving a big coil of several metres of black cable dangling half way down the pole, the other end following the phone lines into the underground conduit to the pole. Over the next couple of weeks my internet connection got steadily more unreliable until it stopped working altogether. At this point I checked the phone; that too was completely dead, and the DC impedance of the line was some varying figure in the several megohms range.

    The next time I went out I met a bloke down a hole pulling a load of wires out of a lake. I thought at first the lake must be the problem, but he said the big coil of black cable dangling from the pole was fibre, and they had broken the phone cable while pulling the fibre through. Unfortunately his orders had apparently been not "find the knackered bit of cable and fix it", but "find the knackered bits of the specific lines of those people who have somehow phoned in/used the website to say their phone/internet doesn't work and fix only them". He wasn't in a position to fix mine as well. I did get him to report it, but they still did fuck all about it for four weeks. Occasionally enough of the high frequency component of the ADSL signal would manage to make it past the break and give me really slow and flaky internet for a few minutes at a time, but the phone continued totally dead.

    All of a sudden it came back on again and started being reasonably reliable, although still not great; and at the same time they began ripping up the pavements wholesale down one of the side streets and all the streets leading off it. They were laying new conduits and the cable they were putting in them was copper. Two, or more, twisted pairs, with stranded conductors, in a common foil sheath (ie. not individually screened pairs) with ground wire, inside a purple outer jacket made of hard PVC or something like it. (The same stuff, as it happens, that I found a big drum of in a skip several years ago and have been taking apart for hook-up wire ever since. Nice to finally know what it was supposed to be for.)

    So it looks like what they're planning/preparing for everyone to eventually have is a fibre connection carrying data, and a copper connection carrying power for the box on your wall that translates between optical and electrical signals - both individual to each house. With more thickness of copper in those power pairs than is in one of the signal pairs in the existing underground multicore cable.

    493:

    "I am far more familiar with TVTropes than I am with Batman ..."

    Same here. I know he likes his dinner, but that's about it.

    494:

    Yep, 18 months into a global pandemic is still not sure whether any of the vaccines are safer than the disease. It's a little disappointing that so many people are so gullible and have willfully huffed so much propaganda that they are betting that long-term sequelae from infections by SARS-CoV-2 are more benign than an intramuscular vaccine. SARS-CoV-2 is the first pandemic virus (original SARS was not pandemic) to use ACE2 and so, per the top post, parasitizes an unusual subset of the cells in the superorganism. Unexpected sequelae should be expected!.

    A related recent UK biobank study (still a preprint) was also interesting: Brain imaging before and after COVID-19 in UK Biobank (medrxiv.org, June 15, 2021) We identified significant effects of COVID-19 in the brain with a loss of grey matter in the left parahippocampal gyrus, the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex and the left insula. When looking over the entire cortical surface, these results extended to the anterior cingulate cortex, supramarginal gyrus and temporal pole. (Though a preprint, it is already cited 3 times.)

    495:

    "British Sikh surgeon’s beard band meets the NHS Covid safety test" Interesting; thanks for the link!

    496:

    Thanks for the Lancet ref, Bill, and that new one. {cries}. Albeit in this case I suspect it's the secondary brain lower down that has been damaged.

    I wonder if his new-ish wife is taking him down the "wellness" pathway that I vaguely recall she was into. I found it hard to keep a straight face so don't recall the details beyond it triggering my avoidant reflexes. He's a nice enough guy, but ... I dunno, easily led? Bad taste in women (this one is much, much better than his previous wife, even if she is full noise antivaxx crystal healing mystical woo (which I don't know, but if she is)).

    It does make me grateful that my new girlfriend was amenable to the switch from vaccine hesitant to signing up for the jab ASAP with relatively little prompting from me. Albeit you don't have to poke me very hard to realise that the combo "antivaxx girlfriend" is not applicable to my situation... you can be one xor the other.

    Now I just have to work out which of the many Australian "MyGov" phone apps is the one that displays vaccine status. Sigh. Just because it's the government doesn't mean it has to be coherent or even comprehensible.

    And yeah, thanks Damien, it's a real facepalm moment.

    497:

    For those on the wrong side of the world wanting some light relief, the moment when someone asked Jacinda Ardern "What do you say to people who question the need for an immediate lockdown" is worth it. The reply "Australia"... pause... longer answer has possibly even reached you by now. But if not: https://youtu.be/D1vxepVkXkg?t=2086

    NSW has just leaped straight from 400-odd new cases yesterday to 600-odd today, while the kiwis are up to 6 or 7 and expect to hit 100 overall. Hence their "stay the fuck at home. I'm serious. Don't make me force you" from basically everyone who has media access in NZ.

    498:

    in general, the weathering of igneous rock is where a lot of our terfart will end up, if we really blow it, That may take 100,000 year or more,

    499:

    Pigeon @ 488:

    "What did skool NOT tell us or emphasise? That swimming is a vital survival skill."

    That was actually one thing my school didn't fuck up. I got my Gold survival badge... Not that I can now remember much of what it entailed; the only thing that has stuck is that they made a big deal out of tying knots in the ends of your trouser legs then popping underwater to exhale into the crotch, to inflate them and make them into a float. I also remember thinking at the time "all this shit is all very well in a nice warm calm swimming pool, but a perishing cold and stormy sea would be a different kettle of fish..."

    I remember that being part of the "swimming merit badge" in the Boy Scouts. But I don't remember having to blow them up that way. IIRC the technique was after you'd knotted off the ends of the trouser legs you were supposed to whip them through the air over your head to inflate them like the wind sock at an aerodrome. If you gave a hard kick upwards you were supposed to be able to do it without without losing so much buoyancy that you sank while you were doing it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNTSoKg6xHM

    What I never did figure out was WHY? If you were going to be so far out in the water that you needed to use that skill, why weren't you wearing a Coast Guard approved life jacket in the first place?

    500:

    Not sure which facepalm that is (I'm pretty sure I'm responsible for several), so you're welcome all the same (just in case).

    There are two MHR-talking apps. One by the same vendor that makes one of the middlewares you're supposed to use to integrate with MHR, Chamonix. Their app is called Healthi. The other one is by... (drumroll to precede the "gah!").... Telstra Health, and is called Health Now. It'd be cool if there's an app that talks directly with AIR rather than MHR, but I think that's all we've got.

    If you opted out of the MHR, you can just log in to MyGov and get a PDF of your immunisation history from Medicare Online (assuming you've linked your Medicare record with your MyGov ID). At least you can print a PDF, or I guess display it on your phone.

    For those playing from home: the Australian government tried to introduce a national identifier back in the 80s, it went to a referendum which failed. Since then, the nefarious purposes people were worried about have gone ahead unhindered due to data linkage being pretty easy if you're the government and can mandate how your sub-entities assign identifiers (and how your sibling/child jurisdictions interact with them). But it renders the citizen-friendly aspects of ID management hard to deliver in a coherent and reliable way that responsible entities appear to know how to communicate to the citizenry in a way that doesn't just freak the hell out of most people. Tangled sentence there, but people will understand what I mean. Nothing is quite so guaranteed to strike terror in the hearts of innocent people anywhere as a statement that the innocent have nothing to fear.

    501:

    I've had kind of a chest congestion cough the last week or so.

    I don't think it's Covid because I still have my sense of taste & smell and there's been no fever, no headache, no sore throat (I'm almost a hypochondriac, so I'd have noticed).

    I've been careful, continuing to wear my mask whenever I have to go anywhere indoors that's not here at home, and I'm still taking care to do social distancing, so I don't know where I could have been exposed if it IS Covid. I'll double down on masking & social distancing & quarantine so I don't spread it if it does turn out to be Covid. If it gets worse, I'll ask about getting tested.

    I am fully vaccinated since Feb 13 and the VA announced today they're going to offer boosters beginning 8 months from the second shot. I'll get it as soon as I'm eligible.

    But it looks like any thought I might have had of finally getting to make my long postponed trip out west is back on hold again for at least the rest of 2021.

    Anyway, I'm pissed off at the anti-vaxxers all over again, because this could have been over already if they weren't such selfish assholes.

    502:

    I just spent 2-3 hours and four phone calls to different bits of the mygov system in an attempt to link my medicare record to mygov. The short answer is the it's not done yet but with any luck it will be possible in the future.

    I am also really, really sick of the hold recordings "did you know you can do most things online...". Well, except the thing I rang this specific number to do, but unfortunately just navigating through to "help connecting your medicare record to my.gov" does not mean they change the announcements. Then just before you get to talk to someone "we require polite interactions. If you are angry about our system this is not the place to express it". I do wonder whether they've done some experiments and discovered that the current setup minimises call duration... because so many people say "at fucking last you useless wankers" and the call is over.

    503:

    JBS What can one do about the anti-vaxxers that does not involve killing them all? A simple recital of: Polio / Measles / Diphtheria / Smallpox .... etc. should convince anyone, but it seems not to. Why the fuck not?

    504: 477 - Well, the logic is that, unless you're seen going overboard, you're almost certainly not going to swim for long enough to actually be rescued (great grandfather was a fisherman and a lifeboatman). 497 - Meantime, I have to work out which "app", if any, will actually work on something that is not a "smart" phone. I actually chose something that just sends and receives voice and SMS. 500 - Likewise, somewhere in years 5 to 7. 502 - UK is also talking about CoVax 3, timed with your flu vaccination, if you're over 50.
    505:

    From what I can work out you would need to create a my.gov.au account, link that to your medicare account, and from there download the pdf of your vaccination certificate and either save a screenshot/image on your phone or visit a maker lab to have it carved into a marble tablet you hopeless luddite^. Australia is not fucking around with the "it's cheaper and easier for us to vomit everything online and pretend that if one person can do it everyone else can too".

    I was disappointed but not surprised to find out that to access my medical information I need to go via the dole office. The best part is that the computer systems are not really linked, and even the ones that are, are sprawling enough that it can take an hour or two for information entered in one call centre to be accessible to another branch of the same call centre. Getting rejected because I didn't know the phone number I was using in 2004 (before I got doxxed by Dear Uncle Rupert's minions) was a bit special. Two of four phones calls ended with the advice "take your ID into a Centrelink (dole) office and get them to help you"... yeah thanks, I'm in the fucking death zone* you muppets, if Centrelink offices are even open they're a place to stay the hell away from.

    ^ "person without reliable access to the internet and a smart phone" officially, and you're advised to visit a physical service centre and queue with all the other people too poor to matter * "local government areas of concern" is the official term, I think.

    506:

    What can one do about the anti-vaxxers that does not involve killing them all?

    Wait. Many will die, some of them recanting on their deathbeds.

    In practice the "vaccine passport" ideas will hopefully make it increasingly difficult for the death cultists to go about anything like a normal life. Initially just for interstate and plane travel etc, and for passage in and out of locked down areas, and to hold certain jobs like medical and emergency services. But very quickly I think we'll see employers entitled to verify vaccine status and refuse to allow unvaccinated people to work (probably in most cases with a "unless vaccine is medically contraindicated" clause). At some point I expect the various public transport systems will be set up to have a flashing light and a speaker saying "UNCLEAN" when such people attempt to swipe on or off PT.

    507:

    Not an Australian, don't have Aussie Medicare, bought phone pre-Covid that did what I want, not what the Gubbermint wants.

    508:

    Back on the "inappropriate reactions" topic

    For those not in the US the fight of the last week or so has been mask mandates for schools starting back up.

    Local news was outside a local school board meeting (which decided, yes everyone would mask) interviewing a couple of people who had attended. One was a local hospital doc/admin on the "please God wear masks as we're out of beds and staffing due to Covid-19". And the other was a nice looking lady (her clothes fit and general appearance put her in the not the bottom of the income ladder) who basically told the reporter and the doc that they were lying. The hospital wasn't full up. And masks were a plot for ... well something.

    509:

    What I never did figure out was WHY? If you were going to be so far out in the water that you needed to use that skill, why weren't you wearing a Coast Guard approved life jacket in the first place?

    So you were in the boy scouts 60 years ago based on what I know of your age. And we still have people on lakes drowning because they think .... well they don't think.

    Usually the vests are in a locker someone on the boat. Usually next to where everyone is sitting/standing/drinking.

    510:

    I think the answer to your question, and the most important lesson from covid-19, is that brain-washing can be effective.

    People who get their news exclusively from propaganda-outlets like the british tabloids the US propaganda-TV or North Koreas State Television, have clearly had their perception of reality effectively detached from it.

    That is in itself a major health crisis, because you cannot possibly sustain a high-tech civilization in the long run, if half the population cannot be trusted to take necessary precautions against approaching disasters.

    And mind you, covid-19 was in no way an abstract threat, certainly not any longer...

    511:

    Then I have broadened your horizons. It not merely does not have a sound card, it has no sound connectors, and no speakers. I set it up that way.

    513:

    Think falling or being pushed off a dock, pier, ferry or similar. Lifejackets are less effective than is often believed around British coasts, because of cold shock and hypothermia, especially outside late summer. There is a fairly narrow timescale for rescue, and it is a lot narrower if being rescued onto an unheated boat, as was normal when the swimming superstition developed. Lifejackets extend the window considerably, of course.

    https://www.stevegibbon.co.uk/images/Sailing/Cold%20shock,%20hypothermia%20and%20drowning.pdf

    514:

    Cold does make a huge difference. But in the US we have lots of lakes and rivers of all sizes. And lots of people drowning. With life jackets stowed on the boat/whatever they were on before it turned over or they fell in.

    It is a mindset that I CAN SWIM or I CAN FLOAT and don't need no stinking life vest / jacket. The "I'm sure the I don't need a seat belt because I can react fast enough in a car accident" is a subset of this group.

    And they aren't that inconvenient these days. https://www.target.com/p/speedo-life-jacket-adult-vest-xl-xxl-blue/-/A-54084719

    515:

    In Denmark a major part of the reasoning for teaching kids to swim, was so they would know when not to attempt it.

    Ever since the bathing at the beach became a thing around 1900, there was a steady increase in tragedies where somebody got in trouble and then N other people lost their lives doing stupid things trying to save them.

    We kids got merit marks for staying afloat ("bronze"), being able to swim a few hundred meters in calm waters ("silver"), and got the gold mark if we could make our way hundred meter backwards, dragging a pretend incapacitated person along while keeping their head above water.

    The net effect has been that a lot of trivial accidents at beach do not turn tragic, and almost total elimination of the "Heroic dad dies trying to save child" stories.

    So at least here calling it "swimming superstition" is unwarranted.

    516:

    Read #476, and my statement about the date in #514. The superstition being referred to was among at the least British seafaring folk of up to the 19th centuries. I think it held in Denmark, too, but am not sure.

    517:

    My wife and I can swim. Sort of. Poor form and all that. But we can get somewhere faster than someone dog paddling. We were part of a community pool for most of their youth and it shows. My son swam 2nd or 3rd rank in school and college. So he never was good enough to actually compete but can out swim 99% of the people. My daughter was even into diving for a while before her teens.

    And they know when to put on a vest. My point is like you, I really don't worry about them near the water.

    I was helped by getting my recreational scuba diving certificate 40 years ago. I didn't keep it up but it was great training for the basics of staying alive. Before you could do anything else you had to be able to get mask, fins, and snorkel off the bottom of an 8-10 foot pool, put them on, and start breathing through the snorkel and clear your mask without taking a breath without it. All of us in the class decided they first step in learning sucba diving is learning how to almost drown. Over and over and over ...

    518: 510 - A few weeks ago, 4 people drowned on Loch Lomond, and now apparently "something must be done about it". People have been drowning on Loch Lomond since before I can remember, usually because they go into a place where they can't see the bottom, and then find an undertow, or a cold current, or a sink hole. 514 - That's fair. Even with a life jacket, I still try to avoid going anywhere on a cabin yacht that's not at least waist high.
    519:

    I don't think it's Covid because I still have my sense of taste & smell

    That's not as comforting as it once was, in terms of having Covid. If you're vaccinated and get Delta you might keep your taste and smell.

    On the bright side, losing taste and smell seems to be linked to increased risk of neuralogical effects, so not losing them (even if you have Covid) is still good news.

    520:

    Then just before you get to talk to someone "we require polite interactions. If you are angry about our system this is not the place to express it". I do wonder whether they've done some experiments and discovered that the current setup minimises call duration... because so many people say "at fucking last you useless wankers" and the call is over.

    I would assume that they do it because people have been abusing call centre staff (who have nothing to do with the wait times or complicated/useless menu system). Getting verbally abused isn't pleasant, especially about things you have nothing to do with, especially when you have to sit and remain polite. Being able to hang up on abusive callers does amazing things for staff morale — it's worth any number of internal awards, free food, or even pay rises.

    At the very least, not having to spend time calming and placating abusive arseholes is going to shave minutes off the average call.

    521:

    A few weeks ago, 4 people drowned on Loch Lomond, and now apparently "something must be done about it".

    We loose a dozen or so people per year on the outer banks of North Carolina. But it is just what happens and is mostly accepted. In most every case it is someone getting caught in a rip current, out of sight of life guards, and/or not knowing what to do. And it seems about half of the cases are from one person going out to save another.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_current

    And someone I know personally died 2 summers ago when a not large wave caught him when he was standing in the edge of the dry/wet boundary and he was pushed over into the sand. He hit his head against the sand in a way that snapped his neck. Two of his early teen daughters were standing next to him and not affected.

    Like Covid the ocean doesn't care about you. It just is. And you have to pay attention to it all the time or it just might bite your butt.

    522:

    I suspect the big issue with taking your pants off and tying knots at the ends is simply having you get your pants off, because nothing will make you less able to swim than having your pants on - they tend to get sopping wet and provide immense amounts of resistance any movement.

    523:

    I would assume that they do it because people have been abusing call centre staff (who have nothing to do with the wait times or complicated/useless menu system). Getting verbally abused isn't pleasant, especially about things you have nothing to do with, especially when you have to sit and remain polite.

    My wife did 18 years in an airline call center. The last 8 in baggage. And virtually no one calls that "desk" unless there's a problem. And there are just some people who have decided the way to get through life is to try and dominate others.

    She has tales.

    524:

    What's in the news up here about North Carolina is that they've finally begun taking steps to end child marriage. Not completely, but at least 14-year-olds can't be married off anymore, and the 16-year-olds can't be married off to anyone older than 20…

    525:

    I suspect the big issue with taking your pants off and tying knots at the ends is simply having you get your pants off,

    Reading your comment popped this image into my mind. https://www.saksfifthavenue.com/product/balenciaga-ripped-logo-lined-jeans-0400013124882.html

    I guess spending a grand on these is a bad idea if you're going out on a boat.

    Not that I could imagine it would every be a good idea except for those with money but no sense. At all.

    526:

    Yes. A few women stood up in hearings and told of being forced into marriages decades ago when pregnant and 12 or similar.

    Getting it totally to 18 proved not possible as there are too many in the legislature who personally know marriages that worked at 16 and/or 17. Give us a bit of time.

    The state legislature has been a battle royale for the 30 years I've lived here. Close split between D's and R's and urban and rural. The next 2 years may make the previous decade or few look tame. The urban / rural divide is growing deeper. And the money R's are caught in the middle of recruiting big companies to move here but the new hires tend to be way more liberal than they like. And before anyone jumps in and blames it all on R gerrymandering the D's did it for the previous decades and got dragged into court for it over and over again. The R's are just keeping up the tradition.

    527:
    The potato famine period that started in the mid-1840s covered most of Europe, it wasn't just a case of "the Redcoats a'stealin' all of our potatoes oh" but the Oirish do like to blame someone other than themselves for all their ills. Some estimates put the excess death toll in Europe in the mid-1840s at over a million people, mostly due to malnutrition and other diseases. These famines were also the triggers for revolutions and instability across Europe in that time period which didn't help.

    That "over a million dead due to starvation across Europe" figure is a neat elision. It breaks down thus: Ireland: 1 million Rest of Europe: 100,000 Imagine 600,000 people starving to death in Yorkshire between now and 2027. Same 1-in-8 dead, same duration, same Parliament.

    Your point about the 1840s being bad across all of Europe is true, and would have remained true if you'd left out the Victorian-era-Punch bigotry.

    529:

    Thanks for that; I missed it on first read-through.

    530:

    So how long will the insurgents hold Edinburgh Castle?

    531:

    Well, Ireland was a colony, and so subject to the same measures used on other colonies…

    (Thinking here of Mike Davis' book Late Victorian Holocausts, which I read years ago.)

    532:

    @502 -- You aren't the only one po-ed at the anti-vaxxers.

    In the NY Post, from Alabama:

    [ "Fed-up doctor tells anti-vaxxers they’re on their own"

    Mobile, Ala., physician Dr. Jason Valentine posted a photo on Facebook in which he’s seen standing in front of a sign that reads “Effective Oct. 1, 2021, Dr. Valentine will no longer see patients that are not vaccinated against COVID-19.” . . . .

    ...Valentine doesn’t appear to be picking on the ignorant so much as he doesn’t want to watch them hack, gasp and cough themselves to death after finally coming to appreciate the wonders of modern medicine once it’s too late.

    “If they asked why, I told them covid is a miserable way to die and I can’t watch them die like that,” he wrote. . . ."]

    In the meantime a story rushed around the country of a parent in a TX public school ripping the mask off the face of her kid's teacher.

    533:

    In the meantime a story rushed around the country of a parent in a TX public school ripping the mask off the face of her kid's teacher.

    It's not all bad news from Texas: apparently at least one school is making masks part of their official dress code, in an attempt to bypass the governor's "mask mandate" ban.

    As Paul Krugman notes in his blog, Lolapalooza went off without a superspreader cluster despite 300,000-odd attendees ... because they required proof of vaccination for entry, and masking for at least half of the festival. A lot of people are getting fucked off with the reality-denying saboteurs.

    534:

    ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE

    I'm going to be scarce around here until Tuesday 24th -- play nice!

    (Firstly, I have to check the copy-edits on "Quantum of Nightmares", with a tight deadline: and then British Telecom are in theory upgrading my fibre connection. This is good in principle, but there's a risk of a protracted internet outage if anything goes wrong.)

    535:

    Getting back to the original topic, about inappropriate responses to Covid19. A bit of googling suggests that the anti-vaxxing influencer sector is worth about a billion dollars in 2021. That's rather less than I thought it would be, but still rather obnoxious on the dollars per illness and dollars per death end of things. And yes, it seems to be mostly an American phenomenon.

    536:

    RE: Water safety and swimming. You can have a lot of fun diving down the rabbit hole if you looking up Swimming strokes on Wikipedia, and still more if you follow the external link to swimmingstrokes.info.

    I'm personally rather fond of Fred Lanoue's Drownproofing system, which is one of the few you can learn from a book. It's slow, but you don't get worn out. I've used it to cross a small lake.

    It's also fun because it's slow and weird. If you get in the slow lane of a swimming pool to practice it, pretty soon you have the lane to yourself. As I said, it's fun.

    Then there's the traditional Japanese swimming methods known collectively as Nihon Eiho. I don't think there are any US teachers, but some of it's available online. Figuring the basic kick out is a bit annoying (it's a variation on a scissors kick), but the strokes are another lane-clearer if you're trying to work them out in a not-too-packed pool. Nihon Eiho styles were designed for different bodies of water and different needs: lakes, rivers, the ocean, unsplashy combat sneaking, safe travel, showy display, etc. Many of the styles have your face out of the maybe-not-so-clean water for some reason. Nihon Eiho has been called the most practical Japanese martial art, and it probably is. Wish it was more widely taught. But I like weird stuff.

    537:

    Sorry, but no, it's 100% ALL the GOP. See St. Ronnie Raygun. The reality is "outsource whatever we can to our buddies, who will bribe, er, contribute to our campaigns and give us a "job" afterwards."

    The quote is from the literal traitor Grover Norquist, all GOP, all the time, since the seventies.

    538:

    A month or two before last year's election, an old friend I've known since the seventies? late sixties? called, and started defending the Former Guy. I've been getting more and more aggravated at him for a long time, and this was it. I told him that if he voted for Trump, to forget my phone # and email, because he was not my friend, he was my enemy.

    I'd an antivaxxer the same way as someone who I'd slept with, who hadn't told me they had STDs.

    Actually, I wonder if they're criminally chargable under those laws....

    539:

    If I was that doc, I'd sue her for slander.

    540:

    I make it a point to aim before I shoot.

    I have, numerous times, complained to the call center person that I'm pissed at their manager, who's understaffed the center, and he needs to hire more call takers.

    I do get annoyed at people who, after I've given them information, ask for it again, as if they are robots who can only follow a script.

    In addition, as I've said for decades, if I have the right to bitch when someone does something wrong, I have the concomitant responsibility to tell them when they do it right, to, ahhh, "encourage the others". I have utterly surprised some folks, when I ask to talk to their manager, to tell them that this person had done so well - I figure that matters a lot more than a questionnaire, it will matter next review period.

    And I have jumped down the throat of someone who's too stupid - if I ask for the next tier of support, and I've given them my credentials (i.e. system support), and they still don't get it....

    541:

    One. Thousand. Dollars. For schmattas/pants I'd have already tossed?

    Hey, my SO and I can call ourselves fashion designers, and sell our worn-out crap.

    542:

    They've got to be wrong-wingers, since they're talking about the "dictatorship", but I was wondering that myself.

    Oh, and of course, in addition to all other charges, they should all be fined for not buying their tickets.

    543:

    "And yes, it seems to be mostly an American phenomenon."

    Oh, the stupid bastards are cropping up over here now since the plague vaccines started coming out. Seems to be coming from the excessively-rich fascist-fifth-column anti-EU crowd. Pity it's not realistic to expect the originators to be practising what they preach and killing themselves off.

    544:

    Oh, right: send in the tourists, to laugh at them.

    And don't forget to give them dildos. (see "branch dildonians")

    545:

    Texas antivax couple both die, their four kids now orphans. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/18/texas-couple-declined-covid-19-vaccine-died-orphans/

    I'm assuming that now we can teach them, and so their parents' brain faults do not continue another generation.

    546:

    I do get annoyed at people who, after I've given them information, ask for it again, as if they are robots who can only follow a script. Quite often they are being forced to act as if they're a robot. It's the old story of companies trying to make their workers into interchangeable, disposable cogs. Yes, they know you just told them the answer to their next question; they still have to ask it. Yes, they are as fed up with the restrictions as you, but unlike you they can't speak up on record without getting punished.

    Source: roommate worked at a call center (focused on research) for years

    547:

    It gives me an idea. Round here we occasionally get these plastic bags pushed through the door with invitations printed on them to put our old clothes in them and leave them out to be collected "for charity". They are actually scams, but I'd always ignored them even before I knew that because once something gets to the point where I will no longer wear it, not even a tramp is going to consider it an improvement over what they've got on already.

    But it would be more fun to return the bags containing some tangle of disconnected threads that used to be a pair of trousers, with a note pinned to them carrying that web address and the message "Give these a good wash and you can flog them for a thousand spods".

    548:

    It's not all bad news from Texas: apparently at least one school is making masks part of their official dress code, in an attempt to bypass the governor's "mask mandate" ban.

    I saw an article about a mother in Tennessee who wrote to her school board demanding the forms to opt out of the dress code, on the grounds that if other students could opt out of a mask that protected her daughter from Covid, her daughter had the right to opt out of a ban on narrow straps on her tops to protect boys from evil thoughts…

    “In light of the opt-out option related to the recently announced mask mandate, I can only assume that parents are now in a position to pick and choose the school policies to which their child should be subject. As someone who holds a strong commitment to my feminist ideals and my desire to raise my daughter to be a strong and empowered woman able to make choices for herself, I find that the school’s dress code does not align with my belief system. I therefore intend to … send my daughter to school in spaghetti straps, leggings, cut offs, and anything else she feels comfortable wearing to school.”

    https://www.scarymommy.com/tennessee-mom-school-dress-code-mask-mandate/

    549:

    What infuriates me is the related problem when they hand over the call to someone else (which may occur several times in one session), but the call is all they hand over and they don't pass on any other information with it. So I not only have to go over the entire bloody thing all over again with the new person, starting right from the beginning with who I am etc, but I also have to tell them everything that's happened with the people I've spoken to already, and explain to them why the previous person passed the call on to them in the first place.

    550:

    Swimming x distance with them on was part of the test.

    551:

    Greg Tingey @ 504: JBS
    What can one do about the anti-vaxxers that does not involve killing them all?
    A simple recital of: Polio / Measles / Diphtheria / Smallpox .... etc. should convince anyone, but it seems not to.
    Why the fuck not?

    I'm not quite convinced the "kill 'em all & let Dog sort it out" option should be off the table. After all, they don't give a shit if it kills me ... but I guess I want to be a better person than that.

    The drawback with the "simple recital" method is you have to get close enough to engage them in conversation and they're going to refuse to wear masks and will get all hot under the collar and be shouting at you, foaming at the mouth and spitting in your face ... fuck that!

    I think I have mentioned that I convinced my brother, but he wasn't really anti-vaxx, just hard-headed & stubborn.

    And I was only able to do that because I knew which buttons to push ("If you get sick & die, your wife & daughter will have to live with your in-laws." That won't work for everyone, especially because I don't know what buttons to push with them.

    552:

    paws4thot @ 505: #502 - UK is also talking about CoVax 3, timed with your flu vaccination, if you're over 50.

    Eight months after the second jab is going to work out to be right around the time I would normally be looking for my flu shot and I am over 50, something that's a constant source of befuddlement for me.

    553:

    "Even with a life jacket, I still try to avoid going anywhere on a cabin yacht that's not at least waist high."

    Better still to clip on, indeed to make clipping on a higher priority than a lifejacket. If you go over, even if you do keep afloat there's a very good chance of the boat not being able to get back and pick you up in time, or even go back at all.

    554: 541 - A word in defence of call centre operators; they are following a script that expects them to input as fields - surname, forename, street number and name, zip, city, state etc, but only in that exact order. 548 - Similarly here, and said bags get transferred from the front porch to the mixed recycling bin, so they maybe do something for the council's common good fund.
    555:

    Moz @ 507:

    What can one do about the anti-vaxxers that does not involve killing them all?

    Wait. Many will die, some of them recanting on their deathbeds.

    Turns out that many of them have been secretly vaccinated. Add hypocrisy to their list of crimes.

    It's their victims; the poor, deluded fools they've deceived recanting on their deathbeds.

    556:

    One of the problems is that a mix of unvaccinated and vaccinated is also a reasonable breeding ground for a Covid19 strain that can dangerously infect vaccinated people. Of course, that describes the world at the moment.

    Fortunately (?), it doesn't look like the people involved in collecting medical debt really profit off Covid19. In fact, hospitals have been losing money on it in the US, due to cancellation of lucrative elective surgeries.

    557:

    David L @ 510:

    What I never did figure out was WHY? If you were going to be so far out in the water that you needed to use that skill, why weren't you wearing a Coast Guard approved life jacket in the first place?

    So you were in the boy scouts 60 years ago based on what I know of your age. And we still have people on lakes drowning because they think .... well they don't think.

    Yeah, about the right timeframe, although it was a few years later when I got to that "merit badge".

    Usually the vests are in a locker someone on the boat. Usually next to where everyone is sitting/standing/drinking.

    Yeah, and how many of them are going to be wearing long uniform trousers suitable for converting into a field expedient flotation device or will remember how to do it in their drunken stupor? Drown-proofing only works for people who are never going to need it. Whenever I'm on a boat (most likely the Ocracoke Ferry) I AM going to know where the life jackets are stowed & how to get to them if the boat starts to sink.

    In the unlikely event that any of the cool kids ever invite me to spend the day with them on their boat, I'll be wearing the damn life jacket ... even if I'm the only one on the boat who is.

    Whenever I've flown commercial, the first thing I did after I found my seat was look for the emergency instructions in the seat pocket. By the time the flight attendants started the preflight announcements I'd already read it twice and I was still following along, craning my neck to find the over-wing exits ... I'd just be too embarrassed to die from STUPID in an otherwise survivable accident.

    I understand other people don't think this way. What I don't understand is WHY NOT?

    558:

    David L @ 513: And for a brief change of pace.

    Boston Dynamics shows some behind the scenes videos.
    https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/boston-dynamics-shares-an-incredible-behind-the-scenes-look-at-robot-building/

    I wonder how close they are to developing a robot that could do that kind of maneuvering without it having to be choreographed? That is, a robot with a built in set of routines - run, jump, step over, climb up ... - and the processing power to recognize which routine is needed and then implement it?

    And maybe string together combinations of routines for more complex maneuvers?

    559:

    Robert Prior @ 520:

    I don't think it's Covid because I still have my sense of taste & smell

    hat's not as comforting as it once was, in terms of having Covid. If you're vaccinated and get Delta you might keep your taste and smell.

    On the bright side, losing taste and smell seems to be linked to increased risk of neuralogical effects, so not losing them (even if you have Covid) is still good news.

    Hadn't heard that before. Loss of taste/smell appears to be the primary identifying symptom, but I don't have any of the others - sore throat, fever, headache - either; just the stupid cough which does appear to be waning.

    But those are beside the point. I'm taking precautions to avoid catching it and to avoid spreading it if I do catch it anyway; doing the things that, to the best of my knowledge, are the things I'm supposed to do to bring about the end of the pandemic.

    I got an email yesterday that one of the clubs I belong to will resume in person meetings in September.

    I will NOT be attending.

    560:

    Robert Prior @ 525: What's in the news up here about North Carolina is that they've finally begun taking steps to end child marriage. Not completely, but at least 14-year-olds can't be married off anymore, and the 16-year-olds can't be married off to anyone older than 20…

    Hadn't realized that was the case. I thought the age to get married without parental permission was already 18 in North Carolina.

    When I was in high school, several kids ran off to South Carolina to get married without their parents' consent. Some of them kept the marriages secret from their parents for one reason or another, but I'm pretty sure that not all of them were because of the girl getting pregnant.

    One of the guys I worked with at newspaper in Durham (my senior year I was the gofer for the advertising department) told me about going to jail for running off to South Carolina to get married. They weren't even under age at the time. He was 18 & she was 25.

    Her daddy was a judge & probably one of the richest men around where they lived at the time. The "marriage" was annulled and HE went to prison for transporting a female across state lines for immoral purposes.

    561:

    David L @ 526:

    I suspect the big issue with taking your pants off and tying knots at the ends is simply having you get your pants off,

    Reading your comment popped this image into my mind.
    https://www.saksfifthavenue.com/product/balenciaga-ripped-logo-lined-jeans-0400013124882.html

    I guess spending a grand on these is a bad idea if you're going out on a boat.

    Not that I could imagine it would every be a good idea except for those with money but no sense. At all.

    I doubt anyone dumb enough to pay a thousand dollars for pre-ripped jeans is likely to be able to handle the process for turning trousers into a field expedient float. And those jeans wouldn't hold air anyway.

    562:

    I wonder how close they are to developing a robot that could do that kind of maneuvering without it having to be choreographed? Closer than I want given the military interest in autonomous robots. Look at the authors on this Science piece (paper). (Story mentioned in previous thread as well, and also mentioned by cstross on twitter.) A few of them are biomechanics/robotics people. Acrobatic squirrels learn to leap and land on tree branches without falling (Abstract (paywalled), Nathaniel H. Hunt, Judy Jinn, Lucia F. Jacobs, Robert J. Full, 06 Aug 2021) Squirrels show off killer parkour moves as they leap from branch to branch - Pushing off vertical surface helped squirrels adjust their speed for a better landing. (Jennifer Ouellette, Aug 5, 2021)

    More generally, "reinforcement learning" is the general approach. One major area of robotics reinforcement learning research is transfer from learning in simulation to the real. (Simulation is cheaper and often much faster, and much less dangerous.)

    563:

    Genuine conversation with nurse during hospital in-patient stay, "If the fire alarm goes off, I'm out the (ground floor) window. Which way is the assembly point?"

    564:

    I wonder how close they are to developing a robot that could do that kind of maneuvering without it having to be choreographed?

    You may have missed it. In the reading or the video they talk about that. How the current maneuvers are almost there. - Here's the path - Get past/over the things you get to.

    They have to have been programed with a general maneuver for each things but still, they are getting there.

    They are not trying to program exact steps. They even talk about how the bots are doing real time adjustments as they move and you can see some of this in the videos.

    565:

    Pigeon @ 548: It gives me an idea. Round here we occasionally get these plastic bags pushed through the door with invitations printed on them to put our old clothes in them and leave them out to be collected "for charity". They are actually scams, but I'd always ignored them even before I knew that because once something gets to the point where I will no longer wear it, not even a tramp is going to consider it an improvement over what they've got on already.

    We have that around here too, but you have to be careful dismissing them all, because some of them are NOT scams. Torn jeans are now a fashion statement, and poor kids want to be cool too.

    The UN-wearable crap may be sold as rags & the money used to further a genuine charity's goals.

    566:

    Hadn't heard that before. Loss of taste/smell appears to be the primary identifying symptom, but I don't have any of the others - sore throat, fever, headache

    Apparently it's one of the differences with Delta (or maybe Delta+), as well as being vaccinated.

    The loss of smell/tase seems to be from the virus infecting neurons, so it makes sense that not having that happen is a Good Thing™ — especially given that some 30% of infections go on to develop persistent neurological symptoms.

    567:

    What infuriates me is the related problem when they hand over the call to someone else (which may occur several times in one session), but the call is all they hand over and they don't pass on any other information with it.

    Given my inside knowledge please don't vent to the person on the phone. Many times it is the call center software the blew it.

    In my wife's case, many times it would be due to the call being transferred to a different team. She might be working the Caribbean sales desk but given her experience she would be backing up domestic sales and also acting as a Tier 2 supervisor for domestic sales if someone wanted to talk to a supervisor. And the software would not always handle the hand off correctly in such a situation. And when she would get the transferred call as the supervisor, the original agent (who very likely was in a different city) was already on another call.

    My point is the agents on the phone tended to be as pissed as you.

    568:

    One of the guys I worked with at newspaper in Durham (my senior year I was the gofer for the advertising department) told me about going to jail for running off to South Carolina to get married. They weren't even under age at the time. He was 18 & she was 25.

    How long ago was that? Two adults…

    Unless the law was very different at the time, it sounds more like a corrupt judicial system than a legal matter.

    569:

    “The quote is from the literal traitor Grover Norquist, all GOP, all the time, since the seventies” Ah, yes, that was the foul specimen I was thinking of.

    570:

    With "Services Australia" or My.Guv I was not so much talking about the staff as the voice announcements while you wait, that seem specifically designed to infuriate callers. I can handle "Company X makes the best doodads" or "this is your government, we're here to help you". But when I am ringing the very specific number for "help me get signed up for the website" and the announcements are all designed to push me away from the phone and get me using the website... that's just pissing me off.

    I want to use the website. I am trying to use the website. I have done what I can to use the website, but the website has shat out "Error FKU231" and told me to ring this number "call 132 123, then 1 for human services, 3 for website, 2 for problems signing in, 5 for cannot link A to B"

    Subjecting me to 20 minutes of "did you know you can do this via our website. Visit www.you.are.fucked.gov.au" and enter your medicare number", and "our services are now available online. Sign up at www.hahaha.no.gov.au".

    You better bet that I'm pissed off by the time I get the a human operator. Not at the human, but at the inhumane process. Especially now, when apparently most calls to medicare are being diverted to the dole office, except those staff don't have access to the medicare computer system so can't actually help 90% of callers. Oddly enough they are also very frustrated with the system.

    571:

    "Given my inside knowledge please don't vent to the person on the phone. Many times it is the call center software the blew it."

    Don't worry, I've always assumed that was the reason anyway :)

    572:

    "Subjecting me to 20 minutes of "did you know you can do this via our website...""

    Yes, I've had that several times too. Yes, you stupid computer, I know all about your website. You're an ISP, I'd be amazed if you didn't have one. And I am only on the phone at all because the internet service you provide is not fucking working.

    All the more galling since when I signed up to them they were a small outfit who were thoroughly clued up and seemed to be glad that I wanted to discuss something with them in technical terms on the one or two occasions the need arose. Then they got bought out by Plusnet and it all went to shit. Every month their bill payment system would send me a confirmation of payment received and then a couple of days later cut me off for not paying, and it took an hour or two of listening to "Don't You Want Me" and arguing with several different thick people who couldn't understand what the problem was to get it back on again. So after some repetitions of this I decided that indeed I didn't want them, and gave them the push.

    573:

    when I signed up to them they were a small outfit who were thoroughly clued up and seemed to be glad that I wanted to discuss something with them in technical terms on the one or two occasions the need arose

    Back in the 80s I signed up for a long distance provider, which was cheaper than Bell and had amazing technical support. I'd just finished working at BNR (NorTel) so could chat with the support engineer about how they configured the DMS switch and other technical details.

    Then they got bought out and tech support calls were no longer answered by engineers, problems took longer to get resolved, and I stopped using them…

    574:

    Yeah one of the first things the Abbot-Turnbull-Morrison government did when it was first elected in 2013 was take Medicare from the department of health and merge it into what was then known as the "department of human services", was once called the "department of social security" but is now "Services Australia". The direct outcome was that every Medicare customer service centre in Australia, all of which had recently implemented a really excellent customer queue management system by the way, were immediately closed and their functions transferred to Centrelink* offices. The latter were subject to quite a bit of deliberate-cruelty-as-policy "service efficiencies" in the ensuing years.

    FWIW I didn't agree with the change that this same government made to the My Health Record (which was called the Personally Controlled eHealth Record, or PCEHR, when it was introduced by the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government for a couple of billion AU$ in 2012). Other than the silly name change, transitioning from an opt-in to an opt-out model meant pretty much every state jurisdiction and NGO had to re-assess its integration, because when it was opt-in there was implied consent to upload documents to it. My view is this change was one of the few things this government has done with genuinely good intentions, but they listened to the wrong stakeholder groups, namely the relatively authoritarian old-school professional colleges, and simply did not have any idea what the impact would be.

    Don't get me wrong on privacy. I think that with both models there definitely exist populations for whom involuntary disclosure of their health information to third parties represents an unacceptable risk and people in those groups should definitely opt out (or not opt in). The easiest to understand case is a friend who is a survivor of domestic abuse who was obliged to move states and change her and her children's names to escape an abusive ex-partner who happens to be a doctor. It's pretty easy to see how the privacy controls don't help for that.

    Anyhow even with all this, it's getting pretty clear what some of the benefits of having a personally controlled record include, and being able to refer to your vaccination information easily in a way that proves stuff to third parties is just a taster really.

    • Centrelink is what Australia has called its dole office since the Howard years (decided to omit a longish discussion of the history... it's not that interesting to non-Australians, and would just come across as me expressing some sort of grudge against conservative governments).
    575:

    timrowldege I had to look Norquist up Actually, he comes across as "Unfit for Office, by reason of Insanity"

    576:

    In which case it would be nice if they could/did vary the script by saying "I'm sorry but our transfer software seems to have lost your details; I'm afraid that we have to take them all again."

    And yes I am a software engineer saying "blame the computer (programmers)."

    577:

    So your experience is a clue that they've mostly only had manager types and software/dev types specifying and working on their solution, including software and workflows. And that's usually a mistake, because workflows are hard, while getting software to work with them is usually pretty easy once everyone understands what all the actors are doing in each step and what they need. And it's usually because the people who know the most about the workflows are the ones who enact them, and they are quite junior relative to the people who make decisions about workflows, so no-one actually listens to them, least of all the devs (whose jobs might be at the whim of the managers).

    578:

    Systems with design/implementation details going back 50+ years. Silos. And differing record layouts, at times very subtle. Some of these transfers go between such systems and the holes in the transfer occur way down deep below any meaningful user notification.

    And I'm not defending.

    And the real fun with airlines or other industries where the competitors get to interact is when they have to trade data with other airlines or 3rd party firms that do industry wide things such as interline baggage tracing.

    Then you get into situations where the airports of a country are totally owned, run, and staffed by the federal or local government. So the people wearing the uniform of airline XYZ are really government employees assigned to XYZ. And all the IT/workstations are government issued. So none of this "we only support Win10/Linux/Bozo/whatever on our dedicated systems". And you have no control over updates or installed software. Well some control. At times. Mostly. Sort of.

    It all adds up to a not wonderful experience for the customer at times.

    579:

    And it's usually because the people who know the most about the workflows are the ones who enact them, and they are quite junior relative to the people who make decisions about workflows, so no-one actually listens to them, least of all the devs (whose jobs might be at the whim of the managers).

    And I've seen where they bring in these folks. And some are great. Other couldn't give a crap. And others were adamant or clueless as to why any change was needed from when they started doing things in the "gold medal year of ought 5". And the above managers pick these folks so your relationship with said manager is many times more important than your knowledge of the process and most importantly the WHY of the process. And to make it more fun everyone in the room and those who put them in the room might have different incentive situations that impact their pay and promotion.

    Getting more of a pessimist crumudgen as I grow older I am.

    580:

    Yeah. I'm now working in a quite good position as a software engineer, where we can mostly decide the things and flows we do by ourselves, and even then it's still not easy. Of course there are external requirements, but we can discuss those and they are mostly about what different REST APIs the users of our stuff want. It's also mostly in-company so some monetary hassles are abstracted away.

    Still we don't know the flows perfectly and have to fiddle with stuff every once in a while, and the tools we use change, and there are new ones, and old ones become obsolete. Even then it's nicer than working with other peoples' specifications.

    581:

    "The same people who deny climate change, think Covid-19 is a hoax, that the election was stolen, and obsess over Qanon are the same people who thought .....

    The exact same people, the exact same mind set."

    I'd be interested in any evidence for that. In an attempt to discuss their beliefs I read and write on "CriticallyThinking" but probably not for much longer. In the last issue my requests for evidence for assertions were marked down.

    I see occasional references to QAnon but the two strongly common memes are paranoia about world-domination by an elite and christian religion. Of course, this is just a sample from a self-aggregated population and proves very little

    582:

    Some of us have relatives where all of these things seem to mix together.

    Climate change is a minor part of this. Easier to leave it out as most of them agree that something is changing but are totally against anything that says people are causing it. But Trump was the God anointed savior of the country against the sexual predators and pedophiles that make up most of his opponents. And given this there was no way that Trump didn't win.

    As to all the other things, they seem to travel together. About 1/2 of the descendants of my grandfather are somewhat or totally there. Including a brother and his kids and their spouses. My grandfather was born in 1885 so there are maybe 50 or more adults in this group. More when you consider the in-laws and such who are fully on board.

    But they don't come out and say QANON is totally true. They just bloviate on various bits of it.

    583:

    "The bioweapon hypothesis has two key weaknesses, to my mind, leaving aside the actual genetics of the pathogen in question.

    If it's a bioweapon, then it was obviously released either deliberately or accidentally. (Pick one, but not the other.)

    Deliberate release: well, who the fuck would be stupid enough to release something with the properties of COVID19 without being prepared to (or already have) vaccinate(d) their own population? It serves no reasonable strategic goal and the potential for political blowback if a planned release was exposed is enormous."

    The antivaxx conspiacists are ahead of you there. It is a bioweapon designed to reduce the word's population by a hidden elite and vaccines for it have been documented/patented before its release so, presumably, this elite were made immune before the release.

    A more recent belief is that vaccines have had graphene dioxide for many years and it has been activated by the 5G radiation. Evidence for this is that graphene dioxide is super paramagnetic and explains why magnets stick to vaccinated people and dead chickens.

    584:

    Oh, totally.

    Getting more of a pessimist crumudgen as I grow older I am.

    Not at all, you just sound realistic to me. If it's any consolation, it gets messier in health, where the hierarchies are more complex.

    585: 578 - #581 inclusive - Exactly. I don't know that I have much to add.
    586:

    The best example I ever found was from my old employer. I had solid (disability) grounds for a parking permit, but none of the tick boxes were relevant and there was nowhere to put anything else. So I rang the relevant department:

    Me: (essentially) This is discriminating against partially disabled people like me; there needs to be a box marked 'other' and a field to fill in.

    Them: I am sorry, but we can't change the form.

    Me: Who has the power to change the form, then?

    Them: We do.

    587:

    I think there was a book and movie.

    588:

    I had the exact opposite experience; my employer told me that, even though I didn't qualify for a blue badge I should use a disabled bay "because you have a limp and no-one else here needs them".

    589:

    That wasn't my point - I was probably unclear. I got one, OK, but had to jump through hoops. My point was about the self-castrating effect of bureaucracy. In fact, it went on:

    Me: If there is a problem updating the form (shorthand for if they have lost the source or have no-one literate who can operate a keyboard), tell me the format and I will send you an updated version (it was a very simple form).

    Them: That's not possible.

    At that point, I gave up, and did what everybody else did (and I was recommended to by the supervisor, who was the sole one above trained monkey level): filled in the closest (but false) tick box.

    590:

    In addition to the "Big Batteries made of Rust" energy-storage I mentioned up-thread... Here is a very optimistic development Making "Pig Iron" or its equivalent using zero Coal.... IF ( Big "if" ) both of these are shown to work properly, it will be a very good start.

    [ Quote: the fossil CO2 emission decreases from 1600 kg/ton of crude steel to 25 kg/ton. ]

    591:

    That sort of thing was obviously what hydrogen is good for, right back when the hoo-hah started, and NOT the imbecility of using it as a vehicle fuel (whatever the vehicle). Essentially, it makes iron smelting just like aluminium smelting, where the key is access to lots of cheap electricity. Ores of both are still plentiful.

    Yes, hydrogen is still bloody dangerous stuff, but it's a lot easy to store it safely in a static plant than a moving object, and doesn't have the same constraints on enclosure size and weight. And a huge bang doesn't have the same hard-to-predict consequences.

    592:

    My point was about the self-castrating effect of bureaucracy.

    At a guess, the culture of that workplace was all about blame-avoidance.

    One of the best principals I had wasn't afraid to make decisions, taking the risk of being wrong as part of the job. The worst principals* avoided making decisions so that no blame for mistakes accrued to them. In the culture of the school board, having a "black mark"** could sink your career.

    *Many more of them

    **In quotes because a crazy parent complaining to the superintendent was considered the principal's fault (for not mollifying them before they complained, apparently).

    593:

    Charlie @535:

    I'm going to be scarce around here until Tuesday 24th -- play nice!

    OH YEAH! PARTY TIME! Let's break out all of the strange attractors that Charlie doesn't like & TOTALLY GO WILD WITH THEM!

    WOOO!

    [JReynolds has been banned]

    Whitroth @541:

    I do get annoyed at people who, after I've given them information, ask for it again, as if they are robots who can only follow a script.

    I was a phone jockey at an inbound call centre a decade ago (contracted with Crapital One).

    There was one particular moron who came in, and talked over my introduction with his card number, name, date of birth, and last 4 of his SSN. While his info was up on my screen. He was wasting his time and mine.

    In that job, the good clients are quickly forgotten, while the idiots get into your long-term memory. Forever.

    Related to this is Pigeon @550:

    What infuriates me is the related problem when they hand over the call to someone else

    Sometimes nothing could be done. Cardholder is dead, next of kin calling in to say that they needed to switch the card over to them now. Nope, sorry. Our 'small business cards' were a semi-scam. They were attached to the primary cardholder's SSN. The only difference between them and a regular card is that you could have your business's name on the card.

    Explaining to people that no, the card was done & I'd have to transfer their call to people who would now close the card was... unpleasant more than once. "YOU'RE RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR BUSINESS NOT BEING ABLE TO WORK! IT'S YOUR FAULT" were words I heard more than once. Plus, you had to get consent to transfer people to someone else, and if the caller was mooing about how they needed to keep using the card, while I said "sorry, the card is now permanently out of use. Can I transfer you to someone who will finalize this?" got a LOT of pushback. People refusing to be transferred, insisting that I turn on the card again, etc.

    It's easy to say "Sorry, lady1. You should have read the terms and conditions of your card before you started using it." However, the misleading marketing also played a role here. Not to mention that the T&C were in small print in grey (not black!) font on the back of the statements to make them easy to ignore.

    ~oOo~

    1The one who keeps coming to mind was a particularly determined woman who kept refusing the transfer and demanded that I make things right. I finally had to 'transfer them to someone who could resolve this for you', eliding that the "resolution" would be a final closing. Sorry, unknown person in the closing (due to death) department. Your day is going to be worse as well.

    594:

    Worth looking at the more technical write-up: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4701/10/7/972/htm

    Looks like they're using hydrogen to reduce the iron, which is useful. The problem is that this isn't the first plant to try it, merely the first to look like it's going to be commercially successful. Per the document above, a plant in Trinidad in 2016 failed.

    The hard parts for scaling this up are: getting a lot of non-carbon electricity (Sweden has hydropower) and having a place to store a lot of hydrogen (they claim that salt mines so far are the only industrial scale hydrogen storage available). So this technology might be constrained to sites that have all relevant stuff available. But it's still cool.

    I just tripped over a similar use of hydrogen in making thermoelectric elements out of tin selenide (SnSe). Turns out the performance killer is tin oxide, so when they manufacture polycrystalling SnSe in a hydrogen atmosphere, they get a really, erm, hot material. Hopefully this scales too: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-021-01064-6

    595:

    Overly optimistic. Assuming a sterilizing immunity of roughly 50% and an R0 exceeding 8, in a fully vaccinated population, COVID-19 will be an endemic virus, perhaps indefinitely.

    Vaccination hopefully reduces the incidence of permanent mental disability.

    Some people will opt for vaccines and boosters. The others will opt for infection and periodic reinfection. Following the first or second infection, prognosis may not be too different.

    For unvaccinable people, this is not great.

    For others, meh. I am guessing one more big Delta wave. Perhaps overwhelming hospitals and killing people with other emergency issues. After that, hospital burden should be low. Beyond that, for adults, I am having mustering up much more than a vague distaste for paying their bills for long-term disability.

    596:

    Yeah, Norquist isn't as popular now (thank Goddes) as he was. While not technically a traitor, I think there's a good case for him being a crypto-anarchist who should get the loving treatment usually reserved for the Black Bloc types.

    597:

    No - it was much worse than that, but you couldn't tell from just that exchange. Their management would neither have noticed nor cared if they had shown any initiative, and their (single) supervisor would have jumped with joy.

    They were the sort of bureaucrats whose Purpose was solely to administer the Rules according to Procedure, and under no circumstances do anything else. And, yes, that does include passing a problem up to the supervisor, even on request. Occasionally, Instructions would arrive from their Management to prepare new Rules or Procedure but, once their Management had pronounced it Good, it became Immutable. All capitalised terms could be prefixed by Holy (or Holy and), and anything like initative was pronounced Heresy.

    598:

    Beyond that, for adults, I am having mustering up much more than a vague distaste for paying their bills for long-term disability.

    The restaurant wars are stating. Just now a trickle but growing. No shirt, no shoes, no vaccine, no service.

    And people are yelling. Of course the same ones here (in the US) who want individual freedoms don't want business owners to have the same freedom to say "nope".

    I wonder if orphaned relatives will change more minds.

    599:

    I wonder if orphaned relatives will change more minds.

    Probably not. :-(

    The same minds that blame Biden for mishandling the pandemic and for making a deal with the Taliban and abandoning Afghanistan etc etc et bloody cetera will have no trouble blaming Biden for their relative dying of a non-existent pandemic…

    600:

    I am guessing one more big Delta wave. Perhaps overwhelming hospitals and killing people with other emergency issues. After that, hospital burden should be low.

    Eh, no.

    Firstly, you're assuming Delta is the last, worst strain of COVID19. I am seeing worrying reports that Lambda might show significant vaccine escape, in which case we're right back to where we were in December 2020.

    Secondly, the idiot "let it rip" crowd have successfully traumatized an entire generation of medical staff. By some reports as many as half of all doctors and nurses in the NHS are thinking about quitting the field entirely when the current pandemic subsides.

    Hospitals will be running on HR fumes for the next decade because it takes seven years to train a specialist nurse practitioner and a decade to train a consultant doctor or surgeon. So departments are going to be chronically under-staffed and run by under-trained newbies for years to come -- even if they double the intake of trainee doctors and nurses immediately (not to mention other hospital specialists: don't forget the cleaners, porters, and radiographers) it's going to take a decade to restore the pre-pandemic status quo.

    But that's insufficient because we've got long COVID as well, which appears to track ME/CFS quite closely, which implies hundreds of thousands (in the UK: in the USA, make that millions) of permanently disabled folks needing treatment, physiotherapy, assisted living, at home nursing during flare-ups, and so on. So we're going to need more medical professionals going forward, rather than the same number as previously.

    Also we've got a huge backlog of follow-up investigations that have been delayed due to hospitals being swamped by COVID19 cases and having to shut down elective non-emergency operations and treatment. Many of these will translate into would-have-been-curable cancer deaths a couple of years down the line, not to mention other illnesses. More of them will translate into lack of early detection and care for chronic conditions like diabetes or kidney failure or multiple sclerosis, leading to bigger treatment bills.

    Upshot: healthcare costs are going to skyrocket.

    And this is a global, not a local, phenomenon. The UK used to get round chronic training shortfalls and recruitment problems by hoovering up nurses from poorer countries. But those countries have the exact same problems. (And who would want to go and work in the post-Brexit UK with its "hostile environment" approach to immigrants?)

    TLDR: we are not out of the woods yet. We many never be out of the woods, during my lifetime, which I expect to be truncated by knock-on effects of COVID-inflicted damage on the healthcare sector.

    601:
    And people are yelling. Of course the same ones here (in the US) who want individual freedoms don't want business owners to have the same freedom to say "nope". I wonder if orphaned relatives will change more minds.

    Tut, tut, tut...

    You come from the nation with over fifty per cent of the world's lawyers.

    You have a legal tort of "reckless endangerment" don't you?

    As a civil action you need only prove that on the balance of probabilities you have been harmed by those non-vaccinated.

    In the land of the free, the most lawyered-up are kings, right?

    602:

    I agree, from start to finish.

    I am tracking this, and will post when I see anything worth reporting. #152 is seriously incomplete, but I need to do some more analysis on the God-awful data the gummint provides before doing so. The minimal information about Lambda indicates that it is probably slightly less infectious than Delta but rather nastier.

    603:

    EC @ 592 Hydrogen Our misgovernment have gone completely bonkers on Hydrogen-Vapourware & not just for the railways. I strongly suspect that many of their corrupt friends stand to make a lot of rip-off out of it, before it collapses. It is of course a "secondary" fuel - it has to be manufactured first at an enegry cost & loss & its energy denisty is low.

    Rbt Prior The worst principals* avoided making decisions so that no blame for mistakes accrued to them. Like Macavity, who always "wasn't there" ... or BoZo, of course, who always seems to make it up as he goes along & then blames everyone else.

    Erwin If "they" decide I'm in a vulnerable group for a booster, I'm grabbing it! And it depends on how fast a modified-vaccine for λ can be worked-up & produced, of course.

    Charlie Long-Covid really scares me - much more so than getting & recovering from a bout of the disease itself.

    604:

    I believe I've told this story before, but not recently.

    Back in the late eighties, I worked for the Scummy Mortgage Co in Austin, TX (Fortune 500? Fortune 50 company, then). One department (might have been where they took the mortgage information) the manager, who Knew How It Should Work, designed the interface (mainframe, CICS, terminals), that was implemented by DP. From talking with the folks who worked in that dept, it was so hostile, and they hated it so much, that they'd write down the info with pen and paper, and as the very, very last step, do data entry.

    Who do you think runs so many of these departments?

    605:

    Since he was saying he wanted to "drown the US government", I'd say that qualifies as "making war on the US", and "giving aid and comfort to the nation's enemies".

    And he's never been in government, he's a lobbyist, with really deep pockets. He started by pushing, in the later seventies, a proposition in Californai that screwed the state over with taxes, unable to raise important ones. He's gone on from there.

    606:

    Back in the mid-nineties, Japan had a "wonderful" economy. And at the time, the US was graduating more lawyers every year than practiced in all of Japan.

    Then, in, I think, '95, Japan allowed US lawyers to practice in Japan. And their economy tanked....

    608:

    And this is a global, not a local, phenomenon. China is a notable large exception. IF they continue the incident suppression approach (tracing, quarantines, actual real hard lockdowns, other NPIs), their short and long term medical spending will not increase much, nor will future societal costs for long COVID sufferers. China's current sinovac vaccine is not very good, but that's a point in time. And they have the NPI approaches tuned pretty well for their country, and a competent police state to implement/enforce them. (Australia/New Zealand are doing well too. Vietnam is struggling but may have plateaued.)

    Agree about the emergence of a vaccine-escaping Delta(or similar) variant; that's baked in due to the huge raw numbers of infected people (including some with multiple strains). We should hope for more interesting vaccine science, beyond boosters that cover new widely spreading variants. (e.g. broader vaccines, cheaper vaccines )

    609:

    Getting back to the anti-vaxxers for a second, I think we've got them wrong as animists.

    They're white supremacists, pure and simple, using the tactics developed over 200 years to Keep People They Don't Like In Their Place. For all I know, the Norse and Celts used this on their slaves too. Frothing rage, boundary breaking, threats, terror, violence, insurrrection. It's the same brutal system. There's a certain amount of schadenfreude here, because it's so spectacularly mis-aimed at a virus, but there you have it. It would be funny if it were not so sickening. Unfortunately, I'm running short on compassion for those people, especially the ones who make death threats against those who try to mandate masks.

    As for Covid19 in the future, it's not going away, because most of the world hasn't been vaccinated. This is particularly sickening when White Supremacy states are dumping mass quantities of expired vaccine because the red caps aren't getting jabbed, while whole countries do without the stuff my fellow white idiots are so stupidly against. But until there's a global push for a vaccine, there's no possibility of wiping it out.

    The second problem is that even good vaccines wear off with this virus, even absent viral mutations. So without vaccine technology continually keeping new vaccines coming out, everyone eventually seems to end up vulnerable. Maybe simultaneously immunizing them for SARS-1 will help?

    The third problem is, of course, mutation. That will just unpredictably speed up the time when everyone's vulnerable.

    And so it goes.

    610:

    H SO -are our, British anti-vaxxers "White Supremacists" or are they, simply - Stupid & Gullible? I think the latter. I'm surprised at you falling for "The US is the Planet" trope.

    611:

    I think there's considerable overlap between "White Supremacist" and "Stupid and Gullible." In either case they're people who are ridiculously vulnerable to propaganda.

    612:

    Getting back to the anti-vaxxers for a second, I think we've got them wrong as animists. They're white supremacists, pure and simple, using the tactics developed over 200 years to Keep People They Don't Like In Their Place.

    Correct.

    They're responding to COVID19 as if it's a human threat, but their threat response is 100% authoritarian/race-supremacist. Even their preferred conspiracy theories -- like QAnon -- are shout-outs to the Blood Libel, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and other anti-semitic myths.

    Greg: Because we share a language, the UK's anti-vaxxers are swimming in the same pool of sewage as the American ones. This shows up explicitly in nonsense like Tuesday's "Sovereign Citizen" anti-maskers attempted occupation of Edinburgh Castle, citing Magna Carta (not even a thing in Scottish law).

    613:

    Considering the Farrago crew as the British equivalent of the US's Trump crew, that does seem to be where it is coming from - the ultra-fascist anti-EU seducers painting themselves gleaming white and selling their shit to our extensive pool of ignorant dimwits with no power of critical assessment. Different names, but same garbage and same process.

    614:

    "A more recent belief is that vaccines have had graphene dioxide for many years and it has been activated by the 5G radiation. Evidence for this is that graphene dioxide is super paramagnetic and explains why magnets stick to vaccinated people and dead chickens."

    Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow!

    615:

    ?? I'm more familiar with R0 being ~1.

    616:

    Thank you for that link. (The Independent article says basically nothing.)

    "Looks like they're using hydrogen to reduce the iron, which is useful."

    Shame they don't say anything about how. They say only that it's endothermic so you have to put energy in, but that's not an explanation, it's just a statement of the problem. With enough energy about the reaction can go in the direction you want, but some other condition must also exist to make sure it actually does to a useful extent.

    617:

    Delta variant is "as contagious as chickenpox", which has an R0 of 10-12. Delta isn't quite that bad, with an R0 of 6-8 (depending on source).

    618:

    Given how the average supermarket chicken is created, I would not be surprised if magnets stuck to them. But reversing the neutron flow isn't enough - what we need is a tinfoil hat that will repel the omega neutrinos that the gummint is using to program us with.

    619:

    Do you have a reasonably solid link to your first sentence?

    620:

    SO -are our, British anti-vaxxers "White Supremacists" or are they, simply - Stupid & Gullible?

    A significant number of your anti-vaxxers appear to be racist fuckwits, which to a first approximation is congruent with "white supremacist".

    621:

    Given its properties, there is essentially no chance of wiping it out, even if the entire world were vaccinated. Sorry.

    A more serious vaccination problem is how the Taliban are going to react to the polio eradication program. A pox on the CIA.

    622:

    By some reports as many as half of all doctors and nurses in the NHS are thinking about quitting the field entirely when the current pandemic subsides.

    That's playing out here too. The Alberta government has just cut the pay of nurses (which has been frozen for five years) by 3%, which has not had the expected effect of making them grateful they have jobs and willing to work unpaid overtime… :-/

    624:

    Robert Prior #624. "That's playing out here too. The Alberta government has just cut the pay of nurses (which has been frozen for five years) by 3%, which has not had the expected effect of making them grateful they have jobs and willing to work unpaid overtime… :-/"

    Kenny really does seem to be running a master class in how not to run a province successfully.

    To be fair, he is from the party of big oil and antigovernment, which has been in government for most of the last century.

    He is unable to do the right thing because his party will eat him alive, and he lacks the intelligence or the ability to think of anything other than the usual right wing pablum which never works. 'There is a virus - cut taxes. Climate change - cut taxes. Thermonuclear war - cut taxes. Why isn't this working?'

    625:

    Robert Prior @ 567:

    Hadn't heard that before. Loss of taste/smell appears to be the primary identifying symptom, but I don't have any of the others - sore throat, fever, headache

    Apparently it's one of the differences with Delta (or maybe Delta+), as well as being vaccinated.

    The loss of smell/tase seems to be from the virus infecting neurons, so it makes sense that not having that happen is a Good Thing™ — especially given that some 30% of infections go on to develop persistent neurological symptoms.

    Not disputing that not having that one symptom is a good thing. Just noting that whatever the reason for its absence, not having the other symptoms either means the cough is probably not Covid. .

    626:

    The problem is not the neutron flow, but the bozon* flow.

    *Bozons are the particle which carries stupidity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bozo_the_Clown

    627:

    Robert Prior @ 569:

    One of the guys I worked with at newspaper in Durham (my senior year I was the gofer for the advertising department) told me about going to jail for running off to South Carolina to get married. They weren't even under age at the time. He was 18 & she was 25.

    How long ago was that? Two adults…

    Unless the law was very different at the time, it sounds more like a corrupt judicial system than a legal matter.

    I'd guess he was between 25-30 when I worked there, so he'd have been 18 sometime between 1955 and 1960 (?) ... and absolutely it was a corrupt system.

    628:

    Yes. It clarifies the aspect that raised my eyebrows - I am afraid that you simply made a mistake. The 'Delta variant' and 'Delta' are the same, and there's simply dissention on exactly how contagious it is.

    629:

    Ok, new tech articles.

  • Alibaba's AI is more accurate than human volunteers in answering questions given just pictures as inputs (81.26% vs 80.83%). https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3145525/alibabas-algorithm-powered-machine-outperforms-humans-understanding
  • a. This has been done for years by feeding the outputs of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) into a LSTM decoder. b. This is the equivalent of the SuperGLUE test for language extraction, where 3 models have higher accuracy than the human baseline (89.8%).

  • I wonder to what extent gene testing sites such as Ancestry were responsible for the changes in the 2020 Census composition?

  • Someone is selling an electromagnetic gun in the US. I don't think it's very useful, but cool toy. Do you guys see an obvious use case where rail guns are better than traditional guns, except in space? https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2021/08/05/arcflash-labs-gr-1-anvil/

  • Here is a rundown of Chinese companies trying to compete with Nvidia, especially on GPGPUs, which are optimized for AI applications https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/In-depth-Chinese-chipmaking-upstarts-race-to-rival-Nvidia

  • Carbon-free steel is beginning to scale up. They have a long way to go, but it's an important step https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/19/first-fossil-free-steel-produced-in-sweden-delivered-to-volvo.html

  • Looks like the porn industry is going to be a pioneering use case for cryptocurrency https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/19/onlyfans-porn-ban-is-cryptos-opportunity-of-a-lifetime/

  • TickTock is the first social network branching out into face and voice biometrics. Personally, I think that they're trying to extract the features which Facebook already gets through text and image extraction, but the China angle can't be dismissed. https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/19/senators-challenge-tiktoks-alarming-plan-to-collect-users-voice-and-face-biometrics/

  • This new sub might have practical uses outside the oil and offshore wind turbine industries https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/19/bedrock-modernizes-seafloor-mapping-with-autonomous-sub-and-cloud-based-data/

  • What do you guys think of Zuckerberg's metaverse idea?

  • 630:

    What can one do about the anti-vaxxers that does not involve killing them all? A simple recital of: Polio / Measles / Diphtheria / Smallpox .... etc. should convince anyone, but it seems not to. Why the fuck not?

    In addition to the already mentioned propaganda/brain washing, most of the population has never experienced those diseases - ironically enough thanks to vaccines - so doesn't fear them.

    Same reason why some parents stopped getting their kids vaccinated - they were easily swayed by junk on social media because they had no direct experience with those diseases, which of course has resulted in occasional measles outbreaks in kids in the US for the last 10 years.

    631:

    TomSmith @ 584: A more recent belief is that vaccines have had graphene dioxide for many years and it has been activated by the 5G radiation. Evidence for this is that graphene dioxide is super paramagnetic and explains why magnets stick to vaccinated people and dead chickens.

    Do they offer any EVIDENCE for this? I am fully vaccinated & I have chicken breasts in the freezer. I just did a quick experiment using some magnets I have and they don't stick to me or to the chicken.

    Why take the word of some anonymous on-line THEY when you can test it for yourself? Don't THEY teach the basic scientific method in high school any more?

    632:

    All the magnets you can buy were manufactured by companies in on the conspiracy. You need special magnets without the vaccine chip detector chip.

    Obviously.

    633:

    I just did a quick experiment using some magnets I have and they don't stick to me or to the chicken.

    It is the brass keys that magnetically stick to organic material that has been vaccinated.

    634:

    JReynolds @ 594: Whitroth @541:

    I do get annoyed at people who, after I've given them information, ask for it again, as if they are robots who can only follow a script.

    I was a phone jockey at an inbound call centre a decade ago (contracted with Crapital One).

    Often the person on the phone at the help desk has an on-screen form they're having to fill in and all that information you're piling on them might not be on the current screen. They're slowed down by typing in the relavant fields and maybe don't remember everything you've told them by the time they get to a certain field, so they need you to repeat some of what you've already told them (I too have experience working the help desk for a very large multi-national computer manufacturer).

    Modern call centers are not staffed by engineers & programmers. The Tier 1 call takers have a Script and a decision tree AI. Even if they know what the problem is, they're not allowed to skip forward without dotting all the 't's & crossing their eyes. And usually they DON'T KNOW how to solve the problem, but they have to go through their script before they're allowed to escalate the call.

    And frequently - just frequently enough to keep it from always being a total waste of time - the answer IS somewhere in the script.

    PS: I have a last name that is frequently (I want to say ALWAYS) misspelled and I have a southern drawl, so the employees at call centers outside of the U.S. have trouble with my name even AFTER I've spelled it for them a couple dozen times and until they can get it right they're stuck on that field in the database & can't move forward.

    635:

    Greg Tingey @ 605: Charlie
    Long-Covid really scares me - much more so than getting & recovering from a bout of the disease itself.

    I know you can still get Covid after being fully vaccinated, but how effective does being fully vaccinated appear to be at keeping such an infection from becoming "Long-Covid"?

    I've seen a lot of news stories that the people who are dying from Covid are unvaccinated; that when fully vaccinated people do get it, it's a milder disease. But what about vaccination and "Long-Covid"?

    636:

    whitroth @ 607: Since he was saying he wanted to "drown the US government", I'd say that qualifies as "making war on the US", and "giving aid and comfort to the nation's enemies".

    Doesn't quite work that way. The Supreme Court ruled that someone must be present (and participating) during a military action to qualify as "making war" on the US. I doubt even some of those present at the Jan 6 Capital invasion will be charged with Treason.

    It was 1807 BTW. Jefferson was the President

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_parte_Bollman

    637:

    Elderly Cynic @ 620: Given how the average supermarket chicken is created, I would not be surprised if magnets stuck to them. But reversing the neutron flow isn't enough - what we need is a tinfoil hat that will repel the omega neutrinos that the gummint is using to program us with.

    Do you know where to get real TINfoil? There used to be a place that sold it on-line for recording audio on antique Edison phonograph cylinder machines, but even that place seems to have disappeared.

    Aluminum foil is just NOT the same!

    638:

    Charlie @ 614 Oh SHIT

    639:

    dpb @ 634: All the magnets you can buy were manufactured by companies in on the conspiracy. You need special magnets without the vaccine chip detector chip.

    Obviously.

    How did THEY know how to include the "vaccine chip detector chip" in magnets manufactured before I was born? And, I'm pretty sure they weren't able to miniaturize vacuum tubes that tiny back then.

    640:

    I know Delta is a variant.

    We were originally told (by the CDC) that it was a contagious as chickenpox, so R0 of 10-12. Newer data seems to show it's not quite that contagious, with R0 of 6-8 — which is still bad enough.

    I was assuming that Erwin's R0 > 8 was referencing the earlier CDC "contagious as chickenpox" analogy.

    641:

    You know what's worse? They called it "THE Magna Carta".

    642:

    And apparently didn't read it, as article 61 doesn't say anything about occupying castles or museums…

    643:

    3: I skimmed. It's as powerful as an airgun.

    Last: metaverse? I expect it to be exactly as effective and well-produced as faceplant... that it, an utter PoS.

    644:

    They have to be 5.5G magnets, don'tcha know?

    645:

    “How did THEY know how to include the "vaccine chip detector chip" in magnets manufactured before I was born? “ Well that just proves how deep this thing goes. THEY have had current electronic stuff for a long time, obviously. Dr Zeus and co.

    646:

    May I please beg your indulgence in providing your data confirming that assertion re: the anti-vaxxer economy?

    647:

    ANOTHER corrupt, money-grubbing lying tory - selling-off a burning planet for a few pence in his pocket. Why am I not surprised?

    648: 628 - There's just one little thing I don't understand; there seems to be no mention of the British Prime Minister in this article. 631 (3) - Well, anywhere you want a kinetic projectile, but emphatically do not want a deflagrant or explosive (yes there is a difference) propellant.

    (5) - By definition there is no such thing as "carbon-free steel": You can make a low carbon emission steel by:- a) Using hydro, solar and wind power to generate the electricity. b) Starting with a low carbon cast iron as your base alloy. That said, I have rather ignored emissions in mining the iron ore, and extracting the cast iron feed stock.

    633 Para 3 - I don't think the scientific method is taught in schools any more no. Certainly I know medical personnel who've never heard of Occam's razor. 636 - Well, given where I used to live my usual reflex is to say %placename, and then spell it using phonetic alphabet without being asked. 637 Para 4 - Being vaccinated and still getting Long Covid can't be a thing; the English Broadcasting Corporation has never mentioned it! ;-)
    649:

    Only £3k? They really are cheap!

    650:

    Yes, but that's not how I read your posting that started this. As I said, I am interested in reports of significant new variants, and thought that you said you had found such a claim.

    651:

    But what about vaccination and "Long-Covid"

    Well a part of it is "long" means studies that take time. And so far we're looking at only the early stages of "long" and don't know how long long will turn out to be.

    Then, as best I can tell, there are all kinds of questions about to what degree Long Covid is from the virus messing things up in your brain and organs or is the result of oxygen deprivation over days/weeks. Or a combination of the two factors.

    If the former than getting Covid, especially Delta or maybe newer ones we don't know much about, after a vaccination may have a higher chance to give you Long Covid. If the later then getting an asymptomatic case may be "OK". For various definitions of "OK".

    652:

    And now for something different.

    Was at dinner with some long term friends. All of us vaccinated. One of them works for a very large multi-national tech company. One issue about going back to in office work is .... drum roll ..... MICE.

    With no one in the buildings, the mice discovered a nice environment in the desk drawers to nest and all kinds of snacks in desks and vending machines. Mice are mostly gone as the food eventually ran out but all kinds mice nests and poo in desks all over the complex.

    Oh yeah. They are working remotely from Hawaii till they have to go back to work.

    653:

    Answers:

    1) Why do you think that they were paying attention? Science is effectively not a mandatory subject.

    2) No. Only a few schools did, and only for a short time.

    3) See #108.

    4) Dogma trumps evidence, as we all know.

    654:

    I have a fairly common Highland surname, with a large number of more-or-less correct spellings (Gaelic being a purely verbal language until recently) - it is almost invariably copied incorrectly from a printed example in one country, but rarely in all others. Spelling it out helps less than half the time, and I have to waste time correcting their error the rest of the time (not always successfully)! No prizes for guessing the one country.

    655:

    Well, I came up with 2 nations; ironically both of them claim their official language is "English".

    656:

    Try the closer one ....

    657:

    5) In many schools experiments have been replaced with simulations/videos, because they are cheaper/easier/safer/'just as effective'*.

    *A few years ago at a conference I was chatting with a science teacher who was her board's safety officer. She said it was frustrating, because any injury in a science class was grounds for prohibiting whatever caused the injury (except badly behaving students, apparently), while injuries and fatalities in sports were just part of life and shrugged off with no changes.

    Not that they're effective, but honestly most school "experiments" aren't really experiments, they're cookbook activities where students are graded by how closely they match the expected outcome. Real experiments with controls etc are hard and time-consuming to run in a school environment*, especially with reluctant students willing to (a) cheat and (b) mess with the equipment for lulz.

    *Period usually 70 minutes here, but often arbitrarily changed with no notice by school admin, and students pulled for guidance/sports with no notice.

    658:

    Yes, but that's not how I read your posting that started this.

    You made the mistake of reading what I actually wrote, rather than what I thought I was writing! :-)

    My fault. I worded my post poorly.

    659:

    Mistakes happen. Anyway, no nus is good news.

    660:

    In related news: here in Edinburgh there's a shuttered Royal Bank of Scotland office building, closed since some time in 2019 (pre-COVID). It was due to be refurbed and sold off as offices for someone else (RBOS closed it when they moved to a huge new campus out of town). And recently the local newspaper published photographs taken from outside, showing a fox sunning itself in a window. Inside the building, that is.

    So maybe there aren't many mice there right now. Right?

    661:

    So did it appear "plump"?

    662:

    "Gaelic being a purely verbal language until recently"

    really ? http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/4940/1/MacCoinnich4940.pdf

    663:

    Classical ‘Common’ Gaelic, also known as Early Modern Irish or Classical Irish (the names favoured in Ireland), are the terms used to describe written Gaelic between c. 1200 and c. 1650 in Ireland, and also in Scotland. This Classical Gaelic has been described as a sort of ‘Gaelic esperanto’ which differed, perhaps markedly, from the vernacular Gaelic of Scotland and from that spoken in many parts of Ireland, especially towards the end of the ‘Classical Gaelic’ period.

    Little other than limited personal and placename evidence is evident of the Gaelic speech of much of the highlands from the late medieval / early modern period.

    I said that it is a Highland name, and meant just that. Yes, perhaps I should have stated that it is Scottish Gaelic (rather than Irish, and its classical derivative) that was a purely spoken language. Irish Gaelic has a longer record of writing than English, if I recall.

    664:

    How's this for a start? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01260-6

    I searched for antivaxxer economy. Further information is left as an exercise for the student.

    665:

    I was under the impression that you got to do the experiment, and if it didn't come out right, with the other students' and the instructor's aid, you should find out why it didn't work.

    Assuming there was time.

    Periods in the US are about 50 min, allowing 10 min to get to your next class.

    666:

    There are a couple of issues here.

    One is a (hopefully abandoned) practice I ran into in freshman chemistry: the lab TAs did the experiment, took the means of their results, and graded students on how many SDs their result was away from the mean of the TAs. Some people figured this out, fudged their data, and got As. Others had problems, took the time to work out what was going on, and got Cs. Since I know someone who made a career out of teaching chemists not to do this assinine stuff, I think it's been abandoned.

    Other things that have been abandoned: large chemical amounts in labs. Why do something with grams when it can be done with miligrams? big amounts are a) expensive, b) often more toxic, leading to disposal and exposure problems, and c) really fun to store in earthquake zones (the Chemistry Department at UC Berkeley was one block away from, and perpendicular to, the Hayward Fault. I hope they've moved it by now). The person in the previous paragraph switched from a chemistry PhD to an education PhD due to exposure-induced allergies. She still worked in a chemistry department, but as an educator, not a researcher.

    This is a really, really good reason to do simulations, incidentally: in a simulation you could conceivably have a freshman see what happens when you vary the amounts of potassium metal you add to water. In a real lab, this is probably a bad idea. While I agree that safety training and learning physical techniques are important, but there's a balance between learning the principles and learning to do stuff. Sometimes principles can be better taught online.

    Then there's the problem with labs where students design their own experiments, something popular a few decades ago. The students designed their experiments, did them, and typically the setup didn't work (no surprise). So they wrote up a paper about what happened, went through an edit process (!), and learned that science didn't work. Meanwhile, their peers doing more traditional lab exercises associated vocabulary with structures and techniques, and had no trouble with advanced classes. I know which one I preferred. That "I learned that science didn't work" line came from a student who got A's in the modern classes, and was rather pissed off when she found out what she'd missed by listening to her advisor, who had denigrated the more traditional classes as worthless.

    Those are the bad stories. There are a lot of good ones too, about how someone learned to be a scientist and made a career out of it.

    [[ html fix - mod ]]

    667:

    And which Gaelic would this be? Arran, Kintyre, Islay and Jura, Mull, Skye, Uists and Benbecula, Lewis and Harris, Munster, Leinster, Connaught? They do all differ.

    668:

    Paws & EC The Boss' name is "Neil" ( AS in McNeil of Barra, IIRC ) The number of times that is mis-spelt is legion ... especially including. "Neal" & Kneale"

    669:

    I was under the impression that you got to do the experiment, and if it didn't come out right, with the other students' and the instructor's aid, you should find out why it didn't work.

    Assuming there was time.

    Time being a real constraint, but students typically struggle with "why". The usual answer is to blame your lab partner for making a mistake :-)

    In the last decade I've really got away from the idea that a lab "didn't work". That implies mistakes (which can happen), and I'd rather the students think about interpreting their results. So I usually phrase it something like "Did your lab produce the results you expected? If not, how can you explain the results you got? Can you suggest refinements for the procedure? Do you need to refine your hypothesis?"

    If I had enough continuity I would run labs over two periods: the first running the procedure and gathering data, and the second analysing and discussing the results. Unfortunately, doing a two-period activity means that about 10% of the students will miss one of the two periods and need accommodation…

    A note to Brits: in Canada there are no lab technicians/assistants for science teachers. We set up the labs, mix chemicals, repair and put away the equipment, etc. So doing a lab involves a 'tax' on the teacher not present in other subjects*.

    Periods in the US are about 50 min, allowing 10 min to get to your next class.

    We have 70, with 5 minutes to get to the next class.

    *English teachers here always talk about how time-consuming marking essays is. When I inquire I invariably find that I am marking as many or more essays/reports as they are.

    670:

    Then there's the problem with labs where students design their own experiments, something popular a few decades ago.

    We did that for a few years. The problem was that it took too much time to review/conference/edit the procedures before we had to do the lab, accompanied by lots of parents demanding that their little darling get the last review slot so they had the most time to prepare the procedure (not to mention complaints that the teacher hadn't taught the student the procedure that they were supposed to design themselves…).

    We used to run a Rube Goldberg contest, and stopped it because students began just watching YouTube and throwing something together the night before… and it was embarrassing when we had a TV crew and engineers taking time off work to judge it to see how little the students cared.

    Possibly generational, possibly changing demographics in the neighbourhood. We now have to scaffold activities far more than we used to.

    671:

    Also Neill and Neall, oh yes and Niall. I make that 6 valid spellings of the one pronunciation. Then there also variations on McNeil and O'Neil...

    672:

    Even excluding its forms in other languages including, apparently, Nigel! When Anyone With Clue is faced with such a name in writing or spelled out, they copy it as it is. Unfortunately, there is a serious shortage of Clue.

    673:

    ...recently the local newspaper published photographs taken from outside, showing a fox sunning itself in a window. Inside the building, that is.

    Coincidentally, there's also news about virtual foxes.

    Apparently in the Skyrim game there's long been a rumor that if a player follows a wild fox the NPC animal will lead them to interesting and profitable places. But... why? Why would a fox care about treasure? Was this some programmer's easter egg or secret advantage? Or is this just a myth, since if players walk long enough they're likely to find something interesting, with or without a fox?

    It turns out this is real but not intentional, a side effect of how the software models the game world. A fleeing fox wants to put stuff between it and the player avatar, and there is a lot less stuff in wilderness than in 'interesting' places like ruins.

    674:

    Elderly Cynic @ 655: I have a fairly common Highland surname, with a large number of more-or-less correct spellings (Gaelic being a purely verbal language until recently) - it is almost invariably copied incorrectly from a printed example in one country, but rarely in all others. Spelling it out helps less than half the time, and I have to waste time correcting their error the rest of the time (not always successfully)! No prizes for guessing the one country.

    There are a couple of things for which I PAY for tech support. I have a contract. For some reason if they don't spell my last name correctly, they can't find the account even when I give them the account number. Apparently having the name misspelled nullifies the account number. I can't explain why this would be so, but it IS my experience.

    The call center might be anywhere in the world. But once they have my last name (spelled correctly) and my account number, I am transferred to a call center here in the U.S. (where the drawl is not a problem).

    If the representative at that second tier call center can't fix the problem over the phone or over the internet, I get a replacement over-nighted to me and a box with a pre-paid shipping label to ship the old one back.

    675:

    Sigh.

    Ok, going to give a response here that many will not understand (@ your twitter with "David Icke = Lizards = antisemitism). It's the wrong way around, just like the above discussions about Covid and Wuhan have been (JBS kinda gets it, but not really). It's about "are you an Octopus or a Squid or did you accidentally mis-attribute Carcinisation?[0]" and how people get to their conclusions. Yes, it might look like that, but is it, really?

    Oh, and we're going to tie this into Covid and it might break your Brain a little.

    First off: early D. Icke stuff is 100% not antisemtic. Having read it[1], the morphology is all different. Lizard people really do exist, in that they are in contact with dimensional beings who are not friendly to humans and do deals for power which has a distinct effect on their Brain / Humanity (on a multi-dimensional level). i.e. Humans with Power do these deals, they become "less Human". It's not exactly a million miles away from actual research[2] getting to that point 20 years later. Just with a load of LSD based stuff attached to it.

    And most of them are not Jewish, they're WASPs (Mr Icke has small willy provincialism written all over him).

    Now Then, Now Then: who profits from making a (rather non-scientific and cruddy) critique of Power into those old bugbears? Well - Newsflash. It's called MI5, ADL, FBI etc. Re-writing the "new" into the "old" pathways is what they are paid to do. Well, that was obvious. Put him on Wogan, laugh a lot, when he gets a bit of a following, switch it into "Lizard people is AS".

    Literally, I can give you the names, funding and contacts for the people in charge of running this counter-culture stuff.

    But... that's boring. But the question you have to ask yourself is this: are all critiques of Power intrinsincally "antisemitic" (as you kinda just suggested) or are they made to look that way.

    Note: after 30 years and some dubious cash flows, of course... the original message can change.

    Moving on:

    Wuhan is/was:

    a) a CN / USA large co-project on bio-safety focusing on SARS b) has the original (sourced before dec 2020) virus, bat samples and pangolin strains because that is what it is supposed to be doing c) IS A PRODUCT OF AN EXTREMELY IMPORTANT JOINT EFFORT BETWEEN GLOBAL POWERS TO STOP THIS SHIT WHEN ITS THE REAL ACTUAL SHIT FROM EVERYONE GETTING PARANOID AND BOMBING THE SHIT OUT OF EACH OTHER d) Wuhan is also wired up to the global stuff which tells you when a 4 gets loose. Trust me, it's kinda a thing.

    Again, you're looking at this all wrong: Covid19 (in the scheme of things) is pretty much the D grade "this is easy mode" of pandemics. Flip it around, again: what if Covid19's accidental escape / 'origin story' was actually you getting very lucky indeed?

    See?

    What if D. Icke was being pushed as the mild stuff to defang some other more hard-core stuff?

    "the Protocols" is still on sale in Britain today - you just have to go into a "muslim bookshop" ( Well, some of them, anyway ) YUCK

    You should really ask yourself 'cui bono' here - House of Saud, CIA, NATO and so on. It's not exactly a fucking secret who the West backed to become the dominant vocies within Islam, is it now?

    And so on. Discuss it like adults or don't. Just don't pretend you're an Octopus when you're a Squid or worse, a crab.

    Literally cannot deal with people not understanding how this works. Climate: that's one thing you cannot finesse.

    And there's people who were eager to nuke the CCCP kinda looking at Climate and thinking "Hmmm". And they're not some shitty brain-washed kids in a bedshit with a Nazi flag on the wall, they kinda run major fucking Corporations.

    And there's a big fat "Bond Issue" bleeping right now saying: "ESG ain't gonna solve this one".

    ~

    No, really.

    Major hint kids: No one alive actually believes in Blood Libel outside of some extreme Catholic nonsense, the ADL / USA / IL paranoids and bottom-tier dross.

    All the smart racists are... working for the above. Paid muscle, mostly.

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation

    [1] Put it this way: it's not as good as Kant's Kritik der Urteilskraft, but then again: there's a reason for that reference. Hardley anyone espousing an opinion on it has actually read it, which goes just as much for Kant as it does for Icke.

    [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/04/25/the-disturbing-link-between-psychopathy-and-leadership/ -- this is a joke. It's Forbes.

    676:

    whitroth @ 666: I was under the impression that you got to do the experiment, and if it didn't come out right, with the other students' and the instructor's aid, you should find out *why* it didn't work.

    Assuming there was time.

    Periods in the US are about 50 min, allowing 10 min to get to your next class.

    That's how I remember High School Biology, Chemistry & Physics classes working.

    Usually the experiments were so limited & simple there was little chance of them not working.

    And when it didn't work it was pretty obvious what had been done wrong, so there was no question of time running out before the lesson was learned.

    677:

    And if you want to get really spicey, it is fundamentally reactonary to the core to rephrase all of this stuff into ancient "Blood Libel" stuff.

    If we have read Kant, so have they.

    Re-tooling and re-purposing old weapons is kinda a thing, and it is fundamentally dangerous to slip back into using the older versions because it allows the newer versions to slip between the Blood-Brain barrier so much more easily.

    Because you're not learning, you're regressing and that's half of what they're doing.

    ~

    And if you doubt that Mr Pompeo threatened the UK Nation with a coup if a certain Grandpa won, whelp:

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mike-pompeo-suggests-us-could-block-jeremy-corbyn-from-no-10-h5d3zzjb9

    The UK is no more soverign than Afganistan. It just hid it a little better until recent things occurred.

    678:

    (Also SotMNs warned back then. :-))

    Ask an actually interesting question: SARS viruses do not cross the blood-brain barrier (it's just not something they do/did, past tense). The reason for this is due to their ecological niche and their predation habits. Go look it up: it don't pay well in virus offset stuff to infect brains when your major vectors are pangolins (brains = pea) and bats (brain = pea).

    Grab yourself some rabies and go to work: you'll notice the major differences[1].

    Voice of the Mysterons: "It's just Zerohedge Russian Conspiracy Theories"

    ~

    Someone's doing something a whole lot more ultra-nasty on the QT. And we've only spotted six voices[0] noticing what they're doing.

    To tie this all into Nixon, you should probably see a film:

    "Jacob's Ladder" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099871/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJztRnDxdM8

    Fun note: they re-made it with an African American cast, zero budget (but with .mil backing for the physical props): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlPBFmJ-bE0 and lost a lot of the real meaning. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3016748/

    Now why oh why would people take something complex and new and make it old and shitty and boring....? Hit me up next time you need 10,000,000 innocents in your next 20 year war.

    ~

    https://twitter.com/TESLAcharts/status/1428540624203128837

    Tsla shilling "ROBOTS" for Mars. LOLS. They're literally telling you that AI / Robots ain't going to be used for anything but .mil (seen the recent parkour?) and that .... you the human will be subordinated under the suit / netjack into serving for Mars.

    Literally. Spitting. In. Your. Face.

    ~

    At least Covid19 was dramatic. But you should check out what the wet-ware Mind merchants were actually doing.

    [0] Out of literally billions

    [1] Come on: are we pretending that a major tick virus is not a bioweapon that got loose? Everyone knows.... Everyone knows.

    679:

    Usually the experiments were so limited & simple there was little chance of them not working.

    They're not really experiments, honestly. A small activity with the hypothesis and procedure already provided, and a foregone conclusion…

    Worth doing to develop lab skills, in the same way that musical scales are worth doing, but not really experiments as scientists do them.

    You can do real science in school, but it requires way more time than provided by a science class. If only science had "experimental classes" the way music has "performance classes" (which is basically rehearsal, for credit).

    On a semi-related note, if anyone has children (or grandchildren, given most of our ages) who are interested in experimental science, I've been impressed with the PocketLab series of sensors and accessories. The TurboTrack is cool for playing with dynamics, and you can 3D-print most of it to save money.

    https://www.thepocketlab.com

    Also, Phyphox is a cool (free) app that uses a smartphone's sensors to gather data.

    https://phyphox.org

    680:

    TAs did the experiment, took the means of their results, and graded students on how many SDs their result was away from the mean of the TAs.

    The TAs appear to have independently discovered this tool for prioritising decision criteria used in (some) qualitative research:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOPSIS

    I suppose it would be a novel (and obviously spurious) application.

    681:

    Looks like the constant 'nym-shifter is back, under yet another 'nym, no doubt taking advantage of OGH's absence to annoy and aggravate.

    682:

    D - Er, shell electron diagrams are a good model of atoms for certain purposes. Magnet and cloud models are better for other purposes.

    No-one over 18 should own a "smart" phone either; The biggest issue with them is the number of "smart" phone users who show a moving map and say stuff like "ain't it kewel?" and/or complain where their complaint translates as "The screen design is wrong because it's for landscape mode on a VDU over 1_000 pixels horizontal resolution".

    683:

    @ 676 The US & others backed Saud & therefore extreme Sunni - because of the OIL & for no other reason. I'm really surprised that the US isn't really pushing the drive to renewable/"green" forms of energy, because, then ... they can abandon the religious primitives

    @ 681 (b) - WRONG. Totally & completely WRONG There is, or should be discovery in education ... discovery of new ( To the pupils ) of new ideas & concepts & methods.

    ImaPsudonym But - as noted above, she(?) is, occasionally transmitting a clear message. Most unusual - we'll see how long this lasts.

    684:

    It's not hard to set up experiments where the conclusion is not predictable by the students - or even by the instructor. It's tricky to do so in a way that a clued-up person cannot predict that it must be one of a particular set or in a particular range, but that's not needed for that level of teaching. It's not even difficult to simulate them, but that is less satisfactory for psychological reasons.

    Your points about time, effort and resources (in that order) stand.

    685:

    SARS viruses do not cross the blood-brain barrier (it's just not something they do/did, past tense).

    Incorrect.

    See: The S1 protein of SARS-CoV-2 crosses the blood-brain barrier in mice ( Nat Neurosci. 2021 Mar;24(3):368-378).

    But it doesn't really need to cross the blood/brain barrier to fuck up your brain: it disrupts epithelial linings including those of blood vessels, including the mesh of capilliaries which provide perfusion to the brain. Lots of microvascular accidents -- mini-strokes -- do the damage: they trigger an inflammatory response in the immune tissues already present in the brain. (A bit more here.)

    Basically your take on COVID19 exemplifies the category error I'm pointing to in the OP up top: thinking COVID19 attacks people, not cells. Or in your case, thinking it attacks specific organs, not cells.

    Of course nothing evolved specifically to attack the brains of pangolins. But pangolin cells have ACE2 receptor sites, and human epithelial cells have ACE2 receptors, and that is a fat, juicy target.

    686:

    The school system for hoi polloi started out as training the raw material to perform arbitrary tasks at speed in response to external commands, punctuated by a bell -- see also the Victorian factory work environment. Also to read/write/sum sufficiently to be useful for tasks requiring basic numeracy and literacy (obeying a sign that says "SPEED LIMIT 15MPH" implicitly requires core literacy and numeracy and understanding of speed/distance).

    Over time, more stuff got dumped on it to add functionality to the basic worker-products: history and geography for nation-building (useful for your conscripts to have a sense of national identity), team sports (to get the conscripts used to cooperating under orders in small-unit groups, while viewing their rivals as a play-enemy), rudiments of science ("do not lick bare electrical wires"), for the girls: cooking, cleaning, sewing (to ensure minimum training standards among the domestic servants).

    Stuff like woodworking should be obvious; ditto metalworking and then machine shop.

    Advanced training took place in the factory/design shop via apprenticeship. A lot of what we today consider to be graduate or PhD level work was back then performed by men (almost always men) who left school at 15 and then did an engineering apprenticeship.

    Come 1958 and the "Sputnik moment" it suddenly became glaringly obvious that leaving science education to the Ivy League/Oxbridge/Elite academies was not going to produce enough R&D talent to make an end run around the perceived Soviet supremacy in missiles and nukes. (Which was not in fact a thing: just scared primates spooked by their own reflection in a mirror.)

    So a whole raft of new stuff got bolted on top, and the tertiary education sector mushroomed to dump STEM degrees into as many brains as possible, and due to internal competition the liberal arts faculties also grew proportionately, and suddenly degree-level qualifications for 50% of the population were a Thing.

    Which is why, 60 years later, we have elite over-production, PhDs paying off ruinous student loans while working as baristas, and indeed a PhD is simply a union card for jobs in the scientific research sector. (It has been, since at least 1980 and probably earlier.) It's why we also have huge heaps and drifts of junk research papers piling up on all sides (unverifiable or actually falsified research, or zombie trials because their statistical basis is invalid but they can't be dropped or the funding will go away), "peer reviewed" journals that are actually scams (when researchers are expected to pay to publish, and the journals milk university libraries for ridiculous fees, and the reviewers are unpaid, you've got to ask who profits), and giant projects that go nowhere in particular, at a snail's pace.

    There is no solution to this problem under actually-existing capitalism.

    687:

    (Admin update: death march is 2/3 done. Taking a day off for decompression, back to the word mines tomorrow then finished on Monday.)

    688:

    It's worse :-( Higher degrees/qualifications are increasingly used as an inappropriate filter - indeed, often one that selects on unsuitable candidates. Also, once a peasant has a student debt and family, they are discouraged from saying to abusive employers "Fuck you and your job - I am off to set up a business as a home-delivery agent for my local vegetable farm."

    689:

    Charlie @ 687 Which suggests, quite strongly, that taking anti-inflammatories is a good protection against (some of ) the nasty effects of C-19. Doesn't it? @ 688 team sports - to get the conscripts used to cooperating under orders in small-unit groups Which occasionally fails spectacularly. I must be a real outlier in that respect .... ( Cue Kipling on the song of the "Commissariat Camels" !! )s

    Nowadays. this vile trope has acquired a zombie life of it's own, together with the 24-carat pure BULLSHIT of it being essential for "fitness" "living a healthy lifestyle" etc, etc. HINT: My weight is now down to what it was 40+ years ago - fractionally under 80kg. I do no sports at all - I think the last "sport" I undertook wasn't one on any school curriculum I've seen, except as an after-hours "special" - fencing.

    690:

    I think the big change came in the 80s.

    In the 70s about 10% of school kids stayed on for 6th form and about half of those went on to university. So you ended up with 5-7% of people getting degrees. Of course, at that point you had student grants and A levels were on a percentage grades basis.

    Now A Levels are modular with continual small exams/tests, its decidedly more tick box orientated and student loans funded. Suddenly half the school population are going into universities and theres not enough demanding jobs out there to justify that proportion - but lots of people want the "university experience" - rather than turning up because they really love the subject. Which isn't to say the 1970s students didn't get drunk, stoned, laid and dance, but with most the people I knew they were going to do that some of the time whether they went to university or not. A gap year wasn't even invented and you certainly didn't fly to Prague for a weekend gettng hammered.

    Yep, they insist on turning out the STEM based kids which is kind of cruel because when you hit the work place you suddenly discover that the good pay goes to the accountants and anyone who has management in their degree title*. Where I work a graduate turning up from Oxbridge with a 1st in physics will be recruited 2-3 grades lower than a qualified accountant and will then need 10 years to reach the same grade - by which time they are £250k down on the deal.

    We recruit arts graduates too as project manager and management trainees (one of my line managers was a drama graduate I wouldn't have trusted him alone with an electric toaster) and its obvious that while UK PLC demands scientists, it really doesn't like them.

    As our OGH implied, we're screwed.

    My preference is for bringing back exams where only a given proportion get a certain grade - people have not got brighter over the last 20 years, its just the current system ensures natural talent is impossible to distinguish from carefully coached hard work.

    *Niche exception banking - we lose IT staff that way a lot - but the accountants are still paid better, even there.

    691:

    Higher degrees/qualifications are increasingly used as an inappropriate filter

    Back in the late 80s, when I lectured at a community college, I learned that one of the requirements to get into cosmetology* was a credit in advanced functions and/or calculus.

    Nothing whatsoever to do with the program, but they had 10 applicants for every opening and were looking for a way to cut the numbers.

    *Hair and makeup, as distinct from cosmology. (For one thing, cosmetology has better job prospects!)

    692:

    That “occupy the Castle” protest would have been more interesting a few years ago,when Edinburgh Castle was still a working military Headquarters (52 Brigade HQ, the local Royal Military Police detachment, a Security Section, etc - up to a decade ago, I think). At night, the tour guides and Historic Scotland would all leave, and the soldiers who did the shortbread-tin dress uniform stuff in daylight would change uniforms, and patrol the Castle (note that PIRA bombed in in the early 1970s, trying to kill the lone piper at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo).

    Try that sort of stuff in those days, and the results might have been a bit more amusing; perhaps the Duty Officer declaiming loudly within protestor earshot: “No, Sergeant Smith, you can’t just shoot them, and bayonets are still a bit excessive. How about we just say that they fell off the battlements?” followed by a rapid and entirely voluntary/peaceful exit :)

    693:

    Our school was big on life skills; make sure we could swim before leaving Primary School, Junior First Aider certificate in S2 (year 9 for those unfamiliar with the Scottish education system). I’ve got memories of doing the Amateur Swimming Association “Personal Survival Award” - bronze to gold awards, and “honours”.

    You entered the water clothed, trod water for a period, then made a float from your clothes; then swam a set distance within a time period (including underwater), and leave the pool without benefit of steps. It was progressive; for early awards, you just wore pyjamas over your swimsuit, but by the gold/honours you were wearing trousers, shoes/socks, and two layers on top. The entry height, durations, and distances increased, and the timings shortened. It wasn’t just “improvise floats from trousers”, you also had to demonstrate a float with a long-sleeved shirt IIRC.

    At a guess, it came from a similar place to the old Army Swimming Test (enter water from a height, swim a distance, climb out of the water unaided). They were an emulation of the likely skills required to survive your troopship (or evacuation liner) being torpedoed by some dastardly U-boat captain; get into the water, swim to a lifeboat/raft, climb to safety, not assuming that a life jacket was accessible (worst case: at night, without warning).

    They’ve modified them since - travelling by ship isn’t as common, so the likely scenarios/demonstrated skills have changed… I think it’s now “demonstrate a huddle, to support the person in the group without a buoyancy aid”

    694:

    Martin Once or twice, idiot drunks have come in from the Thames side to The Tower .... To meet the patrolling ( v small ) garrison soldiers, who have fixed bayonets. Apparently, they have all retreated to the river .... [ I've been to "The ceremony of the Keys" - quietly impressive. ]

    695:

    "Amateur Swimming Association "Personal Survival Award""

    Yes, I'm pretty sure that must have been it, but you remember more about it than I do. Only they never told us there even was an "honours", or I'd have done that too.

    696:

    @668 those are all dialects of Scottish or Irish Gaelic as I'm sure you know, and that is a by no means exhaustive list of the former; you can still pick them out on the radio, helped (I'm told) by the distinctive accents.

    697:

    @664 For the period up to 1600 or so, literate Gaels used a different form of the language from those who were illiterate (in Gaelic) - how different is difficult to know. However you can sign up at a number of universities to study "Scottish Gaelic Literature" from the 17th century, indeed you can do the whole course in Gaelic if you wish. "Modern" Scottish Gaelic Literature seems to be delineated as from around 1900 onwards - sadly the world wars provided fresh creative input. So I guess it depends on how you define "recently". As a measure of... something, there are now a few Gaelic crime and SF novels (i.e. not translated from English).

    698:

    "My preference is for bringing back exams where only a given proportion get a certain grade"

    Ah, yes, grading on a curve, which some administrators love, and all competent teachers hate, hate, hate. Backstabbing 101 ahoy, and never mind actually learning anything.

    "its just the current system ensures natural talent is impossible to distinguish from carefully coached hard work."

    Which is fine, as there is no good reason to distinguish.

    JHomes

    699:

    Applying the idea to workplace performance reviews is one of the most efficient ways to destroy an organisation too.

    700:

    Grant: "its just the current system ensures natural talent is impossible to distinguish from carefully coached hard work."

    JHolmes: Which is fine, as there is no good reason to distinguish.

    I agree and IMHO the concept of "natural talent" should be unravelled, given the assumptions it embeds. However to be fair to Grant, I think what he meant here is that all else being equal for some specific students there are some specific subjects they would drift into dint of possessing both inclination and proclivity (wherever those came from), but if you make that subject a "gatekeeper" for something else for which there is high demand, especially a vocational pathway, then the risk is that these students will be swamped by the ones determined to follow the vocational path, who might have all sorts of advantages including time and space, extracurricular tuition or even life experience that makes the "chore" of dealing with the gatekeeper topic less challenging. It's a dynamic that, applied broadly, negates education as a pathway to meritocracy, because it entrenches advantage even over pathways that the oligarchs are not interested in.

    701:

    Well, yes. Apparently you know that now>/strong>. Date of publication: March 2021.. "past tense".

    Do a grep and feel a little tingle. (And feel free to hit up ~40 years of research into them wherein not even those working in Stage 4 could make that jump, it's not saying what you think it's saying unless you ascribe 'magical Eastern Science DNA' to CN researchers).

    It is... well. Let us say: after 40+ years of some of the most heavily funded (Wuhan cost a packet and had some of the finest minds, USA and CN, involved with its inception) labs in the world looking at SARS (like the MENA version), just put it this way:

    They're a fuck more surprised than you are about it happening.

    An analogy: you're a behaviouralist who considers mammals (non-Homo Sapiens) to have no theory of Mind. Then your dog paws the shotgun you've set aside to eat your lunch while you're out hunting ducks because you kicked her out of spite earlier in the week.

    ~

    The rest, well: plug into your googlebox / bing-bang / duckfuckduck and notice... some startling interwoven threads.

    They're all jokes, you just gotta ignore the Time stamp to make you feel safe.

    702:

    Ah, yes, grading on a curve, which some administrators love, and all competent teachers hate, hate, hate. Backstabbing 101 ahoy, and never mind actually learning anything.

    Back when I was in engineering college, we did a mock liability trial with the law students. They were astonished to learn that engineering students studied and worked together. Law was much more competitive — so much so that some students would razor-blade pages out of the reference works in the library to give themselves an edge. (Best clerkships went to students with the best (curved) marks.)

    Accounting is the same way. One of my nieces was studying for accounting qualification a few years ago, and I was astounded to learn that only a fixed percentage of students would pass the exam. So when you hire an accountant, their credential means they were in the top xx% of the year they sat the exam…

    Professional Engineering qualifications (in Canada) are different. There is a written exam, there is also a portfolio assessment and interview. The examiners do their best to be objective, and are under no constraints about what percentage of applicants will get their P.Eng. — it varies by year and the abilities of the candidates.

    703:

    cubic miles

    well, math and wine don't mix, who knew.

    Anyway, another go at it gets me: given a) 50 GT yearly carbon emissions b) 1 Ton pulverised olivine absorbs 1 Ton CO2 c) ~ 2.5 tons olivine per cubic meter (as rock)

    50 GT olivine occupies 50^9 m3 / 2.5 = 20^9 m3 = 20 km3 = 4.798 miles^3 ( /= 4.1681818 )

    ?

    704:

    Of course nothing evolved specifically to attack the brains of pangolins. But pangolin cells have ACE2 receptor sites, and human epithelial cells have ACE2 receptors, and that is a fat, juicy target.

    There's a meme for the moment: look up the brief half-life of the "Shroom Man", fieled about two months ago.

    pangolin - pengguling

    Pro-tip for those unsatisfied by "Woke Afganistan" UK models: go look up why D. Icke is so popular with Malaysian Revolutionary forces. OOOOOH, SPICEY. Naughty Naughty, why would Malaysians be so interested in D. Icke?

    But, back on track: pangolins are (shortly to become "were") 80,000,000 years old (roughly: put it this way, the model hasn't changed for at least 10,000,000 years).

    ~

    In science terms this means: it's sure as shit not possible to game their antibodies vrs an ACE2 attack because they are, literally, survivors of this stuff.

    And yet: novel stuff keeps happening to them, only in the 20/1 st centuries.

    Why?

    705:

    Grant @ 692: My preference is for bringing back exams where only a given proportion get a certain grade - people have not got brighter over the last 20 years, its just the current system ensures natural talent is impossible to distinguish from carefully coached hard work.

    I STRONGLY disagree with that. Such a system in inherently corrupt.

    If you can do the work & answer the questions on the test, you should get the mark you earned. There should NO arbitrary limit on grades. Because that always ends up with the teacher's pets getting the good grades and everyone else getting screwed.

    That happened in some Army "schools" I attended. "We only graduate the top 20 ..." or the top 10% ... is BULLSHIT!

    706:

    In the 70s about 10% of school kids stayed on for 6th form and about half of those went on to university.

    We had about the same in Ontario — 5% of students went on to uni then, about 25% now.

    I'm not convinced that more university education is a bad thing, if it could be accomplished without loading students with lifetimes of debt.

    In Canada undergraduate education subsidizes* both research and graduate education. Maybe the thing to do is separate out undergrad courses, price them more like community college classes or even cheaper, and accept a more educated populace as a public good**.

    One thing the profs I know have observed: good marks going into university are only loosely coupled to success at university. A system that condemns 19/20 to not having a chance is wasting a lot of human potential.

    *You can't convince me that an undergraduate lecture with 3000 students attending (the first 2000 in a hall, the rest over CCTV in other rooms) is worth over a thousand dollars, compared to a class in a room of 30 students for about $300.

    **However unfashionable that concept is nowadays.

    707:

    I STRONGLY disagree with that. Such a system in inherently corrupt.

    You mean the SAT? Talk about a corrupt system…

    The tests themselves are biased towards well-off students, both in terms of assumed cultural background and time to prepare. Studying for an SAT is time-consuming and expensive (study guides, tutors, coaches, etc*).

    Every time black students' scores start to rise towards white students', the exam is changed and their scores drop again.

    And they are unreliable as tests of knowledge/skill. An old colleague used to take the SAT, for fun, in languages he didn't know — and could reliably score over 40% by pattern-matching and understanding how multiple-choice questions are constructed.

    *Not strictly necessary, but gives you an edge.

    708:

    Didn't think that would make me friends.

    700: "Which is fine, as there is no good reason to distinguish."

    You may be right under day-today conditions, but under pressure, when pulling an all nighter because dire things will happen if you don't sort the problem out, I prefer the people I work with to be the sort that could have passed the exam with a hangover because they have a natural interest/talent for it.

    I dearly wanted to play guitar and worked at it. After 4 years I was awful I had not talent for it. My son can't work out if he would rather play drums, accordion or bass - he can play them all.

    I suspect that people operating at that level are more likely to innovate too.

    704: Is that in the US or UK?

    707: "I STRONGLY disagree with that. Such a system in inherently corrupt."

    Surely it merely has the potential to be corrupt, but only if the teacher marks your course work. In the 70's people who didn't know you from Adam marked your work. I wouldn't argue that it doesn't potentially favour the rich but thats true of almost any system due to the hot housing the public schools achieve.

    The drip feeding and regular exams of current A Levels merely reward endurance.

    I suppose my bottom line is, if I had brain surgery would I want the surgeon to be someone who could do it falling of a log or would I want the person operating right at the edge of their performance envelope.

    709:

    Anyhow, here's a film (2020) you should watch:

    Riders of Justice https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11655202/

    Mads Mikkelsen and so on. It's kinda good.

    p.s.

    You should probably look up studies (mostly NON-PUBLIC-SECRET) into pangolins and how they were using them... precisely because they have the oldest and grim-dark antibodies known to "MAN".

    ~

    But, like, whatever: Your society failed the "D" grade test. It wasn't even hard.

    710:

    My stepson got into the first year that the nearby high school had a couple of magnet programs - he got into the engineering one (the other was bioscience).

    He was also on the robot team, was really good at it, and the first? second? year that they were ever in the national event, their robot got to the regionals.

    He'll be getting his engineering BSc at the end of this term, I think.

    711:

    I lean towards those over 18 not having them, either.

    At the very least, the driver's seat of a car should be a Faraday cage, and there should be what was the Mayor of Philly's April Fool's joke of a few years ago, lanes on the sidewalk for distracted walkers.

    712:

    There was some idealism in the creation of the public school system, at least in the US.

    But.. yeah. 1980, requiring PhD's? In 1978, I got a good job working as a library page, which was when I went back to college, working for my degree. There was a Black woman who got a job working as a page with me. She had an M.Sc. in microbiology... and so couldn't get a job in the field. (That, and being a woman, and being Black.)

    It's a Good Thing I've never run into the people who ran the company my late wife and I worked for in the early '90s. After nearly 9 years as a lab tech, getting top reviews... she came back from lunch one Friday, and they laid her off. Never mind that, as a couple or three chemists said that she'd taught them how to do their jobs, she didn't have a degree. That Sunday, we saw the ad, looking for a chemist with a 4yr degree for lab tech work.

    Meanwhile, they hired me, with 11 years experience as a programmer as a "tech IV", and when they made the offer, the hiring manager apologized that they couldn't hire me as a Staff Scientist I, which they should have. Some of the people I worked with....

    As a friend with an MSc who was a Sr. Scientist there put it, Austin, TX was the most paper-snob town he'd ever seen.

    713:

    I'll note that in the US, they keep dumbing down high school classes. Most folks these days could not pass the tests my father passed, I'm sure.

    So now, community colleges (2 yrs) have to bring them up to what a high school diploma meant when I started working.

    714:

    I dunno. They change them partly so that students and scum "tutors" can't use the old tests to tell the kids how to pass.

    I got right around 1400/1600 on both parts, and I assure you, we were not well off. We READ, however.

    715:

    "Shame they don't say anything about how. They say only that it's endothermic so you have to put energy in, but that's not an explanation, it's just a statement of the problem. With enough energy about the reaction can go in the direction you want, but some other condition must also exist to make sure it actually does to a useful extent."

    Blacksmith and occasional hobbyist smelter here. Unlike using coal, coke, natural gas, or charcoal to reduce the iron oxide to metal by reacting the oxygen with carbon monoxide generated by the carbon source, the hydrogen process does the same with hydrogen. The main difference is that the carbon based systems burn their fuel and create both heat and the chemical (CO) needed to convert the iron ore, and the heat is enough to liquifiy both the iron and the non-iron material so the iron and slag can separate. In a short-stack smelter, if you use a tuyere with an optical port you can actually see the molten iron and slag form and separate as they move down the stack. The carbon burning in the air blast is exothermic, the conversion of the carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide is exothermic, while the conversion of Fe2O3 and Fe3O4 to FE is endothermic, the process overall is exothermic, to put it mildly. All you need is a good blower, no other power source needed, and you'll get iron out.

    With hydrogen, you roast the ore and pulverise it, then heat it up and flow hydrogen over it -- when you do this in a quartz or other transparent heat-proof reaction vessel, you can see the reaction moving down the tube as the oxide is reduced, a line of brightness in the ore. This generally doesn't get hot enough to melt the iron or to create slag, so any commercial process will have to separately heat the resultant sponge until the materials liquify and separate. This means the overall operation is endothermic, requiring initial heating of the ore charge and post-processing, while the actual conversion can be (with pure enough ores, the right starting temperature and pressure, hydrogen flow, etc.) self-sustaining.

    I also note that Sweeden was the last country to stop commercially producing iron made with charcoal, back in the 50s, so they are both the first country to start making fossil-fuel free iron now, and the last to have stopped making it.

    716:

    Oh dear, we are bck to obscurantist bollocks again, what a pity ( # 703 )

    whitroth There is also ageism as well as "paperism" MSc, over 40? Forget it. "We can't get the trained staff"

    717:

    Yes. You keep missing the point about the HIGHLANDS. The very, very few literate people living there would have used two languages - one to speak where they lived, and the other to write to their Lowland or Irish equivalents. You should look up the political and social conflicts between the Highlands and Lowlands during that period.

    718:

    Yes. It's not exactly advanced chemistry to know that; I learnt about hydrogen reduction of iron oxide at school, and stopped chemistry at O-level. On a large scale, the melting can be done somewhat more efficiently, by reusing the heat regained as it solidifies. What it is, is some pretty skilled engineering, to avoid having to rebuild the plant every run!

    719:

    Virtually all Scots speak at least 2 languages; one from Doric, Gaelic, Scots, Hebrew, Punjabi, Urdu, Cantonese and Mandarin, and this thing called English. Some of us speak more, but a modern European language is likely at least a 3rd language.

    720:

    But it doesn't really need to cross the blood/brain barrier to fuck up your brain: it disrupts epithelial linings including those of blood vessels, including the mesh of capilliaries which provide perfusion to the brain. Lots of microvascular accidents -- mini-strokes --

    Interesting! And so a disease which causes weird blood clots in peoples toes, and attacks the lungs, also hits the brain.. all through a similar mechanism.

    But aren’t epithelial linings kind of everywhere? Like, around all the organs and all through the body?

    721:

    My stepson got into the first year that the nearby high school had a couple of magnet programs - he got into the engineering one (the other was bioscience).

    Magnet programs are, quite intentionally, different and better quality than normal classes. Depending on how they are set up, they might have more resources and more trained teachers. They certainly have more administrator support. And also, the students have chosen to be there which is a filter for interest, whether or not there is an entrance requirement that is a filter for aptitude/knowledge/skill.

    He was also on the robot team

    We had one of those. Like all extracurriculars, running it required teachers to volunteer their time — it wasn't a class. It didn't get the same respect from admin that the sports teams got.

    722:

    But aren’t epithelial linings kind of everywhere? Like, around all the organs and all through the body?

    Yes, which is what makes COVID19 so terrifying: it causes low-level damage to multiple organ systems and we still don't fully understand the full extent and duration of its effects (although now we've got tens of millions of survivors and millions of dead the statistical evidence is piling up).

    723:

    They change them partly so that students and scum "tutors" can't use the old tests to tell the kids how to pass.

    You mean places like this? https://www.khanacademy.org/sat

    Back in the early 90s when I was in teachers college, one class we had looked at the SATs as part of looking at assessment and evaluation. There was a whole ecosystem of supplemental study guides, coaches, practice tests, etc all with College Board approval. And the biggest correlation with SAT score? Family socio-economic status.

    My sister has to pass requalification exams to keep her license. They're a bit of a joke, given that patients don't come with neat multiple-choice options, but at least they force some review of current medical practices.

    But an exam/assessment that has a whole industry of aides for helping pass the exam — not learning the material that is supposedly being assessed — is of limited use for assessing knowledge/skill/aptitude, because what it's actually assessing is the ability to pass the exam. It's Goodhart's Law in action: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

    And I find it more than a bit suspicious when the exam updates consistently negatively affect one group more than another. Seems a clear-cut case of bias.

    724:

    I know I've had student who want to go to American universities asking me for advice on studying for the SAT. I've also heard from American teachers about students doing that, because they need a certain SAT score to get into their dream college.

    I don't know how common it is, but I assume that if I've heard it multiple times from independent sources when I wasn't asking about it that it can't be that uncommon.

    I also know that getting into a top university is more competitive than it was when I was at university.

    Which is why, among other things, parents are paying to have their children diagnosed with a learning disability so that they will be allowed extra time on the SAT as an accommodation*. Varsity Blues only caught the really egregious cases.

    *I've had more than a few students whose parents have insisted that they get accommodations but resist having an actual IeP because they don't want their child "labelled". Admin often caves. Which is another reason I don't have nearly the faith in objective testing that some have.

    725:

    It's many $ many billions in the US: How the SAT failed America, (Forbes, Sep 30, 2020) And under heavy assault. (There are plenty of other tests for prep companies to make money off of, though.)

    726:

    Why do you think I never went for an MSc? I was afraid some moron/HR idiot (I repeat myself) would decide I was "overqualified", as well as too old.

    727:

    Wow, that's worse than I thought. Thanks for the link.

    728:

    No, not the support... but it did have a lot of support: partly brand new, partly the school used to have a bad rep, and they were trying to bring it up.

    729:

    Ah, no, that's not what I was saying. There are "tutors", etc, who pay students to collect - steal - the questions, and tell them what they are. This is not with the support of the College Board.

    730:

    pretty much the D grade "this is easy mode" of pandemics. Flip it around, again: what if Covid19's accidental escape / 'origin story' was actually you getting very lucky indeed? COVID-19 cases tend to be much more severe in the age cohorts that hold most of the power/money, which tended to amplify the response, at least until those cohorts were vaccinated. And the world now knows how (if willing, sigh) to respond to respiratory virus pandemics, with an abundance of natural experiments and enormously more data gathering and data science than in previous pandemics. Notably, the winter 2020 and 2021 southern hemisphere flu seasons ... weren't, and the winter 2020/2021 northern hemisphere flu season didn't happen either, due to anti-COVID-19 NPI measures being even more effective vs (the lower R0) influenza.

    KSR's "Ministry for the Future": "...the 2020 dip." True (and blunt). COVID-19 knocked a couple gigatons off of CO2 emissions, at least. And stirred up some significant political and economic (and social) awareness/changes/unrest. And was an exploited opportunity for further enrichment/power consolidation by some.

    Re the line about tick-borne viruses, I've assumed that you were talking about lazy conspiracy stuff that was circulated(no traction) about a 2020 outbreak of Dabie bandavirus, also called SFTS virus, Recent analysis: Molecular evolution and genetic diversity analysis of SFTS virus based on next-generation sequencing (April 2021) Based on coalescent analysis of the current data, it was believed that SFTSV originated in the early 18th century from Zhejiang province,...

    Re the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in a human population: They're a fuck more surprised than you are about it happening.

    Then your dog paws the shotgun you've set aside to eat your lunch while you're out hunting ducks because you kicked her out of spite earlier in the week. "Wōdan Shodan", 2017: "Not actual Dogs, it's a slur used for some H.S.S Minds."

    731:

    Robots

    We had one of those. Like all extracurriculars, running it required teachers to volunteer their time — it wasn't a class. It didn't get the same respect from admin that the sports teams got.

    I wonder how many teams are run by teachers and how many by outsiders. My brother was big into running teams for teenagers. To the extend it would elicit eye rolls from his wife when the subject came up. I suspect it was his stress reliever from his day engineering job. This was in Virginia outside of DC.

    732:

    Is/was this a big thing at some point?

    It is closely tied to helicopter parenting. And parents who want their kids into a "top" school but likely will not make it without a big SAT score.

    I was at dinner a few nights ago with my daughter's best friend there. She took the SAT twice. Missed one or two questions the first time. Wanted a perfect score and got it the second. But didn't study for it. (And she married someone a lot smarter than her.)

    733:

    "Wōdan Shodan", 2017: "Not actual Dogs, it's a slur used for some H.S.S Minds."

    It's also a Cheney joke[1], keeping with the themes. It's also a joke about Skinner (of the boxes) not being able to recognise REM sleep patterns in dogs. It's also a [redacted] joke. It's also a meta-joke (do a search for "hunter's dog shooting accident" and whistle at how long a trope it is). It's also a wail of anguish about certain things. It's also a nod to "those who know, know" that we're aware that they've been using Covid19 as an alibi to bump off dissenters (and we're not talking about rando USA hate gulpers, we're talking about AFRICOM level restructuring of CN involvement in the continent and some heavy-messing wet-work getting filed under "protested during IMF mission restatement" level stuff - you'll note Macron got "back on board" regarding immigration and Afganistan recently, probably not worth noting how the Franc(African) is doing).

    But, it's a joke that gets you an 'out of jail' card for all parties (or, more accurately, a "no loss of face" card):

    Oh dear, we are bck to obscurantist bollocks again, what a pity ( # 703 )

    By now Channel 4 (under threat of sale, deregistration and so on) has probably fielded their Covid19 documentary featuring Wuhan, the Chinese Government has placed its extreme objections to Biden and so on and so forth. And you'll have to be up-to-date with the issues at hand[2] in several spheres to understand the elegance of the solution: "Wild Card, bitches!" (this is a quotation from a film, we don't use such language in reality). See note [3]: it's not Armageddon if you fuck up.

    Diffusing a "big badda boom".

    The Guardian citations are ironic.

    ~

    Hint: you really have to have seen the films / know their plots to understand the contextual meaning. Just like you have to take 15 seconds to go look at the ADL burning down to know their Minds got fracked and notice that no-one is buying the kool-aid no more.

    [1] Cheney shooting victim says sorry - to Cheney https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/18/usa.dickcheney

    [2] The Wuhan lab leak theory is more about politics than science https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/22/the-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-is-more-about-politics-than-science

    [3] The tick-borne viruses thing is about a melange of US specific stuff: search terms: tick bite meat eating allergy; tick range environment warming; tick mysterious disease; lyme disease ticks ... but, essentially, it's on file and known that the US engineered a tick virus that escaped roughly 30-40 years ago on their own soil. Like anthrax, it's kinda another get out clause: According to the CDC, culture dishes of anthrax bacteria kept in a level 3 high-containment lab, were subjected to a treatment that should have killed them. Even though the treatment was reportedly experimental, the dishes were sent to a level 2 lower containment lab in the same building on 6 June, to help develop detectors for environmental anthrax. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25766-anthrax-escape-raises-worries-about-lab-grown-super-flu/ -- now ask any UK commentator here about anthrax, islands and sheep and they'll know the reference (we hope).

    734:

    I wonder how many teams are run by teachers and how many by outsiders. My brother was big into running teams for teenagers.

    Up here there must be a teacher responsible for the students, if it's a school-sanctioned activity. Like parents volunteering on field trips, they can come to help, but they can't run the activity by themselves. (And if anything goes wrong, it's the teacher who is legally responsible.)

    Our robot team had two tech teachers and a parent volunteer, who put in huge amounts of time (as did the kids). Did quite well. Learned many valuable lessons, including that management (ie. school admin) really doesn't value STEM.

    Or rather, they think STEM is Sports Teams, Equity, and Music. :-/

    735:

    Got a story here to warm the cockles of Greg's heart…

    https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/08/22/why-barrys-bay-could-be-the-perfect-incubation-box-an-example-of-a-small-towns-vulnerability-to-the-delta-variant.html

    The outbreaks and finger pointing have caused tension, often playing out in social media discussion groups but also in local businesses. Some residents blame out-of-towners for bringing the virus, while others point to the local Catholic community and say their religious objections to vaccines and masks put the community at risk.

    “When you put those numbers into the Canadian context … When less than 10 per cent of the high-risk contacts are fully vaccinated, it’s clear you’ve got a problem here,” Cushman said.

    Religious objections have proven to be a prominent reason for vaccine hesitancy, based on the false claim that vaccines contain aborted fetal cells. None of the COVID-19 vaccines used in Canada or the United States contain aborted fetal cells, but fetal cell lines, which are grown in a laboratory, are used in testing for the mRNA vaccines by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. Fetal cell cultures were used in the production of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.

    Mark Woermke, a local resident and writer for the Madawaska Valley Current, wrote a column in February about an anti-lockdown protest he observed in Barry’s Bay. He references two local publications, LifeSiteNews and Catholic Insight, which he says have stoked and encouraged the views of townspeople opposing vaccination by promoting skepticism about the efficacy of masks and conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID vaccines.

    “I was trying to demonstrate to local readers that this community is housing two right-wing, Catholic, pretty extreme publications that are definitely opposed to masking and vaccination and think that COVID is a hoax and conspiracy … those ideas are trickling down to local people who are making health decisions based on that misinformation,” Woermke said.

    So, even when the Pope calls vaccination a "moral obligation", local Catholics know better and can overrule him.

    736:

    If pope Francis stays on for much longer, and especially if he is succeeded by someone similar, I expect a lot of conservative Catholics to either join Sedevacantists, or declare an outright schism.

    737:

    Credentialism has become a scourge on students and employers alike.

    My first job after grad school was entirely because I was credentialed. All the boss cared was that I had an MA. There was a half hearted attempt to ask what I had studied, but she zoned out by about the third sentence of my description.

    I worked there for five years. When I started I was immediately put at a higher pay scale than a person who had been there for a decade, had immensely more experience, connections and skills than myself, and was certainly better at the job. A year later I was put in charge of him (which was a great gig for me since he was excellent and required very little of me).

    The only thing I had that he did not was an MA, and not in a field even remotely connected to what we were doing (Housing Policy).

    738:

    But an exam/assessment that has a whole industry of aides for helping pass the exam — not learning the material that is supposedly being assessed — is of limited use for assessing knowledge/skill/aptitude, because what it's actually assessing is the ability to pass the exam. It's Goodhart's Law in action: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

    I once went for a job at Compaq. On my CV there was a list of the Microsoft exams I'd passed up to that point (not enough for an MCSE, but one exam off). The interviewers asked a bunch of the usual questions "where do you see yourself in 5 years?" etc. Then, one said "which college did you study at for the MCSE exams?" There were dozens of MCSE boot camps in town that promised you an MCSE in X weeks or your money back.

    "I didn't go to a college, I just booked the exams direct"

    "So how did you study?"

    "I got the books, set up a test network at home and practised on that"

    The three interviewers all put down their pens, looked at each other and then said "when can you start?"

    739:

    Right. I can relate to that, from an interviewer's side! The skill I was looking for was primarily adaptability, because the job was bleeding-edge, and paper qualifications aren't a lot of use in deciding that.

    740:

    I don't even know what a Batman gambit is -- at least by that name.

    Sorry, I was looking at this part for the Laundry Files in TVTropes:

    Batman Gambit:

    • In The Apocalypse Codex, the Big Bad's plan hinges on the Laundry sending an elder operative who can be used to help with the invocation.
    • The Rhesus Chart as a whole. An ancient vampire who embedded himself in the Laundry used the Laundry itself as a tool to take down an even older vampire, by tempting the elder to create a "nest of baby vamps", then arranged for them to be snatched up by the Laundry and thereby blow away plausible deniability, then co-opting the elder vampire's pet vampire hunter, then manipulating the elder vampire to attack the Laundry personally. If the plan came of smoothly, the elder would be eliminated with prejudice by the Laundry, and even if it failed, both would be less one frustratingly effective government agency.
    • Lampshaded and Invoked by Nyarlathothep, saying that since true clairvoyance is probability-based, the best way to get it to go your way is to rely on this trope. It's why he had Mhari do the job, because the combination of her Impostor syndrome and the ability to play Xanatos Speed Chess is best way to fight Scry vs. Scry between the OPA and the new SOE.

    I forgot that others might not have read it. I blame my autism. Also if this is boring.

    741:

    RbtPrior Indeed ... Stupid religious primitives killing themselves off through said stupidity. Pity about their children, though.

    742:

    On inappropriate reactions to COVID19

    Holy crap. Do other countries have these folks also.

    Public comment time at Palm Beach county school board meeting. This is just north of Miami.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/ParlerWatch/comments/p74guf/this_school_board_meeting_antivaxxer_is_so/

    743:

    Do other countries have these folks also.

    Yes. You have quite effectively exported the memetic virus. The rest of the world is duly thankful for yet another gift from America.

    744:

    Teachers ran it. More than one, IIRC. They begged for parent help, and got some.

    745:

    THANK YOU! I'd never heard of Sedevacantists, and, in the novel I'm working on, a thousand years from now, on colonies not in the Confederation, one large "Christian" has a number of sects, and one, of course, is ultraconservative "Catholics", run by a council of Cardinals, led by one who's "more equal than the others", and now I have a name for them.

    And literally just last night the story started telling me about them, having realized I needed to show (not tell). Talk about timing!

    746:

    Whereas for me, it was the opposite. I got my first job, at a community college, without any college degree. I'd taken all the computer classes they offered... and one old friend was the (one and only) systems programmer for the mainframe (1980).

    I was hired as a sr. programmer I. I asked my (now late) friend why not as a jr. programmer... and he told me, and I quote, "they got rid of those positions a couple of years ago, because they were eligible to join the union."

    747:

    The thing that got me my last job was, as part of the interview (or was it before) - I was interviewing as a sr. Linux sysadmin - to write a script to dynamically ban an IP address. I'd never done it, but looked it up online, and wrote a perl script to do it, took an hour, hour and a half, and submitted that.

    I was told by my manager (who really did know what he was doing) that I was the only candidate who did that.

    748:

    Had I been there, I would have recommended that they Baker Act the woman (involuntary institutionalization).

    749:

    David L / whitroth / Rbt Prior We have got these dangerous lunatics running around here as well. Maybe it's some sort of virus they are catching? 😁

    750:

    Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to distinguish a memetic disease from an opinion and that method would hold up in court?

    751:

    Robert Prior @ 745:

    Do other countries have these folks also.

    Yes. You have quite effectively exported the memetic virus. The rest of the world is duly thankful for yet another gift from America.

    OTOH, one might wonder what it is about your countries that allowed this weed to find such fertile soil.

    752:

    OTOH, one might wonder what it is about your countries that allowed this weed to find such fertile soil.

    Shared language, shared mass and social media environment. Swim in the same sewage, get infected with the same faecobacteria.

    That, and some of the grifters are making a lot of money by peddling lies to the desperate.

    753:

    I think it's something in the water in the US South, and it's migrating. Weeds, weedkillers, something.

    754:

    Shared language, shared mass and social media environment. Swim in the same sewage, get infected with the same faecobacteria.

    This.

    755:

    I guess that would be Escherichia trumpi, Salmonella johnsoni, Vibrio farragensis and the like...

    756:

    Charlie Stross @ 754:

    OTOH, one might wonder what it is about your countries that allowed this weed to find such fertile soil.

    Shared language, shared mass and social media environment. Swim in the same sewage, get infected with the same faecobacteria.

    That, and some of the grifters are making a lot of money by peddling lies to the desperate.

    The worst part of it is how the grifters made those people so desperate in the first place.

    Abuse piled upon abuse piled upon exploitation piled upon ... It's "turtles all the way down" so to speak, until it almost seems like the only way to get out from under is to become a grifter yourself.

    757:

    whitroth @ 755: I think it's something in the water in the US South, and it's migrating. Weeds, weedkillers, something.

    It's not just the southern U.S. It's not even just the U.S. It's a universal problem.

    Wall Street banksters ain't from the south. Silicon Valley ain't in the south. Brexit ain't in the south ..."Alexander Petrov" and "Ruslan Boshirov" aren't from Georgia.

    758:

    Aww. Some good posts got vaped and we even kept it to the Rules. Guessing it was Anthrax or whatever the D-Notice is about this year. But it was all true...

    Masters and Vagina Museum was useful. Although, certain [redacted] certainly spat their corn-flakes out at tieing that thread back into the weave. Yes: "Master in his head" is gonna ring a few bells of warning, Ma-Gog style.

    Paradox!

    Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to distinguish a memetic disease from an opinion and that method would hold up in court?

    On the subject, you've no idea what's going on out there.

    Wild stuff.

    Cats and Dogs living together stuff. Probably shouldn't look at Australia too hard.

    Also: probably should consider that you're all also infected with it, just different varients.

    ~

    For the record: CN are spitting acid over Wuhan (e.g. go look up Zepnhik / grug security guru on twiter for her response to Guardian articles cited and note who is responding) and... the take above is 100% original, True and also correct. And it (once understood), really is a proper right on 'Card'.

    Bring me the Human who can do that, doesn't exist (and thus, ergo, even if pre-prepped as 'gain of function' in lab, result is chaotic, not weapon).

    That quality of counter-measure... should be expensive. Lucky we're Anarchists.

    shrug

    Oh well.

    Here's a freebie: CDC fast-track and Sacklers (opiates, remember that?) are gunna be an easy weak-spot to break, given who Biden appointed, the state of the restitution lawyer stuff (not sure you can negociate penalty terms with the US Gov, but apparently you can if you're them).

    If the GOP had any decent thinkers or there was actually some rebel scum left, they'd crack that one like an atomic egg.

    759:

    (we're also aware that jumping the shark to ACE2 receptors is really bad fucking news for your Conscious Minds and it'd be really nice / great for the species if you focused on that rather than shit-tier politics but apparently that's impossible for you).

    Oh.

    Dags and shootin?

    Bonus round: go look up dogs, Australia and shooting. Ooooff.

    Bonus Bonus round: go look up "incidents where police shoot dogs" and you'll notice something.

    Bonus Bonus Bonus round: we've mentioned this before.

    35,000 years of symbiosis is not something rational humans break. And remember kids: when you hear the words "stop resisting", these fuckers have been trained to kill you.

    ~

    Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to distinguish a memetic disease

    Holy fuck, have you never heard of the famous speech about the Devil, the Law and so on? You're literally all infected with it already.

    760:

    I don't know if this is what catina is taking about when referring to batshit crazy in Australia, but the Prime Minister of Australia; Scott Morrison, is constantly reiterating that the independent report (Doherty Report) says that we should end lockdowns and open up completely at 70% of over 18 year olds vaccinated.

    It's a complete lie of course. The report actually says the exact opposite, that on going restrictions will be essential.

    Modelling prepared for National Cabinet on the 4th June 2021 considered the likely impact of Astra Zeneca vaccines on transmission potential of the Alpha strain of SARS-CoV-2, as well as a more transmissible variant with properties similar to the Delta strain of the virus. That work demonstrated that even at very high levels of vaccine uptake (80% or above), suppression of epidemic growth below the critical reproduction number of one required to attain ‘herd immunity’ was unlikely for such a strain. However, substantive reductions in transmission potential could be achieved which, together with intermittent application of social measures, would constrain the rate and extent of epidemic growth.

    Not one interviewer has pulled him up on this so far.

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/23/scott-morrison-tells-states-they-need-to-honour-covid-deal-with-all-australians-to-reopen

    761:

    Kinda.

    Ok - guessing you've not heard that the Mormon Church in the USA is having a melt-down about Covid? That multi-billion dollar entity that produced Bain Capital and so on? It really is. Full on "Personal Patriarchal Meetings" stuff. Rebellion awakened!

    You might remember the 47% comment by a Mormon who ran for office.

    The Aus you mention: similar kinda Church. Similar real issues within it.

    The trick is noticing: they'd really prefer it if the other 53% died out. Bit bigger than just the "abbos". Nice protests you have there, cracking out the rubber bullets early this time.

    ~

    Anyhow. Someone smart has prolly done a grep and noticed stuff that's breaking the rules so bai. Sorry to ruin "plans" and so on.

    762:

    I see it as more of a thing for the folks who run other people's lives, and those who want to. And 19th century Wall $treet banksters were involved in the plantation economy up to their eyeballs, one of the motivations of secession was a desire to increase the book value of slaves.

    763:

    Sane person: Surely, we have reached peak stupid now.

    Antivaxxer: Hold my beer and pass me the livestock dewormer!

    764:

    You guess right. From here the USA just looks like a bump on the horizon filled with madmen.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Avenue

    Picking out the different flavours of crazy is hard, and unrewarding from this vantage point. It's hard enough dealing with the fallout at this end as the powerful, but gullible, embrace a philosophy that requires them to be as awful as possible to everyone in their quest for power and money because power and money is proof God loves them.

    765:

    That, and some of the grifters are making a lot of money by peddling lies to the desperate.

    Here's somethign interesting from the New York Times California Today newsletter (I get it emailed, I'll see if I can find a link):

    “'In a situation like this where we’re seeing basically Covid everywhere,' he said, it is easier to see the strong correlation between higher vaccination rates and lower rates of disease.

    "Still, additional factors may be at play, experts say.

    "A recent survey by the University of Southern California found that people who were unvaccinated were more likely than the vaccinated to go to a bar or a friend’s house and less likely to wear a mask or avoid large gatherings.

    "In other words, people who choose not to get vaccinated are also probably less worried about Covid-19 and take fewer safety precautions, contributing to their risk of falling ill, said Kevin Malotte, a professor emeritus of epidemiology at Cal State Long Beach.

    “Lack of mask measures, lack of worry about it, lack of vaccination are all kind of the syndrome, and I think that’s what we’re seeing correlate with the high rates,” Malotte told me."

    ...

    You know, it may be more than grifting. While I don't disagree that predators are taking advantage, multiple news outlets reported that Trump got booed at an Alabama rally for telling his supporters to get vaccinated. So it's not just Trumpism, it's culture.

    This isn't a con that we can get suckers out of by telling them they've been had. I'm beginning to think it's got a lot more inertia than that. It's Altemeyer's Right Wing Authoritarian followers, but it's also that they've been continually enculturated to be risk-taking suckers. The syndrome includes masculinity defined as stupid risk-taking (Hey y'all, watch this), forced prosociality (keep up appearances), a herd mentality where ignoring risks and problems is rewarded to some degree (with medals to the survivors), taking advantage of others is deemed appropriate behavior, especially for elites (especially Others as pigmentally defined), and people are kept just uncertain and desperate enough that they're constantly trying to maintain or enhance their status, not questioning the system (cf most homeowners with mortgages now. Cf also "ecology of fear" for nonhuman analogs). Oh, I forgot: big liberal cities as escape valves for those who do question the system, where the refugees from Authoritarians can be taken advantage of in the so called Knowledge/Gig Economy and by even steeper home prices.

    I think this has largely been set up, much as the Australian aborigines used fire on the landscape, and for much the same reason: to create sustainable hunting grounds for a few human predators. The grift isn't the landscape, it's the cull of suckers, and the landscape is designed to nurture suckers, whatever is going on. As one of the prey, it's probably worth looking at how the hunting grounds are being created and maintained around us.

    766:

    Right. I started pointing out during the Thatcher rule that was the main reason for the education and related 'reforms' in the UK and continued since (most definitely including by That Bliar). I was, of course, flamed for it.

    No, I am not saying that it was a formal, smoke-filled room conspiracy, but I keep pointing out that most conspiracies are tacit, and not all are fully conscious. Some are the result of agreeing to produce another result, but where I regard it as clear that what happened was a near-certain consequence.

    Undoing 40 years of such social conditioning is neither easy nor quick, even if there were the will. I shall not see it done.

    767:

    I think you're both right and wrong. Right in that the grifters would definitely like to groom the playing field, and they're certainly trying to do so, and we need to be very aware of that.

    Wrong if you imagine there aren't any counter-currents. The grifters are also learning what any politician who tries to exploit extremists learns sooner or later; you start out riding the extremists, but they end up riding you. Assuming the power-brokers still have any control left - and this is a big assumption - we're soon going to see a reluctant cull of the crazies. I think everyone here has observed at this point that extremism is as much a way to express a tribal/cultural affiliation as anything else, but it will start to fade when the consequences of extremism become worse than losing tribal ties - and the government can make that happen.

    I think the second counter-current is one of anger. Everyone I know is quietly angry at the nutcases and the damage they've done with COVID. I don't know how much of a pushback that will result in, but the anger is definitely there; whether some group of left-leaning organizers will find a way to harness than anger is another matter.

    768:
    PIRA bombed in in the early 1970s, trying to kill the lone piper at the Edinburgh Military Tattoo

    I thought who was responsible for that one was unknown? PIRA had a longstanding objection to attacks in Scotland, so if it was one of theirs that would be very interesting.

    769:

    This isn't a con that we can get suckers out of by telling them they've been had.

    The definition of a great con is when the marks never realize or admit they were conned.

    And to Troutwaxer's point.

    There's an incredible amount of tribalism going on. The tribe of "our lives should be much better" against the despicable liberals who are keeping us from it. And as long as they feel this way they are going to follow along with the enemies of the "left" no matter what the nonsense is. Or what facts they have to ignore/deny.

    To me this seems more and more like a bunch of US football crazies. I've had this feeling for a while and it grows stronger by the month.

    770:

    Yes. Evidence? Who needs steenking evidence? Why not blame the Russians? The most likely culprits (as I heard it at the time) were some British terrorists, probably the Angry Brigade.

    Incidentally, it was the army's thuggery(*) that was largely responsible for turning civil dissent in Northern Ireland into outright rebellion. Bloody Sunday was merely the culmination of the process. People nowadays forget that the 'Catholics' welcomed the troops when they were first sent in.

    (*) Especially the ones that had been taught to go in fast and hard and take control with an iron hand (recently in Yemen, if I recall).

    771:

    EC @ 767 Ah yes, the educational "reforms" ( Dumbing-down, followed by excessive dumbing-down ... ) started with the destruction of "grammar" schools, deliberately shutting-off a guaranteed escape-valve for children of poor parents [ like my father ] & then continuing with a set of curricula & "awards" for non-academic subjects .... @ 771 Not quite, or not entirely. The Army took advice from "the Civil Power", who were, of course at that point the Bowler-Hatted Orangists. See also Martin's past comments on the disaster of Bloody Sunday.

    Troutwaxer Trump doesn't seem to care that the ultra-extremists are riding him (?) "Culling the extremists" - like anti-vaxxers, perhaps? Brexiteers? ( Saw first supermarket shelf-gaps today - milk. ) --- following to David L @ 770 .. The screams from inside the US of how Universal Health Care is for the "losers" & the "lazy" & those who have not got decent (work) fake "insurance" US-style & complete disregard for anyone else at all - a total loss of "community" & empathy. Even by US standards, it's extreme.

    772:

    Tim H. @ 764: I see it as more of a thing for the folks who run other people's lives, and those who want to. And 19th century Wall $treet banksters were involved in the plantation economy up to their eyeballs, one of the motivations of secession was a desire to increase the book value of slaves.

    The whole "plantation economy" & slavery would have been impossible without financing from Yankee banks & British cotton merchants. Doesn't excuse the Confederates, but it does mean they weren't the only ones with innocent blood on their hands. Something too many people won't admit, not even to themselves.

    And by the same token, it's not the south's fault that it's beset by a whole world of grifters, even if our history does seem to make us particularly susceptible to the depredations of snake oil swindlers, televangelists, grifters & greed-heads. Most of 'em are carpetbaggers came here to take advantage of the yokels.

    773:

    Troutwaxer @ 768: I think the second counter-current is one of anger. Everyone I know is quietly angry at the nutcases and the damage they've done with COVID. I don't know how much of a pushback that will result in, but the anger is definitely there; whether some group of left-leaning organizers will find a way to harness than anger is another matter.

    Some of us are past being quiet about it.

    774:

    David L @ 770:

    This isn't a con that we can get suckers out of by telling them they've been had.

    The definition of a great con is when the marks never realize or admit they were conned.

    And to Troutwaxer's point.

    There's an incredible amount of tribalism going on. The tribe of "our lives should be much better" against the despicable liberals who are keeping us from it. And as long as they feel this way they are going to follow along with the enemies of the "left" no matter what the nonsense is. Or what facts they have to ignore/deny.

    To me this seems more and more like a bunch of US football crazies. I've had this feeling for a while and it grows stronger by the month.

    U.S. football crazies aren't that crazy. Fans of the Washington "whatever-they're-called-now" team don't go around murdering Dallas Cowboys fans.

    Hell, I don't even think the most notorious U.K. Football fans are that crazy.

    Brownshirts & blackshirts & freikorps are NOT sports fans ... and vice versa.

    775:

    I agree that Wilson, Heath, Callaghan and Maudling were stupid and bigoted enough to allow those extremists to call the shots, but the army's behaviour changed radically from 1969 to 1972.

    Martin's comments were revisionism, pure and simple. 1 Para (at least) had been repeatedly complained about for brutality, virtually all civil rights leaders had been calling for their removal, it was bloody obvious that a bloodbath was inevitable without that, they had NOT been properly trained in crowd control (one of the complaints), newspapers were pointing out (IN ADVANCE) that the PIRA were intending to cause a firefight, McGuinness and others were carrying Armalites, there were reports immediately afterwards that the orders the PBI received were confusing and impractical(*), it was reported (AT THE TIME) that some of them thought that they were about to lose control, and they couldn't get through to the brass hats to ask what to do.

    Yes, it was a total clusterfuck by TPTB, but it was NOT true that it was simply the result of a few people disobeying orders. If it had been, the Widgery report would have been at less pains to assign all the blame to the victims. I was one of the people who puked at it, based on my own research (which elicidated the above facts). It was the worst travesty of justice until the Hutton report.

    (*) E.g. do not use your weapons unless fired upon, but under no circumstances let the demonstration break through to location XXX. The details may be wrong, but that was the gist.

    776:

    Some things I've run across and pondered in the past week or so ...

    How Lodge makes cast iron cookware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEQP94YbYFo

    The Media Bias Nobody is Talking About: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXouSNjuMX0

    Doesn't excuse the reich wing extremists in the U.S. for their hypocrisy regarding Afghan refugees coming to the U.S., but why aren't rich Muslim nations doing more?

    https://www.news18.com/news/world/why-rich-muslim-nations-have-steered-clear-from-accepting-muslim-refugees-fleeing-afghanistan-4119191.html

    ... and "Number One with a bullet", a town council in Australia shoots dogs because of Covid to stop volunteers from rescuing them:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/08/22/covid-fearing-australian-council-shoots-rescue-dogs-stop-volunteers/

    777:

    JBS I heard a snippet of a very very interesting conversation today, walking back up my local High Street, which is strongly multicultural. The two people, who looked to be from different parts of what used-to-be-called "India" were conversing in English ( You should be able to work out why that was so ... ) And one was clearly agitated that the Taliban were going to take ( His words were "sweep in" ) Pakistan & spread their absolutism. Um.

    778:
    And one was clearly agitated that the Taliban were going to take ... Pakistan & spread their absolutism.

    Heh. That ship sailed long ago, I think.

    779:

    From looking it through, it's not so much "local Catholics" but "local right-wing Traditionalist Catholics". LifeSiteNews has it's own wiki,

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeSiteNews

    and you can go through Catholic Insight's website,

    https://catholicinsight.com/

    Actually, after reading that one through I really want to end my 12 year moratorium on cannabis, err...

    Thing is, Pope Francis is not a liberal Catholic, he is a conservative Catholic (think Conservative Judaism in comparison to Reform or Reconstructionist one). Just like the Ratz, the difference is mainly in the optics.

    As for Traditionalists (Sedevacantist are a radical sub-group[1]) seceding from the main church, it's possible, but not due to vaccines...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditionis_custodes

    and since Hegel was right, and Marx even more so, history repeats itself, see the Russian Old Believers,

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Believers

    but path dependence making some Traditionalist Catholics developing similar to the priestless Old Believers,

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezpopovtsy

    I guess the Marxian dichotomy of tragedy and farce would need some updating with a third category, namely "reality is off its meds again".

    I guess I'll leave it at that one, my father hangs out with the somewhat-pope-approved local branch, so I'll keep to OPSEC, maybe at some convention or so.

    In other news, back to work at helpdesk, I like it and it pays the bills, but after some of the calls I get I think giving some people and services access to the internet is akin to "Irre ans Gewehr" (loosely translateable as "crazies to the guns"), and after some googling I realize

    a) the SPK never used that slogan. b) I still have some lacunae in early Industrial Music. c) there is quite an interesting article about the guys with a), namely:

    https://www.christian-pross.de/pross-revolution-and-madness1.pdf

    Caveat, the author was part of the early phase of the SPK and might want to distance himself from some developments. Short description of the SPK, think Synanon, but with inpatients instead of addicts, throw in some early 70s politics, oh, and for a very small subgroup of the SPK it ended with the RAF (the German terrorist, no need for the aircraft strange attractor) instead of band criminality.

    And, sadly, no JMS using their ideas about therapy in space opera.

    [1] Fun fact, there are a few antipopes around with those.

    780:

    Elderly Cynic @ 776: (*) E.g. do not use your weapons unless fired upon, but under no circumstances let the demonstration break through to location XXX. The details may be wrong, but that was the gist.

    Guns are the wrong tool for controlling a demonstration.

    What you want are protection for your line - helmets, shields, stabbies, body armor and well controlled tight riot formations. If it's tight, few of the demonstrators will get through & they'll be isolated so the backup line can take them into custody as individuals.

    If you have reason to believe there are armed provocateurs hiding within (or more likely behind) the demonstration you have intel & counter-sniper teams to pick them out and neutralize them, where "neutralize" does not mean killing someone unnecessarily. It means stop them from breaking the law by harming other people and from inciting others to break the law by harming other people with the least amount of force necessary. There may be no other option than lethal force, but it must always be the last resort.

    And you have to be very careful with so called "non-lethal" weapons/munitions, because if they're used wrong they CAN BE lethal.

    781:

    And, in completely other news, Congratulations to dame Jocelyn Bell Birnell for winning the Copley Medal.

    782:

    Getting back to the US slave economy, here's the problem:

    When the British realized slavery was a problem, they banned it within the Empire--but financed the slaveowning south and the Confederacy during the war. Bit of hypocrisy there, really. But they were partially right: it's entirely possible to be profitable without enslaving and exploiting people. It's just not as profitable or as exciting to do things the right way. Power's addictive.

    When the Yankee north attempted to follow the British lead and outlaw slavery, the Old South actively, for decades fought to expand slavery within the US. That's not on Wall Street, that's on the plantation owners, who had the political and financial resources to dominate politics in the US up to, well, now (cf: Bushies and Trump).

    The moral event horizon the slaveowners crossed came with things like the Fugitive Slave Act, wherein anyone who looked like a slave could be taken into slavery, anywhere in the US. Given a choice between doing the moral thing and burning the system down, they chose the torch.

    That's not on Wall Street.

    I should note the whole Reconstruction debacle was the southerners choosing the torch again, and again, and again.

    We're seeing the same attitude with the petroleum industry now. They've got billions to trillions of dollars they could invest in both saving the world and owning the new world they helped create. Instead, they chose to literally burn civilization for their own profit. They've crossed the same moral event that the slaveowners took 150 years ago, and it's even worse this time.

    So don't excuse the torch. Get it out of their hands instead.

    783:

    Greg Tingey @ 778: JBS
    I heard a snippet of a very very interesting conversation today, walking back up my local High Street, which is strongly multicultural.
    The two people, who looked to be from different parts of what used-to-be-called "India" were conversing in English ( You should be able to work out why that was so ... )
    And one was clearly agitated that the Taliban were going to take ( His words were "sweep in" ) Pakistan & spread their absolutism.
    Um.

    Probably they are lacking one basic fact.

    The Taliban are the creation of, and a wholly owned subsidiary of, Pakistan's ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence). Pakistan is already over-run with absolutists. They have so many they're exporting them.

    Why do you think bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan was located 0.8 mile (1,300m) from the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad?

    784:

    The ONE positive thing that I have to say about the British government's mishandling of Bloody Sunday was that they did learn lessons from it. Immediately afterwards (in political terms), troops being assigned there were trained in crowd control and they suspended Stormont. Basically, Bloody Sunday and its aftermath was the event that at least largely pulled off their blinkers.

    785:

    paws4thot @ 782: And, in completely other news, Congratulations to dame Jocelyn Bell Birnell for winning the Copley Medal.

    Cool!

    786:

    Heteromeles @ 783: Getting back to the US slave economy, here's the problem:

    Yeah, that's the conventional "blame the south for everything that ever went wrong in the USA" wisdom.

    I don't buy it.

    787:

    Pope Francis is not a liberal Catholic, he is a conservative Catholic

    He has, however, stated that getting vaccinated is a moral responsibility, not claimed that Covid is a hoax like the Barry's Bay bunch…

    788:

    When the British realized slavery was a problem, they banned it within the Empire--but financed the slaveowning south and the Confederacy during the war.

    Well, some did. During the Lancaster Cotton Famine the workers by-and-large supported the Union against slavery: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05tly3f

    789:
    Brownshirts & blackshirts & freikorps are NOT sports fans ... and vice versa.

    Technically true, since

    a) the SA got first purged by the Nazis themselves, and were disbanded after 1945. Strasserism might be a modern descendent, though.

    b) while there are plenty of neo-Fascists[1] in Italian soccer, they mostly don't dress in black.

    c) AFAIK there are no groups explicitly using the traditions of the Freikorps, and I guess I lost some sanity points due to reading about obscure groups; some Wehrsportgruppen might qualify, though.

    Before using up any more of my sanity points[2], may I just point you to this guy; honorary (likely unwilling) member of APPD, since he exemplifies the, err, "virtues" that make for deportation to a Gewalt-Erlebnis-Park, "violence theme park".

    [1] As in "Mussolini fanboys"; you can easily be a fascist without being a Fascist, but the reverse is somewhat difficult.

    [2] Somewhat precious at the moment, I need to put off the stimulants for a few days in autumn, and going by precious experience results might be, err, interesting. Prepare the A-team to

    790:

    Elderly Cynic @ 785: The ONE positive thing that I have to say about the British government's mishandling of Bloody Sunday was that they did learn lessons from it. Immediately afterwards (in political terms), troops being assigned there were trained in crowd control and they suspended Stormont. Basically, Bloody Sunday and its aftermath was the event that at least largely pulled off their blinkers.

    Yeah. Kent State here in the U.S.

    As a National Guard soldier, I had to undergo additional training in civil disturbance control during basic training. The RA & AR soldiers got weekends off while NG soldiers had training.

    Run by National Guard instructors, more than half of the training was devoted to how the National Guard fucked up at Kent State and what we as National Guard were going to do to ensure it never happened again.

    The other 45% of the training was how to use riot control equipment, riot control formations and riot control munitions (i.e. tear gas grenades) with an emphasis on what you should not do, were not allowed to do with them. Riot Baton - "There are seven parts of the body you may not touch with the riot baton. Name them."1

    I've since seen a lot of demonstrations and potential riots (mostly on TV or YouTube, but a few firsthand) and the successful responses all followed the procedures I learned years ago, and the unsuccessful ones invariably did not.

    1 The riot baton is a short staff similar to what Little John used to challenge Robin Hood on the foot-bridge ... but mass produced. It has a leather thong and there is a specific way to wrap that thong around your hand so that it can't be used to drag you out of formation if someone manages to grab the baton and pull.

    The seven parts are the top of the head, the side of the neck L & R, the arms L & R and the legs L & R. The riot baton is not intended for striking, it's intended for pushing & blocking.

    Riot batons have nowadays mainly been replaced by the riot shield which provides more protection from alley apples and other flying unpleasantness.

    https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/alley_apple definition 1

    791:

    As I said, he is a conservative, not a reactionary/fascist/I'm running out of expletives for those guys who make Ronny Raygun and Adenauer look like holy Saint Kropotkin himself.

    As for the Catholic stance on vaccines, the mRNA vaccines don't need any fetal cells for production, but in case you can't get the mRNA ones, they'd be OK with AstraZeneca et al., too:

    "As regards the diseases against which there are no alternative vaccines which are available and ethically acceptable, it is right to abstain from using these vaccines if it can be done without causing children, and indirectly the population as a whole, to undergo significant risks to their health. However, if the latter are exposed to considerable dangers to their health, vaccines with moral problems pertaining to them may also be used on a temporary basis. The moral reason is that the duty to avoid passive material cooperation is not obligatory if there is grave inconvenience. Moreover, we find, in such a case, a proportional reason, in order to accept the use of these vaccines in the presence of the danger of favouring the spread of the pathological agent, due to the lack of vaccination of children."

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6699053/

    (Please note we could have a lot of fun with details of the documents.)

    And I'd really like the Roman Inquisition to get their hands on some of those #*1§(scatologics deleted) Barry's Bay guys.

    From personal experience, when COVID hit in late 2020, a local Traditionalist priest quoted Ioannidis and wanted people to sing without masks, his likewise Traditionalist superior was, err, not amused; since I personally know some of those involved, I'll leave out some juicy details. Let's just say quoting the Christmas truce in support of your idiot ideas makes for a special place in Gehenna in my book, and I'm an agnostic.

    Thankfully, the Chesterton fan with this Traditionalist branch is another priest.

    792:

    OK, forgot the last part:

    Prepare the A-team to extract me from India.

    Err, sorry, for the South Park reference, not my favourite show. And drugs are bad, m'kay?!

    793:

    As for the Catholic stance on vaccines, the mRNA vaccines don't need any fetal cells for production, but in case you can't get the mRNA ones, they'd be OK with AstraZeneca et al., too:

    Yeah, but the Barry's Bay Catholics are claiming that the vaccines have fetal cells and so they can't get them. My point being they are claiming they know more than the head of the Catholic Church, and have a sounder grasp on God's will.

    794:

    That's a really intelligent post. Thank you!

    795:

    A riot baton is 6 feet in length?

    796:

    JBS @ 784 YES I already knew this, but they plainly did not. I will repeat something I said earlier: "Domino theory" for Da'esh/Taliban ... Afghanistan - Pakistan - who's next? ( Apologies to Tom Lehrer )

    JBS Striking with a riot baton .. In other words what the Trump-goon did to a US Navy vet in the Portland Riots ( Much videoed ) was totally wrong even by US "rules" huh? ... And then: Paws & JBS Oh dear ... riot batons & quarterstaffs ... LIKE THIS do you mean?

    797:

    Today Biden said he was going to rebuild America from "the middle out." Qanon must be flipping their shit right now!

    798:

    I think this has largely been set up, much as the Australian aborigines used fire on the landscape, and for much the same reason: to create sustainable hunting grounds for a few human predators. The grift isn't the landscape, it's the cull of suckers, and the landscape is designed to nurture suckers, whatever is going on. As one of the prey, it's probably worth looking at how the hunting grounds are being created and maintained around us. That's some evocative tight writing (including the preceding paragraph); thanks!

    See also (supporting, in a weaker form): The Long Con - Mail-order conservatism (November 2012, Rick Perlstein)

    799:

    CDC[FDA?] fast-track and Sacklers (opiates, remember that?) are gunna be an easy weak-spot to break Not sure you're tracking the increasing anger towards the pro-SARS-CoV-2 people (anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, anti-any-NPIs or other public health measures) in the US (and elsewhere, but especially the US). As Troutwaxer says, the majority US attitudes towards same, and even more towards their propagandists and enablers, are quickly approaching(+/being nudged to approach) "I'm not a monster, but if I were a monster, I'd throw anti-vaxxers into wood chippers, and let God sort the flesh-chips out. Head first, I wouldn't be that sort of monster!" (Which makes me nervous, TBH.)

    -- For anyone, re one of the refs above, https://tropedia.fandom.com/wiki/Wild_Card/Quotes https://tropedia.fandom.com/wiki/It%27s_Always_Sunny_in_Philadelphia "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" Dennis: Guys, why aren't the brakes working? Charlie: Because I cut the brakes. Wild card, bitches! Yee-haw! (also)

    It's also a wail of anguish about certain things. ? (I am One Who Asks.) (And yes, I captured the vaped comments.)

    800:

    ...town council in Australia shoots dogs because of Covid to stop volunteers from rescuing them SotMNs mentioned that upthread (Charlie has her on a link budget.) Finally an excuse to use this quote, from Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep". Bold mine (despoilered). (The low-Beyond translation automation is wrong; Twirlip of the Mists is (one of) the most accurate voice(s) in the Beyond (other than the Blight itself.)) From: Twirlip of the Mists [Perhaps an organization of cloud fliers in a single jovian system. Very sparse priors before this thread began. Appears to be seriously out of touch. Program recommendation: delete this poster from presentation.] Subject: The Blight’s goal at the Bottom Distribution: Threat of the Blight Great Secrets of Creation Date: 4.54 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei Key phrases: Zone Instability and the Blight, Hexapodia as the key insight Text of message: Apologies first if I am repeating obvious conclusions. My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive, and I miss many important postings. I think that anyone following both Great Secrets of Creation and Threat of the Blight would see an important pattern. Since the events reported by Harmonious Repose information service, most agree that something important to the Perversion exists at the Bottom of the Beyond in region [...]. I see a possible connection here with the Great Secrets. During the last two hundred and twenty days, there have been increasing reports of zone interface instability in the region below Harmonious Repose. As the Blight threat has grown and its attacks against advanced races and other Powers continued, this instability has increased. Could there not be some connection? I urge all to consult their information on the Great Secrets (or the nearest archive maintained by that group). Events such as this prove once again that the universe is all ronzelle between.

    801:

    @783 That statement that the British financed the CSA is, shall we say, extremely inaccurate.

    The CSA was essentially incapable of financing itself. Its greatest income was tariffs -- but the Union navy blockaded the ports effectively after 1961. It was effective in committing piracy, which it was, though they called it privateering, but there was no legal standing for that as it was not a recognized nation by any other nation on the globe. However, there were British and French companies / individuals who did finance for share of the profits pirate ships, also to build iron clad war ships. But that got put an end to about the middle of the war in Britain thanks to the efforts of Lincoln's minister to St. James, Senator Charles Francis Adams. It was an incredible battle, which waxed and waned depending who was PM. Read an excellent witness account of this from Henry Adams, who was his father secretary. Their other chief source of income was confiscating any property suspected of being owned by someone in the North -- and that wasn't much. After that came the call for confederates' personal property in gold and silver.

    But Britain did not finance the War of the Rebellion beyond private individuals making some donations and investing in CSA piracy. The government could not, as it never recognized the CSA.

    802:

    I think what's meant by "finance" is "bought the cotton." They were "dark Satanic mills" for more than one reason.

    803:

    Although, in an optimistic mood, might anti-vaxxers be seen as simple conservatives?

    As in, resistant to change and preferring an inferior older solution (doing nothing) versus trying a new vaccine? I've seen relatives making similar sounding arguments about tablet-style cell phones.

    That, and a lot of not terribly clear thinking and confirmation bias.

    For USA, 1/21, ~25% seroprevalance, ~350k deaths (Estimated SARS-CoV-2 Seroprevalence in US Patients Receiving Dialysis 1 Year After the Beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic)

    So, deaths, neglecting vaccination, should cap out at ~1.4 million.

    ~600k deaths prevaccine, so maybe 40% seroprevalance? Assuming 50% vaccination of remainder, 30% remaining. So maybe another ~400k deaths, probably on the lower end (older people did vaccinate more). Say 200k. At 2k daily deaths, 3 more months.

    After that, selection pressure moves towards antibody escape, but hopefully less direct mortality. Probably 'flu-like' in terms of periodic vaccination.

    804:

    Although, in an optimistic mood, might anti-vaxxers be seen as simple conservatives?

    As in, resistant to change and preferring an inferior older solution (doing nothing) versus trying a new vaccine?

    How does that explain threatening pharmacists with execution under the Nuremberg laws, claiming to be from the "vaccine police"?

    Or opposing any vaccines?

    While happily self-medicating with animal medicines that haven't been tested on people?

    805:

    Here's what it comes down to. You probably all remember reading in Wired about what a great thing the Internet would be. How it would spread knowledge, allow communication, solve problems via crowdsourcing, and generally bring in a new age of enlightenment?

    It did that for people who have a college-level education and a good clue about reading skeptically. It's been a disaster for everyone else, because the basic filters of licensing and gatekeeping aren't there.* Some guy in a lab coat on YouRube is as good as their family doctor, because they both the family doctor and the YouRube guy wear lab coats. The fact that the guy on the Internet doesn't require a license to discuss the virtues of horse de-wormer, whereas if the same jerk was to actually open a doctor's office he'd wind up in jail... it just doesn't register with some people. Then they defend their belief, which is only natural, and if you want to argue with them you're also arguing with every idiot YouRuber they've ever watched, and the people on Facebook who agree with the YouRuber, and that's even before you toss the toxic mix of politics and prejudice into the mix, which is a whole other explosive mixture.

    The problem is that the "democratization of information" doesn't just mean that everyone can receive the same information, it also means that anyone with a video camera and a lab coat can create their own information, regardless of quality. And I don't have the foggiest idea of how to fix the whole thing.

    • Yes, this is sometimes a good thing.
    806:

    Although, in an optimistic mood, might anti-vaxxers be seen as simple conservatives?

    Nope. Well maybe. For a few. I know personally a non trivial number of these people. And know a few a bit tangentially.

    There are all kinds of things mixed together in the anti-vaxxer group.

    Belief that experts are blowing smoke. (My mother after doctors told her her daughter couldn't be helped and died back in 56.)

    People who want the world to be simple.

    People who believe the "others" (D's in the US) are evil thus anything they like must also be evil.

    People who feel owed / the "man" is holding them back / thus anything said by the "man" must be wrong.

    And so on. Basically it is all tied back to people belonging to a tribe. But the tribe isn't for much. It is mostly a tribe of being against. And if they do get to be in power it becomes obvious they are all on different pages as to what to do next.

    807:

    "Do they offer evidence?"

    Of course, it's citizen science at its best via Facebook.

    https://rumble.com/vk8uzo-critically-thinking-with-dr.-t-and-dr.-p-episode-56-5-doc-special-july-22-2.html from 24:00 onwards.

    This is also how the harmful shedding of the spike protein by vaccinated people was discovered. Dr Carrie Madej asked on Facebook whether anyone had been ill by being near someone who been recently vaccinated and many people came forward.

    808: 797 - Daffy has a quarterstaff there (ignore the animated ballcocks); not sure what Porky has. 802 - Agreed, subject to the note that a licenced privateer's letter of marque only authorises them to attack the merchant navy of nations named in the letter, and then only during hostilities. If nation1 negotiates a truce with nation2, letters of marque authorising nation1 vessels to conduct raids on nation2 trade become piracy when the treaty is signed, rather than at the later date when the privateer is informed of the truce. 806 Para 1 - No, because I never read Wired.
    809:

    Troutwaxer Actually, we've seen that "misinformation spread" before. The "yellow press" in the USA in the interwar years & similar here from about the same time onwards. The All-station Stopper, the Scum & the Daily Hate are still doing it of course. It's just "more of the same" & louder, but it isn't a new phenomenon.

    810:

    QUOTE, from a correspondent in the "Indy": Before we hear any lies to the contrary, the oncoming changes to UK import rules, which are a direct result of Brexit and due to come into effect on 1st Oct, will make the current shortages look like a walk in the park So, actual serious food shortages & people starting to starve by ... when ... 10th/14th October? Wonder how Bozo & his crooked liars will try to wriggle out of that one?

    811:

    They will announce a trade deal -

    with Tuvalu.

    812:

    Not really. That's a major part of it, true, but an even more important aspect is what I pointed out in #767, though perhaps I should add that the education changes were only the most overt part of the social conditioning. Another aspect was handing over control of most of our press to Murdoch, and starting to emasculate the BBC (whose remit originally included education, in a broad sense). And, of course, it's a feedback process, like many social phenomena.

    I can assure you that the British people of my youth who had left school at 14 were a damn sight less sheeplike than many modern graduates.

    813:

    The British government didn't go THAT far, of course, and still hasn't. There has been a vast increase in potentially and usually lethal weaponry in the hands of an increasing number of 'security' forces (some private, and potentially foreign), including assault rifles and up, and relaxations of the rules when they are allowed to use them. So far, this has not gone further than killing one or two unarmed or not dangerously so people at one time, but I am expecting some events (e.g. #812) to trigger a demonstration that makes the government feel threatened, and for that to change.

    814:

    EC Though I was encouraged, last year (?) when the students at "Owens Park" halls of residence ( Manchester) were clearly not going to take any more authoritarian shit than my generation in the same place.

    Actual "police" or fake "security" brutality against the Brit population - as a whole, when there are food riots, meaning NOT one section or small social group they can then discriminate against ... will go down like a lead balloon - & simply will not work, if only because there are not enough of them. BoZo may yet have a short acquaintance with a lamp-post if that happens.

    Some perishables have to be bought in shops - milk is the classic [ You can put butter-slabs in the freezer & get large cans of oil, but milk ... (?) ] And most ( 95%+ ) of the population won't have backed-up flour supplies for baking, will they, even if they know how to & have yeast? There wil be other things that I haven't though of, of course.

    815:

    In other words what the Trump-goon did to a US Navy vet in the Portland Riots ( Much videoed ) was totally wrong even by US "rules" huh?

    Come now, Greg. Those were highly trained officers. They received 16 weeks of training; 28 if they had attended the advanced academy.

    https://www.portlandoregon.gov/police/article/503212 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-training-weeks-united-states/

    816:

    Some perishables have to be bought in shops - milk is the classic

    Powdered milk isn't particularly perishable. Doesn't taste terribly nice, but better than going without…

    817:

    I got hired as a programmer at a grade that entitled me to overtime. After a couple of months of claiming the actual hours worked (at least 50% more than the job description) I was 'promoted' to a salary and got a bit less money.

    818:

    Fresh milk, yes, that requires proper supply chains. But UHT milk will happily last a year or more in our cupboards. It's not what I remember UHT being like when I was young, or I wouldn't be mentioning it.

    (I'm not sure how they made UHT decent, but it seems they did.)

    I've just checked our stock of UHT, and am now drinking some that's three months past its BBD. Contrariwise, a few days ago I had some fresh milk that was 3 days before its BBD, and on frothing, it turned into a solid foam disc that I could lift whole from on top of my coffee. I tasted the liquid, and yeah, a faint taste of imminent sourness. Something about becoming sour makes a huge physical difference on steam frothing it.

    819:

    That Bliar removed pretty well ALL restrictions on who the Home Secretary can authorise for the (special?) police, including the citizenship. It was pointed out at the time that it permitted even Academi (ex Blackwater).

    820:

    Yes, that's how you make cheese :-) I disagree that UHT is decent when drunk as milk, and am not keen on it even in tea, but it's certainly better than it used to be; it might well be good enough for coffee(*). I don't mind (slightly) soured milk.

    (*) Miaow.

    821:

    Dunno. The last 2 to vax I know - (August 21) - were probably 50% - wait on larger sample group, 20% generic distrust of government (immigrants, so not an American thing), and 30% working from home and suspecting they might get called back after vaccination... Now, mind you, reclusive programmers working from home with no kids, so, low risk... There is possibly an element of commercial conditioning. (I reflexively avoid anything repeatedly advertised or free.)

    I suspect reporting focuses too much on outliers, such as the person drinking horse dewormer... Perhaps forgetting that the US health care system is such that self medicating with fish antibiotics is a fairly rational choice for the less privileged.

    822:

    EC @ 821 So? It still won't work - not in the long run.

    823:

    wait on larger sample group

    Um, what?

    We're talking about 5 BILLION doses administered so far worldwide. Less for any individual vaccine, but still an impressively large number compared to the usual study.

    Just how many people do they think the average drug/vaccine is tested on before it's approved?

    824:

    Real coffee contains 0.0% milk anyway, so what UHT tastes like in coffee seems to be an irrelevance.

    825:

    Which would not stop it being used, or even working for long enough. Yes, if most of the country rose up AND was prepared to face brutality, no such methods would work. But that's not likely. Plausible aggregations that might mount demonstrations that would make the government feel threatened include (in decreasing order of both likelihood and of violent suppression succeeding in the short term):

    The peasantry earning less than 20,000 a year and their supporters. This would have a VERY strong racial aspect to it in most UK cities, especially London.

    Climate change / ecological activists and their supporters. Remember that such people directly threaten parts of the kleptocracy.

    Anti-corruption activists and their supporters. This might follow tax rises / pay cuts needed to maintain the kleptocracy's lifestyle when our economy starts to stink, er, shrink.

    Rebellious Scots and their supporters. Yes, this is tongue-in-cheek - even the dumbest mininister would realise the pro-union parts of Scotland wouldn't be happy with a return to the 18th century. I hope.

    God help us all, Northern Ireland.

    826:

    I don't buy it.

    To be fair, the South had enablers. Personally I blame Charles Stuart. (A lot of those slave-owning aristocratic families were founded by exiles who picked the wrong side in the '15 and '45 rebellions.)

    There's also plenty of blame to assign to the Arab slave traders who raided Africa for slaves (although, TBF, they were also raiding coastal Europe -- and US shipping -- until the early 19th century), not to mention the British and Dutch flagged slave ships, the French slave colonies in the Caribbean for pioneering the lethal plantation system, and so on and so forth. Even, at a pinch, British and Dutch demand for cheap sugar for brewing white lightning (aka "gin").

    Sugar beets were bred in the second half of the 18th century; I suspect this could have happened earlier in principle, and if so, the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the slave system in the Caribbean would have been almost unimaginably different (although: cotton).

    828:

    So, deaths, neglecting vaccination, should cap out at ~1.4 million.

    Except, that was before Delta hit.

    Delta is more contagious and causes worse morbidity. This tends to overload hospitals, which in turn leads to oxygen and ICU beds running out, so a higher death rate.

    On the other hand early mortality was concentrated among elderly city-dwellers: but there are a lot of old folks in rural communities who are going to get slaughtered as the pandemic reaches them and the healthcare infrastructure is overwhelmed.

    If we go by the early mortality estimates of ~1%, the USA could easily be on course to see 3.5 million dead. Okay, so large numbers are vaccinated ... but the anti-vaxxers will see a higher per-capita death toll. Swings and roundabouts.

    I can't give you a firm estimate but I think you're dangerously optimistic -- especially as the more infected there are, the higher the probability of a vaccine escape (at which point we're straight back to the green field epidemic scenario).

    Oh, and don't forget the 10:1 ratio of disabled survivors to deaths. Can the USA cope with 15-40 million permanently disabled people (and a totally burned out medical/nursing community)?

    829:

    Just how many people do they think the average drug/vaccine is tested on before it's approved?

    OK. So now they pick something else. They, the anti-vaxxers, will always have another reason.

    My brother, who I wasn't close to for various reasons, surprised me and my other brother when he popped out with his extended family as totally "the medical system, government, etc... is all corrupt and can't be trusted" just as Trump showed up. I thought that had died out with my mother. Especially since he didn't get along with my mother at all.

    But no mater what stupid you swat down to the extent they have to give up on it they come up with another. Did you know that having measles early in life reduces your risk of cancer? This one got tossed at me when I was foolishly trying to talk about some of their anti-measles nonsense.

    And every time I bump into the decedents of one of my uncles (born 1915 and there are a lot of decedents) they all seem to be on this side. Although the engineers in the group don't say much at the funerals I have attended.

    Whataboutism.

    One things I've noticed is that NONE of the people I graduated with from high school (pre-university) who were in what is now called STEM courses are on the crazy side of things on Facebook. I don't know if this means they avoid FB or are not crazy believers.

    830:

    Oh, and don't forget the 10:1 ratio of disabled survivors to deaths.

    I've been wondering about this ratio for a while. Can you source it?

    And I'm not arguing that it is wrong, just wanting to find more details.

    831:

    And not George II and Cumberland for taking fire and the sword through much of the Highlands? Shame on you!

    832:

    To me this seems more and more like a bunch of US football crazies. I've had this feeling for a while and it grows stronger by the month.

    My point here is that the loyalty is more to the logo than the people involved. "We're #1 and all that".

    Says a long time UK (Uni of Kentucky) basketball fan who is more and more burned out by the BUSINESS of sports. And who lives in the center of the college basketball universe.

    833:

    On the other hand early mortality was concentrated among elderly city-dwellers: but there are a lot of old folks in rural communities who are going to get slaughtered as the pandemic reaches them and the healthcare infrastructure is overwhelmed.

    I irritated a lot of people when I said nonsense to their claims that their "R" and conservative approaches were working to keep it away. And thus they didn't need no stinking masks. Ignoring that their town of 10K people was a 3 hour drive from anywhere.

    834:

    A suggestion, a useful thing in stories based in the future might be a meme that some forms of economic success* come at too high an ethical price.

    *Perhaps those whose success comes at such costs might be referred to as "Suck Cess pool"?

    835:

    In 1995, the 250th anniversary of the '45 Rebellion there was a TV series detailing the history of the times and its aftermath. They interviewed the then-current Duke of Cumberland who admitted that he was unsure of his continued well-being if he ever ventured north of the border and anyone found out who he was.

    836:

    No, but it's not implausible - which does NOT mean that it is likely, let alone that getting measles improves your long-term prospects (which is almost certainly false). But there are 'interesting' reactions between measles and cancer.

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19203112/

    The immune system is COMPLICATED, and still very poorly understood (i.e. the more immunologists discover, the more they realise they have left to discover). Suitable challenges in childhood are now known to be important in the prevention of worse problems later. Basically, it's a fairly standard statistical phenomenon, where the risks of going to either extreme are higher than that of a compromise approach. And, whatever you do, there will always be SOME probability of harm, so anyone who talks about 'eliminating risk' is an ignorant arsehole.

    837:

    Maybe.

    For hospital loading in the Delta wave, it seems to be capping out at similar levels of ICU usage to the winter peak. Seems, mind you. So, I wouldn't expect significantly higher death rates. And I really dislike Republicans, sigh. Personally, I've daydreamed about setting up recruitment for traveling medical personnel from conservative sections of the country out of pure spite.

    For long COVID, it seems to be roughly 10% of hospitalizations. With maybe an additional 1% death rate in the first year) Non hospitalizations seem to have less severe and probably non crippling symptoms. So, meh, fatality rate is about 20% of hospitalizations (Macedo et al, meta-analysis). So, maybe an extra 500k severely disabled. But, COVID tends to kill older patients and older patients tend to be health care consumers... So, a silver lining may be that health care costs for the aged decline.

    For vaccine escape, meh, I guess that we will see vaccine escape after seroprevalence gets high enough to start favoring selection of vaccine resistance. Right now, spreading in the unvaccinated is just easier. That said, I guess that the big impact would be having large booster adoption. With boosters, maybe r0 is below 1. Without boosters, r0 appears likely to be above 1 in a vaccinated population. So, long-term, unless spike mutations are very expensive in terms of fitness (maybe), the long term scenario may be boosters every 4-6 months indefinitely.

    838:

    My niece-in-law was using this as a reason it was OK for kids to have the measles. Losing your hearing or death was just nonsense made up to scare people and enrich the drug companies and doctors.

    The vaccines were obviously (to her tribe) worse than the results of having the disease. Both the political and medical effects. After all this has been thoroughly documented on the internet by assholes. Why not trust them? [/sarcasm]

    839:

    NONE of the people I graduated with from high school (pre-university) who were in what is now called STEM courses are on the crazy side of things on Facebook

    I haven't kept track of my high school classmates, but among my STEM-degreed acquaintances I have:

    • an astronomer who is a full-bore Republican-style conspiracy theorist • an engineer who passes along Tea-Party-style emails and conspiracy memes • a biologist who loudly proclaims Covid is just a bad flu • a physicist who believes the same (although they did get vaccinated)

    840:

    On the other hand early mortality was concentrated among elderly city-dwellers: but there are a lot of old folks in rural communities who are going to get slaughtered as the pandemic reaches them and the healthcare infrastructure is overwhelmed.

    Speaking only for the US, that's been going on for some time: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html (probably paywalled for some, but the maps of cases and threats are clear enough).

    In the US, the Pfizer vaccine has been given full FDA approval. For the anti-vaxxers, this means that, on top of the horrors of government microchips and whatever, they also can lose their jobs at some hospitals and, soon, in the military, for not getting vaccinated. The whine has been "but the vaccine's unapproved." That's no longer true. There actually are hospital employees who have been refusing to get vaccinated. They now have an interesting choice.

    Some unscrupulous doctors have been prescribing equine-appropriate doses of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for the unbelievers. I've heard through the grapevine that Costco pharmacies, which fill both human and veterinary orders, are refusing to honor these prescriptions. The juicier part of that rumor is that the pharmacists called the doctor's offices to confirm the prescriptions, and at least one doctor's office refused to pick up the phone.

    In other news, a pharmacist somewhere in the flyover states got busted for selling faked vaccine cards for $1500 a pop. The actual vaccine is free, and the pharmacist will likely lose their license over this. So anyway, $1500 is the price to go maskless and unvaccinated. Just so you can go to a bar and pay someone to pour you a beer and get a Covid19 shooter for free.

    But this is actually a story about the strange twists of evolution. No one would have thought, when SARS-CoV2 first popped up, that it would evolve from a virus to an intelligence test. Yet here we are.

    841:

    Did you know that having measles early in life reduces your risk of cancer?

    So does riding your motorbike without a helmet.

    A lot of these statistics ignore the fact that you can only die once, so anything that kills you reduces your chance of dying of cancer — hence appears to reduce the risk of cancer.

    (Lesson courtesy of my epidemiologist father.)

    Not claiming that measles might not provide some form of protection, but you'd need to be very careful that your statistics showed that and not just the 'died first' effect.

    842:

    In other news, a pharmacist somewhere in the flyover states got busted for selling faked vaccine cards for $1500 a pop. The actual vaccine is free, and the pharmacist will likely lose their license over this. So anyway, $1500 is the price to go maskless and unvaccinated.

    Or possibly the price to keep your job when you are terrified of the vaccine because your information ecosystem is awash in disinformation and if you know anyone who got Covid it was like a mild flu so it can't be that bad.

    843:

    Let's see. I graduated from high school in 72. 16 in Chem II. 11 in Physics. Advanced math maybe 40. Out of a class size of 235.

    It hit me about a year ago that none of the crazies I was noticing were in any of those classes.

    A lot of us from the high school hooked up when they consolidated the 3 county high school 5 to 10 years ago. Which meaned shutting down the school that was built in 1922. At least as a high school. Many of us had parents and even grand parents who went to school in that building. Anyway they had a reunion for anyone who graduated there and made an effort to contact everyone. (I decided not to attend when I found out 7of9 was not going.)

    Now as a bit of a diversion that you might appreciate. In the 11th grade I took Chem I. It was an easy class. Got A's without really trying. There were I think 2 sections of 35 or so each. That summer the teacher retired. We got a new guy who was maybe 30 years old. First day of class (Chem II and Physics and I assume Chem I) he said he really appreciated how the previous teacher turned over to him his class plans and such. But it was time to move into the 20th century. So in Chem II we were going to spend 6 to 9 weeks covering what we should have covered in Chem I but didn't. Then cram the full Chem II into the remaining time. Oh, in physics the inclined plane and friction was NOT the pinnacle of high school physics. So get ready. And you'll need a slide rule or you'll never pass. (1971). I can sell you a cheap one for $3 or a better one for $8 or you get your own. We start learning how to use them in 3 weeks. Within a few days the physics and Chem II classes went from 35+ to 11 and 16. Similar things happened in the Chem I.

    If you want I can tell you about my high school trig teacher. Different story but similar.

    844:

    In other news, a pharmacist somewhere in the flyover states got busted for selling faked vaccine cards for $1500 a pop.

    I read a story about US Customs seizing fake CDC vaccine cards in Memphis which had come in from China. I was confused for a bit then I remembered "FedEx". Many FedEx flight from around the world arrive in the US in Memphis due to that being their largest hub in the US. (Which is also why that bridge closing for a few months created so much logistical havoc in the eastern US.

    845:

    This is true, but at the time there were maybe a dozen really yellow sources of national journalism in the U.S. and everyone knew who they were and what their agendas were. Everyone else gave the straight news; not from one political point of view, mind you, but they'd tell it straight and keep their opinions on the editorial page, where they should be.

    I'll note a couple more things. The first is that when I started reading the news back around 1971, there was no national "narrative." That game didn't get played nearly as much, and reporters were more likely to call it as they saw it - and if they didn't they'd get called out on it by someone. The second is that media consolidation and the greed-is-good ideal were both in the future pre-Reagan, and that shows through every day.

    846:

    I'll note a couple more things. The first is that when I started reading the news back around 1971, there was no national "narrative."

    Yes and no.

    TV news up to some time around that point as 15 minutes a day MINUS commercials. About that time it went to 30 minutes.

    Watergate was telling. Where I lived in Lexington KY, it didn't exist in the Lexington Herold Leader it didn't exist. In the Louisville Courier Journal 90 miles up the way and with a state wide distribution it was the scandal of the century.

    A lot of people before that time got most of their nation news from their local paper. And the ownership of said paper determined what you read. This was true outside of the 10 to 20 major urban areas of the US. Ted Turner and CNN changed everything in the 80s. For better or worse.

    847:

    Oh yes. Education changes are a huge part of it. There was a month-long section of my 8th-Grade English class (13-14 years old) which dealt solely with critical reading and critical thinking. We were asked to consider the probably agenda of whoever was writing, their social status, their political affiliation, their age and gender, etc., and we discussed all the issues of how these factors relate to understanding a writer, and the question of whether a writer is correct or incorrect in their assertions.

    We also discussed the question of what good research looked like, at least in the broad outline, and a little about how to look at a footnote or citation and track down whether it is good or not.

    And as far as I know none of that stuff is getting taught anymore. I had a very unhappy experience on the blog of someone whose readership is all very intelligent, probably equal to the educational levels you find here, and probably similar in age and income, except that the majority of them were rightwingers or Libertarians. And nobody there knew anything about reading critically. Sad.

    848:

    reading critically.

    Reading something that is critical of what I KNOW to be true.

    Right?

    849:

    I do that fairly often, check it for pausibility and, if so, seriously reconsider the evidence. I often change what I know as a result :-)

    850:

    Are they are arguing that measles-induced immune amnesia is a good thing? Measles and Immune Amnesia (May 18, 2019, American Society for Microbiology) The risk associated with measles infection is much greater than the sum of its observable symptoms. The immune memories that you have acquired are priceless, built over many years and from countless exposures to a menagerie of germs. Measles virus is especially dangerous because it has the ability to destroy what’s been earned: immune memory from previous infections. ... One of the most unique—and most dangerous—features of measles pathogenesis is its ability to reset the immune systems of infected patients. During the acute phase of infection, measles induces immune suppression through a process called immune amnesia. Studies in non-human primates revealed that MV actually replaces the old memory cells of its host with new, MV-specific lymphocytes. As a result, the patient emerges with both a strong MV-specific immunity and an increased vulnerability to all other pathogens.

    851:

    Or possibly the price to keep your job when you are terrified of the vaccine because your information ecosystem is awash in disinformation and if you know anyone who got Covid it was like a mild flu so it can't be that bad.

    Intelligence isn't just process speed and error rate. Notionally at least, it has survival value for humans. One facet of survival intelligence is detecting when one is being taken advantage of and getting out of that situation.

    The problem with the CDC Vaccination Record is that in the US, medical records are legal documents. Pharmacists get a whole bunch of schooling and testing on the law and the legal requirements of their profession. It goes with getting licensed. While they're often denigrated as pill pushers, one reason for the license is that they're part of the QA/QC chain that keeps patients from getting killed due to doctor's errors in prescribing. Only idiots (of which there are many in managerial positions) think their sole job is dispensing what they're told to dispense.

    So the intelligence test here wasn't just for the suckers paying the pharmacist to falsely fill out vaccine records for them, it was also an intelligence test of the pharmacist. AFAIK, losing a license due to a conviction on forging medical records is one of those hard-to-come-back-from career moves. When you estimate the number of cards they'd need to forge to cover future lost earnings if any one card was discovered, the solution can be approximated as "what were they thinking?"

    852:

    @804 Still inaccurate, because the cotton could not get to Britain in near enough quantity to make that much difference, due to the South not having their own carrying fleets. Like for everything else the rich and others in those states needed and wanted, they didn't have either the infrastructure or desire to have it, to make it possible. It was Northern ships that carried the cotton, about which the slaveocracy complained endlessly, but none of them bothered to create a naval mercantile fleets to do so -- they only invested in slaves and more land. Thus this the era when cotton slavery in Egypt and India took off . . . .

    Moreover the slaveocracy elite and powers were highly suspect financially by anyone who knew anything -- they still owed British investors in particularly millions for investing in the worthless bonds issued by Mississippians in particular for canal building that never happened. They they blithely chose not to repay. (Sound like anyone you have seen in the news in the last few years?) This was still dragging in the courts as the descendants of initial British investors continued to try and collect. At some point in the 18 ... 80's" later? The US paid up the debts, i.e. the average Northerner did.

    The British government like that of France could not advance great loans to the CSA because it was not a nation, and that is the great thing. Davis and the others of the CSA kept pinning their expectations on France and Britain rescuing them as France did the nascent US in the War of Independence. But France recognized the US. France never recognized the CSA, nor did Britain.

    853:

    paws4thot @ 797: A riot baton is 6 feet in length?

    "Similar" applies to it being "like" a staff - used for pushing or blocking the way a staff would be used. But don't ignore the part about "short" ... about 3 feet long as I remember them. Six feet would be unwieldy in a close formation.

    This video shows how to use the thong to hold the baton, but right in the middle when he lets the tip rest on the ground you can see it comes up to about his waist.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbLaj3EBYlU

    These guys are spread out a little too much. We were trained to be tighter, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow. You're supposed to be like a wall. But you can see the length of the baton fairly well as well as how to hold it.

    That's a fairly relaxed ready position, but I think the photo was from a staged photo-op.

    854:

    “Are they are arguing that measles-induced immune amnesia is a good thing? ” Well, let’s be sensible here - it purifiesthe immune system by returning it to a natural state. Must be good, right?

    855:

    Greg Tingey @ 798: JBS
    Striking with a riot baton ..
    In other words what the Trump-goon did to a US Navy vet in the Portland Riots ( Much videoed ) was totally wrong even by US "rules" huh?
    ... And then:
    Paws & JBS
    Oh dear ... riot batons & quarterstaffs ...
    LIKE THIS do you mean?

    If some goon was "striking" with the baton, he was NOT following the training the National Guard receives.

    One thing to note is the National Guard does NOT have "qualified immunity" the way the police do. If a National Guard soldier on riot duty breaks somebody's head using the baton as a club they can be held civilly and criminally liable (although the plaintiff has to wait until the UCMJ gets through with him (not even double jeopardy because "disobeying a direct order" is a distinct crime from civil assault and battery).

    The whole point of riot control is to be IN CONTROL ... how can you control rioters if you can't control yourself?

    The staff is too long to be a riot baton, but the "Ho! Ha ha! Guard!" portion (the 1st second of the cartoon) would be Ok. The rest is pure Looney Tunes.

    856:

    Perhaps less sample size than time. There's a probably rational bias towards skepticism towards studies that fit a narrative and/or whose conclusions benefit some interest group. (Honestly, a fairly distinguished statistician recommended such a bias when reading studies...) On their part, they were a bit skeptical of claims that all problems with the vaccines had been identified. (And, did end up choosing Pfizer...over, eg, J&J). Waiting a bit for effects in a population-level study wasn't totally crazy, particularly since their COVID exposure surface was fairly small. If they'd waited a bit, they might have gone for Moderna...

    And, honestly, even though I looked at them funny, they did eventually get vaccinated. (Probably not strangely, just in time to have a month or two delay in returning to the office, based on the betting pool for when management would want people back in.)

    Besides, I'm fairly skeptical of COVID studies with socially or economically desirable conclusions. Some of that skepticism has been justified. Eg, 'kids don't get infected and aren't infectious' turned out to be fairly incorrect and most likely pure BS to push for schools reopening... Kids do seem to be at relatively low risk (delta?), but I'm in the wait and see camp about long-term effects. Some of that skepticism was probably incorrect. 'Take-out doesn't spread COVID' seems to be fairly true.

    Hard to predict though. There's always the chance of a rapidly transmitting, antibody evading outlier with 20-30% infection fatality rate. It appears more likely than not, though, that IFR is substantially less than 1%, even though case fatality rate is pretty consistently in the 1-2% range. So, I'm guessing that the immediate pandemic's mortality contribution in the US is more than half over. Heh. We'll see in winter.

    For the antibody-evading variants, meh, hard to predict. My one data point is that the Spanish flu did evolve to be deadlier. So, somewhere between 0.3%-100% fatality rate overall. Kind of mechanistically, seems more likely than not that COVID will not evolve to be substantially deadlier, but don't really know enough to have an informed opinion.

    857:

    THe pharmacist, assuming this is the one, is far stupider than you might be imagining- https://gizmodo.com/chicago-pharmacist-faces-120-years-in-prison-for-allege-1847502991

    E-bayed them.

    858:

    Re #812 and onrushing Brexit shortages, this from Chris Grey, who is usually fairly good- "Thus, again, the question will be whether the government pushes on, in the name of ‘true independence’, or whether it decides to again postpone import controls (the October phase was originally meant to have been implemented in March, and the EU’s controls were in place for the end of the transition period). I sometimes see people on social media suggesting that a continuing failure to implement import controls would violate WTO rules, because it would discriminate between EU and non-EU importers, but my understanding – for what little that is worth on this issue – is that this is largely theoretical: any action against the UK would be very slow and the penalties nugatory. Rather, again the decision will depend on a domestic political calculation of how much inconvenience the public will put up with for the sake of Brexiters’ eighteenth-century notion of sovereignty."

    Whole piece here- https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2021/08/living-with-brexit.html

    Blog is a pretty good read generally if you want to keep up with the latest Brexit lunacies.

    859:

    Are they are arguing that measles-induced immune amnesia is a good thing?

    Just to be clear they argue that measles and it affects in any form are way better than the vaccine. And if pressed into a corner will say things like the bad things about measles are exaggerated to allow doctors and drug companies to make more money and the government to meddle more in our lives. (I've ranted about this enough. Got to accept that large chunks of my family are in so many ways lost to me. And some decades long friendships also.)

    To EC's reply to me about critical thinking. These folks have no interest in learning something that might contradict what they KNOW to be TRUE.

    Like EC, I read all kinds of things. And learn new things. Sometimes to the detriment of my past (mistaken) knowledge.

    860:

    If only my physics in high school had been like that....

    And the class size? My first computer class, in '78, started with 36? 39? people (community college). Unfortunately, a lot seemed to have the attitude "I read you can make big money doing computer on the back of a matchbook". 13 of us took the final, and of that, three of us though it was a Mickey Mouse class, and the other 10 were desperately treading water.

    861:

    it affects

    Wow was that bad.

    its effects

    862:

    THe pharmacist, assuming this is the one, is far stupider than you might be imagining- https://gizmodo.com/chicago-pharmacist-faces-120-years-in-prison-for-allege-1847502991 E-bayed them.

    Stupid is as stupid does.

    To be clear, I don't think they'll be doing Buck Rogers time on this one (starting a war will get you a shorter sentence). That said, if they're convicted, that may be about how much time they'll have to wait before applying for a pharmacy license again. Not counting climate change-induced delays.

    863:

    "Goon"? The word you want is "pig".

    I will never forget Chicago in '68 (what my first wife and I did instead of a honeymoon), and seeing a pig swinging a riot baton down at a demonstrator who'd fallen to his knees, aiming at his head.

    Note: even in Chicago, in '68, we distinguished between the ordinary cops, just trying to do their job, and Daley's pigs, in their baby blues. I kid you not - in the federal commission report (of course I still have a copy) that they did afterwards, they called it a "police riot"... and that before one evening, Daley and his Chief of Police called their pigs in, and Daley literally gave them a St. Crispin's Day speech, and sent them out to break heads.

    On the other hand, there's a difference between the baton and guns, and too many cops these days don't seem to care.

    864:

    Here's a blurb on the scamverse part of fake cards: https://slate.com/technology/2021/07/vaccine-cards-covid-scam-fake.html

    In places where there is an official database (Russia being the most severe), there's an interesting wrinkle. Once you get someone to forge your vaccine record, that's your official record. If you change your mind and decide to actually get jabbed, you won't be allowed, because you've already been vaccinated.

    I think my comments about predators grooming habitats for suckers to inhabit and be culled periodically apply here as well.

    865:

    Foxessa @ 803: The CSA was essentially incapable of financing itself. Its greatest income was tariffs ...

    The states that became the Confederacy were low tariff or anti-tariff states. Their income came from the export of agricultural products, primarily cotton and tobacco, but also rice & indigo.

    They were dependent on other states & foreign countries for most manufactured goods. In many cases manufactured goods from England cost less to import than those same goods brought from New York or Massachusetts. Tariffs raised the prices of goods imported from England allowing domestic manufacturers to raise their prices to the detriment of the planters' purchasing powe.

    But Britain did not finance the War of the Rebellion beyond private individuals making some donations and investing in CSA piracy. The government could not, as it never recognized the CSA.

    British banks & cotton merchants helped finance the plantation slave cotton economy BEFORE secession (as did New York banks & Boston merchants).

    The Confederacy had every expectation that those banks & merchants would continue to do so. And they did continue to do so (minimizing their own risks) regardless of the official position of the British government.

    The British contribution to the Confederates' war effort was minimal; their support for the Confederate economy was greater. Britain's anti-slavery sentiment always took a back seat to British banks' & manufacturers' profits.

    866:

    Troutwaxer @ 807: Here's what it comes down to. You probably all remember reading in Wired about what a great thing the Internet would be. How it would spread knowledge, allow communication, solve problems via crowdsourcing, and generally bring in a new age of enlightenment?

    THEY said the same thing about Television in the 1940s. I wonder why anyone thought the Internet would be any different?

    867:

    Only idiots (of which there are many in managerial positions) think their sole job is dispensing what they're told to dispense.

    Which explain how the whole opioid things started — pharmacists dispensing what they're told to dispense, in the interest of greater profits.

    As a teacher, I have seen many dodgy notes from doctors over the years. We all know some doctors who write any requested note for a fee.

    868:

    Because new and shiny is ALWAYS better.

    869:

    paws4thot @ 826: Real coffee contains 0.0% milk anyway, so what UHT tastes like in coffee seems to be an irrelevance.

    Yeah, what he said!

    I'll say this for UHT milk, it doesn't suck as bad as the old powdered milk you used to get as a substitute (or extender) for fresh milk.

    870:
    They were dependent on other states & foreign countries for most manufactured goods.

    All too true.

    Here's what William Tecumseh Sherman had to say about the impending Civil War in December 1860:

    Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth--right at your doors.
    You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.

    We seem to be moving towards a strange attractor....

    871:

    The Looney Tune cartoon was posted strictly for humor value.

    872:

    The British contribution to the Confederates' war effort was minimal; their support for the Confederate economy was greater. Britain's anti-slavery sentiment always took a back seat to British banks' & manufacturers' profits.

    America's pro-democracy sentiments have always taken a back seat to American banks' and manufacturers' profits.

    If one is going to hold Britain accountable for the actions of British companies, then one must hold America accountable for the actions of American companies.

    "I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."

    874:

    I'm used to police (any nation) carrying batons between 15 and 30 inches in length. OTOH a quarterstaff is around 72" long and 2" in diameter, and a skilled practitioner can be about a match for a swordsman.

    875:

    Charlie Stross @ 828:

    I don't buy it.

    To be fair, the South had enablers. Personally I blame Charles Stuart. (A lot of those slave-owning aristocratic families were founded by exiles who picked the wrong side in the '15 and '45 rebellions.)

    I do NOT think the south was blameless. Slavery was wrong and I wish we had gotten rid of it without the American Civil War, which was the quintessential Rich man's war, Poor man's fight as well as being morally repugnant on one side. I DO think there are others outside of the U.S. south who deserve some share of that blame.

    In addition to losers from Charlie Stuart's wars, many of the southern planter aristocracy were descended from younger sons of nobility who came to the colonies seeking to establish their own dynasties. The southern planter aristocracy really were an aristocracy before the American Revolution.

    There's also plenty of blame to assign to the Arab slave traders who raided Africa for slaves (although, TBF, they were also raiding coastal Europe -- and US shipping -- until the early 19th century), not to mention the British and Dutch flagged slave ships, the French slave colonies in the Caribbean for pioneering the lethal plantation system, and so on and so forth. Even, at a pinch, British and Dutch demand for cheap sugar for brewing white lightning (aka "gin").

    Sugar beets were bred in the second half of the 18th century; I suspect this could have happened earlier in principle, and if so, the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the slave system in the Caribbean would have been almost unimaginably different (although: cotton).

    Yeah, cotton.

    Before the American Revolution slavery was lawful & practiced in every one of England's new world colonies, including the 13 that broke away to become the United States. But within a few years it became economically nonviable in most of the northern states. I believe it persisted in New York state until 1827 and in New Jersey until 1865 with the passage of the 13th amendment, although in New Jersey it was not exclusively the enslavement of Africans.

    And, of course, Maryland, Kentucky & Missouri were "slave" states that did not join the Confederacy and were thereby not subject to the provisions of the Emancipation Proclamation, so slavery was not abolished THERE until the 13th Amendment.

    After the American Revolution slavery was becoming an economic drag for southern agriculture as well ... and then "cotton" which had evil effects beyond rescuing chattel slavery here in the south from the trash heap of history (where it belonged).

    I wonder how slavery might have ended here in the U.S. if Egyptian cotton had supplanted that grown in the southern U.S. before the American Civil War?

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-american-civil-war-built-egypts-vaunted-cotton-industry-and-changed-country-forever-180959967/

    876:

    Elderly Cynic @ 833: And not George II and Cumberland for taking fire and the sword through much of the Highlands? Shame on you!

    I don't thing any great number of THOSE refugees became part of the southern planter aristocracy here in the U.S.

    877:

    Robert Prior @ 843:

    Did you know that having measles early in life reduces your risk of cancer?

    So does riding your motorbike without a helmet.

    I realize it's difficult to extrapolate from a small sample size, but ...

    I had measles when I was in the third grade (before there was a measles vaccine) & I have ridden a motorbike without a helmet (before helmet laws came into effect in North Carolina), and neither one of those kept me from having cancer.

    878:

    David L @ 846:

    In other news, a pharmacist somewhere in the flyover states got busted for selling faked vaccine cards for $1500 a pop.

    I read a story about US Customs seizing fake CDC vaccine cards in Memphis which had come in from China. I was confused for a bit then I remembered "FedEx". Many FedEx flight from around the world arrive in the US in Memphis due to that being their largest hub in the US. (Which is also why that bridge closing for a few months created so much logistical havoc in the eastern US.

    Why would it cause "logistical havoc" in the eastern U.S.? The FedEx World Hub at Memphis International Airport is on this side of the bridge?

    879:

    Same city metro area. Way more trucks than normal going north and south to get around bridge. I suspect some went to St. Louis before crossing. Shipments delayed getting out of Memphis stacking up warehouse sorting system space. Etc.

    880:

    You might be wrong, there. George II and Cumberland were equal-opportunity butchers, and a lot of the lairds fled because they would face the chop otherwise. I agree that the ordinary clansmen would not have been among those you describe.

    881:

    whitroth @ 865: "Goon"? The word you want is "pig".

    Nope. "Goon" was the word I wanted. "Goon" was the word Greg used, and "goon" was the word I was responding to.

    I will never forget Chicago in '68 (what my first wife and I did instead of a honeymoon), and seeing a pig swinging a riot baton down at a demonstrator who'd fallen to his knees, aiming at his head.

    Note: even in Chicago, in '68, we distinguished between the ordinary cops, just trying to do their job, and Daley's pigs, in their baby blues. I kid you not - in the federal commission report (of course I still have a copy) that they did afterwards, they called it a "police riot"... and that before one evening, Daley and his Chief of Police called their pigs in, and Daley literally gave them a St. Crispin's Day speech, and sent them out to break heads.

    On the other hand, there's a difference between the baton and guns, and too many cops these days don't seem to care.

    I never was a cop. I was in the National Guard. So I can only speak to the "Civil Disturbance" training I received from the National Guard. Breaking heads was not part of that training and was, in fact, specifically forbidden.

    Although the primary emphasis of that training was to never to repeat the fuck-up at Kent State, there were other instances, taken from riots in Detroit & Los Angeles ... I think maybe even Philidelphia ... that occurred during the 60s BEFORE Kent State and some things the National Guard got wrong in those instances.

    Why counter-sniper has to be rigidly controlled. You don't just shoot up at windows because you think someone up there might have fired down at you. For one thing, what goes up always comes down again with the same terminal velocity with which it left the muzzle and you don't know WHERE it's going to come down or who might be standing in the way.

    Those instances are also the source of "National Guard soldiers DO NOT have qualified immunity." If you are sent for Civil Disturbance duty, you can and probably will be prosecuted if you don't follow the training. Follow the training and you won't have to worry about that.

    I don't think Chicago 68 came up, because that wasn't an example of a National Guard failure while doing Civil Disturbance or Riot Control duty. Remember, You cannot CONTROL a riot if you cannot control yourself!

    882:

    @867 You are repeating what I said, while evidently chiding my post for not saying it -- what in fact it did state, including, sheesh! the south manufactured nothing, though, ta-da! they managed to ramp up war material production by the end of the war via slave operated factories. They couldn't even replace playing cards soon into the war, needing to depend on new decks coming in on blockade runners, which natch carried only luxury goods for the wealthy, while from almost the first months, and the earlier years of the grim and bloody slaughter, they couldn't feed their population. But at least the common soldiers could get playing cards off the many, many dead and imprisoned Union soldiers, while the women of Richmond rioted in 1863, and broke into food emporiums, and then gasp into the shops full of fine blockade runner provided jewelry and other luxury items. So send in the militia, and they did.

    So, without food, blankets, etc. the CSA 'government' sent sending out regional slave planter aristo officers to confiscate food, animals and anything else from the non-slaving holding white farmers, and left them to starve.That was the major reason Lee invaded Pennsylvania the first time the second -- to let his boys live off the land like mercs, because Richmond had no funds and resources. Also, you know, massive corruption . . . .

    And again, before the war their cotton was all carried via northern shipping, not their own. After the blockade Europe could not get into CSA ports, and the CSA cotton couldn't be gotten out of it.

    If the Brits were contributing so much to the CSA war economy, why was it failing from the gitgo? The south's wealth was embodied literally in the bodies of the enslaved, which economic system didn't work so well, since, for a single instance, having enslaved human beings as collateral for loans to a British bank, O, I don't think so, and certainly not by the end of 1863.

    And in the end it was the South who made the war, and the south that has been keeping the fight going by any and all means ever since, right up to at this very moment, ant-vaxxing and masking, keeping covid going going going.

    883:

    Right. In '68 in Chicago, it was the special cops.

    Btw, IIRC, the Guard did finally get called out... and those of us in the streets were really happy to see them. We knew that so many of them were in the Guard to not go over there. They weren't attacking us - that was the pigs.

    884:

    I put milk in coffee because I don't particularly LIKE coffee! Actually, there is an exception, which I very much like and never put milk in - Arabian/Turkish/Greek coffee.

    885:

    Robert Prior @ 874:

    The British contribution to the Confederates' war effort was minimal; their support for the Confederate economy was greater. Britain's anti-slavery sentiment always took a back seat to British banks' & manufacturers' profits.

    America's pro-democracy sentiments have always taken a back seat to American banks' and manufacturers' profits.

    If one is going to hold Britain accountable for the actions of British companies, then one must hold America accountable for the actions of American companies.

    Sure. How does that contradict my contention that the U.S. south is not uniquely at fault for the evil of slavery?

    Hold the American companies accountable. Hold the British companies accountable. Hold the Canadian companies ... I don't care what country they're hoarding their profits in, if they're exploiting and abusing people, put a stop to it and make them accountable for the things they've done.

    But don't blame the people from a single region for such evil while excusing your own people for participating in that evil.

    886:

    @ 878: I don't THINK any great number of THOSE refugees became part of the southern planter aristocracy here in the U.S.

    887:

    Elderly Cynic @ 882: You might be wrong, there. George II and Cumberland were equal-opportunity butchers, and a lot of the lairds fled because they would face the chop otherwise. I agree that the ordinary clansmen would not have been among those you describe.

    Could be. I might be wrong about any number of things. How does it go? "I once thought I had made a mistake, but it turned our I was wrong about that."?

    I know some of the lairds fled to the colonies. I don't know of any of them who became a part of the southern planter aristocracy. If any did, it was unlikely it was any significant number of them.

    One of my college room-mates was the great-great-I-don't-know-how-many-greats-grandson of Flora MacDonald. He grew up on the farm (not a plantation) in Red Springs, NC where the Flora MacDonald Highland Games were held before they moved to the campus of the former Flora MacDonald College. Additionally, my Mother's maiden name was "Moore", so I may know a wee bit about Scottish settlement in those colonies that later became the nucleus of the United States.

    https://www.ncpedia.org/highland-games

    888:

    Hold the American companies accountable. Hold the British companies accountable. Hold the Canadian companies ...

    I'm all for holding companies accountable, and it happens far less often than it should.

    It sounded like you were blaming the British government for the actions of British companies. Which philosophically I have no problem with, but that standard has to be equally applied — and I have, possibly mistakenly, got the impression that you have in the past drawn a distinction between the actions of American businesses and the American government (and people).

    If I have misconstrued you I apologize.

    For the record, Canada's record on holding mining companies to account is absolutely disgusting. We even have laws that they can only be sued if they agree to let the lawsuit proceed…

    889:

    It's commonly assumed that someone spends the evening getting shitfaced, yeah

    The guy wants an entire white orchestra. I've no doubt at all that the underling in question was at the very least sentient

    Funny enough the last Human we ever saw was a beautiful woman of sub-Sahara descent. We think about her quite a lot. Probably the last to have Faith in us. And she was beautiful.

    You're not gonna understand a full reverse ferret if you can't see all the trouser legs it's doing. Time is branched (your Minds' version, it's actually fractal). The shit-faced bit is because, frankly, you're lucky enough not to do the trawls into various Minds who are a little less friendly than your average Bear to get it done.

    Coronavirus origins: US intelligence report 'inconclusive' https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58329980 25th August 2021

    Given the amount of effort spent on this issue (by professionals, scientists, PR, NGOs, flaks, opinion writers and the legion of amateur researchers, good and bad and of course the 'Dark Side of the Moon' stuff - FB in particular has been wild with it) and having absorbed huge amounts of it: that's the best take you're gonna get. Now check out what Wodan-Shodan said (was it her?) before this all had to happen.

    Same result. A lot of Trouser Legs with some scary outcomes if certain parties were not kept happy.

    Humans are shit at probabilities, always want certainties. In the end, you're going to believe what you want anyhow. The real trick is noticing that we flagged each one before they did wyrd things (and would flag more, but we're catering it to the larger LGBT+ community and restricted SF/Fantasy author zones, really).

    ~

    ? (I am One Who Asks.)

    As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. It was hard to know who was more crazy. Me... or everyone else. Here they come again. Worming their way into the black matter of my brain. I told myself... they cannot touch me. They are all dead. I am the one who runs from both the living and the dead. Hunted by scavengers. Haunted by those I could not protect. So I exist in this Wasteland. A man reduced to a single instinct: survive.

    Bear a thought for those who cannot get vaccinated: the embalmed-in-paralysis, the homeless, the illegal, the imprisoned. For they exist and are already first to the woodchipper.

    Cost: Our Teeth, Our Health, Our LOA, Love, the Planet and so on.

    ~

    Easy white-man problems. We're actually worried about that $1 trillion reverse repo swap, ECB and the complete lack of Future baked into the systems that fortified themselves. Fun fact: Labour UK are now retro-actively purging certain 'fringe' elements who are about as threatening as your average trans* person and with as much resources.

    Oh, and the signals from all over blinking: "Death of Consciousness" who now have almost unlimited funds to chuck at the issue.

    ~

    But now everyone has defined what a "Reverse Ferret" is, well.

    Not sure you're tracking the increasing anger towards the pro-SARS-CoV-2 people (anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, anti-any-NPIs or other public health measures) in the US (and elsewhere, but especially the US).

    Oh, we're tracking all sides.

    If any serious Players were not already bought off, cracking the US Egg... would be childs' play.

    890:

    future might be a meme that some forms of economic success* come at too high an ethical price.

    Somewhat related is this thread in r/poly on "is this community too negative":

    grey: it's often people who haven't done enough soul searching or research on their own, looking for easy answers

    emerald: we don't tolerate stuff a lot of places get a pass on including a lot of the "soft" misogyny and lack of accountability other places are more likely to give head pats for. I would say this isn't just a polyamory forum, it's a highest standards of accountability and respect forum.

    Presume for a second that that is true, I'm also wondering whether a lot of the negativity in the environmental movement stems from a similar source. After years and years of the same lack of research and demand for easy answers, greenies are often terse with people asking those questions and not welcoming to people like that. So you get answers like "you're making the perfect not just the enemy of the good, but the enemy of your own survival" with no further explanation. Not helped by those lazy morons also demanding "but what have you done" while also blathering about hair-shirted luddites.

    It would be interesting to posit an Ursala K Le Guin style anarcho-environmentalist future where society assumes an ethics of care both for society and ecology, and how they would deal with defectors (especially the always-defect players from capitalism). The ones who walk away from Omelas, perhaps, skewed towards ecology rather than humanity.

    891:

    Oh, and the answer is 47.

    That's the cost for all parties to get to some shitty stalemate that we'd already worked through.

  • Conscious. Minds. No doubt self-aware, at that.
  • I've no doubt at all that the underling in question was at the very least sentient

    You gotta read your Iain M Banks dear. Human Minds are not the pinacle of Creation.

    892:

    Full disclosure:

    There are many who did the work and flagged the issues who are probably on various lists (we're talking ~87% accurate).

    Here's a warning:

    We'll fucking burn your Minds out if you do after them.

    893: 887 Because it is the Southern states and their adherents to slavery and racist systems that have kept it all going all the time here in the USA.

    What other nations do and did and have not done, and do not do, are not excuses, justifications, or anything else for the ongoing systemic racism of the USA. That is OUR choice, particularly OUR political choices, to keep whomever in political power in any kind of way which keeps the USA making the satanic deals WITH THE FRACKIN' SOUTHERN STATES. This started before the War of Independence, through the Constitutional Convention, through the the early Republic, through the War of 1812, through the wars of acquisition of Mexico etc., through the coup against Reconstruction, through Jim Crow, through you NAME IT.

    This is the nationhood of the USA, and that is what it is and they there -- I will blame capitalism too, going back to the bankers and companies of New York and Boston and other big financial centers, who kept slavery going on into the Americas, even after the War of the Rebellion, financing ships and vessels to keep bringing in enslave people from Africa for Brasil and Cuba -- and the Brits too were deeply involved with that, along with their other slavery enterprises throughout their Empire. (keeping safe by selling the US flag which since the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812, meant the British navy ships policing the West African Slave Trade, couldn't stop, search and seize any ship flying the US flag -- and o did our embassies etc. make BIG MONEY selling that flag to African slavers)

    But in the end, right here in the USA, it is the SOUTH that has been the prime mover of all the evil of slavery and racism from 1619 and now. But its metastasized throughout the nation, and -- well, it continues to destroy this nation.

    Never say any other nation or people were responsible for what we have here than we ourselves.

    894:

    It's a generalisation, and certainly not an absolute rule, but anyone who's surname is "Mac$Forename" probably has genuine Scottish roots if you go back far enough. I don't but "O'$Forename" is a result of my paternal line great-grandfather migrating from real Ulster to Scotland during Victoria's reign (date not known by me but one of my cousins might know).

    895:

    Yes, probably Scottish, but there are quite a lot of Irish ones, such as McGuinness and Maguire (or MacGuire). I don't know if they are all from the north of Ireland, which has been linked to the west of Scotland since time immemorial, but it's possible.

    896:

    I agree that what you say is probable, but there are other reasons I said what I did. The main one is that some of the great lords that fled before they could be slaughtered were merely associated with the Jacobites.

    One of the things that I find really disturbing about the UK is the increasing attitude of TPTB and their supporters to regard evidence as redundant when someone is suspected of terrorism or treason, and support the security forces' use of summary executions. But we have not yet reverted back to the 17th century, which was a lot worse.

    Also, I don't know the distribution of wealth in the relevant areas in that era, though I agree that it is likely to have been concentrated in the hands of the great lords (though it was different in the Lowlands). I might be wrong there.

    897:

    No, this is NOT correct, and JBS has a very good point: "But in the end, right here in the USA, it is the SOUTH that has been the prime mover of all the evil of slavery and racism from 1619 and now." For the first century or so, the mover was at least as much foreign (mainly British) initiatives in setting up slave-worked plantations. And the slave transport up to the end of the 18th century was definitely mainly British.

    Anyone from Britain who denies our responsibility deserves to be sent on a cruise, and claims that we were on the side of the angels - in the hold of a reconstructed slave ship.

    898:

    Or, if from Ireland, "Nc$Gaelic_forename".

    899:

    demanding "but what have you done" while also blathering about hair-shirted luddites.

    Each time I come here, I check the comment count on that previous thread and find some reassurance in noting that it hasn't changed, given your somewhat definitive last word there. I mean maybe comments are turned off there by now (and should be I suppose), but still.

    Anyway if anyone doubts our doom, the proof is that a well-heeled, educated commentariat, not notably bent toward the loony side, has the sorts of reactions it does (the "logic" in some of the rationalisations is the most bizarre motivated silliness) to the relatively modest stuff we talk about here. I can't really blame anyone here for their views, they are what they are; but because they are so, for me this is an objective demonstration of our imminent demise as a species. The proportion of people who even want to choose "survival" seems to be vanishingly small, and once you eliminate the ones whose choice is a fumbling, flailing and missing sort of thing, quite possibly me included, it's very few.

    And look, I can carry off a discussion about how there's a point with the domestic solar when we can care less about the grid connection, and when we're growing our own veg, how we can make do and live on that, even to the point of anti-hypertensive things like green oats and rosella. But when I start including contingencies like the water supply infrastructure failing, I get some pushback: "What do you mean when there's no mains water?". Even though rainwater tanks have become normal again here. But maybe that won't happen here in my lifetime. Seems a bit overoptimistic to rely on...

    900:

    What I said fits with ecology as well. Concerning "The perfect being the enemy of good enough", I read as "This is a game of nibbling at the issue, reduce it enough and it's nearly as good as complete elimination.". I will need to read "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", given the number of children who live in filth & despair in this world, achieving happiness at the cost of one child in misery is at least more efficient than what TPTB are okay with.

    901:

    Yes, but, it's more than the south, it's how many of TPTB are okay with human suffering? How adept are they at dehumanization? Can they do this and still command the respect of their peers?

    902:

    By some reports as many as half of all doctors and nurses in the NHS are thinking about quitting the field entirely when the current pandemic subsides.

    Not just the NHS. Apparently Mississippi is down 2000 nurses in the last half-year, which is roughly 4% attrition in the last six months.

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/25/us/mississippi-covid-nurse-strain/index.html

    903:

    Yes, but, it's more than the south, it's how many of TPTB are okay with human suffering? How adept are they at dehumanization? Can they do this and still command the respect of their peers?

    Most of them, very, and apparently.

    904:

    And to pile on a bit.

    The main difference in racism in the US is the south wrote it into laws. The rest of the county just did it by custom (after around 1900) and thus claimed it wasn't really there. Till it was exposed. Then they did a whole lot of whataboutism pointing south and east.

    905:

    So, when my parents moved to California, the house they bought had a fairly standard clause prohibiting sales to mixed race couples.

    And, I've been told that the Yellow Scare in CA was responsible for the creation of the INS.

    And, well, remember the anti-Hispanic act?

    Integrating racism into our laws is not simply a Southern tradition.

    The South is, sure, behind the times.

    906:

    To be more accurate. Many in the south were up front and personal about segregation and racism and explicit in their laws.

    Racial exclusions in deeds and such were not so much written into laws as just allowed to happen. I guess my point is in many parts of the country segregation was just done while in the south it was written into state law.

    I have memories of my relatives in Detroit in the 60s and how they spewed out racial nonsense when they were around. Of course when you're 10 you don't always realized just what is going on until later in life.

    907:

    I ran into a question that I thought I'd like to put into the group:

    Why are Zoom and TickTock starting to rise despite the fact that they have no new technologies compared to their established peers? Perhaps because, just like video games in the 80s, they've gone from a medium of technology into another art form. What do you guys think? Should social networks and internet communications media themselves be considered the next art form, along with books, music, movies, graphic novels, and video games?

    @908. Here's a phrase I heard growing up from non-white friends explaining their predicament: "In the South, they don't care where you live as long as you don't rise too far. In the North, they don't care how far you rise, but they care where you live".

    908:

    Why are Zoom and TickTock starting to rise despite the fact that they have no new technologies compared to their established peers?

    Blind luck? Can't discount the null hypothesis…

    Zoom got a boost from the pandemic, but there were many videoconferencing platforms around. Possibly having a short name helped them become well-known because it was easy for people to use (and remember) — "zoom me" vs. "videoconference me".

    TicTok probably got a boost among younger users because it wasn't Instagram/Facebook/YouTube where they were outnumbered by their parents' generation.

    Past a certain point it's network effect — you use the social media platform that your friends and colleagues are using.

    909:

    Why are Zoom and TickTock starting to rise despite the fact that they have no new technologies compared to their established peers?

    Well first off it's TikTok.

    And if you go all the way back to MySpace, the teens gravitate to whatever doesn't have their parents and grandparents on it. So every 5 to 15 years something new will catch on.

    Zoom put together a pricing and ease of use model that was fantastic for grandma to talk to her kids and grandkids. On whatever device they owned. Teams and it's similar wanted accounts, terms, rules, etc... I tried some of the others for various situations and Zoom was by far the easier to setup and use. Especially for the non nerds around us.

    I have organized a weekly meeting mainly centered around Apple tech but ... Anyway some of the folks say we should use Facetime instead of Zoom. Of course they never dealt with FT just not working at times for more than 2 people. It usually does but not always. Zoom never not worked in the last 18 months. With up to 20 people at a time in the meetings. Plus we didn't want to exclude people who didn't have an Apple "thing" nearby. Many people who have lots of Apple things participate on Linux or Windows boxes because that is where the camera or sound set up is located.

    910:

    No, that's not right. Mc is a bit more common than Mac in Ireland, true, but there are plenty of Mac names. I don't know of any Scottish names using the form Mag, though there may be some.

    911:

    So, when my parents moved to California, the house they bought had a fairly standard clause prohibiting sales to mixed race couples. And, I've been told that the Yellow Scare in CA was responsible for the creation of the INS. And, well, remember the anti-Hispanic act? Integrating racism into our laws is not simply a Southern tradition. The South is, sure, behind the times.

    And California sent Kamala Harris, a mixed-race woman of Asian and African heritage, first to the Senate, then to the White House.

    I'll point out, again, the moral event horizon that the South crosses, repeatedly, isn't racism. It's refusing to even try to do something about it, and worse, trying to stop anyone from doing something about it and forcibly degrading them to your level.

    If you're covered in dog shit, there's precisely no utility in bragging about it. There's still less in flinging feces at people who are trying to clean themselves off, and there's still less in tackling them and forcing them to roll in it again. And it's especially ugly when you attempt to proclaim moral superiority because you're covered in dog shit, and to claim that those who are trying to come clean are hypocrites, because they were once as filthy as you are now.

    That's stereotypical "Southern" behavior about race, about climate change, and about covid19. Why should we tolerate it?

    912:

    I'm not sure it's worth discussing who's to blame for American racism. The simple truth of the matter is that fingers can be justifiably pointed at any number of people and nations, starting with those in Africa who sold their neighbors onto the death ships, and going forward from there to the British, to Southern U.S. people, to Northern U.S. people (Look at the work of people like Robert Moses if you don't believe me.)

    There's PLENTY of blame to go around. Enormous amounts, and literally millions of people have contributed to the project of turning the U.S. into a racist shithole. I'm sure we all have our favorite group to blame, but as long as someone is in the right neighborhood why fight over it? You can individually blame every British sailor, banker, cotton-buyer, etc., literally hundreds of thousands of people and still have hell-filling amounts of blame left over for folk from the Southern U.S., and having blamed both of those, you can look to the U.S. North or our West Coast and still see a near-genocidal level of racism! (Portland anyone, both currently and historically?)

    The important thing is that it's on all of us to call it out. It's been about 165 years since the Civil War and the important thing is that we all hire Black people if we're hiring, that we all protest when/where we can if BLM is doing an event, we all educate ourselves and we all call out current racism as we see it!

    913:

    I'd be careful about 'othering' the South. My perspective is that the only fundamental difference between California and the South is that of political feasiblity. Well within my lifetime, we elected Reagan and Wilson. We, whether CA or NY, have plenty of racist hillbillies. The South, by and large, has plenty of fairly immigrant-friendly cities.

    And, by and large, the rural areas are better thought of as impoverished, self-absorbed, and ignorant of city life and global affairs (perfectly reasonable, I am fairly ignorant of farm life. In high school, I learned that the combination of multi-hour-long police response times, Reagan's policy of putting schizophrenics on the streets, and our town's policy of forcing homeless outside of the town led to a non-trivial number of scary trespassing/scavenging incidents that were solved by brandishing a shotgun. Attractive young woman, albeit the stories of slaughtering her pet calf were somewhat offputting. Same with the running people off at gunpoint.)

    At some point, it became clear that straight racism was an insurmountable political disadvantage in California, probably because of the large immigrant population. At that point, the Republican party became non-competitive (cutting racism, if anything decreases Republican turnout more rapidly than it acquires swing voters.). I am quite confident that most Republican politicans are aware of this issue. But...their choice is between evil and collapse.

    It may simply be that you are more optimistic about people than I am, but, meh.

    If anything, the most important thing is swinging borderline Republican states blue, even for a bit. When voter suppression is dismantled, close states seem to become non-competitive for Republicans. At that point, politics in those states improves and rural regions become quietly and increasingly irrevelant. I look forwards to Texas turning blue.

    914:

    Erwin Provided ....that the "R's" do not succeed in 2022, of rigging the votes so that they have seized the lower US House & kill what is left of US democracy in the process, turning the country into an official Oligarchy of the White Wing

    915:

    Speaking as a Californian, you're sort of right. There are plenty of racist, right-wing people and places just a few miles from me. And to the degree that they'll try to infect me with Covid19 or threaten the non-white members of my family, yeah, they're Other to me at the moment. They always have the choice of washing off the dogshit. I will object when they try to poison me with it when I'm working on cleaning myself off.

    We agree very strongly that most of the Red State system depends on voter control, heavy propaganda, and industrial control. It's an authoritarian system, basically.

    Where we disagree is that I'm pretty sure the Republicans have four choices, not two: it's not death or acquiescence, it's death, acquiescence, change, or leave. Quite a few of them have changed (become politically independent or moderate democrat) or left (moved to California or the more liberal cities). This is hard on both the over-burdened cities and the dying towns, but that's the price of the whole Red State Authoritarian--heck, call it fascist--system.

    916:

    @908

    That's inaccurate. Apartheid was written into national law by that Virginian in the White House, Woodrow Wilson. He codified the Jim Crow legal system throughout the nation. Which is why it takes a White House and federal passage of laws to even begin trying to change the system.

    Genocide and racism, enforced via the Justified Violence committed by White Man With His Gun are the widest, deepest, most consistent threads, themes and practice, that make the US a nation, as opposed to 'merely' a country. It's been here since even before 1619, and it has always been here and done here.

    917:

    I like coffee... but I like it with milk in it.*

    Are you going to assert that, every weekened, when I go downstairs and slave over a hot espresso maker, so that we can have cappuccino in bed, that we're not drinking coffee?

    And I hate to tell you, but there is Middle Eastern coffee cooked with milk and sugar.

    • Of course, I'm grinding Columbian supremo (medium roast), or, for cappuccino, espresso beans, not "12 oz makes as much coffee as a pound" office coffee.
    918:

    zoom: established peers? You mean the ones that you pay through the nose for, like gotomeeting, or Cisco's WebEx (which, as of 2019, when I was in one at work, and contacted their support, was told that they did not support 64 bit o/s)?

    Zoom let individuals d/l, and small groups start one for free (considering it, one must assume, loss leader), and that worked (mostly)?

    TikTok, I stay away from. As I understand it, it's for 1.5 min videos or under. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

    919:

    Gads, if it wasn't so tragic it would be hilarious to see the same damned arguments and justifications trotted out over and over to say that slavery and racism in the US, and the War of the Rebellion weren't the fault of the South and the USA. The Southern planter power political class was already blaming slavery on the Brits, led particularly by South Carolinians and the Virginians, such as those brilliant intellectual apologist for the necessity, inevitability and essentiality of enslaving Africans here, Thomas Jefferson and "Give me liberty or give me death' Patrick Henry.

    So just give it a rest.

    920:

    I'll not that, right now, in the last 7 months, it's overwhelmingly the South passing voter restriction laws.

    And I assure you that there are folks in Texas who consider only Texas to be the Real South (ok, ok, maybe louisiana, also).

    921:

    "Running people off at gunpoint". A late friend of mine told me this: she and her husband had bought a farm in, IIRC, WV. She found horseprints on their land one day, and being a horsewoman, was following them, and as she came to the border of their property, a "neighbor" was there with a shotgun, telling her to stay off his land.

    They sold the farm not long after that, and moved back to Philly. This would have been late seventies, maybe.

    922:

    You tend to protray things as totally binary.

    Sure the Southern Confederate states where big and a driver of racism. But the entire country was racist for a long time. Well most of it. But in terms of hard core laws it was the old confederate south. The rest of the country had softer laws. Or implied things. Or just hard core habits. But the south would brag about it.

    As to blaming the south for slavery and not one else. Sorry. I give the old Confederate States the lead, especially in the US. But they got that mostly because the rest of the European centric world abandoned the practice first. Mostly. Sort of. Well the direct parts. Kind of. ...

    But if you want to yell at us and tell us the one true way, well go ahead. I'll let it pass over.

    923:

    "Are you going to assert that, ...."

    That wasn't me, gov, honest.

    "And I hate to tell you, but there is Middle Eastern coffee cooked with milk and sugar."

    I must look that up.

    924:

    I should point out that I am a Brit. The reason I posted was that the converse bollocks is often spouted in the UK, denying OUR responsibility in creating your southern slavery racism. I will have no truck with political revisionism, especially of that nature. But the failure (and worse) to fix the situation since your rebellion is, I agree, nothing to do with us.

    Which is not to say that we shouldn't have the finger pointed at us for similar reasons, even today, albeit to a much lesser degree.

    925:

    Something I have seen discussed elsewhere is what could/will happen when/if the Rethuglican party implodes? Since the US political system (to an outsider at least) seems inevitably geared towards a two party system as it is today - will the "right wing" democrats split off, form a new party and absorb the sentiments (and votes) of the homeless republicans or will the left wing of the democrats do similar but with left wing voters?

    (Of course - as a european - realising that what US considers "left wing" would here (mostly) be considered someone slightly to the right of the bog standard conservative parties...)

    926:

    sigh That should have been "I'll note that", not not....

    927:

    Last time it happened trains were a somewhat recently introduced way of travel. So it is hard to say.

    If the R's do implode personally I except there to still be an R but it be made up of a new group of people. Sort of like how the D's transformed as the southern whites drifted away. But that took a LONG time. Look up Dixiecrats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat They tried to split off form the D's just after WWII when Truman had the audacity of saying we need to de-segregate the armed forces and a few other things. It wasn't until Nixon, voting rights, and civil rights that they finally left the D's to start over. As R's. But even in my first vote of 1970 the south was still solidly registered as D and voting that way locally but R nationally. I mean such that many local positions didn't even have an R running.

    But your premise ignores how firmly the R's are in nearly 1/2 or more of many states. Very firmly. And while a non trivial number of R's don't like a lot of what the R's are doing, they also don't like the D's and wind up voting for the one THEY find the least offensive.

    The bigger thing I see is what happens when the people who don't want to be a D or an R manage to coalesce around a new party. Maybe. Kind of. North Carolina Stats as of this month. Total registered to vote: 7,124,069 Total registered as D: 2,490,613 Total registered as R: 2,169,971

    That's a lot of not D or R. https://vt.ncsbe.gov/RegStat/

    928:

    This is worth a skim, and it's perhaps worth supplying the link to people belittling the seriousness of SARS-CoV-2. More than 50 long-term effects of COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis (Nature, Open Access, 09 August 2021) It is, as usually a point in time, only has 1.5 years of history to work with so talks about "months", and is missing some concerns not yet fully baked by science, such as concerns about long-term neurological damage. From the abstract: The included studies defined long-COVID as ranging from 14 to 110 days post-viral infection. It was estimated that 80% of the infected patients with SARS-CoV-2 developed one or more long-term symptoms. The five most common symptoms were fatigue (58%), headache (44%), attention disorder (27%), hair loss (25%), and dyspnea (24%).

    929:

    hair loss (25%)

    For some (many?) of us that wouldn't be all that noticeable. Maybe the number is higher?

    930:

    Hair loss is a common effect of many serious illnesses. Maintaining those glossy locks isn't that important compared to keeping the guts etc working…

    I'd be surprised not to see hair loss among long-Covid survivors.

    931:

    glossy locks

    I've been thinning since I was 30. And getting a sun burn through my hair since then. My wife's hair went mostly white/gray in her later 20s.

    We'd need to look for other symptoms.

    Oh, and people have told me I have attention issues since grade school. :)

    Thanks for the link.

    932:

    A lot of mine slid down to my chest and back.

    On the other hand, my oncologist, when I was being treated, was very annoyed they didn't seem to get any of it....

    933:

    Don't forget the ears.

    934:

    My hair went grey in my 20s, and I was white by my 40s.

    I suspect stress had a lot to do with it. I didn't realize until I retired just how stressful I found teaching. No longer working 60-80 hour weeks has done wonders for my health!

    935:

    Agreed. Albeit, I'd make a distinction between Republicans and Republican politicians.

    I've seen plenty of Republicans turn away from the national party. They clearly have many reasonable choices. Frankly, there's room in the CA Democratic party for plenty of typically conservative and/or classist positions. Perhaps more room than I prefer.

    But, I've seen relatively few viable paths forwards for a CA Republican party. I suspect the Republican 'grifter' issue is mostly an outgrowth of the fact there is a large racist client population and no viable way to advocate honestly for their main policy items.

    Now, I'd argue there is a difference between dealing with problematic people and understanding them as a group. If you look at this as a trolly problem, people showing direct hostility towards friends or family are not high value for me. I lean towards hitting the empty trolly even if the ratio of non-problematic people to problematic people is really high in the other trolly, but don't really feel good about that choice. I'll abide by the rules of a civilized society, but, meh, if they end up being triaged in a pandemic, meh.

    On the other hand, seeing these people as other leads to an inaccurate assumption that red states and blue states have dramatically different mixes of people. They really don't. It also, in my opinion, leads to a largely inaccurate mental model involving persuasion and choice. A mental model assuming that people die faster than they change their minds is more predictive of the future of aggregate populations. (Not totally true, viz gay marriage.) Another inaccuracy is the exculpation of the North. Perhaps from an outsider's perspective, just looking at the general population, closer to one clean pig and another smellier pig. Still pigs. (No offence meant to pigs.) To be fair, around the Bush era, Chinese newspapers would translate to 'idiot white ghost president does stupidity'.

    And, even further, while Asian countries have mostly done well with the pandemic, vaccine uptake hasn't been amazingly better.

    936:

    Still pigs.

    Pigs are actually quite clean animals, if you don't keep them in a sty where they have to wallow in their own shit to keep cool.

    Also as smart as dogs.

    937:

    Something I thought of today ... may not have any scientific basis, but I thought I'd run it past y'all and see what you think.

    I remember back around the first of the year when there was a strong push to get people vaccinated that some people had a flu like reaction to the second dose of Covid vaccine and eventually there was some kind of news explaining that those strong reactions were generally among "younger" people (younger relative to old farts like me) who had more active immune systems and the reaction to the second dose was because their immune systems had produced a greater number of antibodies and was already revved up before the second shot.

    Make of that what you will, but I wondered about something else. Breakthrough Covid among the fully vaccinated.

    Is there anything to tell if the people who had strong reactions to the second dose are more OR less likely to have a breakthrough case of Covid? Or does there not appear to be any correlation.

    I didn't have a reaction to the Covid vaccine and I usually don't have a reaction to the annual flu shot (other than a little tenderness at the site the next day), but I got my first "shingles" vaccination today (VA finally had it in stock when I was there) and it HURTS!.

    Feels like they one of those pneumatic nail guns to drive a 16d nail into my shoulder. Or like they pounded the nail in with a baseball bat.

    Second shot is due in October and they told me to either get my flu shot in September or wait until November.

    And I guess I'm going to have to figure out when to get the Covid booster if it turns out I need to get one, because the previously announced timetable (5 months from the second shot) for the VA put that shot in mid-October as well ... that would be the earliest I would be eligible.

    938:

    Waiting to get your Covid booster might well produce better protection in the long run. And you've had lots of practice at protecting yourself by now, so an extra couple of weeks should be easy.

    (That's the question I would ask my doctor if I faced that choice, though.)

    939:

    Robert Prior @ 890:

    Hold the American companies accountable. Hold the British companies accountable. Hold the Canadian companies ...

    It sounded like you were blaming the British government for the actions of British companies. Which philosophically I have no problem with, but that standard has to be equally applied — and I have, possibly mistakenly, got the impression that you have in the past drawn a distinction between the actions of American businesses and the American government (and people).

    No. The distinction I'm trying to draw (or perhaps opposing) is the idea that slavery was uniquely the fault of the American South. I don't absolve American businesses or the U.S. Government. But I do want it understood that the American South (and its people), American businesses and the American Government (and people) are NOT THE ONLY GUILTY PARTIES.

    And it's not just what those guilty parties did during the American Civil War. Slavery existed in England's North American Colonies for 157 years BEFORE the American Revolution.

    From 1776 to the XIIIth Amendment (1865) is another 89 years.

    If you're going reconcile that, you have to consider everyone's actions during the entire 246 year period. The "south" has a lot to atone for over slavery, but they're not the only ones.

    If I have misconstrued you I apologize.

    Now you know where I'm coming from there's no need.

    For the record, Canada's record on holding mining companies to account is absolutely disgusting. We even have laws that they can only be sued if they agree to let the lawsuit proceed…

    I believe those laws came from NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, Mexico and the U.S. that George HW Bush negotiated and Clinton got ratified by Congress ... and how ever the other two went about adopting it.

    940:

    She of many names under yet another pseudonym @ 893: Oh, and the answer is 47.

    That's the cost for all parties to get to some shitty stalemate that we'd already worked through.

    47. Conscious. Minds. No doubt self-aware, at that.

    I've no doubt at all that the underling in question was at the very least sentient

    You gotta read your Iain M Banks dear. Human Minds are not the pinacle of Creation.

    No, THE answer is 42.

    You gotta read your Douglas Adams ... or Lewis Carroll.

    941:

    Something I have seen discussed elsewhere is what could/will happen when/if the Rethuglican party implodes? Since the US political system (to an outsider at least) seems inevitably geared towards a two party system as it is today - will the "right wing" democrats split off, form a new party and absorb the sentiments (and votes) of the homeless republicans or will the left wing of the democrats do similar but with left wing voters?

    A new right-wing party would emerge built around the GOP's reactionary base. My guess is that the remaining Reaganites who comprise the current GOP establishment would defect to the Democrats' moderate wing. Several of the Cheneyite Neocons have already done this.

    The more important matter in the next few years is who wins the civil war within the Democratic party: the moderates or the social justice faction. The SJs have the passion, the youth, and the megaphone, but the moderates have the money, the institutional memory, and the bulk of the voters. The SJs grossly overestimate the size of their bloc and, to put it politely, lack crossover appeal. The moderates can win swing voters the SJs tend to alienate, but the moderates are boring and fail to capture the media's attention. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders's social democratic movement has mostly evaporated with its remains absorbed into the SJ faction, and their economic issues have taken a backseat to the SJs' culture war efforts.

    If the moderates win, the status quo more or less continues. If the progressives win, the question is then becomes whether the moderates defect to the GOP, try to join with what remains of the center-right and form a centrist party, or become disillusioned and stop voting, leaving U.S. politics to an era of reactionaries vs. progressives with nothing in-between.

    942:
    Biden Promised Electric Cars, Which Need Lithium. A Proposed Mine Is On Sacred Land
    In Nevada, tribal opposition to a proposed lithium mine is testing the White House's pledge to electrify America's transportation system and give more of a voice to indigenous people in federal lands.

    TL;DR: It's not easy being green.

    943:

    David L @ 906: And to pile on a bit.

    The main difference in racism in the US is the south wrote it into laws. The rest of the county just did it by custom (after around 1900) and thus claimed it wasn't really there. Till it was exposed. Then they did a whole lot of whataboutism pointing south and east.

    The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

    It was not, IS NOT a southern problem. It's an American problem here and a global problem elsewhere.

    944:

    David L @ 908: To be more accurate. Many in the south were up front and personal about segregation and racism and explicit in their laws.

    Racial exclusions in deeds and such were not so much written into laws as just allowed to happen. I guess my point is in many parts of the country segregation was just done while in the south it was written into state law.

    I have memories of my relatives in Detroit in the 60s and how they spewed out racial nonsense when they were around. Of course when you're 10 you don't always realized just what is going on until later in life.

    To be more accurate still, Restrictive Covenants were not a thing in the south because of the overt racism. You didn't need them to keep "those people" out.

    It's outside of the south that Restrictive Covenants were used to exclude the other because the racism & segregation was not overt.

    Where did the KKK have its greatest strength in the 1920s?

    945:

    I dunno, I've know two pigs that insisted that being out of the pen was worth while even if they couldn't get back in and had to suffer the indignity of being chased, caught, and forced back in. The dogs were much more likely to be able to get back into their runs and some even clued in that looking unusually innocent afterwards was a silly idea.

    OTOH dogs are not really tool users the same way pigs are. I've had a pig that would push its house across to the fence so it could jump from the top of the house over the fence and escape. Never seen a dog do that.

    946:

    Heteromeles @ 913: That's stereotypical "Southern" behavior about race, about climate change, and about covid19. Why should we tolerate it?

    Because you're just as bigoted and racist as they are.

    947:

    Foxessa @ 918: @908

    That's inaccurate. Apartheid was written into national law by that Virginian in the White House, Woodrow Wilson. He codified the Jim Crow legal system throughout the nation. Which is why it takes a White House and federal passage of laws to even begin trying to change the system.

    Would that "Woodrow Wilson", former president of Princeton University and Governor of New Jersey who kept us out of war in 1914? "Father" of the League of Nations?

    948:

    Why are Zoom and TickTock starting to rise despite the fact that they have no new technologies compared to their established peers?

    It's not just Zoom - Microsoft Teams also took off in usage in the last 18 months.

    Both driven by the need for people at home to communicate with others using video, whether family to family or for previous social groups to keep meeting when physical became impossible.

    Zoom took off in the non-corporate world because of it's simplicity.

    Teams took off in corporate because it was bundled with Office, and offered features that corporate types needed - but that also meant it was far too complicated for personal use.

    949:

    You're not gonna understand a full reverse ferret if you can't see all the trouser legs it's doing. That Reverse Ferret tweet/replies is good twitter. "The ferret is in the wrong trouser leg of time!" got me curious about ferret psychometrics and what ferrets are (uhm) capable of. Interesting creatures. Ferret Body Language (Chewy Editorial, January 1, 2016) This is a nonspecific request that usually manifests itself as a persistent stare. Your ferret will lock its eyes on you and you will have to figure out what it wants. That's one way of looking at it. Ferrets are said to stare down cats.

    Humans are shit at probabilities, always want certainties. Some here (including Elderly Cynic, and myself to some extent, think with probabilities/fields/uncertainties). It's not unknown, just rarer than it should be. It would be good if most humans were taught the basics when very young.

    Bear a thought for those who cannot get vaccinated: the embalmed-in-paralysis, the homeless, the illegal, the imprisoned. Yes, [sigh]. And also elsewhere especially in the less rich parts of the world. The US should lop off $100B (+/-factor of 2) from military spending and use it to ramp up vaccine production, distributed no-conditions (other than distribution to everyone) to the parts of the rest of the world that need vaccine supplies.

    950:

    I disagree. Over the years, I've run into a lot of Democrats, including older ones, who are unhappy at how far to the right the Democrats moved.

    I mean, really, Sanders is a New Deal Democrat. A lot more folks than you think want that... and given that what, 41% of the electorate is registered "independent", you don't think more of them moved to Democrat for the new wing?

    951:

    Over the years, I've run into a lot of Democrats, including older ones, who are unhappy at how far to the right the Democrats moved.

    Yeah, well, the left wing of your Democrats are centrists by Canadian standards. The 'moderates' fubar was referencing would fit nicely into our right-wing party. Manchin would fit in with Bernier's People's Party crazies.

    952:

    FUBAR007 @ 943:

    Something I have seen discussed elsewhere is what could/will happen when/if the Rethuglican party implodes? Since the US political system (to an outsider at least) seems inevitably geared towards a two party system as it is today - will the "right wing" democrats split off, form a new party and absorb the sentiments (and votes) of the homeless republicans or will the left wing of the democrats do similar but with left wing voters?

    A new right-wing party would emerge built around the GOP's reactionary base. My guess is that the remaining Reaganites who comprise the current GOP establishment would defect to the Democrats' moderate wing. Several of the Cheneyite Neocons have already done this.

    I suspect that when the GOP implodes it will be something more along the lines of the Röhm purge without the actual "long knives". Or perhaps Stalin's Party purges without the show trials.

    There really are no remaining "Reaganites" in the current GOP "establishment". Some people still think Trumpolini did something to the GOP when he took it over. He didn't. He just recognized it for the rotten fruit "ripe for plucking" that it had already become. The GOP has been fully fascist for at least a decade or more.

    The more important matter in the next few years is who wins the civil war within the Democratic party: the moderates or the social justice faction. The SJs have the passion, the youth, and the megaphone, but the moderates have the money, the institutional memory, and the bulk of the voters. The SJs grossly overestimate the size of their bloc and, to put it politely, lack crossover appeal. The moderates can win swing voters the SJs tend to alienate, but the moderates are boring and fail to capture the media's attention. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders's social democratic movement has mostly evaporated with its remains absorbed into the SJ faction, and their economic issues have taken a backseat to the SJs' culture war efforts.

    The "civil war" within the Democratic Party is more of a chimera created by the lame-stream media than a reality within the party. The so called "Social Justice Warriors" are mostly just mainstream Congressional Democrats doing constituent services. The only real difference between the politics of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Tip O'Niell are ....
    1. He was an old white guy from Boston and she's a young Hispanic lady from New York.
    2. He died when she was only 5 years old.
    They're both old-fashion New Deal Democrats ... TVA & REA to bring power to the people out in the backwaters of the USA on one hand, and Solar Power & Internet to bring power to the people in inner city backwaters on the other.

    You don't have to choose between them because they complement each other.

    There some old CONSERVATIVE Democrats who can't read poll numbers in their own districts, who for some reason are still afraid of being primaried from the right. They haven't learned the lesson from Obama that the GOP never bargains in good faith. But they are NOT moderates. They're RINOs or DINOs or some dying breed.

    If the moderates win, the status quo more or less continues. If the progressives win, the question is then becomes whether the moderates defect to the GOP, try to join with what remains of the center-right and form a centrist party, or become disillusioned and stop voting, leaving U.S. politics to an era of reactionaries vs. progressives with nothing in-between.

    The "moderates" will win because THEY are the heart of the Democratic Party. And so are the so called "Social Justice Warriors". That's the point of a Big Tent political party. You don't have to agree on every little thing to get the job done.

    953:

    Moz @ 947: I dunno, I've know two pigs that insisted that being out of the pen was worth while even if they couldn't get back in and had to suffer the indignity of being chased, caught, and forced back in. The dogs were much more likely to be able to get back into their runs and some even clued in that looking unusually innocent afterwards was a silly idea.

    OTOH dogs are not really tool users the same way pigs are. I've had a pig that would push its house across to the fence so it could jump from the top of the house over the fence and escape. Never seen a dog do that.

    I have seen dogs do that. I've also seen them just climb a fence to get out ... or in.

    954:

    I well understand that. Actually, are you sure Manchin, for example, isn't more conservative? The new wing of the party are finally, as Bernie put it, the Democratic wing of the Democrats, at least as compared to, say, before Tricky Dick.

    955:

    Suspect American politics becomes interesting once the Republican party implodes. Political stability seems to thrive on a continuous gradient, where policy shifts to pick up the median voter.

    Problem is that there's a 'social conservative' (racist) voting bloc. One of Trump's 'innovations' was realizing that increasing racist rhetoric was popular enough with the base that he picked up more votes than he lost or activated against him. (At least, in swing states...)

    Issue is, electorally, they're on kind of a sinking ship and will likely end up like CA Republicans at some point, while still being popular locally. Sure, they can try voter suppression, but it probably doesn't work long-term. (The larger the population differential, the more blatant measures need to be, and one bad election and you end up losing permanently.)

    Splintering into a right-wing party will be electorally futile at that point, as they simply won't have the votes to be relevant nationally.

    Possible futures? 1. Regional parties, allying in the federal legislature? 2. Democrats -> elitist, socially liberal, big business, New Republicans -> Xenophobic, socialists 3. European politics -> Democrats fragment, with the US having a left wing and the centrist Democrats and Republicans forming a new party, both of which are not particularly racist.

    My guess is #2.

    Heh. Probably happens in my lifetime. Interesting times.

    956:

    JBS And over here, too: There really are no remaining "Reaganites"Macmillan/Heath people in the current GOPtory "establishment". Some people still think TrumpoliniBoZo did something to the GOPtory when he took it over. He didn't. He just recognized it for the rotten fruit "ripe for plucking" that it had already become. The GOPtory has been fully fascist for at least a decade5 years or more. .... There some old CONSERVATIVE Democrats who can't read poll numbers in their own districts, .... What's-his-name from N Vir? Mnuchin/Manchin or something like that?

    Erwin Sure, they can try voter suppression, but it probably doesn't work long-term. SURE about that? If they can fix the elections in 22 & 24, they can lock the US into a permanent White-wing rich Oligarchy

    957:

    No, the shingles vaccine doesn't hurt particularly. What almost certainly happened is that you were unlucky, and the injection managed to hit a nerve. That's rare, but happens.

    https://www.verywellhealth.com/injection-side-effects-call-doctor-2616542

    958:
    Why are [..] TickTock starting to rise despite the fact that they have no new technologies compared to their established peers?

    Because TikTok's established peer - precursor, really - was acquired and shut down by Twitter about a year prior to TikTok's international launch?

    959:

    AFAIK, no-one other than PIRA was really in the frame for the 1971 attack. Getting a home-made bomb to actually operate as planned, is technically demanding - very few organisations had the means and motive.

    Remember, terrorism is quite expensive (and stressful). The reason that neither PIRA nor UVF carried out any other attacks in Scotland, is that it contained a lot of support[1] and infrastructure (i.e. fundraising), for both sides; and provided a safe space where they could take a break without having to look over their shoulder or under their car. If the bombs go off and gunfire starts, then that support evaporates; not to mention the attention of the authorities to such worrying questions as "who owns or profits from this market stall / pub / car dealership?".

    The paramilitaries were often as pragmatic as any organised criminals; allegedly, they met to deconflict which businesses in Northern Ireland would find themselves extorted for protection money - after all, you can't expect anyone to pay twice, and you don't want anyone escaping [2]. As for the drugs trade, the greatest sin was to compete with them.

    [1] In terms of ideology, there was even some concern in the early 1970s that Glasgow could go the way of Belfast. There were a lot of the same drivers in place (anti-Catholic bigotry and discrimination was endemic); when most other Nationalist movements of 1930s Europe were choosing "the bankers" (euphemism for Jews) as their scapegoat and target, many Scottish Nationalists had "the Irish" (euphemism for Roman Catholics) in their sights.

    [2] We lived a mile away from a business that refused to pay, and it would get blown up every year or so; it started out a petrol station with a small shop, and grew with every rebuild over the years into a motel/restaurant (because HM Govt guaranteed that no-one was uninsurable). It was one of the safer places to dine, but the eventual rebuild was vaguely predictable, to the extent that Dad/Mum took a visiting friend out to dinner, with appropriate briefing about "just in case, do whatever the person in the balaclava orders". It was apparently blown up the next week...

    960:

    Suspect American politics becomes interesting once the Republican party implodes.

    Problem is that there's a 'social conservative' (racist) voting bloc. One of Trump's 'innovations' was realizing that increasing racist rhetoric was popular enough with the base that he picked up more votes than he lost or activated against him. (At least, in swing states...)

    Issue is, electorally, they're on kind of a sinking ship

    There is (rightly) a lot of focus on Trump's appeal to racism, but to only focus on that ignores that other issues also brought him (and the Republicans) voters.

    Montana elected a Trumpist Governor, and perhaps this article in the Guardian from yesterday helps explain why - everyday people being priced out of their communities not just in NY or California, but middle of nowhere Montana. Median price for a single family home $720,000 and 2 bedroom apartments going for $2,000 a month.

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/26/american-west-income-inequality

    The combination of being forced out of society and the fear of socialism/left wing politics means voters react unpredictably.

    Thus there is no certainty the the Republican Party is on the verge of irrelevance.

    961:

    Poor Sus scrofa...

    I guess if I had to compare the usual suspects to animals, the only genus that comes up is Anopheles.

    AFAIK they fulfill no important ecological role, and at least the larvae like eutrophic water bodies (AKA sewerage).

    Personally, I react to Mosquitos through a "kill on sight" policy, which says something; e.g. I usually catch vespidae et al. with a glass; bonus point, chorea-like movements don't make for a sure kill, but for a very agitated hornet.

    Oh, and the genus is nearly cosmopolitan, so little room for ethnic stereotypes.

    962:

    ... the army's behaviour changed radically from 1969 to 1972. Martin's comments were revisionism, pure and simple.

    How is it revisionist to suggest that the only capable and competent terrorist organisation of the time operating in the UK and targeting the Army, was responsible for a terrorist attack targeting the Army?

    Just for clarity, Widgery was a whitewash, and the Saville Inquiry was shamefully overdue. And you're right - after the first couple of years, there was a massive investment by the Army in training for Northern Ireland. At the start, they were sending battalions straight from BAOR to Belfast; by the mid/late 1970s they were putting months of preparation before any unit deployment, training soldiers to act in support of the police (often in the sense of each RUC officer patrolling their beat, having twelve or more soldiers orbiting them to deter any terrorist attack)[1].

    Until the full Saville Report was available, I'd been willing to go along with the generally-accepted[2] narrative of "over-aggressive and under-trained Paras faced with an unfamiliar situation, thought they were under attack after a moron of a Junior Officer decided that what the situation really needed, was for him to fire a warning shot", followed by the depressingly-inevitable 1970s stock response of "close ranks and deny the obvious truth".

    After reading the Saville Report, I was happy that they tried to prosecute the murderers. Because most of it was clearly murder, not "overloaded soldiers make bad decisions under stress"[3]. If anyone doubts that, I suggest that they read the full report; it makes for depressing reading.

    [1] Dad's last job in the Army was training soldiers to go to Northern Ireland; due to childcare issues, I got to see some of the presentations from the projector booth :)

    [2] Generally-accepted everywhere outside the Parachute Regiment...

    [3] As a young infantry reservist in a battalion with a Home Defence role, I went through a little of the same training - because of the PIRA threat, we patrolled our training areas with live rounds. Rather than the "yellow card" rules of engagement, we operated to similar "white card" rules ("blue card" and "pink card" also existed for specific tasks). It was enlightening (but depressing) to see how easily an otherwise-sensible soldier could be overloaded into a bad decision by a new scenario, but that's why we did the training on the specialist ranges at Lydd; making sure they wouldn't be overloaded so easily, the next time round the training loop.

    963:

    I don't think you can look at politics simply by itself, because external factors are going to increasingly come into play.

    The two basic forces are (to be snide, but not aimed at you): --Batshittery, and --Authoritarianism

    The batshittery comes primarily from the Covid-hoaxing, anti-climate change stunts going on right now among the QNut growers. The problem they have is that people are getting killed in increasing numbers by listening to them, and that's pissing some few of the survivors off. If this goes on, I'm pretty sure the anti-vaxxing QNuts will go the way of the hippies and other divorced-from-reality movements. This is also true for those getting burned, flooded, or droughted off their farms and out of their homes and livelihoods. There are, apparently, an increasing number of them out there, conservatives who take climate change seriously, almost to the point of making common cause with progressives on it.

    So if it was this alone, I'd say the Republican party is on the way out, because they've normalized this bullshit to the point of calling Trump out when he suggests they get vaccinated (in other words, he's the norm, not the outlier now).

    Problem is, authoritarianism thrives in places and times when central power isn't solving the problems people are having, whatever those problems and whoever those people are. This is when the bullshit and the batshit show up, because the conventional is either irrelevant or judged too painful, and some charismatic strongman tries to make the case that giving him all the power will make it better again.

    And the Republicans are definitely an authoritarian party now. I'd even go so far as to say they're deliberately destablizing the US to foment authoritarian takeovers.

    The bad party of this analysis is that it says that the Republican future is stochastic, not probabilistic. Since they'll keep doubling down (e.g. cranking up the positive feedback loop) on anything that will get them the power they crave, they could conceivably win entirely, at least for a short time. More likely they'll over reach, crash out, and kill a lot of people in the process. But because they're going to maximize the feedback from everything that happens to them, it's going to be really hard to predict what will happen. And I don't expect democracy from them at all at this time.

    964:

    Given that you were not aware at the time, I suggest consulting Wikipedia before posting such nonsense. To same you the massive intellectual stress of a Web search:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Angry_Brigade

    As I said in #772, it was believed to be them by the authorities, not least because it had their signature and NOT that of the PIRA.

    965:
    The reason that neither PIRA nor UVF carried out any other attacks in Scotland, is that it contained a lot of support and infrastructure

    That's partly why I asked; the IRA is not known to have carried out any attacks in Scotland, but the UVF is, and the lack of retaliation in kind has been attributed to a semi-official IRA policy of no attacks in Scotland for exactly the reasons you mention, so evidence to the contrary would be interesting.

    966:

    I think the Republicans have "jumped the shark" at this point. From here forward it's all downhill. Whether they'll drag the rest of us down the hill is another matter entirely.

    967:

    I was referring to your previous comments on Bloody Sunday, which Greg had referred to.

    Widgery was a flagrant and incompetent whitewash, as a huge number of people pointed out at the time (including me). In this context, it's a straw man - stop raising it.

    Saville was a subtle and competent whitewash (and, yes, I looked at it). I gave up wasting time on it when I discovered (without surprise) that it had carefully omitted key knowledge, in order to whitewash TPTB. I knew damn well that the prosecution would not proceed, because the defence would raise many of the points I made in the second paragraph of #777, and we can't have that! I checked some of those fairly recently in newspaper archives, and they confirmed my recollection.

    Whether or not Soldier F was guilty of murder, it was the result of a clusterfuck by TPTB, as they realised themselves (see #786). I stand by every point I made in the second paragraph of #777.

    968:

    Given that you were not aware at the time, I suggest consulting Wikipedia before posting such nonsense. To save you the massive intellectual stress of a Web search:

    This would be a London-based Angry Brigade which operated almost exclusively in the south of the UK, against soft targets such as unguarded banks, recruiting offices, military museums, and domestic residences...

    ...suddenly deciding to plan, and almost successfully conduct, a timing-critical bombing against a working military headquarters at the other end of the country, yet not claim responsibility? The timing aspect was an attempt to kill the lone piper during the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, and IIRC they got the timing about right, but didn't quite succeed in locating the bomb to achieve their aim.

    I'd also note that the 1971 Edinburgh Tattoo was held in mid/late August (as it was in every other year - the BBC recording is dated 31st August 1971, and this record of the Angry Brigade dates the bombing as 29th August 1971), while the Angry Brigade were arrested, with their explosives and weapons, on the 20th of August 1971.

    I think that Occam's Razor has a certain amount going for it, and you'll notice that I managed to comment politely.

    969:

    The only online citations I can find for the Angry Brigade being responsible are in the metadata of a photo on Scran.ac.uk and Stuart Christie's memoir - and given no less an authority than Her Majesty's Judiciary said he wasn't a member, we must assume he had no inside knowledge. On the other hand, the quote from his memoir is "Angry Brigade attacks on property continued after our arrests: Edinburgh Castle barracks were bombed on 29 August," and continues in a similar 'we're-definitely-not-the-Angry-Brigade-they're-still-blowing-stuff-up' vein, he clearly did think it was them. It looks like this one's unattributed for a reason. :-)

    970:

    Oh, really? ALL of them? Why not look at a more thorough chronology? No, I don't trust it an inch, because it attributes things to the Angry Brigade that almost certainly weren't, but it does point out that they weren't all rolled up in August. Furthermore, they were believed to have fairly close links with other, similar organisations.

    https://libcom.org/history/angry-brigade-documents-chronology

    And, as I said, TPTB attributed the Edinburgh bombing to them at the time, though more suspicious people asked why it couldn't have been one of the other, similar organisations. As I also said, it did not have the signature of a PIRA bombing.

    971:

    Exactly. Another plausible hypothesis is that it was one of the other, similar organisations, possibly one that had 'inherited' materials or a bomb from the Angry Brigade. Basically, such groups formed a loose aggregation, with most of them doing no more than civil disobedience, but only a few actually carrying out such actions. Some of them had some links with the PIRA, but the latter regarded them as dilettantes and didn't trust them an inch (for good reason). They all disappeared as a side-effect of the campaign against the PIRA, as you might expect from dilettantes with a poor grasp of operational security!

    972:

    As I also said, it did not have the signature of a PIRA bombing.

    How so?

    Do you mean intelligence signature - target selection, and the desire to pull off a "spectacular" against high-profile individuals (such as Airey Neave, Margaret Thatcher, Lord Mountbatten) or locations (such as Selfridges, Harrods, Houses of Parliament)?

    Operational signature - the determination and capability to deliver and plant a bomb inside a military base (such as happened at Chelsea, Strensall, Ripon, Deal, etc)?

    Or do you mean technical signature - industrial explosives rather than home-made, accurate use of timers, effective detonation?

    973:

    Elderly Cynic @ 959: No, the shingles vaccine doesn't hurt particularly. What almost certainly happened is that you were unlucky, and the injection managed to hit a nerve. That's rare, but happens.

    Yeah probably.

    I usually don't have much trouble with injections and I think I may have a higher than average endurance for pain. This was a significant outlier.

    974:

    To my recollection: it was in Scotland, the type of bomb, the placement of the bomb, and the lack of any warning or claim. I can't remember what else, but it may have included the type of explosive.

    The PIRA's bombs were intended to kill or maim (usually as many people as possible), and they were pretty competent about placing them to achieve that. The bomb could have been placed to minimise the risk to people, while still causing extensive damage.

    975:

    Related note: a couple of years ago I was offered -- and took -- a new pneumococcal pneumonia jab: a wide spectrum one that provides lifetime protection against about 50+ bacterial strains that can cause pneumonia.

    Well yes, so I'm probably not going to die of that. (Viral pneumonia is another matter.) However, a few hours later it hurt like I'd been kicked in the arm by a mule, badly enough I couldn't sleep properly even with painkillers: it took nearly a week to subside.

    Hitting a nerve sounds possible, but the lack of immediate pain suggests to me that, well, "localized soreness" due to my immune system going into overdrive is definitely a thing sometimes.

    976:

    I mean, really, Sanders is a New Deal Democrat. A lot more folks than you think want that...

    ...until it comes time to raise taxes to pay for it.

    Americans say they want social democracy as long as somebody else has to pay for it. And soaking the rich isn't enough; the volume is in the upper-middle class. That means convincing the suburban, three-car garage, McMansion crowd to downscale their lifestyles to something analogous to what their grandparents had circa 1960. Not happening.

    Personally, I think it's a tradeoff worth making, but I'm very much in the minority.

    977:

    protection against about 50+ bacterial strains that can cause pneumonia

    Harking back to the post topic, my brother made a comment a year or so ago about how hospitals (in the US) were coding pneumonia as Covid-19 to get a bigger reimbursement.

    I didn't reply as I didn't know where to even start.

    I thought my brother was smarter that that but tribalism seems to have more influence than reality.

    978:

    What's going to happen to the GOP will be... interesting.

    For one, they're now outright the party of fascism and racism. Anyone not going along is attacked.

    For another, the fascist billionaires - Murdoch, Koch, etc, are doubling down on funding them,

    The white-wing, and yes, 99% is what they are, are hearing what they want to hear, and the wealthy are surveying them carefully to say the right thing, and they're not going to change.

    A major issue is tht the US government - and the states - were all designed to be balanced, between the urban and the rural, and back then, it was only a few percent urban. Now, it's 80%... and the few people in the rest of the state can override the majority of the population, esp. if the representation is gamed, as is who can vote.

    If the GOP controls the states, they can fix the federal government.

    However, if they don't take back control, we could see infighting like the US hasn't ever seen. I won't be shocked if actual terrorist organizations start up... except that a lot of the will be incompetent (thankfully).

    I really want to see what happens if the Dems can pass a wealth tax, and/or crank up the tax brackets.

    979:

    Agree on the authoritarianism, skeptical on the batshittery. I'd guess that most of that is simply motivated reasoning, little different than agreeing that your friend's ex was awful.

    I doubt they can win entirely. There are states comprising large fractions of the population and economy that are extremely unlikely to turn red.

    @978

    Some fraction of Sander's appeal is that, eg, universal health care would likely save money. I don't mind paying more in taxes if my health care costs go down and care improves, which looks more likely than not. There is an uninsured, healthy segment of the population that ends up worse off, but, eh, I'm sort of okay with that.

    980:

    The "civil war" within the Democratic Party is more of a chimera created by the lame-stream media than a reality within the party.

    It's not a chimera. It is more of an "inside the Beltway" thing, though, and it's playing out within the party apparatus and the adjacent movement entities moreso than amongst the elected members.

    The other dimension you're ignoring is the culture war, specifically the rift between older, establishment liberalism (i.e. individual freedom, 2nd/3rd-wave feminism, ideal of a post-racial "colorblind" society, etc.) and the younger, activist progressivism (i.e. collective rights, queer theory/gender deconstruction, racial justice/reparations, etc.).

    The "moderates" will win because THEY are the heart of the Democratic Party. And so are the so called "Social Justice Warriors". That's the point of a Big Tent political party. You don't have to agree on every little thing to get the job done.

    Moderates and progressives have been a fair-weather alliance since the 2020 primaries to defeat Trump and roll back his more egregious policies. But, the two factions do not like each other and their interests and goals only overlap up to a point.

    As AOC herself put it, in a sane system, she and Joe Biden wouldn't be in the same party.

    981:

    In the U.S. the last figure I saw is that we're paying 18 percent of our GDP for health care. Going to a single payer system would probably both increase middle-class wages AND lower taxes.

    982:

    Speaking as a hippie, I beg your pardon.

    Calling the hippies "divorced from the world" says that all you know is the bs the mainstream media worked to sell us as. I know, from personal experience, that half or two thirds of all hippies were POLITICAL, and the media did not want to admit that.

    Nor did it want to admit that some of us were technical. Oh, no, they want you to believe we were Cheech and Chong, but more spaced out.

    983:

    In a sane system Joe Biden wouldn't ever have been the senator who represents the Delaware Corporations... so maybe not, but I do get your point.

    984:

    Isn't that just what an allergic reaction is? Most of us got that to the old TAB vaccine, though usually not as badly as you did. I.e. we had problems sleeping, but without painkillers.

    985:

    Let's run with 18%; how much of that is actual costs (estate, cost rather than retail price of drugs...), staff wages, stakeholder profits?

    986:

    I didn't get a flu shot for years. Then my doc yelled and so I did about 15 years ago. I had the worst cold symptoms I could ever remember the next day.[1] But it was only a day long. Since then I've gotten them every year. I still get a very mild cold like reaction most years but nothing like the first.

    So what is the difference between an allergic reaction and your immune response?

    I figured it was NOT the actual flu as my bones didn't ache. Which they did anytime in the past I had caught the flu.

    987:

    Going to a single payer system would probably both increase middle-class wages AND lower taxes.

    BUT: second order consequences -- fewer jobs in the insurance, accounting, bankruptcy, and debt collection sectors.

    As I understand it, the private health insurance industry in the USA creams off about 30% of the healthcare spending: and it mostly gets spent on office buildings and wages.

    Moreover, the private healthcare system distorts the delivery of medicine: the poor are actively deterred from seeking early diagnosis of seemingly-minor ailments -- like that irritating dry cough that turns out to be lung cancer. Consequently people either die needlessly, or are diagnosed very late and require aggressive treatment. Then, for those people who do seek diagnosis and treatment and who have insurance, there's a baked-in profit seeking incentive to commission diagnostic tests because the insurers will pay and ruling stuff out needlessly (it's a low probability diagnosis and there's a much higher probability cause, but we'll rule out the low-prob one just in case) is a pre-emptive defense against litigation (at someone else's expense).

    The result is horrendous inefficiency and a near-complete lack of funding for public health initiatives.

    (This isn't to say that fully socialized systems don't have their own failure modes -- but they usually do public health better, e.g. national screening and vaccination programs that can be proven to save the taxpayer money in the long term.)

    988:

    I suspect that healthcare is so expensive in the U.S. that making sure everyone who has a job in private insurance was paid off, or found something else, or got an early pension would still be cheaper. It would certainly be cheaper in the long run. And all that saved money would be available for investment in something new... like maintaining our rotting infrastructure.

    989:

    For those tracking the 2021 Atlantic/Gulf storm season, this chart is interesting (and her account is worth following):

    I updated yesterday's Argo plot for the 11am EDT 27 August NHC forecast cone for #Ida. I limited the plot to ocean profiles observed the past 3 days within 200 km of the cone center. These profiles are eerily similar to each other, and they're all very warm = lots of energy ahead pic.twitter.com/H7vThGbN3V

    — Dr. Kim Wood (@DrKimWood) August 27, 2021
    990:

    With the proviso that the immune system is complicated beyond most people's belief, and I am a layman who is a very, VERY long way from being expert:

    An optimal immune response is when it fires up just enough to eliminate the threat, which often includes inducing a fever, or localised hot, sore patches.

    An allergic response is when it over-reacts and the harm from the response is greater than the harm from the threat.

    Anaphylactic shock is the most extreme form of that.

    So it's all a matter of degree. People who don't have ANY reaction to a vaccination sometimes have natural immunity, and sometimes are simply not getting any benefit from it. A moderate reaction is a sign that it is probably working.

    991:

    I know. I'm channeling my crazy relatives at times. Sorry.

    992:

    The discussion on the Republican party imploding is based on 2 simple fallacy: that the GOP can't get minority voters to replace white voters. Also, that Cali is representative of the nation. I'll focus this analysis on Latinos, because there isn't a good breakdown for Asian Americans

  • According to AS-COA's methodology, Clinton (both) and Obama represent the floor for Latino voters, not the median. Note that McCain and Romney did better than Bush 1 and Dole, so I'm willing to treat that as the floor. Likewise, Cali Latinos are anomalously liberal. Politico believes that As_COA understates Latino conservatism, putting 2020 at 38% instead of 32$
  • https://www.as-coa.org/articles/chart-how-us-latinos-voted-2020-presidential-election https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/30/new-trump-poll-women-hispanic-voters-497199

  • Even in Cali, Latinos are not guaranteed to be reliable Democrat voters: a majority of Latino likely voters back recalling Gov Newsome.https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article250171895.html

  • I suspect that the GOP's anti-vax/mask mandate play is not just for the consumption of white people: they're trying to attract the anti-vaxx minority populations as well. We'll see if that strategy is successful/

  • A few points on Asian Americans a. Trump won the Vietnamese votes, and did very well with Filippinos (43%) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/21/us/asians-census-us.html

  • b. The question: which groups of Asian Americans have grown between 2010 and 2020 - East, Southeast Asian, or South Asian? The NYT article above strongly indicates that the Japanese American population has shrunk. Did the Chinese American pop grow due to immigration or natural growth rate? If the former, there's no guarantee this will continue b/c CHina's richer, and who knows if Xi will crack down on emigration.

    I'll hold off on making other predictions until more data comes in

    993:

    The problem with your hypothesis is the growing anti-Asian sentiment among the GOP's base (they created the virus! It's their fault!), and no defense against it by the GOP.

    That's going to lose them.

    Remember, also, that the older generation of Vietnamese, etc, and Cubans were all right wing to start with, supporters of dictators. The younger generation has other agendas, as someone said.

    994:

    Sigh.

    Anti-Parasite Drug Used on Arkansas Jail's Inmates for COVID

    https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2021-08-25/anti-parasite-drug-used-on-arkansas-jails-inmates-for-covid -- Aug 25th 2021.

    They're not getting the vaccination because someone, somewhere is using the $$$ to buy fuckin animal pharmacuticals instead. Just like they use the budget for shit food and pocket the excess.

    Now: did we know that before it became GENERAL KNOWLEDGE or did we get lucky?

    Look: do a grep back to a question about it (JBS? Paws? One of the established users), we provided the exact paper (AUS, actual science) and flagged the IN VITRO bit and then flashed a massive hint-hint-hint that it was a "GOLD RUSH". Exact fucking language used. Flag it all up: we told you how this would play out, and it's just rolling into it. Years ago.

    ~

    The discussion on the Republican party imploding is based on 2 simple fallacy:

    Look up: we are incredibly not phased by even the scariest little beans on the planet Earth like 国安部 - we will smack them around a little then point to the 風水 of the outcome of our efforts and so forth and - they will pretend to have never been interested, madpersons cast the 易經 and it has already unfolded.

    We were talking on a more general level. Go look up what the 'reverse repo rate' actually is about (too much 'cash', too little shitty IPOs @ 100 billion a time to spunk it on, WeeeeWOOORK) and actually run it through. And here's another 1,000 data points of Light.

    Quite literally: Anyone decent could break your society without even sweating. And remember kids: [redacted] exist.

    ~

    She of many names under yet another pseudonym @ 893: Oh, and the answer is 47.

    No, actually: that's how many Minds got wiped / perma voided / split from their Earthly taper / RAM smashed and EM spiked / vanned and trauma-perma-psych-warded for that to work. Not by us: by the opposition.

    She (kinda lovely person on Twitter) asked and mocked: that's the real answer. This shit costs.

    ~

    Oh, and Onlyfans are scum-suckers of the worst order. It's not a victory, it's something (like us) dumping the bleeding heart of a [redacted] on their meeting table at the top of the building and stating: you will do this, because you're fucking incompetent shit-heads and do not understand the control and degredation levels we are feeding off this Pyramid.

    And yes: we know it's like the gig economy for SW / women / trans* / marginalised people, which is why we supported the 'BIZARRE REVERSE FERRET'.

    Very... very conditionally: those fuckers are not your friends.

    995:

    "The problem with your hypothesis is the growing anti-Asian sentiment among the GOP's base (they created the virus! It's their fault!), and no defense against it by the GOP."

    True, but it also depends on how it plays out against the anti-Chinese racism that's an undercurrent of both East and Southeast Asia. That applies to newly naturalized immigrants, not the US-born population.

    "Remember, also, that the older generation of Vietnamese, etc, and Cubans were all right wing to start with, supporters of dictators. The younger generation has other agendas, as someone said."

    This is why the numbers for immigration vs natural growth are so important. For instance, newer Colombian immigrants are more right wing than both US born younger Colombians and the older generation. I think the same holds true for Filipinos. I don't know if this holds true for Vietnamese. I think that the Puerto Ricans who moved to Florida after Hurricane are more right-wing than the established community, but I'm not confident in that observation. As I said, I need more data.

    996:

    4. A few points on Asian Americans a. Trump won the Vietnamese votes, and did very well with Filippinos (43%) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/21/us/asians-census-us.html

    That's actually not what the link says. It notes that Trump won 55% of voting districts that are majority Vietnamese, and 43% of voting districts that are majority Filippino.

    This is a critical distinction: It's most true around ethnic enclaves, not around Vietnamese as a whole. Given that many of the Vietnamese refugees from the 1970s were conservative south Vietnamese, this is not unusual. Given how many of their children married non-Vietnamese, it's a lot less clear what it all means. Mixed race living in a mixed neighborhood is not one of the categories they analyzed, for pretty obvious reasons.

    997:

    Immigrant Chinese from the PRC tend to vote for the Conservatives up here.

    At least partly because our Conservatives understand 关系, in the sense of doing favours for those in power in exchange for favours in return (approval for projects, laws, regulations, etc.)

    The Conservatives are anti-immigrant, unless the immigrants are rich which many from the PRC are, and they both tend to be prejudiced against darker skin pigmentation…

    998:

    Today I learned…

    That the strong, proud, independent stop-leaching-off-us province of Alberta has taken more Covid aid, per capita, than any other province — while trashing the federal government for not doing enough to stop the pandemic. (This is the same Alberta that decided to end Covid restrictions July 1, despite having one of the worst vaccination rates in Canada, while picking a fight with medical practitioners*.)

    *Nurses have had a 5 year pay freeze and a 3% pay cut while being required to work mandatory overtime and accept reassignment anywhere in the province under emergency legislation. The government is telling the nurses there is an emergency while claiming in public that the pandemic is over.

    999:

    Rbt Prior Surely the voters of Alberta will take revenge for this insanity & murder? Oh PLEASE, can you & whatever-her-name is PLEASE not use Han Pictograms? It presumably means something - why not just tell us?

    1000:

    The Para's had already blooded themselves in Ballymuprhy a few months previous to Bloody Sunday and got clean away. They killed 9 innocents, and in some cases bragged about it after. They, among others, shot a priest going to give aid, a woman standing by (three times) to whom they denied aid, man whom they arrested, beat and shot again , a teen-age boy giving first aid.... The sad reality is that post Ballymurphy the paras had a hunting license.

    1001:

    Greg: I've seen Alberta.

    Alberta is basically Texas North -- oil industry, pick-up trucks, and right wing politics. Fewer guns than Texas South (because Canada) and the weather's colder, but those are the only obvious differences.

    1002:

    I've never been to Texas, but oil, pickups, and right-wing populism sums up Alberta.

    Provincial budget has been in the red for as long as I've been paying attention to politics, despite billions in oil revenues. Alberta politicians routinely complain about federal taxes while happily accepting federal funding for things like disaster relief (70% of the most expensive natural disasters in Canadian history happened in Alberta).

    Alberta is still seething over NEP from the 70s, back before most Albertans were born. I sometimes wonder if the crazy right-wing crap is a really long elaborate revenge on the descendents of a long-dead enemy…

    1003:

    关系 is in simplified characters. Not pictograms. If you need pinyin, guānxi. Although in both Google and DuckDuckGo wikipedia is the first hit when you search the characters, so it's not exactly obscure.

    I thought it would be obvious from context, but apparently I was wrong.

    So explicitly, the way Canadian Conservative governments operate is close enough to the way the Chinese government operates that immigrant Chinese businessmen feel more comfortable dealing with our Conservatives than anyone to the left on the political spectrum. It's not precisely 关系, but close enough for practical purposes.

    1004:

    No. I am not going to look them up. This blog is put up by OGH, a Scot, in English. 90% or so of the posters speak, read, and write English as a first language. Posting in another alphabet, with no translation, is arrogant and "aren't I k3wl".

    In my novel, I made good on something I'd been saying since I was at least in my twenties: my quotes were in Welsh and Finnish, to get even for all the Old French, Latin, and Greek quotes I'd been subjected to in so many books.

    And I had translations, unlike 99% of the books with the other quotes. I was having fun, and making a point. I was not "I'm going to teach you something, and you're going to have to learn."

    1005:

    Oh, and how would I know that, after I went to the trouble of translating, that it wasn't more reddit-speak obfuscation?

    1006:

    1005 Yes but WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY SAY ffs! - - -see also whitroth @ 1006 You and she are poncing & it's unamusing

    And they (Albertans) haven't noticed yet? This is considerably more STUPID than Brexit, really.

    1007:

    Charlie Stross @ 977: Related note: a couple of years ago I was offered -- and took -- a new pneumococcal pneumonia jab: a wide spectrum one that provides lifetime protection against about 50+ bacterial strains that can cause pneumoni

    Well yes, so I'm probably not going to die of that. (Viral pneumonia is another matter.) However, a few hours later it hurt like I'd been kicked in the arm by a mule, badly enough I couldn't sleep properly even with painkillers: it took nearly a week to subside.

    Hitting a nerve sounds possible, but the lack of immediate pain suggests to me that, well, "localized soreness" due to my immune system going into overdrive is definitely a thing sometimes.

    I think hitting the nerve may be the best explanation. It hurt like hell as soon as the needle went in and hurt more when the serum was delivered. The soreness is localized today, but it's still more than I "normally" experience. Not so bad if I don't touch it, but quite tender if I try to touch it to see how much it still hurts. Which I'm doing my best to refrain from doing.

    1008:

    Often those are words loaded with accumulated meaning that is not translatable into an accurate concise English language word or phrase. Not really the first though, which is less than 40 years old. 国安部 (Ministry of State Security) 風水 (Feng shui) 易經 (I Ching) 围棋 (Go (game)) 关系 (guanxi)

    (And, if you do not hit the links (first google hits, mostly)(or do a search and find other links), and haven't already studied the underlying cultural detail, then ... )

    1009:

    FUBAR007 @ 978:

    I mean, really, Sanders is a New Deal Democrat. A lot more folks than you think want that...

    ...until it comes time to raise taxes to pay for it.

    Americans say they want social democracy as long as somebody else has to pay for it. And soaking the rich isn't enough; the volume is in the upper-middle class. That means convincing the suburban, three-car garage, McMansion crowd to downscale their lifestyles to something analogous to what their grandparents had circa 1960. Not happening.

    Personally, I think it's a tradeoff worth making, but I'm very much in the minority.

    The trouble with taxes in the U.S. is that they're so regressive. The less money you have, the higher percentage of your income goes to taxes (sales taxes, use taxes, property taxes). Income taxes are supposedly "progressive" (although they're not really) and earned income is taxed and UN-earned income is taxed at substantially lower rates (if it is taxed at all).

    Then there's the problem that ALL of the media is owned by the rich or the corporations they control and they are constantly bombarding us with the message that taxes are too high.

    Maybe taxes are too high for you and me, because our incomes come from working.

    p>But the media LIE about taxes won't mention this disproportionate burden on the working poor and lower middle class. They're only concerned with breaking the social safety net, primarily so that Wall $treet Bank$ter$ can can "privatize" Social Security & Medicare tax withholding and do the same thing to you they've already done with the U.S. Health Care system.

    1010:

    WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY SAY ffs!

    I gave you the pinyin: guānxi.

    There is no English translation. That's true of a lot of non-English words and concepts. Trading favours is part of it, but only part. (And given our Conservatives record, I think the Chinese businessman are mistaking transactional low-key corruption for guānxi, but that's a separate matter.)

    There, I've done you a service. Where's my fee, as you promised?

    1011:

    Troutwaxer @ 990: I suspect that healthcare is so expensive in the U.S. that making sure everyone who has a job in private insurance was paid off, or found something else, or got an early pension would still be cheaper. It would certainly be cheaper in the long run. And all that saved money would be available for investment in something new... like maintaining our rotting infrastructure.

    Put 'em all to work manufacturing tumbrels & guillotines for the Aristos and we can kill two birds with one stone so to speak ...

    No? Well it was a thought, and as THEY say, "It's the thought that counts."

    1012:

    Google translate says "relation" or "relationship". In the context of the original post I think "tit for tat" is probably a close approximate. (Just my opinion)

    1013:

    Ioan @ 994: The discussion on the Republican party imploding is based on 2 simple fallacy: that the GOP can't get minority voters to replace white voters. Also, that Cali is representative of the nation.

    [ ... ]

    You've got a couple of fallacies there yourself:

    1, The GOP can get minority voters, but their whole shtick is feeding white voters fear of being replaced. This handicaps the GOP's leadership in recruiting minority voters. For every minority voter they recruit, they're going to lose white voters, so there's no reason to think the GOP can GROW by recruiting minority voters.

    That's why they've become a fascist, apartheid organization. They want to remain in control when whites actually DO become the minority.

    The GOP is a white peoples party. They will not (not can't, WILL NOT) replace white voters with minorities. Asian & Latino voters choosing the GOP represent a deluded minority who think they're somehow going to end up being "white" once the GOP secures permanent one party rule.

    There were Jews in Germany who tried to join the NAZI party.

    2. California is NOT representative of the nation.

    California is SO fucked up as to be ungovernable.

    Gavin Newsom won election in 2018 with 61.9% of the vote. But in California 12% of the voters can override the will of the majority of voters and force a recall election. There have been seven recall petitions circulated since Newsom took office in January 2019. The seventh petition finally obtained signatures from 13.8% of voters.

    So how fucked up is California's recall election?

    If California voters want to keep Newsom, they have to vote NO on the recall question. That is, if they wish to achieve a positive outcome, they must vote in the negative. If Newsom gets less than 50% + 1 NO votes he's out.

    IF there are more than 50% then the NEW governor is the person who gets the most votes among the 46 candidates listed on the ballot. Doesn't even have to obtain a majority. The new governor can be elected by as few as 3% of the votes cast. More likely it will be a candidate who gets around 20%.

    As of Thursday, 26 Aug, it appears California Voters are leaning NO by 50.6%

    https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/california-recall-polls/

    Supposing Newsom wins the recall on 14 Sept, I expect recall petition number eight will be circulating no later than 15 Sept.

    1014:

    Well, latest Lancet is claiming doubled hospitalization rates, so, assuming outcomes are similar, quite a few more deaths incoming.

    1015:

    Charlie Stross @ 1003: Greg: I've seen Alberta.

    Alberta is basically Texas North -- oil industry, pick-up trucks, and right wing politics. Fewer guns than Texas South (because Canada) and the weather's colder, but those are the only obvious differences.

    I've been at Ft. Hood, Texas during the winter. When the Chinook wind whips up in Alberta, you feel the chill down in Texas.

    1016:

    Continental interior climate, sure, but I'm pretty sure Canada can add a few angles of its own -- if nothing else, longer nights and shorter days (so less sunlight to warm things up fractionally).

    1017:

    When the Chinook wind whips up in Alberta, you feel the chill down in Texas.

    The Chinook is a föhn wind that melts snow incredibly quickly. They can be fast (120 km/h) and the temperature can go up 25° in an hour, so chill is the last word I'd use to describe them.

    Calgary gets a lot of them, although not as many as Lethbridge. Edmonton gets a few, but not every year.

    1018:

    Greg Tingey @ 1008: 1005
    Yes but
    WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY SAY ffs!

    According to Google Translate 关系 means "relation" or "relationship" or "connection" ...

    I get an insinuation of low level, petty graft ... "You scratch my back & I'll scratch yours" ..."One hand washes the other."

    Maybe nothing quite so overt as Baksheesh, but similar?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baksheesh

    "In countries with endemic corruption, for instance, a member of the police force, or a migration or customs officer, or any other type of government official may be swayed from legitimately or illegitimately arresting, issuing a fine, or imposing a tax on someone by a suitable payment of baksheesh which would constitute a bribe, whether it was offered to the official or requested by the official."

    Or, in the words of Donald Trump, "I need you to do me a little favor first."

    1019:

    Charlie Stross @ 1018: Continental interior climate, sure, but I'm pretty sure Canada can add a few angles of its own -- if nothing else, longer nights and shorter days (so less sunlight to warm things up fractionally).

    Oh, I'm sure. But I couldn't let the opportunity to crack on Ft. Hood & Texas pass.

    1020:

    So... you'll be pleased with this, however implausible it sounds, because you're right. We lived in Edinburgh in 1971, because Dad had been posted to the Security Section at the Castle. So, this afternoon, I asked him whether they knew who had done it.

    Firstly, they never found out - but thought it probably wasn't PIRA. Apparently, the blast travelled in a fascinating and rather surprising route, because of how it was constrained by the rather thick stone walls. They suspected that the intent was to blow the lone piper off the battlements; but they couldn't be sure whether the detonation in the Ladies' lavatory was a deliberate act, or whether the bomb had been abandoned there because the bomber feared being compromised, and the planned target was elsewhere in the Castle.

    Secondly, that was the night that our family went to the Tattoo. As Dad said, the presenter covered up the loud noise quite well... but being nearly five years old, I don't remember that - I just remember it being cold, and having a blanket across my lap.

    1021:

    Asian & Latino voters choosing the GOP represent a deluded minority who think they're somehow going to end up being "white" once the GOP secures permanent one party rule. There were Jews in Germany who tried to join the NAZI party.

    I am a Russian Jew living in US. And I think that American Jews who support current Republican Party are just as deluded as these Asians and Latinos. They think they are part of the "civilized tribe". They are wrong. That tribe is no friend of Jews. (Also not civilized.)

    This is particularly painful to me because my parents are Trump supporters.

    1022:

    "fewer guns". Really?; I'm sure I've seen statistics that Canadians own more guns per capita than USians, but shoot fewer people.

    1023:

    Re: Alberta. I grew up in the very heart of Alberta oil country in the 70s and 80s. It was an article of faith that (P.E) Trudeau had betrayed the Albertans by implementing the National Energy Program and killing what had been an oil boom.

    Not one of the people I knew at the time or now had any notion of the core cause of the boom - the OPEC embargo. The cause of the resultant crash was Saudi Arabia turning the taps back on again, making Alberta oil expensive and uneconomic. Funnily enough, that is also the cause of the more recent oil crash.

    In both situations Albertans have a Trudeau to blame and have taken to doing so wholeheartedly, facts notwithstanding. However, Alberta is changing. The rumours regarding the current federal election are that the Conservative party is worried about Alberta because the conservative premier has so colossally fucked up the pandemic, the economy, the health system and everything else he has gone near that they may lose seats that have been 'safe' for generations. There is also a very real chance that the NDP (Social Democrat) might win the next provincial election, and give the simple minded someone nearer to blame all their problems upon.

    As for guns, Canada has as many guns/capita as the US, but drastically fewer handguns and assault style weapons. Not zero, but it is very difficult to get either and they are tightly regulated. Gun deaths still happen, particularly gang related, but aside from the occasional bystander there isn't the same level of mayhem. Please, let's stop talking about guns before the technical wankery goes any further than that.

    As for Alberta winters, the chinook wind does tend to give some weeks of relative warmth to places like Calgary - less so for points north. For particularly brutal winters see places like Hinton or Edson. In both cases the warm wind come down off the mountains to their West, 'bounce' over both communities (and drop lots of snow), then come back down to their East and warm up Edmonton. So they routinely get brutal cold snaps (-40C) with mountains of snow while everyone else gets a nice warm(er) break from winter (i.e. -10C).

    1024:

    Thank you very much for posting that. It's extremely interesting, and much more detail than I had heard before.

    1025:

    Yeah, baksheesh was the concept that came to mind for me too, particularly also being a loan word.

    But also (for Greg's benefit) a better example of translatability would be something like soixante-neuf. Sure, there's a simple direct and literal translation. It just probably doesn't help much with getting at the concept being communicated (other than the literal translation itself having a similar meaning in some places).

    I guess that's also an available allegorical translation, but there are many in a similar theme: cf "reach around" or "daisy chain" (although I guess depending on the speaker there's a risk of homophobic connotations, perhaps nonetheless on point for conservative politicians).

    1026: 1019: "so chill is the last word I'd use to describe them."

    Ah, but when you are standing in the place the wind blows to, where it is normally a lot hotter than Canada, it's probably quite an apt description.

    1012: "I gave you the pinyin: guānxi."

    It was not clear that "if you need pinyin, guanxi" meant "It can be rendered into Roman characters as guanxi", rather than being part of the pedantic objection to calling the characters "pictograms".

    "There is no English translation..."

    The point isn't about how easy it is or isn't to render the concept into English, it's about presenting the actual word in a form which is both readable and searchable.

    Roman characters are instantaneously recognisable to the overwhelming majority of readers of this blog, but Chinese characters are totally obscure to someone who hasn't studied them. I had to scroll up and down several times between your post and Bill's list at #1010, trying to memorise particular features of the characters ("there's a little short line on the right which meets another line at such-and-such an angle", etc) from one post and then compare them to the characters in the other post before I forgot the shape too much, to be sure which of the items in the list was the same pair of characters you used in your post. One dead spider looks much the same as any other to me.

    If you put a word in Chinese characters in your post, and then later on make another post which also has a word in Chinese characters, I can't even tell whether the two posts are referring to the same concept or not without spending half a minute scrolling up and down and peering at intricate and unfamiliar details three pixels wide - never mind understanding what the concept(s) is/are about. (For all I know they might be something I'm quite familiar with.) Whereas if you just write guanxi I can tell straight away that it's not the same as feng shui in the other post.

    Furthermore, I can also straightforwardly TYPE "guanxi" into a search engine and look up what it means; I can then remember what I found out and refer directly to that memory the next time I see someone use the word "guanxi". If it's written in Chinese characters I have to fuck about doing copy-and-paste; and I have to fuck about every time someone does it, not just once, since although the definition might be entirely memorable and distinctive, the shapes of the characters are not.

    (HTF do you even get the Chinese characters in the first place? Even if I did want to write "guanxi" in Chinese characters, the only way I'd be able to do it would be to do a search for the word using Roman characters and then copy-and-paste the Chinese version out of the wikipedia article... which makes the exercise even dafter.)

    Pretty well everyone on here has the Roman alphabet as their "native" alphabet (plus a handful of Cyrillic, which is the same thing in this context). It may well be the case that there is no straightforward and concise English equivalent of some Chinese word, but it does NOT help anyone make the translation, nor convey any extra meaning, to write the word using Chinese characters. On the contrary, it is positively unhelpful: it makes the concept harder to look up in the first place, and it makes it harder to recognise it as the same thing when you come across it the next time.

    1027:

    I see... exactly the same as the Columbia Univ strikers found when they invaded and occupied the office of the President of Columbia Univ in NYC in '68, as Kunen, one of the participants, related in The Strawberry Statement. What they found in the file cabinets was one dirty hand washing another, not a conspiracy.

    1028:

    Frankly, I sympathise with Greg, though I wish he would ignore the multinominal one rather than encouraging her. Let's take the latest example:

    "Look up: we are incredibly not phased by even the scariest little beans on the planet Earth like 国安部 - we will smack them around a little then point to the 風水 of the outcome of our efforts and so forth and - they will pretend to have never been interested, madpersons cast the 易經 and it has already unfolded."

    The first inclusion could perfectly well have been translated, as you pointed out.

    The second makes no sense in context - exactly why does smacking an organisation around lead to 'place' properties as the outcome?

    And the third was almost certainly a gratuitous Chinesification of the standard English expression "cast the runes".

    1029:

    BUT: second order consequences -- fewer jobs in the insurance, accounting, bankruptcy, and debt collection sectors.

    But also! Think about all the telemedicine and record-sharing* initiatives all that "excess productive capacity" could be harnessed to, funded by the freed-up tax dollars!

    The US expenditure on healthcare (private and public sectors combined) as a proportion of GDP per capita (and perhaps there's an argument to be had about this measure, it's just the standard one that health economists in the WHO use to compare countries) is roughly double that of the UK, and 180% that of Australia, the two countries that have typically led the field in outcomes and value for money (though I believe they are slipping behind the nordic countries now, at least for the former). So accounting for a 30% additional overhead in administrative costs clearly isn't telling the whole story. Much is definitely overcharging, market manipulation and regulatory capture.

    • I'll accept not everyone treats "record sharing" as an intrinsic public good, so I to pull out just one example, even one from the US: in NYC, the IHE-based record sharing between major hospitals reduced the costs associated with unnecessary repeat diagnostic tests by different provider organisations by 90% (roughly and by memory, there are plenty of papers on it though, feel free to go digging).
    1030:

    Para 4 - We can go further; in the UK record sharing (or transfer) is not merely "a good" but actually mandatory. I recently moved to a different health board for medical reasons (specifically, I required a regular treatment not available where I lived), and all I had to do to get my GP (PHP) records to follow me was fill in a single form to register with a GP in the new heath board area.

    For reasons associated with my conditions, I also had some genetic testing done by a specialist unit in the new health board. The results of these tests were copied to the unit treating me, and to my GP. (to save anyone asking, the relevant genes are both wild rather than mutated)

    1031:

    Once a commentator stated that a past user used the I-Ching in lieu of something else.

    It's a meta-joke (no, it really is) that relies on not understanding which 'realm' each governs (in relation, specifically in this thread, to Covid19 and various Political [actually series] wranglings going on between various Top Level Establishments like the Atlantic Council and the (actual) CCP party, which Xi is having to remind rather pointedly about 'duties of Billionairdom' recently and then you'll have to switch the USA / UK side where various factions have taken up various explanations as "TRUTH" while accusing each other of, well: lying).[-1]

    Mr Prior could (if he was willing) lead you through the exact 'realms' we were referring to. i.e. which 'realm' is touched by them. Essentially: control of People / 'Good Government' / 'Harmonious Society'; control of Place / Aethetics (in this case - meta placement of Ideas in Time and Location); control of Fate / Heaven (for who, other than the insane, could plan all of this to happen as it has?).

    It's a joke: it says, basically: this outcome will satisfy no-one, but ultimately every-one who partakes in it wins, and no-one has to get squished / lose status / worry about retaliation.

    The meta-joke is wondering if we're being serious or not.

    guānxi - is basically, the glue-that-has-always-bound-Chinese society and is very different from, say, Mafia based codas.

    Analogy is UK (perhaps English to be fairer) innate understanding of Class, not so much as an economic function, but in all the little details. Which, even if you're rebelling against it, you'll still understand as you see it. Let's just say: England has never been a meritocracy, and (random example) Mr. T. Young getting his father to get him into OX/CAM operates on much the same level.

    Less cash though: it's mostly (or was) done through Horses (we're not joking about this).

    See? We can make pure boring sense, but the jokes are better.

    p.s.

    Note UK Press / internet eddies for the last two days. "I heard you like Dags"[0].

    [-1] It also relies on knowing all too much about the current politics (both online and off) surrounding Covid19. [0] Quotation from a Film called "Snatch" by an American playing an Irish Traveller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQSnua3M2lo

    1032:

    Maybe nothing quite so overt as Baksheesh, but similar?

    Not really. It's more about cultivating and maintaining personal relationships. Nothing so crass as an envelope of money. So favours given and received, but not transactional. The Wikipedia article isn't bad, although my Chinese friends say it's not quite right either.

    I erred in editing my original post — meant to write that the Chinese think the Conservatives understand it, but missed that bit when rearranging the sentence.

    1033:

    Ok, we'll do this (roughly... very roughly) since Bill spotted the real joke and got the number of references correct:

    国安部 (Ministry of State Security) 風水 (Feng shui) 易經 (I Ching) 围棋 (Go (game)) 关系 (guanxi)

    MSS are kinda notorious as being one of the most hard-core and "we do not fuck around" agencies on the Planet, so saying we're not afraid of them is either insane bravado, a lie or something else. They're also directly responsible for, well: determining if the WHO can enter, who they get to see, which lab (the joke about 4 is that WHO got shown a Tier 4 lab instead of the T2/3 that is alleged to have been working on gain functions, but that's really nerdy stuff you won't get). And yes: they will turn up your door literally if you post the wrong shit. So posting SF memes and jokes and musings... well. < Winnie the Pooh looking at You >

    Feng Shui or "water-wind" is "which claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment" - notoriously mis-used in the West (particularily the USA), but it's essentially about Balancing things. Qi as Time/Space perfection. This is saying (if you bothered to watch the Channel 4 Dispatches or keep up with spook level discourse): there is a reason this is being discussed now.

    I-Ching: well, here's the reading for you reading this explanation:

    6 - Six Sung / Conflict

    The high Heavens over a yawning Deep chasm: An expansive void where nothing can dwell. Even though he sincerely knows he is right, the Superior Person anticipates opposition and carefully prepares for any incident.

    Good fortune if your conflict results in compromise. Misfortune if your conflict escalates to confrontation. Seek advice. Postpone your crossing to the far shore.

    Go - the Game - is kinda what everyone is doing with Covid19 rather than Host's clarion call for, say: actually acting like it's important and not dosing prisoners with knock-off wormers[1] for profit.

    And the "guanxi" here is entertainment but also opening rather than closing Doors to say, non-Western readers.

    ~

    ZZz. Sleepy now.

    [1] Note to stupid white Liberal Westerners: there's some really good reasons to dose a poor, impoverished polity with ivermectin like they have been doing in India, for example: it's a cheap and effective way to "up" the percentage survival rates if you don't have access to 100% vaccination coverage. Like, you should be doing it anyhow, but whatever: notes for the REALLY REALLY DANGEROUSLY DUMB USA LIBERALS MAKING JOKES ABOUT IT: roughly 14% of current USA citizens have significant parasite loads. i.e. they really do have worms (largely due to: no health-care, lax food control Laws and so on and so forth).

    Making your shitty Twitter jokes = You'se part of the problem. And that's free advice.

    1034:

    HTF do you even get the Chinese characters in the first place?

    Click on my keyboard menu, select "Pinyin - Simplified" and type, selecting the correct character from the popup menu.

    (Given the nature of Mandarin, completely different words can have identical pinyin renderings. Written characters have the advantage of being unambiguous.)

    1035:

    Frankly, I sympathise with Greg, though I wish he would ignore the multinominal one rather than encouraging her.

    I assume that quote was from the Seagull? Have them blocked…

    I was trying to be precise by using the correct term, which I thought was clear from context (although apparently not) and was in any case the first hit when looking it up on DuckDuckGo or Google (which I checked before posting).

    I did screw up when editing the post — the Chinese think they are cultivating relationships, the Conservatives think they are conducting transactions.

    1036:

    As for guns, Canada has as many guns/capita as the US, but drastically fewer handguns and assault style weapons.

    Also consistently fewer gun deaths even before we had gun control. It's a significant cultural difference, not just availability.

    (And given that it's a cultural difference I hope we keep, I'm curious about why the difference exists.)

    1037:

    Ah, but when you are standing in the place the wind blows to, where it is normally a lot hotter than Canada, it's probably quite an apt description.

    No, it's not, because the Chinook doesn't reach that far.

    If Texas is getting winds from Canada, that would be an Arctic air mass moving south, not a Chinook.

    1038:

    Do be careful: some of us are involved in California politics, so calling this state "California is SO fucked up as to be ungovernable" invites unkind comparisons to your corner of reality. I strongly suggest not going on a rampage, especially if you live in a state that went for the Confederacy, which California did not join despite half the state wanting to secede.

    Note that I'm not defending the recall. California's an excellent example of why public referenda can be problematic. Similarly, most US states are excellent examples of why making public referenda difficult can lead to toxic misgovernance.

    Not that I'm a huge fan of Newsom, but the California governorship is second only to the Presidency in the level of difficulty. It's a job that calls for competence. While I didn't think Newsom was all that competent when he was elected, he's done well enough with the pile of crises thrown his way. Right now, he's mostly being blamed for stuff that other officials are actually mandating, so the whole thing is sick.

    I'll furthermore predict that whoever comes up as governor this fall will face a recall. Larry Elder, the current poll leader, is somewhere subTrump in competence so far as I can tell. If he's stupid enough to relax mask mandates, I guarantee that he'll be subject to recall, if not impeached, indicted, and sued for wrongful death.

    Hopefully, this will lead to a ballot measure restricting recalls to measures with cause (which is not true of the current one) and putting the lieutenant governor in charge after a successful recall, not some loud mouth.

    1039:

    I think that American Jews who support current Republican Party are just as deluded as these Asians and Latinos. They think they are part of the "civilized tribe". They are wrong. That tribe is no friend of Jews

    I'm reminded of what Maximilian Uriarte wrote as commentary for this Terminal Lance strip:

    I’ll never forget my first week in boot camp as a Jewish recruit. During one of the first weeks, on a Friday night, our drill instructor comes rushing into the squad bay and demands our attention. Eyeballs.

    “Who here is Jewish?” he asked.

    I was hesitant to say anything. If you’re Jewish, you’d understand. Historically, when the military comes around asking where the Jews are, it hasn’t gone well for us

    "It hasn't gone well" indeed!

    (Happily, in this case it worked out fine; he got taken to Friday night Shabbat service. Also, it turns out nice Jewish boys far from home are very grateful for little old ladies who show up with a few cookies and kind words. And it meant a break on Sundays when the Christians were marched off to church.)

    1040:

    Also consistently fewer gun deaths even before we had gun control.

    Does Canada have the same 60/40 gun suicide/homicide rate as the US?

    1041:

    Gavin Newsom won election in 2018 with 61.9% of the vote. But in California 12% of the voters can override the will of the majority of voters and force a recall election. There have been seven recall petitions circulated since Newsom took office in January 2019.

    And it's not just California. To the north in Oregon, the GOP is signing up people to recall the governor. To be clear: there's always a recall petition going around. It's not obviously about anything other than the angry right hating the governor for being a Democrat, but there's perennially two or three people out at public events trying to get voter signatures for this. I suspect a lot of the motivation is to remind people that the angry right wing is still around and has nothing better to do.

    1042:

    soixante-neuf?

    Does it mean in French the same sexual position it means in English? Or does it have some totally different meaning?

    1043:

    Happily, in this case it worked out fine; he got taken to Friday night Shabbat service

    LOL! Very similar experience, except for me it was USAF, not USMC. And happened before Maximilian Uriarte was even born.

    1044:

    My mum did business in China in the 70's, and it's nothing like bribery. 关系 is like trying to make your business associates explode by feeding them. Hospitality taken to the extreme combined with lots of getting to know each other, and then after dinner horse trading and competitive drinking.

    But more than that. Like a responsibility to each other. Like on one business trip she took my brother, who was about 18. He wanted to wander the streets and get up to adventure. So someone was assigned to follow him around and extricate him from any trouble. So when he arrived back at the student accommodation after hours, and should by rights have spent the night sleeping on the street, someone sorted it out for him.

    So nothing like a chip demanding a tip.

    1045:

    I think Damien's point was that saying "that means 69" does not convey the common meaning where it describes a sex position.

    Similarly the deliberately unhelpful "{thing} cannot be translated" above might be true, but if someone can't even start to describe the meaning they shouldn't be using the term. The follow-up is inevitably "Oops, I'm too ignorant to be confident using or explaining that, sorry I got caught being a pretentious wanker".

    Or just the Rutherfordian "if you can't explain it you don't understand it".

    1046:

    Does Canada have the same 60/40 gun suicide/homicide rate as the US?

    Offhand, no idea. American homicide rate is about 3x Canadian rate. Suicide rates are roughly similar. No idea how firearms fit into those stats.

    1047:

    It is the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and the entirety of the Mississippi delta and much of the lower river is facing Hurricane Ida, already with winds of 100mph and with several hours to go in the overheated Gulf before making landfall.

    It looks like there is literally a flood of heavy weather refugees fleeing the region, which is a good thing for avoiding some of the chaos of Katrina, but potentially a vast megaspreader event as everyone shuffles around and bunkers down with relatives or friends, not to mention the inevitable arenas turned into shelters and even more hits to the hospital system.

    At least this time the disaster area has already been declared, and supposedly between the improvements after Katrina and the pre-staged supplies this time people shouldn't be dying of so many preventable causes, but we'll see.

    1048:

    But the governor of Mississippi says it’s not a problem because everyone believes in eternal life and isn’t scared of mere death. Seriously? People actually... oh never mind, that is just too fucking ridiculous for words

    1049:

    Good fortune if your conflict results in compromise. This guy advocates for the traditional Yarrow/Artemisia stems approach, and there are many pages of comments: The I Ching, random numbers, and why you are doing it wrong (July 12, 2013) In this post I will show how the three coins method yields an equal proportion on Old Yin and Old Yang oracles signs whereas the traditional method yields three times more Old Yang signs than Old Yin! (The choice of method has ... implications.)

    Points to clouds in the sky Points to Rainbows I do miss rainbows. Anyway, against my better judgement, been watching visualized data feeds for Hurricane Ida. e.g.(clouds!) https://twitter.com/DrKimWood/status/1431698054248292353 or the continually-updated animation (http warning) http://arashi.geosci.msstate.edu/tropical/2021/Aug28_MESO_band02.mp4

    And you made me crawl through the last few months of research literature on ivermectin vs SARS-CoV-2. It sucks. There is a large pile of speculation, there is some grousing about clinical randomly controlled trials being the standard of evidence, there are multiple dueling metanalyses (with agendas), some meta-meta commentary, some studies with negative results in a few different countries, and maybe 1 mid-sized study in Baghdad that seems on a skim to show interesting results, that last in the "Iraqi JMS"[1]; don't know how much peer review attention it got. (PS: most of the Arkansas prisoners are vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2) Vaccine production and distribution are making the most difference and need to be accelerated. (N95 masks for everyone would help too, where logistically possible.)

    [1] Controlled Randomized Clinical Trial on Using Ivermectin with Doxycycline for Treating COVID-19 Patients in Baghdad, Iraq

    1050:

    The indoor mask mandate in Louisiana will help some(Delta is very contagious though) (But in general Republican anti-masker/anti-vaxxer propaganda may kill hundreds of hurricane evacuees.) Gov. Edwards Temporarily Reinstates Louisiana's Statewide Mask Mandate as COVID Cases and Hospitalizations Threaten Hospitals' Ability to Serve Communities... (August 02, 2021)

    1051:

    Most of that "California is ungovernable" stuff dates back to times when the GOP had enough seats in the state legislature to routinely block and screw up the budgets. Post 2010 or so, the number of seats they held fell below one-third, which meant they couldn't block the budget anymore. Surprise surprise! Suddenly things ran normally and all those stories about CA the "ungovernable" state vanished from the media. (Who of course failed to note the cause.) Looking at wikipedia, I see that republicans have not held any statewide offices since 2010, which is all to the good for the governance of the state.

    1052:

    Strike yet another FAIL against the English Broadcasting Corporation!

    1053:

    Oh FUCK ... ( And I take EC's point @ 1030 ) 1033 / 1035 / 1037 / 1041 / 1043 / 1044 / 1047 / 1049 / 1052 / 1053 / 1056 / 1057 / 1059 Moderators? Isn't there supposed to be some sort of limit, for our sanity's sake?

    Meanwhile: Baksheesh also "pourboire" in its other meaning, or "Old boy's club", or Masonic connections ... All implying a low level of intitutionalised & socialised corruption. Quite.

    Rbt Prior @ 1039 I suspect that the "cultural" difference is brutality & slaveowning, carried forward ... & 1046 - I think not ... - which leads to : timrowledge @ 1061: Really - did he actually say/imply that? ... looks it up. Oh shit. He is, automatically, Criminally Insane & Unift to hold office.

    1054:

    Eh? Are you blaming the BBC for hurricane Ida?

    1055:

    NO; I'm blaming them for the fact that I sometimes get more news from internet bloggers than from their "flagship news programmes", Hurricane Ida being a case in point.

    1056:

    You should blame That Bliar as well as Thatcher, not them, because the dumbed-down programming is not the BBC's choice. Their web site is rather better, as is Outside Source, at least when hosted by Ros Atkins. If you want to complain about the lack of coverage of Scottish and other UK-peripheral news, I would agree with you, but this is not such an example.

    I fail to see why our news should be dominated by that from a far-away country to the exclusion of that from Europe and even the UK. If you want USA-dominated news, you should go to the bint and berk show, a.k.a. BBC News on the News channel. It often excludes even important British news in favour of 'in depth' coverage of some USA lunacy.

    1057:

    Pinyin has caused problems for herbalists. In the 1990s I was research coordinator in an NHS pathology lab. One of my colleagues was also a herbalist. Chinese herbs had become fashionable to treat asthma and he had problems ordering the correct herbs because the same pinyin name could apply to different herbs. This also caused bigger problems for some western firms who set up plantations in China growing the wrong herbs. This wouldn’t have mattered to the unscrupulous suppliers who soaked herbs in corticosteroids then dried them and marketed the products as miracle asthma cures.

    1058:

    if you can't explain it you don't understand it

    Completely true. Sometimes,though, it's important to let go of the need to understand everything, or you can't get anything done. You have to rope, throw and brand 'em, or you won't be living high and wide and all that. Not that this bears much on the translation thing.

    Another I've been seeing more often lately is Kummerspeck, which refers to the weight you put on by comfort-eating, but literally means grief bacon. There's also the oft-mentioned incident when Bob Hawke's words at a summit in Japan were translated literally, to general confusion. He'd said he didn't want to play silly buggers with his interlocutors on some point or other. I gather he was reassured that they didn't want to do that either.

    1059:

    The indoor mask mandate in Louisiana will help some

    "But I don't have to wear a mask! I have a medical exemption!"

    Without requiring proof for medical exemptions, that mask mandate won't mean much in the current climate. Ontario has a mask mandate, yet we have people claiming a "medical exemption" with no way to verify it (and doctors sceptical of so many legitimately exempt people in one place, or in the same family).

    1060:

    Albeit there are times when my efforts to explain things mostly serve to convince me that I have no idea what I'm talking about. Maybe I should just let it go...

    Somewhat amusingly the girly asked me what Young's Modulus is the other day and my first guess turned out to be right. Who could have guessed that a quick overview of mechanical engineering 30 years ago would have stuck? I mean, I have the intuitive stuff about fatigue and elastic vis yield deformation from breaking playing with stuff over the years, but remembering the basics of the maths surprised me.

    1061:

    As the expression is normally used, it is almost completely false!

    There are many things that (some) people understand, but which cannot practicably be expressed in words, because the basic concepts don't exist in any such languages. That includes a lot of things that can be explained mathematically, but which cannot even be well expressed in words, let alone explained. There are sensory (e.g. taste), artistic, emotional, politico-social and similar equivalents.

    And, as most people use it, what it means is "if you can't explain it in the dumbed-down language in the crude, rigid concepts which are all I am prepared to understand, I am going to claim that it's YOUR fault."

    Even in terms of words and expressions used in one educational/social context, an explanation for someone from another one can often need to include an education in the original language and social context. I have many times tried to explain such things only to be cut off with "I didn't ask for a lesson; I wanted an explanation of the word."

    1062:

    (Hastening to add, that a two-thirds requirement for the budget is not qood, and in any case was repealed as well in 2010 by ballot proposition.) (Which I had forgotten.)

    1063:

    "Put 'em all to work manufacturing tumbrels & guillotines for the Aristos and we can kill two birds with one stone so to speak..."

    You're preaching to the choir!

    1064:

    Exactly. The GOP will happily accept Black, Asian, Latinex and Jewish voters until they have permanently seized power, at which point the purges will begin. (Hint for anyone who doesn't want the purges to begin - don't vote Republican.)

    1065:

    (Also to ilya187 #1050) I meant to check in my Robert, and have just done so. Actually, it's a very bad example, because the translation either way is exact.

    The only difference is that the French do it the other way round from the English - or you could say vice versa :-)

    1066:

    Who the hell is writing this timeline, Robert Sheckley?

    https://theconversation.com/excel-autocorrect-errors-still-plague-genetic-research-raising-concerns-over-scientific-rigour-166554?fbclid=IwAR37CouaSiplt81RVTVI1c4YTq2HHdq1tTNiIdTu9K6KDPGnwCFrlsq5g7Q?

    "Our research shows autocorrect errors, particularly in Excel spreadsheets, can also make a mess of gene names in genetic research. We surveyed more than 10,000 papers with Excel gene lists published between 2014 and 2020 and found more than 30% contained at least one gene name mangled by autocorrect.

    This research follows our 2016 study that found around 20% of papers contained these errors, so the problem may be getting worse. We believe the lesson for researchers is clear: it’s past time to stop using Excel and learn to use more powerful software."

    The article includes serious problems caused by Excel in finance and medicine, and discussion of better tools.

    1067:

    Robert Sheckley wasn't dark enough.

    30 or 40 years ago, I heard John Nelder describing some of the statistical horrors that were perpetrated by Excel. I have myself seen it commit gross errors of the simplest calculation, both personally and (much more often) when asked for help. My advice to the victims that Excel was, to be polite, a numerical disaster area had no effect.

    It wouldn't surprise me if some of the automangling found there wasn't visible to the user, because it was sneaked in to some operation or even while saving the file. I have certainly seen discrepancies between what it displayed after I had input data and what was saved.

    Excel has always been unfit for any serious purpose.

    1068:

    If anyone's in the mood for some fairly dark-toned schadenfreude, the nominees are simply piling up over at https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/

    1069: 1058 - Happy to blame B Liar and Thatcher, but as well as Scamoron, Maybot and Bozo rather than just instead of them. In this case, a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico is a severe weather event that affects people on both sides of the Atlantic, rather than just the ones who get blown at and/or rained on. 1060 - No knowing the colloquial meaning, I would have use the literal portmanteau translation of kummerspeck, which is indeed grief bacon. 1061 - We're also allowed to self-certify for a mask exemption, and yet I've only met one person who has done so. What they had done was obtained a button badge which they were wearing. 1068 - Or at least construct themselves a custom dictionary that contains specialist terms that auto second guess you gets wrong. 1069 - I'm pretty sure that both Nancy and I agree with you. Unfortunately the majority of the work I do in "Excel" involves some thousands of calculations, so I can only check a sample of them manually.
    1070:

    Wait - an entire post that I could, and was willing to read? Where are my pearls to clutch?

    Oh, and if you consider this "not humorous"... I don't think I found anything in your usual posts humorous, because a) I don't speak reddit; b) most were too much work, and c) explaining a joke means the joke failed.

    But thank you, this one was interesting.

    1071:

    No - you have missed the point. Bliar and Thatcher were the two that changed the rules by which the BBC was governed, with the intention of turning it into a nice, docile, government-favouring outlet - and used the new rules to do that, of course. The others merely used the changed rules, as they were intended. The BBC is still fighting back, but it's a matter of attrition and they are not doing well.

    Bozo has stated his intention to finish the job, but we all know what a Bozo statement is worth.

    1072:

    I have never used yarrowsticks, only three coins, as most of those I know who consult the Ching do. I have always been satisfied with the results (not saying they were all happy, mind you).

    1073:

    I don't use Excel. That being said, a friend who's a licensed clinical psychologist (and I trust her) tells me their canned formulas, at least as of 8-10 years ago, were better and more accurate than anything else she'd tried.

    ON THE OTHER HAND, automiscorrect should NEVER be turned on by default to correct as you type. At least in LibreOffice, it will underline, not change, spellings. If Excel does not do that, they're M$ idiots ("I* know how to do this so much better than you do....").

    1074:

    I'd need to know which formulae she used. Most of the real stinkers are in financials.

    1075:

    I'd have to get hold of her... but she was using it for her clinical work.

    1076:

    In a world where unconventional warfare is growing, covid-19 is an unconventional weapon. It has effectively stress-tested every country, goverment, society, and culture. The way we as individuals and as groups have responded to this global catastophe will have provided those who plan for conflict and business immeasureable amounts of useful information on how we will react to future issues.

    1077:

    I'd guess that she was mostly using integer statistics then. Those actually are right (based on performing the same calculation manually, with the same result).

    1078:

    paws4thot @ 1024: "fewer guns". Really?; I'm sure I've seen statistics that Canadians own more guns per capita than USians, but shoot fewer people.

    Just a SWAG, but if that's true, they probably have more hunting rifles & shotguns and fewer handguns ... and probably assault rifles aren't a big thing among Canadian hunters. Even maybe effectively banned?

    1079:

    assault rifles aren't a big thing among Canadian hunters

    Are assault rifles seriously a thing for any hunters? What kind of game needs an assault rifle to hunt?

    Wanna-be militia members using it as an excuse I'd believe, but a serious hunter?

    1080:

    In re diabetes: I need to review it, but there's a book called Diabetes Rising which claims that both sorts of diabetes were rare about a century ago, and have gone up quite a bit. And that there's a mixture between type one and two. (Really, why shouldn't there be a combination of pancreas not producing enough insulin and muscles resisting what little they're getting?)

    It's got about 10 theories about why diabetes is rising, and claims that none of them are good enough.

    It seems to me that part of the pandemic situation is people who are on the side of the virus. The big names are Trump, Modi, and Bolsonaro, but there are plenty beyond them.

    Trump recently asked people at a rally in Alabama to get vaccinated, and they booed him.

    The problem is, I can't think of any evolutionary reason for a new virus to be able get people to be on its side at this level of sophistication.

    Nor, of course, any normal psychological reason for people to be on the side of a virus.

    People here are horror writers and science fiction writers-- some of you are both. What can you come up with.

    1082:

    Sorry, but COVID is not a weapon. I don't care how much you want it to be, but it's not. There is more than one reason that they don't use poison gas in warfare, and disease is far less controllable.

    Take your imagination elsewhere.

    1083:

    Don't confuse types I and II - they are very different, and the only definite mystery is why the first is increasing.

    Also, type I isn't that too little insulin is being produced; it's because the islets of Langerhans are being or have been destroyed.

    1084:

    Pigeon @ 1028:

    #1019: "so chill is the last word I'd use to describe them."

    Ah, but when you are standing in the place the wind blows to, where it is normally a lot hotter than Canada, it's probably quite an apt description.

    Plus, it was a crack about Ft. Hood.

    "Chinook" was the word Google provided for "Alberta winds" and I was a member of an Army National Guard Aviation Battalion when we were at Ft. Hood that winter. We didn't have Chinooks, but Ft. Hood did. It's a pun, so I just ran with it.

    What is true is due to the topography of central North America, the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains sometimes acts as a funnel bringing the cold down from the north (Alberta & Saskatchewan). When the wind is blowing from the north in central Texas, it is BITTER. Feels like it's been picking up speed for a thousand miles or more, and like there's nothing in between Texas and the Arctic Circle to slow it down or deflect it.

    hyperbole noun
    hy·​per·​bo·​le | \ hī-ˈpər-bə-(ˌ)lē
    Definition of hyperbole
    : extravagant exaggeration (such as "mile-high ice-cream cones")

    BOLO for hyperbole.

    *********************************

    #1012: "I gave you the pinyin: guānxi."
    "There is no English translation..."

    The point isn't about how easy it is or isn't to render the concept into English, it's about presenting the actual word in a form which is both readable and searchable.

    [ ... ]

    (HTF do you even get the Chinese characters in the first place? Even if I did want to write "guanxi" in Chinese characters, the only way I'd be able to do it would be to do a search for the word using Roman characters and then copy-and-paste the Chinese version out of the wikipedia article... which makes the exercise even dafter.)

    Internet shorthand doesn't translate so well, but Google translate renders "How The Fuck do you even get the Chinese characters in the first place?" as: "你他媽的一開始是怎麼弄到漢字的" in CHINESE (TRADITIONAL)

    guanxi renders as: "關係" in CHINESE (TRADITIONAL)

    guānxi (OTOH) is detected as Chinese and renders as: "guānxi" in CHINESE (TRADITIONAL). Go figure!?

    I don't see the big deal with having to use copy & paste. It's just "cut & paste" rendered in this new fangled Internet medium. I learned how to do it 30 years1 before I ever owned a computer.

    During High School I worked after school as the GoFer for the advertising department of the local newspapers - Durham Morning Herald & Durham Sun. As part of my duties, the Ad guys would give me a layout with a simplified sketch of the art & I had to find the appropriate Clip Art in the big book and cut it out, then paste it into the layout so it could go up to compositing. Another duty was to file the layout when it came back from compositing so the ad could be re-used if needed.

    Sometimes if the art had already been cut out of the big Clip Art book, I would have to copy the clip art from a previous ad & paste it into the new layout.

    Cut & paste - copy & paste - same difference. Doing it on a computer with a GUI is easy peasy!

    1 Twenty-eight years, so it's not hyperbole. Exaggeration perhaps, but not extravagant. 😀

    1085:

    extravagant exaggeration (such as "mile-high ice-cream cones")

    No exaggeration needed.

    https://happyconesco.com/ice-cream/

    Denver is, after all, the "mile-high city" :-)

    1086:

    Robert Prior @ 1038: As for guns, Canada has as many guns/capita as the US, but drastically fewer handguns and assault style weapons.

    Also consistently fewer gun deaths even before we had gun control. It's a significant cultural difference, not just availability.

    (And given that it's a cultural difference I hope we keep, I'm curious about why the difference exists.)

    WHEN did y'all get gun control? Just a SWAG, but I'm guessing y'all had fewer handguns before "gun control" and got "gun control" before the cult of the assault rifle could develop.

    If my guess is correct, the difference is because y'all always had fewer handguns/capita.

    I'd also be interested (but not interested enough to actually research it) to know if gun violence statistics for Windsor, which is almost as "American" as Detroit (due to the shared auto industry) might be somewhat different from gun violence statistics for parts of Canada farther away?

    1087:

    "Chinook" was the word Google provided for "Alberta winds"

    This was my first hit: http://www.albertawinds.ca/story.html

    Surprised Google didn't show you an Alberta Clipper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_clipper

    (Which starts as a Chinook, but acts the other way dropping temperatures by 10-20°, with wind chills of --30 to -50°.)

    1088:

    Robert Prior @ 1039:

    Ah, but when you are standing in the place the wind blows to, where it is normally a lot hotter than Canada, it's probably quite an apt description.

    No, it's not, because the Chinook doesn't reach that far.

    Yeah they do.

    1089:

    WHEN did y'all get gun control?

    https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/gun-control

    Handguns have been restricted for a long time, in the sense of needing a permit to own/carry them. Rifles and shotguns not so much — when I was a boy a kid could buy ammo at the local Canadian Tire without problems.

    Rifles and shotguns have needed a permit since 1977, which is when fully automatic weapons were banned.

    But go back a century or so, when we effectively had no restrictions and there were no automatic rifles, and the murder rates are still different. Which is why I think it's something cultural.

    Looking at heat maps of murder rate by state, it seems the Old South and Michigan are hotspots, with the Northeast, plains, and Northwest being relatively low. That's now, though, and I haven't found historical maps (haven't done more than a quick keyword search, too much else to do). I suspect more than one cause is at work.

    1090:

    Yeah they do.

    Not without lots of refueling!

    1091: 1081 - Assault rifles no; sniper rifles I could see, for things like taking down red deer, caribou and elk at half a mile. 1082 - This table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_by_world_region,_from_1770_to_2018.svg suggests that life expectancy has more than doubled in the last 100 years or so. Organs and glands do wear out, so maybe this is a factor?
    1092:

    Bill Arnold @ 1052: The indoor mask mandate in Louisiana will help some(Delta is very contagious though) (But in general Republican anti-masker/anti-vaxxer propaganda may kill hundreds of hurricane evacuees.)
    Gov. Edwards Temporarily Reinstates Louisiana's Statewide Mask Mandate as COVID Cases and Hospitalizations Threaten Hospitals' Ability to Serve Communities... (August 02, 2021)

    OTOH, an appropriate ending to an inappropriate response:

    3rd conservative radio host who condemned vaccines dies of Covid
    1093:

    The main standard explanations for the increase in type II diabetes are increasing obesity, change in diet, and longevity. They are sufficient to explain it, which is not the same as being certain that they are the complete explanation.

    1094:

    Except the Bible talks about three score and ten.

    I'd say a lot of the far shorter lives were due to starvation, war, infant and mother mortality*. Then there's the industrial revolution, and mortality due to overwork, and TB from the pollution, etc.

    • "Till death do us part", from what I've read, was about 7 years, up until medicine got really going. Women tended to die from childbirth-related diseases after multiple pregnancies.
    1095:

    Nancy Lebovitz @ 1068: Who the hell is writing this timeline, Robert Sheckley?"

    https://theconversation.com/excel-autocorrect-errors-still-plague-genetic-research-raising-concerns-over-scientific-rigour-166554?fbclid=IwAR37CouaSiplt81RVTVI1c4YTq2HHdq1tTNiIdTu9K6KDPGnwCFrlsq5g7Q?

    "Our research shows autocorrect errors, particularly in Excel spreadsheets, can also make a mess of gene names in genetic research. We surveyed more than 10,000 papers with Excel gene lists published between 2014 and 2020 and found more than 30% contained at least one gene name mangled by autocorrect.

    This research follows our 2016 study that found around 20% of papers contained these errors, so the problem may be getting worse. We believe the lesson for researchers is clear: it’s past time to stop using Excel and learn to use more powerful software."

    The article includes serious problems caused by Excel in finance and medicine, and discussion of better tools.

    You'd think that Scientists might have figured out to turn off "auto-incorrect" by now.

    I mean, IF I can figure it out (I do have a High School Diploma), shouldn't the smart people be able to do so? Especially after it happens again and again.

    I don't use Excel. I used to when I had a license through the Army, but since I've retired I switched to Open Office (Calc) ... which is pretty much the same thing.

    I keep "spell check" turned on, but I'm the one who decides whether to accept the suggestions OR NOT.

    1096:

    I can, and do, do the same thing with A Mess Office; speel chuck on, but auto second guess wrong (and grammar check) off. I also manually desk check at least a sample of any calculations I do.

    1097:

    paws4thot @ 1071: #1058 - Happy to blame B Liar and Thatcher, but as well as Scamoron, Maybot and Bozo rather than just instead of them. In this case, a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico is a severe weather event that affects people on both sides of the Atlantic, rather than just the ones who get blown at and/or rained on.

    Still has to churn through the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia and the Northeastern U.S. (and the Canadian Maritimes?) before it's gonna' get to y'all. Maybe fault the BBC if they aren't reporting on in next week, but for now it's only a potential threat to the U.K. sometime in the future, and maybe y'all got other things to worry about in the meantime.

    1098:

    The point is that people very rarely died from diseases and other ailments that typically manifest late in life, because they simply didn't live long enough to do so. Type II diabetes is associated with advancing age.

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/387343/individuals-with-type-2-diabetes-by-age-in-england-and-wales/

    1099:

    That's because subject matter experts, once declared that, mostly are under the delusion that they're experts in all subjects.

    Back in the early nineties, a chemist comes into the office I shared with my manager-of-the-moment (kept changing), to ask her if she could dump a database file to ASCII so he could write a report.

    She told him that she was too busy, but that I knew D/Base, so have me do it. He handed me the two floppies, and I looked at them in d/base... then put him in the chain, and beat him about the head and shoulders with rubber lightbulbs, getting out of him what he actually needed. Then I asked how long it would take him to do the report, and he said two or three days.

    I said, would you like it in a couple of hours?

    The d/b was in fine order. The chemist, a subject matter expert, had NO CLUE that d/base could produce his report with nothing else from him. Took an extra hour to get the format perfect.

    But, subject matter expert....

    1100:

    "Are assault rifles seriously a thing for any hunters?"

    Arabian Oryx hunters, which is why they went extinct in the wild.

    1101:

    Robert Prior @ 1081:

    assault rifles aren't a big thing among Canadian hunters

    Are assault rifles seriously a thing for any hunters? What kind of game needs an assault rifle to hunt?

    Wanna-be militia members using it as an excuse I'd believe, but a serious hunter?

    I was a member of the Militia - the Well Regulated portion thereof - for 32 years. I carried an assault rifle so I could return fire when some bad guy was shooting at me1; so that's my bias regarding assault rifles. They are military weapons, period.

    The gangs you (and the lame-stream media) refer to are NOT "the militia" and I wish you (and they) would stop doing so. It demeans those of us who serve.

    I think any claim someone needs an assault rifle for hunting is BOGUS ... but I am not, and never have been a hunter.

    OTOH, search YouTube for "deer hunting with an AK" or "deer hunting with an AR"

    Evidently it is some kind of thing, as idiotic as it might sound to you or me.

    1 RETURN fire because I was NOT Infantry and it was not my job to seek out the enemy & destroy him. Plus our Rules of Engagement describe very carefully when it is appropriate to fire, and when it is not - even for the Infantry.

    See also my previous rant regarding training for circumstances when the use of firearms was inappropriate.

    PS: Regarding auto-incorrect & spell-check. Neither is an adequate substitute for proof reading. When I went through this I found several instances of properly spelled words that were nevertheless incorrect. Spell-check did not find them and I don't believe auto-incorrect would have either.

    1102:

    Nancy Lebovitz @ 1082: In re diabetes: I need to review it, but there's a book called _Diabetes Rising_ which claims that both sorts of diabetes were rare about a century ago, and have gone up quite a bit. And that there's a mixture between type one and two. (Really, why shouldn't there be a combination of pancreas not producing enough insulin *and* muscles resisting what little they're getting?)

    It's got about 10 theories about why diabetes is rising, and claims that none of them are good enough.

    My personal belief is it's due to hormone mimicking chemicals in the environment that have been accumulating for the last hundred years or so. Why would DDT in the water getting into fish that Bald Eagles ate causing a decline in their population due to their egg shells becoming thinner be the only deleterious effect of the witches brew of chemicals we stew in every day?

    https://raleighnature.com/2008/08/13/ward-transformers-crime-never-stops-hurting/

    How does the daily exposure to chemicals in the environment today differ from that a hundred years or more ago?

    1103:

    The gangs you (and the lame-stream media) refer to are NOT "the militia" and I wish you (and they) would stop doing so.

    They call themselves a militia. And it looks like legally they're right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_(United_States)

    Today, as defined by the Militia Act of 1903, the term "militia" is used to describe two classes within the United States: Organized militia – consisting of State Defense Forces, the National Guard and Naval Militia. Unorganized militia – comprising the reserve militia: every able-bodied man of at least 17 and under 45 years of age, not a member of the State Defense Forces, National Guard, or Naval Militia.

    So they can claim to be part of the unorganized militia.

    Many individual states have additional statutes describing their residents as part of the state militia; for example Washington law specifies all able-bodied citizens or intended citizens over the age of eighteen as members of the state militia, as explicitly distinct from the National Guard and Washington State Guard. In states such as Texas, the state constitution classifies male citizens between the ages of 17 and 45 to belong to the "Unorganized Reserve Militia".

    1104:

    How does the daily exposure to chemicals in the environment today differ from that a hundred years or more ago?

    A lot fewer outright toxins. We used to get a lot of outright poisons in our food, as additives.

    By the end of nineteenth century, food was dangerous. Lethal, even. “Milk” might contain formaldehyde, most often used to embalm corpses. Decaying meat was preserved with both salicylic acid, a pharmaceutical chemical, and borax, a compound first identified as a cleaning product. This was not by accident; food manufacturers had rushed to embrace the rise of industrial chemistry, and were knowingly selling harmful products. Unchecked by government regulation, basic safety, or even labelling requirements, they put profit before the health of their customers. By some estimates, in New York City alone, thousands of children were killed by “embalmed milk” every year. Citizens–activists, journalists, scientists, and women’s groups–began agitating for change. But even as protective measures were enacted in Europe, American corporations blocked even modest regulations.

    https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/312067/the-poison-squad-by-deborah-blum/

    1105:

    There's the theme where certain gun enthusiasts insist that a semi-automatic rifle cannot be included in the definition for assault rifle, so semi- only versions of the AR things are not. To me it's approximately the most depraved example of rules-lawyering I've come across, there's no imaginable circumstance when anyone could legitimately make that argument in good faith. And in Oz, like most of the world, semi-auto is pretty tightly controlled anyway. It does seem like

    I can sort of see a need for semi-auto in an area with large predators, although I'm inclined to the view that mixing oneself in with the predators so you need one comes under the heading of "impious risk". I don't really see it being a requirement for the situation where the large herbivore you are trying to kill for fun is in a position to defend itself by charging you: again, being in that circumstance already means you have taken an unnecessary risk. I don't really see any situation where a bolt-action rifle is not adequate as a legitimate form of recreation (and as noted previously I'm very dubious about hunting-as-recreation at all). Paying trained people to perform defined wildlife and feral animal culling for management purposes is a different thing altogether, though frankly I'd prefer a "capture and neuter, then pamper on a designated reserve for natural lifespan" approach when it's physically and economically possible (there's no shortage of volunteers for that sort of thing). But I accept that the appetite our societies have for this sort of funding is very low, so much so that (as Frank also noted previously) in some cases/places it's only viable to turn loose the hunters, who will pay for the privilege.

    There's a very frustrating debate about feral horses in the Snowy Mountains in southern NSW/northen Victoria: they shouldn't be there at all, they cause erosion just be walking around and are responsible for ecosystem collapse in large parts of the area, yet there's a cultural association with the "brumbies" that resonates with many, especially but not necessarily entirely rural people. See the Banjo Patterson poem 'The Man from Snowy River' and the 1980s movie of the same name featuring Kirk Douglas (not in the title role). The thing about that particular debate that some might find notable is that in this case it's the dirty-rotten bleeding-heated lefty ivory-tower city folks who want the cull to go ahead while the virtuous hard-headed conservative real-world country folks are (largely) on the side of the wild bush horses. Personally, I think there's a completely natural compromise (capture and domesticate!) that is completely feasible with volunteer populations and the only thing missing is funding and political will for use cash in this way. But what do I know?

    Just to complete the loop: being employed on a wildlife/feral animal cull is one of the accepted good reasons to get a permit for a semi-automatic rifle in most states in Oz.

    1106:

    I'd also be interested (but not interested enough to actually research it) to know if gun violence statistics for Windsor, which is almost as "American" as Detroit (due to the shared auto industry) might be somewhat different from gun violence statistics for parts of Canada farther away?

    Can't find gun violence rates, but for murder:

    Windsor - 2.86 /100k (14th in Canada) Detroit - 41.45 /100k

    Most dangerous places in Canada are Thunder Bay / Winnipeg / Saskatoon

    Toronto comes in a 9th with 2.03 /100k and a problem with guns smuggled in from the US (though the Stats Canada definition of Toronto is more the GTA, so the actual City of Toronto will be higher).

    US numbers - https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u-s-cities/63/

    Windsor numbers - https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2020001/article/00001/windsor-eng.htm

    Canada rankings per 100k - https://www.statista.com/statistics/433691/homicide-rate-in-canada-by-metropolitan-area/

    Canada raw numbers of murders - https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3510007101

    1108:

    Most dangerous places in Canada are Thunder Bay / Winnipeg / Saskatoon

    Only if you're First Nations. Or to a lesser extent female. The white men are pretty safe there.

    1109:

    Thanks. That's very useful.

    1111:

    but for now it's only a potential threat to the U.K. sometime in the future

    It is world news because:

    Largest voluntary shutdown of well heads in the gulf ever. (recollection with no sources)

    Largest concentration of petrochemical operations in the US shut down for some period.

    Port of New Orleans closed for some period. This impacts the petrochemical operations above plus world food shipments and other things.

    All of this impacts people around the world. Even if most don't realize it.

    1112:

    And, a recall motion to remove the mayor of Portland is also underway.

    https://www.opb.org/article/2021/08/11/portland-mayor-recall-ted-wheeler-signatures-campaign/

    Given his inactivity in dealing with fascist rioters, it's understandable.

    https://www.opb.org/article/2021/08/22/far-right-activists-counterprotesters-gather-in-portland/

    1113:

    "The problem is, I can't think of any evolutionary reason for a new virus to be able get people to be on its side at this level of sophistication.

    Nor, of course, any normal psychological reason for people to be on the side of a virus.

    People here are horror writers and science fiction writers-- some of you are both. What can you come up with."

    My personal theory: death by COVID is now a type of Death of Despair, like the opioid addiction was. In both cases, they were done by people who consider suicide un-Christian, I doubt that this is a majority of anti-vaxxers, but it's a subset. A larger percentage simply think that they're bulletproof. Fundamentally the same reason a subset of the population still smokes.

    1114: 1101 - I've done similar, with formatting, by starting off by reading the printer manual! 1103 PS - For example they won't find "those" instead of "these". Even so, speel-chuck on the fly does have a use, in alerting you to places where you've typed, say, "teh" for "the". 1107 - I can see hunting uses for a single shot sniper rifle. I can see possible uses for burst fire when dealing with the few large creatures that will attack humans (some of which are herbivores; see Wikipedia entries for hippopotamus and rhinoceros). I can not see any use for "full w@nker" mode other than wasting ammunition. 1113 - Cheers David. That is exactly my point, and I'm surprised that anyone here had to physically state it!
    1115:

    Re whether a semi auto version is an assult rifle:

    When I was in the British Army I was issued a semi-automatic assult rifle, the SLR. Basically the same rifle as the FN but with the full auto option removed as TPTB thought it was just an oportunity to waste ammunition. Each section had two proper machine guns for that sort of suppressive fire. I believe some of our guys in the Falklands were quite keen to pick up the FNs the Argentinians were using since they were otherwise the same weapon....

    1116:

    Re: Average age of death/life expectancy.

    It is common for people to not realise there was historically a big difference between life expectancy at birth and life expectancy if you make it to adulthood, due to high child mortality until relatively recently. Although it is true that the average age of death may have been in the thirties, most people would die by their teens or live to their 60s. In between the major risks are childbirth or warfare, and while they did kill quite a few people it's nothing like the numbers who died young due to things we can now prevent or cure.

    It's most likely that the people who are developing conditions like Diabetes in later life are the ones who would have succumbed to other things when young without modern medicine.

    1117:

    And apparently I need more coffee since I can't spell assault or opportunity....

    1118:

    JBS There's always the "Ode to a spell-checker" isn't there?

    Rbt Prior ( 1105 )"Unorganised Militia" - are NOT "Well-Regulated" though, are they? ( 1106 ) And this is the fantasy-wonderland that the Libertarians want to go back to, AIUI. I've online-asked some: "How do you deal with people adulterating food, then?" And got all sorts of waffle about bringing private prosecutions, I kid you not!

    Damian As always, there's an exception. Polar Bears will attack almost anything & anyone & a rifle is ( I think ) deemed essential in places where they wander around a lot. But that's a "special case"

    kiloseven Many thanks for those links

    1119:

    How does the daily exposure to chemicals in the environment today differ from that a hundred years or more ago?

    Actually, you'd have to go back closer to 200 years for things to be different: if anything, we're much more scrupulous about discharging toxic crap into our environment than the Victorians were. (And they, in turn, were more scrupulous about sewage than their predecessors.)

    A century ago you'd have seen people with phossy jaw walking around; two centuries ago, you had Scheele's Green being used as a food dye(!), and horrors such as Shadows from the Walls of Death (a book of wallpaper samples so toxic that most libraries had to destroy their copies: today, the surviving copies can only be handled using protective equipment). And see also arsenic green dresses and other unfortunate fashion options that killed people.

    1120:

    Yeah, the Australian Army had SLRs too and used them in Malaya and Vietnam, though they started bringing in M16s during Vietnam. Both were eventually replaced with those Steyr things in the 90s. My uncle-in-law was a gunner in Vietnam with RRAA using 105mm howitzers. While they had SLRs, they were only issued rifle ammunition in not-supposed-to-happen-oh-shit-we're-going-to-die situations (this happened at least twice, going by what I remember of his stories).

    1121:

    Your first statement is true; your second is fully true only for the middle and upper classes. You are perfectly correct to point out that using the raw average lifespan is misleading. But there has been enough increase in typical lifespans (even for for people who lived to 20) to be a causative factor for an increase in age-linked diseases.

    In 1841, a man of 16 (definitely adult) had an expected lifespan of about 58. Only if he lived past 20 would his expected lifespan be in his 60s. And, earlier, it was worse.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/articles/howhaslifeexpectancychangedovertime/2015-09-09

    1122:

    In the last thread @ 688 I linked to an Economist article about floating wind turbines. Unfortunately it was behind a paywall.

    The Guardian now has an article about them, if anyone wants some more information.

    1123:

    For a good laugh Cory Doctorow on Uber TL:DR .. They are going spectacularly bust [ But I suspect the original promoters are going to profit at everyone else's expense ]

    1124:

    Fair point re classes -I'm used to thinking about dark age, mediaeval, and modern rather than early modern and current as my distinctions so it's less relevant. The table linked to doesn't cover most of what I'm interested in, as the data comes from archeology not records (since there aren't any really!)

    Certainly for lower class city dwellers there was a big drop in life expectancy with industrialisation and population shiftd compared to their country dwelling forebears, which is why the 1841 levels are so low.

    I think we actually agree - people are living longer, which is why we are seeing more of these diseases. I was just suggesting that another factor is that the older population includes a higher proportion people who are susceptible due to less of them dying young.

    1125:

    Oh, God :-( I absolutely HATE that sort of book, and that paragraph shows why.

    Formaldehyde is Bad News, no doubt about it, as are the toxins OGH mentioned in #1121. Mercury was far too heavily used, too - their use (except for a very few uses of calomel) definitely harmed human health.

    But salicylic acid is just willow-bark extract and, while it IS a pharmaceutical chemical, has a fairly high toxic level. Borax is still used as an eyewash, and the toxic level is fairly high - I looked it up, in the context of an ant-killer argument. In both cases, it is quite likely that their use actually reduced the risk to consumers. Just because something has been superseded by better alternatives does not make its use at the time a bad idea.

    1126:

    No, putting a dozen non-incapacitating bullets into an animal (and replace the near-harmless rhinoceros by Cape buffalo) isn't going to improve its temper over putting just one in. The people who escort tourists on foot up to such things carry guns like 0.5" rifles, often bolt-operated.

    JBS is dead right. The only use of even an SLR is if you want to kill people or animals in bulk.

    1127:

    Negligibly. The days when the USA's petrochemical industry dominated the world are long gone, and there's no shortage of alternatives. There are similar events that are (or have the potential to be) far more serious to, say, Europe that get less reporting here.

    1128:

    Charlie Stross @ 1121: you had Scheele's Green being used as a food dye(!)

    The use of lead acetate as a sweetener goes back to Roman times.

    The use of mercury in making felt for hats goes back to the 17th century.

    As for a mere 100 years ago, water pipes were made of lead, early refrigerators leaked ammonia, and asbestos was used in lots of household goods. In fact in WWII the gas masks issued to every man, woman and child often had blue asbestos in the filters!

    There's a nice sideswipe at the idea of modern life being unhealthy in "Pyramids" by Terry Pratchett. The new king, having been educated abroad, wants to bring in modern plumbing. The ancient priest who actually runs the kingdom prefers "the scapula of hygiene" (presumably a flat bone used to shovel shit). At one point the priest refers to the new king's ideas derisively as "the wisdom of the moderns".

    The first public health action I know about was Dr. Snow removing the handle of the Broad Street water pump. It took a while for his ideas to catch on, but ever since we have been more-or-less systematically removing dangers, including poisons, from our environment. The list of environmental things that routinely caused death was very long right up to the mid 20th century. These days, at least in the rich "West", it is much shorter.

    (I say "more or less" because of occasional horrors like the Flint Water scandal. But at least today it is a scandal. And of course it was only a problem because of the legacy of water pipes from the days when lead pipes were routinely used.)

    I recall an anthropologist (I think it was Jared Diamond) talking about staying with a tribe of forest people, and being advised to move his tent from under a tree that looked unhealthy in case it dropped a rotten branch on him in the night. At first the anthropologist was inclined to ignore such an unlikely scenario. Then he considered the accumulated odds of this if one carelessly slept under any old tree for a lifetime, and realised that it was actually very sound advice.

    This leads me speculate; if humans have evolved to live in a dangerous environment, and hence to spend a certain amount of mental bandwidth worrying about avoiding hidden dangers, what does the mind do when there is so much less to worry about? Perhaps it latches on to things that share tropes with hidden dangers but aren't worth worrying about, like child abduction, 5G and vaccination. Perhaps I should call this "the mental hygiene hypothesis".

    1129:

    If you are into that, I found it extremely interesting that there is some evidence that British neolithic life expectancy was not equalled again until (if I recall) the 16th century. Not surprising, if you consider population densities, the proportion of early deaths caused by crop failures, and the different epidemiology of towns versus scattered villages.

    You might know a better reference than the one I found.

    1130:

    Oh yes, and I forgot in my list of amazingly toxic household goods, the Honeywell Heat Generator (yes, that Honeywell). This used a column of mercury to pressurise household central heating systems so that they could operate at a higher temperature.

    This story describes how the author got landed with a ~$50k bill for HazMat cleanup after finding droplets of mercury where one of these had been carelessly removed by a previous houseowner.

    1131:

    "My personal theory: death by COVID is now a type of Death of Despair, like the opioid addiction was. In both cases, they were done by people who consider suicide un-Christian, I doubt that this is a majority of anti-vaxxers, but it's a subset. A larger percentage simply think that they're bulletproof. Fundamentally the same reason a subset of the population still smokes."

    I don't think this explains Trump, Modi, and Bolsonaro.

    It also doesn't explain weird incompetence which led to tests not being very available for Americans.

    1132:

    "Our research shows autocorrect errors, particularly in Excel spreadsheets, can also make a mess of gene names in genetic research. We surveyed more than 10,000 papers with Excel gene lists published between 2014 and 2020 and found more than 30% contained at least one gene name mangled by autocorrect"

    The example given in the link you provided shows that the user knew very little about Excel. I would never consider using Excel for any task without formatting the columns - a very quick and easy task. I used Excel to produce research reports, customised request forms, processing analyser outputs, billing, generating barcodes, method comparison and quality control - those are just the tasks I remenber -for decades without ever seeing that kind of problem. The only serious problem with a spreadsheet was when my assistant, in a hurry to complete his work before he left his job at short notice produced an iterim report for the sponsors of a clinical trial which completely randomised the order of patient ID codes. It took my two remaining colleagues and I three days to recover the data. But it's unlikely he would have made this mistake without the strain of completing tasks too quickly. And the mistakes in gene codes in other research were much more likely to be input rather than autocorrect errors.

    1133:

    I illustrated my own comment about input errors by typing decades instead of a decade and remenber for remember.

    1134:

    "Unorganised Militia" - are NOT "Well-Regulated" though, are they?

    They are (a) constitutional, and (b) militia.

    Whether not not they are well-regulated, well, apparently American jurisprudence has decided that they must be, because that amendment protects their weapons.

    1135:

    In 1841, a man of 16 (definitely adult) had an expected lifespan of about 58. Only if he lived past 20 would his expected lifespan be in his 60s.

    I recall learning that when the pension age was set at 65, most people didn't live long enough to collect it for more than a year or two.

    1136:

    And for people who did mostly physical work, especially the majority who could never rise higher than "labourer" as their job description, well by the time you're 65 your body is just wrecked. We often see the rise of knowledge work and the associated sedentary lifestyle represented as a bad thing, but I can't help but suspect that those who extol the virtues of hard work the most are precisely those who have seldom been required to do any (and when they are, by golly you hear about it!).

    1137:

    You represent some notable cases demonstrating the general rule that a lot of people find unexpected: for every year you live, your life expectancy increases. Of course the curve a lot smoother for us now; as you say in the past it's been quite lumpy with noticeable thresholds.

    But for the same reason, tackling infant mortality has the greatest impact on QALYs too, just because it has the longest possible duration for effects to be realised.

    1138:

    Charlie,

    the last link in your comment—while covering an interesting story—leads to what looks suspiciously like an anti-vaxxer website. Maybe viewer discretion should be advised.

    1139:

    Dammit, link now replaced with one to a respectable source (National Geographic). I missed the masthead/links because I was googling for a particular article I remembered.

    1140:

    That's true but irrelevant. The context was the proportion of age-linked diseases in the population, where you will find (if you do the calculations) that infant mortality is irrelevant and child mortality relatively unimportant, because they don't live long enough to affect the population numbers much.

    1141: 1128 - From "The Italian Job" (1969 film)

    Garage salesman "What did you do in India sir?" Charlie Croker (Michael Caine) "I killed tigers." {hands over large wad of £5 notes} GS "You must have killed a lot of them sir?" CC "Yes; I used a machine gun."

    1131 - Example. Up until the "civilising" of housing by the introduction of fireplaces and chimneys rather than hearths in the centre of the room, and of separate byres, pulmonary diseases were more or less unknown in rural Scotland due to natural anti-bacterials evolved from the fires and cattle excreta. 1133 Para 2 - My experience is that this sort of error is usually induced by an unthinking use of "sort" functions. 1137 and #1138 - The Old Age Pensions Act (1908) didn't pay out until 70. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-Age_Pensions_Act_1908 1142 - I'm not convinced. The requirement to register H,MandD in the UK goes back to the 1830s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_registration#United_Kingdom at which point is should have been fairly trivially easy to record numbers of deaths at any age.
    1142:

    Negligibly. The days when the USA's petrochemical industry dominated the world are long gone, and there's no shortage of alternatives.

    Who said anything about dominance.

    Did you miss all the discussions about supply chains? Shut down the bottom of the big muddy for more than a week and the world will notice. Especially those not deemed a priority. As they get told to sit while the priority things get caught up. But the most of the world might not notice for a while because ocean shipping is not the same as FedEx Air.

    I deal with small time networking and computer setups. And in the last year things have gone from order most anything I want and it's nearby or here in 2 to 4 days. Now I check with distributors and everything is marked "out of stock for two weeks" (which seems to be a generic message with no basis in reality) or I ask for 4 different models and am told the one I least want to use is the only one they can get in the next 3 months. It is real fun to check a vendor site daily to see if any of the things a customer wants is in stock. And then try and order it and it sells out before I place the order.

    1143:

    (yes, that Honeywell). This used a column of mercury

    As a kid interested in chemistry I quickly learned the fastest way to accumulate some mercury was to find those old round Honeywell thermostats. They had a thermo responsive coiled spring with a bulb mercury switch attached. How many were installed in the US? 50 million? I have no idea. And the rest of the world?

    1144:

    I don't think this explains Trump

    Trump scratched an itch that many politicians and "we" didn't know was a big deal. That he was lying to them didn't matter all that much as they felt the PTB were already lying. So they rode him to power.

    Now can they keep it or was it fleeting. I hope the later. I fear the former.

    1145:

    Yes, precisely. I am disinclined to work out the relevant figures again (yes, I have done it) but, as you say, either you or Damian have access to the data.

    What you need to do is, for each date you are interested in, to calculate the proportion of the currently living population that is over each age you are interested in. I recommend 1850, 1900, 1950 and 2000 for the first, and 50, 60 and 70 for the second.

    You can trivially work out the near-irrelevance of childhood deaths by noting that their life expectancy was (say) 3 when the population as a whole was 40, and their proportion. Simple weighting.

    1146:

    I would never consider using Excel for any task without formatting the columns - a very quick and easy task.

    Designing a spreadsheet in Excel or most any other spreadsheet is PROGRAMMING. And most people using it have no idea how to program. And thus they go from "Hello World" to an absolute mess in a few days.

    1147:

    well by the time you're 65 your body is just wrecked. We often see the rise of knowledge work and the associated sedentary lifestyle represented as a bad thing, but I can't help but suspect that those who extol the virtues of hard work the most are precisely those who have seldom been required to do any

    I've earned a living on knowledge work since my 20s. But I also did a lot of manual labor growing up and still do. (Last few days dealing with re-plumbing my utility room.) But my father taught me to use mechanical advantage anytime I could. Plus sitting on a tractor or excavator was preferable to digging a trench with a shovel in clay. And you still put in a lot of muscle operating the equipment. Just not the point of exhaustion.

    Anyway, there IS a middle ground which allows you to grow older without being crippled.

    Then we can talk about my paternal line. My great great grandfather was born around 1800. All the men in the line lived into their 80s and 90s farming in very rural far western Kentucky. So they worked long and hard. Well except my father who got hooked on tobacco via the free cigarettes in WWII and died at 76.

    1148:

    The people in affected industries and business would notice, sure, but no more than (say) by a major problem in an important Taiwanese or South Korean factory, both of which get a lot less media coverage - which was the main point I was making.

    Also, the shipping and other delays and the plethora of alternative suppliers mean that the audience the media are aimed at may well not notice any glitch. Let's see if there is any actual disruption caused to the hoi polloi in Europe by this hurricane. I am predicting minimal press coverage, though some columnists will use it to fill a slot with speculation.

    In the UK, of course, we wouldn't notice even quite a major glitch right now, because our economy already has so many of them.

    1149:

    Big one is early summer spring wheat shipments around the world. Then specialty resins with single or nearly so souring for specialty products. All with a long delay.

    Of course it seems that while things are a real mess the storm tracked more easterly than expected which mans the disruption on the lower Mississippi is less than expected.

    There is chatter on the "news" about high tension lines going down which if there are many will likely be the biggest priority as nearly nothing can work anymore without electricity.

    People are already yelling about "why" and "we must investigate". Simple answer. No one wants to pay to for the cost of 150mph rated high tension lines. NEXT.

    1150:

    Yes. The people in those areas will be running around like headless chickens for a week or two, but it will be down to a ripple by the time it hits the likes of me. Even the Taiwanese (?) chip factory fire was, and that was proportionately even more of an issue.

    The UK solution to frequent (several times a year) 100+ MPH gusts is to put the lines underground, but doing so across sparsely populated peat moorland is cheap. Skye still has them overhead, probably because of the ground conditions.

    1151:

    Negligibly. The days when the USA's petrochemical industry dominated the world are long gone, and there's no shortage of alternatives

    The US actually (as of very recently) has returned to being a net exporter of oil and only low oil prices mean the US will return to being a net importer.

    In addition the US exports a lot of refined oil products like gasoline.

    Those buyers will need to seek sources elsewhere, particularly if these shutdowns end up being extended, which has the potential to drive world prices up.

    https://www.worldoil.com/news/2021/2/17/us-will-import-62-more-crude-by-2022-due-to-domestic-production-declines-says-eia

    1152:
    Yes, precisely. I am disinclined to work out the relevant figures again (yes, I have done it) but, as you say, either you or Damian have access to the data.

    You don't have to do the work for yourself -- it's all there on www.populationpyramid.net including interactive sliders to look at different years.

    1153:

    Those buyers will need to seek sources elsewhere, particularly if these shutdowns end up being extended, which has the potential to drive world prices up.

    Exactly.

    Now on a somewhat related note. Is there any real information in Europe about why Russian natural gas deliveries to Germany are way down the last 2 months.

    A real technical issue?

    Or just Putin poking a finger into Biden's eye? Ted Cruz wants Biden to block the new pipe line from Russia to Germany and is holding up most all of his ambassador confirmations to show his spite. And this gives him PR talking points on Fox News about why he's right. Or am I reading waaaaaay too much into this?

    1154:

    It lets me only go back to 1950; the really interesting differences show up before that.

    1155:

    Why assume Putin? Ukraine playing funny buggers (possibly with encouragement from the USA) is one of the main reasons Nordstream 2 was built, and Biden has explicitly said that he wants to preserve that ability. But I would not exclude Putin, either.

    1156:

    Wild speculation on my part based on very little information.

    1157:

    Damian #1138. "I can't help but suspect that those who extol the virtues of hard work the most are precisely those who have seldom been required to do any (and when they are, by golly you hear about it!)."

    That still applies to some degree. I worked as a treeplanter for many years, and a foreman for some of them. I learned quickly to avoid hiring the progeny of the wealthy.

    Treeplanting is very hard work in very difficult conditions. The progeny of privilege would make a show of working hard for awhile, but almost inevitably would begin to realize that they genuinely didn't need to be there. Then they would either quit (leaving us in the lurch) or, worse, begin to slack off and encourage others to slack with them (being cool).

    We called them 'Trustafarians', people for whom work was demostrative. Those of us for whom work was an essential survival mechanism would end up dealing with their bullshit.

    1158:

    Given their track records, public statements amd the current situation, I would put the order of likely cause as something else entirely, a technical issue, or political action by USA/NATO (leaning on Ukraine), Ukraine (off its own bat), Russia and Germany, in that order. But I have no actual information.

    1159:

    And from some things I've read, if those self-proclaimed militias are not registered with, and able to be called out by the Governor of a state, or the county sheriff... they're not.

    Quick: (not you, JBS) explain to me the difference between a self-proclaimed militia, and an inner-city armed gang.

    My response is that the former issues bs about the 2nd Amendment, and the latter does not.

    1160:

    Show me one case where they say that any of them are under the command of the governor of the state they live in.

    That is, as opposed to the ones in Michigan, who were talking about kidnapping and executing the governor (and one of whom was just sentenced to five years in prison).

    1161:

    Capture and neuter... can we do that to gun nuts in the US, before they breed?

    1162:

    I'll note that the average lifespan of African-Americans in the US, esp. males, in 32 and under. If they live past that, then it's in the upper sixties or older.

    Is this societal? Hell, yes.

    1163:

    It's not necessary. If you take away all their guns they can't get erections.

    1164:

    Then, as I noted above, every armed motorcycle outlaw gang and every inner city gang are militias.

    1165:

    Ah, yes, "civilizing", putting in fireplaces with chimneys, in place of a hearth in the middle.

    Did the decrease in pulmonary issues that you mention not include death from smoke inhalation as the house burned down, because sparks got out of the hearth in the middle of the house? Or CO2... oh, that's right, the houses were cold, because they leaked air, to allow air to come in for the fire on the hearth.

    1166:

    And SQL was developed and introduced to solve part of the programming backlog, so that managers could write a quick query.

    No, I'm not making that up.

    1167:

    And my father died in his early seventies from cancer, when his father died in his mid-eighties.

    I don't suppose, though, that working in a paper box factor for a long time had anything to do with dust, er, that.

    1168:

    Whether not not they are well-regulated, well, apparently American jurisprudence has decided that they must be, because that amendment protects their weapons.

    American jurisprudence has issues around commas. And politics. Remember that the whole "corporations are people" comes from a comment scrawled on the top of a legal record. Said comment was not part of the legal record until a certain supreme court justice chose to make it so.

    This is a bad habit that the SCOTUS has, dating back to the days of the Dread Scott decision and long before. Periodically, they cause the country to blow up, then go "oopsie, not our fault, heh heh." Which is what they're doing now.

    To comment on something Whitroth said earlier, what we're seeing now is Not new, whether it's armed gangs posing as militias, white people breaking norms, anti-vaxxing hypocrites who die in telling ways. The US went through this in the 19th Century. It's not so much that those who don't learn the past are condemned to repeat it. Rather, it seems to be more that right-wing political science geeks are actively trying to replicate the past in order to cause shocks and profit thereby. It sort of works. The problem is, conditions are different now than they were a century ago, so they're not getting the same results as when their intellectual ancestors lynched Black men and burned down schools.

    1169:

    Rather, it seems to be more that right-wing political science geeks are actively trying to replicate the past in order to cause shocks and profit thereby. It sort of works. The problem is, conditions are different now than they were a century ago,

    The people I personally know on the "other side" seem to want the society of 1821 (well as they imagine it) with the tech of 2021. Because you can get to pocket computers that work as phones with no central government?

    Right?

    1170:

    And SQL was developed and introduced to solve part of the programming backlog, so that managers could write a quick query.

    You do have to admit that a page, more or less, of an SQL query was easier than 8 pages of COBOL.

    Still programming.

    I wonder at what point SQL query systems had to implement governors to deal with people who had no idea what structure mattered.

    1171:

    "...a ~$50k bill for HazMat cleanup after finding droplets of mercury..."

    I can't help thinking someone is really coining it in over trivia with things like this.

    We did at least one experiment at school involving several kg of mercury in an open bath. Of course some of the mercury was spilt, or abstracted, and then fucked about with because it's fascinating stuff, and then disposed of in some manner which prioritised not letting the teacher see above all else, which basically meant some variant on dispersing it around the lab in unnoticeably small droplets. The building where several classes did this every year is still in use, as are the older buildings that used to be science labs before it was built, and you can be very sure that none of them has ever undergone the degree of internal dismemberment needed to even find a bit of the mercury, let alone get rid of all of it. Our school is well known for the number of ex-pupils who end up displaying symptoms of mercury poisoning oh no hang on no it isn't.

    Toxic household goods: fluorescent tubes with phosphors containing beryllium. I encountered a few people who completely freaked out at the idea of going anywhere near a broken fluorescent tube, even though they had stopped using beryllium decades before.

    Terry Pratchett: surely the most directly relevant one is Feet of Clay. All the possible sources of the arsenic that was poisoning the Patrician are things the Victorians really did do with it, even the completely nutty ideas that the Watch dismiss out of hand as being too stupid to contemplate; if anything the nuttier the idea the more likely the Victorians were to do it prolifically and enthusiastically. The use of arsenic candles as a murder weapon appears in a John Evelyn Thorndyke tale, also in other Victorian stories, and you could actually buy the things in the shops at one point.

    1172:

    Getting results out of such data is hard, and it's far too easy to call the most obvious association a cause. There was also a very significant reporting factor; many people who would now be recorded as having pulmonary problems wouldn't have been, then. They could breathe, right? Nothing wrong with them, then.

    1173:

    Treeplanting is very hard work in very difficult conditions.

    The new math teacher who showed up in 12th grade who taught my trig class had a Christmas tree farm not too far from where I lived. Some of us in that class did fall and winter Saturday's there mainly dragging water hoses around for him.

    I spent my time from 15 to 20 while still living at home earning most of my spending money mowing fields. Not fall over dead hard but it kept me in great shape. (Deal with hole in a water filled rear tractor tire by yourself in the middle of a field sometime.)

    With interludes of doing scut work for my dad as he built houses one at a time as a side gig. Mixing mortar and carrying concrete blocks (buyer wanted a slab floor ABOVE grade) that summer for a few weeks when it as 95F up to 100F was the most effort I remember putting in continuously.

    1174:

    Spread a tale that putting gossypol in your propellant gives you 10% greater accuracy or louder bang or something?

    1175:

    Actually, I took a break for a shower and to get lunch, and I realized one more thing: in the US, if you're over 45, you are NOT part of the unorganized militia.

    1176:

    They were called "black houses". Not because they were constructed of dark materials or painted black or any other external feature, but because of lack of windows and because everything inside was covered in the products of partial combustion. Lots of lovely polyaromatics and particulates. Even so, some inhabitants did attain remarkable ages.

    "the houses were cold, because they leaked air, to allow air to come in for the fire on the hearth."

    Hehe... still happens, but now by legal requirement. Place I'm in is excellently well insulated, but it was still bloody cold when I moved in because of a large hole in the wall mandated for air supply to the gas fire/back boiler. Though not actually required. I sealed it up as soon as I felt the draught from it, but the fire still burnt normally and the CO monitor never gave a peep.

    1177: 1150 - My work is still missing a couple of pieces of equipment that were in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. They were supposed to be away for 3 months including return freight and shop time in the USA. 1151 - Or, indeed, it would seem for UPS for the water pumps to get flood waters off the roads, out of basements and undercrofts... 1163 - Tricky, largely because of the number of them who have already bred. 1167 - The spikes in the disease rates are already there in the data, for those who actually bother to look. 1174 - Dead wrong, literally. The problem was that they couldn't breath, and their hearts stopped beating as a result.
    1178:

    explain to me the difference between a self-proclaimed militia, and an inner-city armed gang

    Skin pigmentation.

    1179:

    Well, then we get into the Black Panthers and the Deacons of Defense...

    More to the point, white extremism is being slowly integrated into American perceptions of mainstream terrorism, so we'll see where that goes. Until 2016, the American government coded "terrorism" as "non-white, non-Christian." With the number of church and other attacks on ideological grounds, that rating finally got changed.

    1180:

    Pigeon Liquid Hg at room-temperature is almost ( "fairly"? ) harmless. Just DO NOT warm it up, at all, & certainly not to the point where you start generating Mercury-vapour, which is really nasty.

    H @ 1181 Which is how the IRA got away with extracting funding in the US, of course.

    1181:

    Assault rifles no; sniper rifles I could see, for things like taking down red deer, caribou and elk at half a mile.

    AIUI, the excuse du jour for swivel-eyed 2A types is "feral hogs". Having said that, several hundred kilos of annoyed boar is probably better-served with something a bit heavier-calibre than 5.56NATO.

    As for "sniper rifles", you're right - there isn't that much difference between hunting and sniper rifles (although the last few years have seen sniper rifles head off towards rather expensive metal stocks and big scopes, while hunting rifles haven't changed much).

    AIUI (not being a hunter) the ranges involved, however, should be much closer than half a mile - because any real hunter is concerned about a humane kill (and if you only wound an animal, you now have to track where it ran off to die). This is the reason why ghillies will insist on an accuracy test before taking clients out onto the hills; it's all very well carrying a rather expensive rifle, what matters is whether you can actually use it.

    Aiming for a four-or-five-inch-wide heart on a deer is hard; most firers will struggle past a couple of hundred meters. Likewise, snipers intent on killing a particular target (rather than wounding) train to stalk to within a few hundred meters. The problem isn't just range and wind estimation errors; it's also time of flight - a bullet takes nearly a second to travel half a mile, and the target is entirely likely to move during that time.

    1182:

    “Our school is well known for the number of ex-pupils who end up displaying symptoms of mercury poisoning oh no hang on no it isn't.” Or possibly the Hg has damaged everyone’ mind enough that they don’t realize it. Bit like the people I remember screaming about removing Pb from petrol.

    1183:

    You're presuming a kill shot has to be heart; I'm fairly sure that snipers prefer head shots.

    1184:

    Charlie Stross @ 1121:

    How does the daily exposure to chemicals in the environment today differ from that a hundred years or more ago?

    Actually, you'd have to go back closer to 200 years for things to be different: if anything, we're much more scrupulous about discharging toxic crap into our environment than the Victorians were. (And they, in turn, were more scrupulous about sewage than their predecessors.)

    I was thinking more in terms of chemical industries really began growing in the 19th century. Before the chemical industries became subject to pollution controls, they just dumped their waste. That waste spread out through the environment and became part of the background we're exposed to today.

    They recognized the fast killers and banned them, but they left behind the slow killers they didn't recognize. And I think those fast killers may have masked the effects of the more insidious slow killers. For a while.

    Those residual chemical wastes are NOT the only cause for the increase in Type 2 diabetes and other systemic "diseases" that we see in greater prevelance today, but I think they may be a hidden underlying contributor.

    1185:

    #1128 - From "The Italian Job" (1969 film)... "Yes; I used a machine gun."

    Dad's pre/post retirement career (his first was "soldier") is resilience planning - what used to be called "Emergency Planning". About twenty years ago during the Foot and Mouth outbreak in the UK (while I was still dressing up in green at the weekends), he called me to ask how many trained snipers were likely to be available in his area; they had started to worry that the disease would spread to the deer herds who travel up on the high ground, and that they might need to do mass culls beyond the capacity of local stalkers.

    I managed to shock him, by suggesting that if they really needed to cull an entire deer herd quickly, they shouldn't be mucking about with snipers - what they needed was to bring in the MMG Platoons (tripod mounted machine guns that work in sections, to create a cigar shaped "beaten zone" a hundred meters long by a meter or so wide), drive the deer towards them, and let the snipers worry about the deer who escaped. Not by any means a humane act[1], more one of desperation and brutality - only really justifiable if culling one herd quickly avoided the need to cull several herds later...

    [1] Not least because hunters (and police officers) can use expanding ammunition, designed to create massive internal damage and a quick death; soldiers are specifically banned from using such by the Hague Convention, so military ammunition isn't as effective.

    1186:

    If you take away all their guns they can't get erections.

    What about hanging themselves?

    1187:

    Nancy Lebovitz @ 1133: "My personal theory: death by COVID is now a type of Death of Despair, like the opioid addiction was. In both cases, they were done by people who consider suicide un-Christian, I doubt that this is a majority of anti-vaxxers, but it's a subset. A larger percentage simply think that they're bulletproof. Fundamentally the same reason a subset of the population still smokes."

    I don't think this explains Trump, Modi, and Bolsonaro.

    It also doesn't explain weird incompetence which led to tests not being very available for Americans.

    I found a good book that details what was going on in the administration:

    Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic that Changed History

    Trump got "heroic" measures, including anti-viral drugs not available to most Covid patients and being rushed into the ICU before his symptoms developed. And he was a hell of a lot sicker than the SPIN admits.

    1188:

    whitroth @ 1161: Quick: (not you, JBS) explain to me the difference between a self-proclaimed militia, and an inner-city armed gang.

    Hmmmph! Be that way then.

    https://angrystaffofficer.com/2020/01/20/stop-calling-armed-mobs-the-militia/

    1189:

    whitroth @ 1163: Capture and neuter... can we do that to gun nuts in the US, before they breed?

    No. That would almost certainly be UN-Constitutional.

    ... and probably to late to be effective in any case.

    1190:

    If you take away all their guns they can't get erections.

    What about hanging themselves?

    How can they hang themselves if they can't get an erection to hang the noose from?

    1191:

    Martin @ 1183:

    Assault rifles no; sniper rifles I could see, for things like taking down red deer, caribou and elk at half a mile.

    AIUI, the excuse du jour for swivel-eyed 2A types is "feral hogs". Having said that, several hundred kilos of annoyed boar is probably better-served with something a bit heavier-calibre than 5.56NATO.

    During World War 2, the standard U.S. rifle cartridge was the .30-06 Springfield used in the M1 Garand rifle (designed by Canadian John C. Garand). The Garand is considered one of the world's battle rifles, even though it's limited by having only an 8 round clip1.

    The M1 rifle was used by the U.S. up through the Korean War (with limited service during the Vietnam war) when it was mostly replaced by the M-14 rifle chambered in 7.62×51mm NATO - still a .30 caliber cartridge, but shortened from the .30-06 Springfield. The M-14 is essentially the Garand with the addition of a box magazine & selective fire.

    The idea behind 5.56 NATO seems to be that most combat took place at much shorter engagement ranges (under 300m) and the smaller cartridge could be just as effective at those ranges if it produced a high enough muzzle velocity. That the cartridge might be less lethal was seen as kind of a bonus because dead enemy soldiers just lie there, but a wounded soldier has to be recovered, taking a second soldier off the battlefield to help him ... at least in theory.

    And apparently, Real Manly Men™ hunt "feral hogs" with large caliber handguns. (???!!!)

    As for "sniper rifles", you're right - there isn't that much difference between hunting and sniper rifles (although the last few years have seen sniper rifles head off towards rather expensive metal stocks and big scopes, while hunting rifles haven't changed much).

    I know you can buy "hunting" rifles in .30-06 and 7.62x51 (actually .308 Winchester - same size cartridge, but slightly higher power). The main difference between hunting rifles & "sniper" rifles appears to be the number of rounds that can be loaded and whether they have internal magazine capacity or use a detachable box magazine.

    AIUI (not being a hunter) the ranges involved, however, should be much closer than half a mile - because any real hunter is concerned about a humane kill (and if you only wound an animal, you now have to track where it ran off to die). This is the reason why ghillies will insist on an accuracy test before taking clients out onto the hills; it's all very well carrying a rather expensive rifle, what matters is whether you can actually use it.

    Plus there's the consideration of how far the bullet will travel if it misses the target and whether it's going to hit something else - maybe something you don't want it to hit ... at least it is for hunting. Most states have restrictions on what kind of rifles, what caliber and how many rounds can be loaded. Violate those restrictions & get caught and you could lose your hunting privilege.

    I just did a quick search for North Carolina regulations and it appears you can use a center-fire rifle cartridge for deer hunting (during deer season), but only from an elevated (8 feet or more) FIXED stand ... so that you're firing down into the ground.

    Aiming for a four-or-five-inch-wide heart on a deer is hard; most firers will struggle past a couple of hundred meters. Likewise, snipers intent on killing a particular target (rather than wounding) train to stalk to within a few hundred meters. The problem isn't just range and wind estimation errors; it's also time of flight - a bullet takes nearly a second to travel half a mile, and the target is entirely likely to move during that time.

    In either case, if you miss your first shot, you probably won't get a second one.

    1 Interestingly, the M1 Garand appears to be a very popular choice for ceremonial guards & drill teams even outside the U.S.

    1192:

    paws4thot @ 1185: You're presuming a kill shot has to be heart; I'm fairly sure that snipers prefer head shots.

    "Hollywood" snipers do. Center of mass seems a lot more practical. Even if you miss the heart, you do more damage.

    If you miss the head, all you do is scare the target away.

    1193:

    JBS @ 1190: whitroth @ 1161:

    Quick: (not you, JBS) explain to me the difference between a self-proclaimed militia, and an inner-city armed gang.

    Hmmmph! Be that way then.

    https://angrystaffofficer.com/2020/01/20/stop-calling-armed-mobs-the-militia/

    I will point out that I disagree with him about the Second Amendment.

    It is NOT about individual gun ownership. It is about ensuring LOCAL, CIVILIAN control over the militia. The enumerated powers of Congress allow for them to call the militia to Federal Service to suppress invasion or insurrection and to give the States instruction in arming, training & disciplining the Militia, but the Second Amendment is intended to prevent the Federal Government from just doing away with the militia ... and substituting a standing army that is not responsive to the needs of the individual State Governments.

    Here "right of the people" is a collective right for the citizens of the individual States. The State Government can decide who may keep & bear arms (subject of course to the stricture of according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;).

    1194:

    Maybe the thing to do with people who declare themselves militia members is to call them up, give them ReallyShitJobs, (no military training, mind you) and handle all their complaints via the UCMJ. Make that policy for a few years and everyone will get the point.

    1195:

    You're presuming a kill shot has to be heart; I'm fairly sure that snipers prefer head shots.

    Years ago I knew a chap who had his sniper badge (or whatever it's called) in the Rangers. "Aim center mass" was one of his sayings…

    1196:

    Maybe the thing to do with people who declare themselves militia members is to call them up, give them ReallyShitJobs, (no military training, mind you) and handle all their complaints via the UCMJ.

    Like, maybe, disaster relief? Hauling sandbags? Clearing mudslides? Fighting fires?

    1197:

    Real Manly Men™ hunt "feral hogs" with large caliber handguns.

    Wusses. Give 'em a boar spear and lay bets…

    1198:

    paws4thot @1143: Garage salesman "What did you do in India sir?

    According to IMDB, Michael Caine improvised those lines. The director liked it, and it stayed in the movie.

    paws4thot @1185: I'm fairly sure that snipers prefer head shots.

    I think that one of Reginald Hill's books began:

    '[Protagonist's name] preferred the cerebral approach.

    'He always shot for the head.'

    (Protagonist was a contract killer).

    1199:

    Plus there's the consideration of how far the bullet will travel if it misses the target and whether it's going to hit something else - maybe something you don't want it to hit ... at least it is for hunting.

    Back in the 80s an engineer I worked with had a small cabin in the Gatineau. He and his girlfriend never visited it during hunting season, returning after it was over to patch the bullet holes in the walls, mattress, and cupboards, and maybe replace a window.

    Apparently drunken hunters just blasted away at whatever moved.

    The Arrogant Worms nailed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBU4lcmbh-c

    1200:

    "Aim center mass" was one of his sayings…

    As ever, it depends. For most military marksmanship, this is indeed the case. AIUI, for snipers at shorter ranges, looking for... "definite", then they'll aim for the head.

    Apocryphal fact about UK Police snipers, veracity unconfirmed: the longest range operational shot ever fired in the UK by a police officer? 67 meters...

    1201:

    Interestingly, the M1 Garand appears to be a very popular choice for ceremonial guards & drill teams even outside the U.S.

    Really? Can't say that I've noticed...

    The Commonwealth approach is to avoid any of that "let's chrome-plate or gold-plate everything" beloved of tin-pot dictators, and to use the current service weapon for all ceremonial (stand fast the King's Troop). That's why you'll see the Household Division carrying the L85 when they're Trooping the Colour or standing guard outside Buckingham Palace; the Canadians carrying the C8; and the Aurstralians carrying the F88/F90.

    1202:

    Similar problems in NSW recently, although lockdown has temporarily put a stop to them I assume. It's a good argument for restricting firearms even further, and these days making them have a GPS logger that reports the location of every shot (with penalties for not uploading ASAP).

    But then I am not doing pest control any more so I probably don't count as eligible to comment on gun owner's rights...

    1203:

    Your suggestions could result in someone being considered heroic or even just useful. I was thinking about something more like "latrine duty" or "poison ivy removal" and put them under the kinds of sergeants who can really dish it out. Not the kinds who are abusive so much as the kinds who can make someone who's been called up from Al's Backwoods Rangers feel like they deserve to weed the nettle patch.

    1204:

    "The Arrogant Worms nailed it:"

    Tom Lehrer also had some things to say.

    JHomes.

    1205:

    I dunno. The chance to actually do something useful rather than stand around eating donuts and nattering on about the 2nd amendment might do them some good. It would certainly give them a chance to work off those donuts…

    1206:

    Like painting "COW" in big orange letters on all livestock?

    This is why they use shotguns and slugs in much of Wisconsin. The effective range on one of those is around 100 meters, and generally they're hunting more than 100 meters from homes and buildings, so it's okay. Out in California, especially southern California, the vegetation is generally so open that hunting range is 500 meters or so, rifles are mandatory, and ridge shots (shooting up at a silhouetted animal) can result in the bullet going about 8 km or so before it lands. Which is why hunters ed sternly says Not To Do That.

    1207:

    On this, we agree 100% Heller was bullshit, decided by the Federalist Society Supreme Court Judges, who were (and are) getting honoraria for speechs to the NRA.

    1208:

    So, you're saying that the appropriate governor needs to call up those that folks online refer to as Meal Team 6?

    1209:

    Most large city sewer systems suffer from fat-bergs. Anywhere with riverine flooding, the damage recovery when floodwaters recede is pretty unpleasant too, though perhaps not on a a level with fat-bergs for sheer awfulness. A wide variety of less heroic but not much less unpleasant cleaning tasks abound in any big city. Cleaning in general, and traditionally female-associated tasks even more in general would help get at the self-image problem I guess, but there's a question about how far you trust them to do things that involve caring for other people.

    1210:

    I approve of the sentiment - fat-berg patrol in a sewer would be awful - but I'm not sure I want Meal Team Six to know anything about the sewers under my city. But you're definitely in the right neighborhood.

    1211:

    Contradicting what I said about trusting them to care for people...

    There's always a shortage of trained nurses everywhere, so it's not really taking away jobs if you train all militia-folk as nurses, and employ them likewise as a condition of their militianess (maybe for free, but at best for a small stipend, so you don't have an excuse to cut back on real nurses). That is all sorts of nursing, including aged care, emergency and surgical (everyone has heard the story about how patients with bowel obstructions spurt faeces from their eyes, yeah?). There would need to be close supervision and some kind of corporal punishment for mistreating patients and shirking duties... okay maybe not corporal punishment, but the threat of immediate and permanent gun ownership bans would work, to some extent, I imagine. To the extent it didn't, those people are probably too stupid to trust with a firearm anyway.

    The point isn't to humiliate or make people do unnecessarily unpleasant tasks. It's more that being in this sort of proximity with a broad range of vulnerable people for an extended period of time has an effect on anyone. You learn something about people you might otherwise treat contemptuously that makes the latter behaviour less sustainable and ratchets up the cognitive dissonance that is usually easy to ignore what with Fox News and all.

    1212:

    Problem is, nursing is a vocation, which means in this case that nurses can tolerate shit that will make some other people faint. Sometimes literally in both parts (the shit and the fainting). It's not a matter of physical conditioning, it's the desire to heal and the willingness to put up with others' sickness, plus the mental and physical ability to learn to do something useful about it.

    Not everyone has that. I'm not very good at it, but I've changed a few bedpans. I know some people who are supremely talented workaholics in other fields who faint at the sight of blood. Doesn't matter how scarce nurses are, they're not trainable. That's part of where the shortage of nurses comes from. On the job injuries (mostly from lifting) and high rates of assault by patients and families are others.

    1213:

    You're right of course, but I still think there's something in it. Partly because one of the traits of authoritarians is the hair-trigger disgust threshold, and while I'm sure that yes, some of that can't be conditioned, I don't think that's a complete brick wall and at a certain level that sort of disgust is a luxury item, something people can only have because they haven't needed to do certain kinds of work. I realise I'm overgeneralising and that I'm talking to a pretty rough stereotype, but if you get the ones who can be conditioned...

    Yeah well anyway, look at me talking about conditioning and re-education, anyone would think I was some sort of leftist.

    1214: 1193 - For the avoidance of doubt and explanations, the main difference between a Garand .30-06 and a Lee-Enfield 0.303 appears to be the mechanical fit of the ammo to the chamber and where they were made (similar size magazine, mass and muzzle velocity of bullet, both bolt action, similar range and accuracy). I agree about 5.56 NATO.

    And as for handgun hunting, most hunters I know say "their handgun is a second weapon for when they are surprised by a close range hog".

    1194 - Flak jackets. That's one reservation I've heard about centre of mass shots. 1195 - I agree. Certainly the whole point of the Second was to ensure that the citizenry had black powder weapons and some form of military training. It was not to enshrine in constitutional law the right of every non-felon to own any firearm they could afford! 1200 re #1143 - I think that may be correct although I'm a film buff, not an actor biographer. Either way it was a good decision by someone to do the lines and leave them in the eventual cinema release. 1203 - The British Army re-wrote all their parade and ceremonial drill books when they replaced the Lee-Enfield with the SA-80. 1205 - Gunnery Sergeant Lee Ermey (real name of "Gunny Hartman" from "Full Metal Jacket" (1987 film) springs to mind as being the type wanted?
    1215:

    anyone would think I was some sort of leftist

    Don't worry. If you hang around here long enough, you will be.

    1216:

    There's always a shortage of trained nurses everywhere, so it's not really taking away jobs if you train all militia-folk as nurses, and employ them likewise as a condition of their militianess

    Not as nurses: "nurse" is a graduate-level profession these days, becoming an RN takes 6-8 years of higher education and training.

    You're thinking of care assistants, who do a lot of the less skilled stuff that (expensively trained, highly qualified) RNs are too scarce to do -- turning patients with bed sores, changing adult diapers, and so on.

    1217:

    "Ah Gogo, don't go on like that. Tomorrow everything will be better."

    1218:

    Indeed I am and thanks for the catch.

    The problem really is the extra workload for the real nurses who would need to supervise them, though it's in that realm where it's reasonable to seek out a break even point of adding extra labour versus management overhead.

    The issue with all this sort of thing is the disruption to innocent people who have settled comfortably into relatively poorly paid niches of relatively low skill work that are nonetheless enough to be getting by with, but which you'd unleash the hordes of crazies into. You'd want to provide them with opportunities to be the managers the crazies, or alternatively the right to keep their own personal niche to themselves and exclude the crazies from their domains. In practice though their bosses are possibly some of the crazies so it gets a bit macro.

    1219:

    What about taking the New Deal-projects as an inspiration? Let the crazies work on the big infrastructure repairs (roads, bridges, what-have-you) with shovels. You'd get lots of untrained, overweight people to do manual, unskilled labour in fresh air (with the attached health-benefits) and the US gets its falling-apart infrastructure repaired. Sounds like a win-win!

    1220:

    The problem really is the extra workload for the real nurses who would need to supervise them

    In the early 1980s Margaret Thatcher proposed to bring back national service to toughen up the youth.

    The main opponents were the army general staff, who opposed it because (a) there weren't enough sergeants in the army to train them (indeed, promoting all the privates to sergeants and training them in training would have barely sufficed), and (b) the optics when the first dead 18 year old conscripts came back from Northern Ireland would not be good for her re-election campaign.

    1221:

    Most large city sewer systems suffer from fat-bergs.

    AFAIK, those are mostly caused by so-called "flushable wipes", which aren't truly flushable. As such, cleaning them up should be reserved for the executives and boards of companies selling and marketing them. Repeatedly. Until they get the message and stop damaging infrastructure and costing taxpayers money.

    1222:

    Having worked with people who have been assigned "community service" by the courts, it takes a lot of effort to check any work they've done. So you want work that, while healthy exercise etc, is also capable of being inspected quickly.

    1223:

    @ Heteromeles and other interested parties, concerning the debates about urban planning, public transportation and adjacent topics in this and the previous post:

    I've recently stumbled upon the YouTube-channel of a guy who calls himself Adam Something. He has very pointed opinions on urban planning and very pointed takedowns of Elon Musk's non-solutions to all kinds of transport issues. I quite like them.

    Note that he has a (eastern) continental European background and position, so his perspectives are decidedly non-American (and non-Anglo in general). As a fellow continental European I find them quite natural.

    1224:

    Water company tested and approved paper based flushable wipes (Natracare) are widely available in the UK. All that’s necessary to solve the problem that plastic based wet wipes pose is regulation.

    1225:
    All that’s necessary to solve the problem […] is regulation.

    And of course the land of the free can't have that. So it must also be the home of the brave (sewage dippers).

    1226:

    The UK has a curious blind spot about national service, by assuming that it is necessarily all about (to be euphemistic) creating an army on demand. There is absolutely no reason that such recruits cannot be used for any purpose where lots of fairly clueless and reluctant manpower is required.

    (Aside: as you probably recall, it was Thatcher who changed the rules so that the territorial army could be used as a reserve for foreign adventurism, as well as the defence of the realm.)

    Indeed, I have long believed that a reasonable solution for many young petty criminals would be a form of it, where they were used for such tasks, and given the experience and training to do them. It would be no more expensive than prison and almost certainly a damn sight more effective.

    The problem about finding enough competent supervision remains, only more so. Brutality would be counter-productive.

    1227:

    Aargh! I meant to add "and social conditioning".

    As social scientists have long pointed out (one of the reasons Thatcher and her successors have loathed them), our prison system creates criminals, it does not discourage them.

    1228:

    There is absolutely no reason that such recruits cannot be used for any purpose where lots of fairly clueless and reluctant manpower is required.

    Except that said conscript labour undercuts market wages, which is a whole 'nother political argument (see also "workfare" and, inter alia, slavery).

    1229:

    Oh, yes - used wrongly, it has both of those faults (see the USA for an example), though our existing prisoners are already used for almost unpaid labour. You could perfectly well make it a voluntary alternative to prison - as is done with 'community service' and current prison work. I fully accept that it would NOT be done right under any of our governments from Thatcher onwards - but nor has our prison system been.

    The lunatic leftie claim that it necessarily has those evils, and (by implication) is worse than our current 'solution' of locking people up in a small cell for 23 hours a day, with nothing to do, largely unsupervised, together with more hardened criminals is bollocks - this is one place where the extremists of the left and right agree.

    1230:

    I realise that you may have been referring to universal consription! That has slightly different tradeoffs, but similar remarks apply (especially about our governments and doing it right). There are plenty of countries that do it not TOO badly - it's an ancient practice, after all!

    On THIS aspect, what I absolutely cannot understand is the argument that it is tantamount to slavery to conscript people to do constructive work, but it is not to conscript people to intimidate and kill other people.

    To reduce the unthinking flamers, I am NOT saying that intimidating or killing other people is always unjustified or wrong, but that IS the point of military might, when you come down to it.

    1231:

    The important idea here is to make sure that anyone who wants to be part of a "militia" realizes that it's a bad idea that will see you taken away from your family and forced to do a shit job that nobody wants. This is "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" for White idjits who don't understand the constitution.

    1232:

    Meanwhile, back with COVID and how people are/aren't handling it...

    https://www.steampunkcoffee.co.uk/blogs/steampunk-coffee-blog/these-are-not-the-best-of-times

    ( from OGH's neck of the woods )

    1233:

    @1215

    [ ". . . at a certain level that sort of disgust is a luxury item, something people can only have because they haven't needed to do certain kinds of work." ]

    Ah, you mean men!

    1234:

    There is absolutely no reason that such recruits cannot be used for any purpose where lots of fairly clueless and reluctant manpower is required.

    The reason that the British Armed Forces have repeatedly opposed any "Politicians' Really Good Ideas" about National Service is that it just wouldn't work.

    It works where society supports it; see Israel, or Switzerland; arguably in the USSR (although Dedovshchina made it a horrible experience). It doesn't work if enough of your recruits just don't want to be there. What can you do if they say "No"? Or do a minimal, half-arsed job of things? Consider the breach rates for "Community Service" sentences as an example; one-third failure rates the norm.

    Professional armies are structured and equipped differently from conscript armies. Because you don't need as many tanks/guns/ships, you can afford more expensive ones. Because your recruits sign up for a minimum of three years, not one, you can have more complex and effective equipment which carry a higher training burden. Because your troops have more time to train, and leaders have more experience at all levels, your doctrine can allow for more individual initiative, and more versatile units (armies with less-experienced soldiers tend to a more directive style of command, and to units that focus on one task).

    Whether correct or not, the lesson that many nations drew from the Falklands War was that all-volunteer armies had a distinct advantage over conscript armies; it rather set the Soviets back on their heels, and caused them to start questioning some fairly basic assumptions.

    it was Thatcher who changed the rules so that the Territorial Army could be used as a reserve for foreign adventurism, as well as the defence of the realm

    Not quite. That was down to the Reserve Forces Act 1996 (RFA 96), which was several years after her time. Until then, the Territorial Army was a Strategic Reserve, rather than an Operational Reserve [1]; very much "break glass in case of transition to war", followed by the Wacky Races required to get 40,000 soldiers deployed to West Germany and digging in before the Group of Soviet Forces Germany decided to make use of their "one artillery piece per hundred meters of border" and head westwards at pace....

    The legal mechanism for TA mobilisation during Thatcher's time and afterwards, was "Queen's Order 2" (Reserve Forces Act 1980 Section 10(1)), and applied to the whole TA; there was no concept of "we just want to compulsorily mobilise these people here", it was all or nothing. This meant that those TA mobilised for Op GRANBY in 1991 were actually volunteers - friends who mobilised with 205 General Hospital RAMC(V) had to do so by signing the paperwork to join the Regular Army on an S-type engagement...

    RFA 96 meant that Military Aid to the Civil Community could be done as the more acceptable face of mobilisation (our battalion had lots of four-wheel-drive trucks; e.g. when Dumfriesshire got snowed under for a couple of weeks in the mid-90s, our Motor Transport Platoon were IIRC our first soldiers mobilised since Korea...). The next near-miss was in support of any "non-compliant entry" into Kosovo in 1999 - NATO reckoned on 250,000 troops being needed, so the Army Personnel Centre were 24hrs away from sending the callout notices they'd stacked up, ready to go. Had the Yugoslav National Army not blinked in the face of General Jackson and a NATO Armoured Division on their border, I'd have been coming home from my honeymoon to mobilise our Rifle Company.

    [1] This is still a problem for the Regulars; not understanding the different types of volunteer reserves, nor the best way to recruit, train, and retain them. I can grind my teeth and rabbit on about that at great length...

    1235:

    I was specifically referring to NON-military national service, where what the armed forces think is no more relevant than what anyone else with supervision experience thinks. I know perfectly well just how stupid the politicians' ideas about conscription for the armed forces have been.

    You missed where I agreed with OGH about proper supervision; the main reason that community service is a pretty fair disaster is precisely because of the lack of that. Yes, it takes a higher calibre of supervisor and MUCH more of their time to supervise reluctant oiks, but the goal is at least as much rehabilitation as any productive work. What do we have? A grossly under-resourced public service (largely?) replaced by outsourcing to the usual culprits.

    And, no, I said Thatcher and meant it. Yes, I remember Major's change, but that mainly made adventurism easier; it wasn't as controversial as the one I remember. I can't remember which Act or if it was just a policy shift, but there was a hell of a row over turning the TA from what was mostly a home defence and time of war force into something that could be used abroad without further ado. Possibly my memory is at fault, but I don't think so, given what Wikipedia says here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Reserve_(United_Kingdom)#Rebuilding_Capability_and_Exercising_Roles

    And, no, I definitely DON'T mean Thatcher's damn Home Service Force, which was always intended more as a reserve to suppress internal threats and probably dissent (e.g. the miners' strike becoming general) rather than what it was claimed to do.

    1236:

    My wife is a nurse. And I could never do her job.

    Not because of blood, shit and pus -- that I can deal with. What I cannot deal with is entitled assholes who treat medical staff (the very people trying to save their lives) as shit. And lately there has been quite an uptick in those, with anti-vax and anti-masking.

    1237:

    Trump's Master Plan for Afghanistan revealed.

    Bomb the country into a smoldering, smoking ruin - sparing neither friend nor foe - and remove "American Troops" leaving Allies & cooperating Afghans in the lurch.

    There would have been no evacuation drama at the airports because Trump wasn't going to accept ANY Afghan refugees.

    1238:

    That's what Japan does. Japanese prisons are structured along the lines of a boot camp -- inmates stand at attention, march in formation, make perfect beds, etc. They are supervised every minute of every day, so there is no room for "the strong prey on the weak" hierarchies which develop in most prisons. IIRC, all Japanese prison guards are former drill instructors.

    1239:

    Um, M1 Garand is not bolt-action. It's self-loading.

    1240:

    I should explain that I was an Army Brat who went to an MoD school in Perthshire, who joined the TA in 1984, commissioned into our local Home Defence-roled infantry battalion in 1989 (just round the corner from OGH's flat), and carried on serving through all of these changes until 2004 or so, when kids arrived and it was time to retire.

    ...there was a hell of a row over turning the TA from what was mostly a home defence and time of war force into something that could be used abroad without further ado.

    You're right, there was (a rather intelligent Lt.Col I worked for correctly spotted that RFA 96 would be used as a mechanism by which the Regulars could plunder the TA; she resigned rather than sign up to it) - but as the link you provided makes clear, this didn't really happen until 1995/96.

    The 1991-era changes were post-Cold War, and involved some fairly savage cuts to both Regular and Reserve under "Options for Change"; with the Soviets on their trains heading East, and German reunification around the corner, the need for a massive Army (and massive costs) disappeared. We lost two of five Rifle Companies (our undermanned Penicuik location, and our HSF) as did our NATO-roled sister battalion from Glasgow.

    ... Thatcher's damn Home Service Force, which was always intended more as a reserve to suppress internal threats and probably dissent (e.g. the miners' strike becoming general) rather than what it was claimed to do.

    Definitely not - I can see why people might put 2+2 and think that, but it just wasn't possible. Our HSF companies were purely and simply "too many Key Points needing protected, not enough Home Defence-roled soldiers to guard them against Saboteurs / Spetsnaz". We/they did absolutely zero public order training, had none of the necessary equipment, and focused entirely on the skills needed to protect our area of responsibility.

    To give you an idea of how few troops were available, IIRC in 1989 Scotland had five and a half TA, and three regular infantry battalions (not counting 45 Cdo RM in Arbroath who'd be heading to Norway). Only one of us had a Home Defence role, the rest would be heading off elsewhere.

    Our HSF company were reinforcements to our guard locations around Glen Douglas (NATO ammunition depot), Loch Striven (NATO oil storage depot), and the Mull of Kintyre; that soaked up absolutely everyone we had, and we just couldn't leave those locations unguarded. As another example, the TA unit responsible for the Lothian and Borders area was the training staff of Edinburgh UOTC; probably twenty or thirty soldiers as the TAOR HQ. The RAF covered RAF Turnhouse / Edinburgh Airport, Atomic Plod covered Torness, every other TA and Regular unit was off to dig a trench in Germany. If the police wanted anyone to help with public order, they could whistle...

    You should remember that the HSF were "they're a bit old, but they can still man a gate and patrol a fence" - ours seemed to have a high proportion of retired TA and ex-regular senior NCOs in their late 40s and 50s, many with interesting wings and daggers on their sleeves; our guess was that they drew lots, and the losers had to stay on as Sergeant-Major, while the winners got to be Corporals again and have some fun with their old mates. They weren't expected to do full-on infantry work, but they were living proof that age and treachery will oft overcome youth and vigour ;)

    Remember also that us Territorials were "politically unreliable", being (by definition) local as we were. Nor were we the Jackboot Heel of the Fascist Opporession - thinking back to my time as a 2Lt, I'd describe the officers in our company as "One Labour, two LibDem, two Conservative" - if you wanted to stamp out "internal dissent" (i.e. the kind of thing that would have Generals taking a trip to Buck House for a chat with the Boss, followed by the PM getting the Gypsy's Warning), you'd probably take Machiavelli's advice and use Regular troops recruited from elsewhere in the country... IMHO anyone ordering the TA/HSF to fire on their neighbours wouldn't be a good bet for life insurance.

    As worked example of that thinking, Irish Regiments were rarely sent to Northern Ireland during the Troubles - it took twenty years before the Royal Irish Rangers or Irish Guards did an operational tour there. Note also what happened when the swivel-eyed got excited about Harold Wilson; the Armed Forces stayed out of it.

    1241:

    That's not quite what I meant, but it's better than what we have (in the UK, and certainly USA).

    1242:

    My memory of the timeline may have been at fault, then.

    But I stand by my statement about the HSF. I said 'internal threats', which (other than enforcing the entry/exit rules) is most of what manning gates is about. Yes, they could do that but, given their age, number per site and equipment, the idea of stopping a Spetsnaz raid was simply risible - not that it was likely. The CND and similar, as well as just plain thieves, were FAR more likely.

    And I can assure you that Thatcher was planning her destruction of the unions, starting with the miners, back in 1979 (which is the date I am referring to). She ended up bribing and arm-twisting the police - and, no, I don't know how she brought the chief constables to heel. Remember that the HSF was originally (1979) intended to be considerably larger - no, I don't know why the plan to enlarge it failed, or the plan was changed, or what.

    1243:

    On Covid,

    There are some stickers with anti vax propaganda appearing on lamp posts round where I live. (e.g "Imagine a disease so lethal you need a test to know you've got it"). They advertise some website called White Rose.

    The irritating thing is that these stickers are really well made, with plastic rather than paper, and very strong glue so you can't tear them off.

    Anyone else seeing them? I just wonder how widespread this is.

    1244:

    On poisons in our environment.

    The Guardian has this article on one type. https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/31/pfas-toxic-forever-chemicals-air-breathing

    1245:

    The problem really is the extra workload for the real nurses

    Getting conscripts of any sort to "care" for patients would be a real concern. Patients have rights, and some of them have families. The first time a conscript left granny to lie in a puddle of her own urine because eww gross there would be an outcry. When the first conscript raped someone in care I suspect the program would be halted.

    I see people doing community service on a fairly regular basis, wandering along parts of my rivercare group's territory, and those people are not even very effective at picking up rubbish. The idea that people even less enthusiastic would be any use at all in the "stop sick people dying" area is beyond credibility. You'd have to get the population as a whole worked up to the point where they didn't just support conscription, they actively lynched conscriptees who were not overjoyed at the opportunity to help out.

    This is why stupid shit like the various UK and Australia "force dole bludgers to pick fruit" programs have been such colossal failures. You can physically force people to be on the farm, but you can't make them do anything useful unless you're willing to kill some of them.

    1246:

    But I stand by my statement about the HSF... but, given their age, number per site and equipment, the idea of stopping a Spetsnaz raid was simply risible

    Any Transition To War would thought likely to involve maximum use of the well meaning, and occasionally "useful idiots" - as much trolling and industrial unrest as possible, all to "stop the warmongers". That's fine, we're a democracy. However, we're still turning up Soviet radio sets from hides near strategic facilities; and pre-positioned weapons caches in remote areas were a thing. How many were discovered, and how many jarked / booby-trapped, is left as an exercise for the thoughtful.

    There wouldn't have been that many GRU Spetsnaz types in our area - if they've only got a few brigades of them, and the main effort is West Germany, then the available troops (and the submarines / trucks / trawlers to get them to the UK) are few and far between. Likewise, any saboteurs aren't going to be cutting-edge knife-between-the-teeth types. Given the inability of any small sabotage team to survive a stand-up fight, however well-trained, our aim was to deter them into picking someone else on their "list of things to break" (preferably to take on Commacchio Group RM at Faslane and Coulport, and let us sit back and watch the fireworks).

    I also wouldn't say "risible". Remember, Bravo Two-Zero were compromise and seen off by a couple of farmers, a tractor, and a shotgun. We're likely talking about Spetsnaz teams of four to eight; more PIRA ASU than "Sabre Squadron". Bright, motivated, and fit - but probably inexperienced by Western SF standards (conscript army, remember). They're limited in what they can carry, how far/fast they can travel, and they're being hunted by Security Service and Special Branch, Police and Army. You'd be surprised how hard it is to carry a week's food, let alone a capable amount of demolition kit - it's not easy to keep a low profile.

    We used to exercise for site defence against 23 SAS; they got in about half the time, but those aren't good odds for Special Forces, especially when you consider attrition on the route up to that point... On one war-role exercise, there was the embarrassing scene when two of the Exercise Enemy from Commacchio Group (including a young bootneck Lieutenant) got captured sneaking into one site by an HSF Corporal, himself a former Royal Marine, current Prison Officer at a Young Offenders' Institute, and heavyweight boxer... there was apparently a slight struggle, followed by a face/wall collision, and the Exercise Staff asking "please can you stop restraining them, we need them back for the next serial".

    - not that it was likely. The CND and similar, as well as just plain thieves, were FAR more likely.

    I'm not so sure. CND were most likely to be camped outside Faslane, might have been concerned about Glen Douglas (we had half the battalion there), but our site at Loch Striven was in the middle of nowhere, up a dead-end single-track road, with nothing portable to steal, and no instant sunshine. Just some rather large fuel oil tanks dug into a hillside, and the jetty that was necessary to offload their contents into waiting warships.

    1247:

    Martin @ 1203:

    Interestingly, the M1 Garand appears to be a very popular choice for ceremonial guards & drill teams even outside the U.S.

    The Commonwealth approach is to avoid any of that "let's chrome-plate or gold-plate everything" beloved of tin-pot dictators, and to use the current service weapon for all ceremonial (stand fast the King's Troop). That's why you'll see the Household Division carrying the L85 when they're Trooping the Colour or standing guard outside Buckingham Palace; the Canadians carrying the C8; and the Aurstralians carrying the F88/F90.

    1. I'm pretty sure those you mentioned were never equipped with the M1 Garand during World War 2 and so have no legacy of them for ceremonial use.

    2. Others were equipped by the U.S. during or after World War 2 and many of them have retained their NOT-chrome-plated M1 Garands for HONOR GUARDS and ceremonial drill teams:
    Greece - Tomb of the Unknown Soldier - Changing of the Guard
    Greece - Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
    Norway - Royal Norwegian Guards
    Japan - National Defense Academy Honor Guard & Drill Team
    Republic of China (Taiwan) - Honor Guard at the National Revolutionary Martyr Shrine
    Turkey - Honor Guard at Anitkabir Mausoleum
    U.S. - Guard at the Tomb of then Unknown Soldier

    ... and, of course, the USMC Silent Drill Team

    3. The USMC Silent Drill Team may occasionally use chrome plated bayonets, but their M1s are standard USMC issue with wooden furniture, polished to a high gloss, but wooden none the less.

    The militaries I mentioned above have modern battle rifles in NATO or Soviet calibers to equip their actual combat forces, but I wouldn't mess around with Greek or Turk or Chinese honor guards equipped with the M1 because I'm sure they are NOT just for show.

    Former Soviet client states seem to mostly favor vintage AK/SK rifles for their honor guards, but the M1 has shown up in Iraq & Afghanistan (as still functional weapons rather than ceremonial ones). The U.S. manufactured almost 5.5 million of them and they appear to still be in use by some NON-U.S. "forces" (state & non-state).

    1248:

    Damian @ 1211: Most large city sewer systems suffer from fat-bergs. Anywhere with riverine flooding, the damage recovery when floodwaters recede is pretty unpleasant too, though perhaps not on a a level with fat-bergs for sheer awfulness. A wide variety of less heroic but not much less unpleasant cleaning tasks abound in any big city. Cleaning in general, and traditionally female-associated tasks even more in general would help get at the self-image problem I guess, but there's a question about how far you trust them to do things that involve caring for other people.

    OTOH, There might be a way to keep them focused on doing a good job

    1249:

    I thought that was why the UK is following the USA is following China in turning prisons into proper factories? Real, honest, functional training camps where defective workers are persuaded to function properly in society.

    1250:

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/23/portland-oregon-clashes-protests-proud-boys-antifascist

    Different source, not implying the one you provided is bad, but this one has a short video. So from I've been able to gather from the internet, what happened was a case of too little, too late. There were FEWER cops around than on a normal day, according to some folks on twitter; while the Proud boys were marauding around the gas station close to that Kmart, attacking counterprotesters and probably anyone else who looked too "Portland". And livestreaming themselves doing it! A woman working the gas station literally called the police and they ignored her.

    And thank god the shooter at the first counterprotestor location was such a bad shot. Had a trash-tier pistol too.

    Paintball guns appear to have been taken up as standard by both the fascist Proud Boys and counterprotesters, probably loaded with police-style pepper balls. This is an escalation of the level of conflict. (The prevalence of paintball guns that look like AR-15s is also BAD.)

    And one of the problems appears to have been due to the prevalence of capital-A Anarchists in the style of Kropotkin and Emma Goldman, nothing at all happens that resembles either an operation order or a fragmentary order (FRAGO) for counterprotesters. The doctrinal rejection of hierarchy often bleeds down to a vulgar idea of "Nobody tells me what to do."

    Theoretically, an operation order would have had a section about preparing to move with motor vehicles, probably somewhere near the MDCOA/MPCOA.* An understanding of American doctrine would have familiarity with the concept of 3-to-1 odds. The Kmart was out of walking distance of the first counterprotestor location, and the Proud Boys posted it publicly more than a day before. A FRAGO is an order that delivers the changes deviating from the operation order (who what when where and why) delivered as quickly as possible or even verbally.

    I know both our Host and Heteromeles among others has advocated for nonviolent resistance (I forget the website or the writer's name) and have also implied that extremists on both sides are practically the same. But when the fascist Proud Boys are marauding around with increasing amounts of less-lethal firepower, I do not know what the counterprotestors are supposed to do. If the Proud Boys don't have any counterprotestors to beat up they just find homeless people. And the most prominent Proud Boy leader there has been treated with an extremely light hand by the police despite traveling all up and down the West Coast to do violence.

    In fact it's a joke among enlisted soldiers and even some junior officers to shout FRAGO! whenever higher officers deliver seemingly inexplicable orders, even in peacetime. *Most probable/dangerous (enemy) course of action, respectively

    1251:
    You can physically force people to be on the farm, but you can't make them do anything useful unless you're willing to kill some of them.

    That was a takeaway I had from Chernow's recent-ish biography of Ulysses S. Grant.

    While Grant was trying to make a go of it as a farmer in Missouri in the 1850s, he would occasionally hire enslaved people as labourers from his neighbours (i.e. giving the slavers money for the use of their 'property'). The local slavers shook their heads at his folly. Since Grant didn't whip / beat the enslaved people, the bondsmen generally stood around and watched him work.

    1252:

    paws4thot @ 1216: #1194 - Flak jackets. That's one reservation I've heard about centre of mass shots.

    Flack jackets won't stop a full size rifle bullet. That's why the body armor we were issued for Iraq had SAPI plates. And even those would not stop a .30-06 round (or the Soviet 7.62x54mmR at close range ... especially AP rounds).

    #1195 - I agree. Certainly the whole point of the Second was to ensure that the citizenry had black powder weapons and some form of military training. It was not to enshrine in constitutional law the right of every non-felon to own any firearm they could afford!

    The Second Amendment is not about individuals keeping weapons. Not even black powder rifles for hunting.

    Its purpose is to ensure the Federal Government can never do to the states what the British under General Thomas Gage, royal governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, did to Boston (Somerville) on September 1, 1774 ... and tried to do again in Lexington & Concord on April 19, 1775

    It's right up front - "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State". The states did not think that was stated plainly enough in the Constitution, hence the Second Amendment. There were proposals to include something about allowing people to keep hunting rifles & such, but those were deliberately left out of the proposed Amendment and the Amendment as ratified.

    #1203 - The British Army re-wrote all their parade and ceremonial drill books when they replaced the Lee-Enfield with the SA-80.

    Why? The SA-80 is a bit shorter than the Lee-Enfield, but what was so different that it required a complete re-write?

    FM 22-5 didn't get a complete re-write when the M1 gave way to the M-14 or when the M-14 gave way to the M-16.

    #1205 - Gunnery Sergeant Lee Ermey (real name of "Gunny Hartman" from "Full Metal Jacket" (1987 film) springs to mind as being the type wanted?

    R. Lee Ermey was a Drill Instructor at USMC Recruit Depot San Diego before he became an actor. Kubrick hired him as "technical advisor", but apparently none of the actors considered for the DI role quite had the chops and Ermey did because he's already done that, so he got the part.

    Interestingly, Ermey retired from the USMC as a Staff Sargent E6. Gunnery Sargent is E7, although I think the USMC retired that name for the rank, at least for a while after Vietnam ... so Ermey wasn't really a Gunnery Sergeant, he just played one in the movies & on TV.

    But you don't have to be a Gunnery Sergeant to be a Drill Instructor. You can be any rank between E5 & E8 and maybe E4 - Corporal in the USMC, although that's RARE. Someone selected to become a DI as a Corporal would be Out-fuckin-Standing! and on the fast track for promotion.

    1253:

    Why? The SA-80 is a bit shorter than the Lee-Enfield, but what was so different that it required a complete re-write?

    FM 22-5 didn't get a complete re-write when the M1 gave way to the M-14 or when the M-14 gave way to the M-16.

    If you look at pictures of Army basic training now after the M4 got adopted widely you'll see that the "order arms" position is just carrying the rifle the other way around and straight up and down, instead of on the ground, so much so that drill sergeants just march people around at order arms for D&C. I think the Marines have stuck with the M16A4, though.

    1254:
    There are some stickers with anti vax propaganda appearing on lamp posts round where I live. (e.g "Imagine a disease so lethal you need a test to know you've got it"). They advertise some website called White Rose.

    We're getting some of those down here in the antipodes. The group seems to be riffing of Sophie Scholl's WWII White Rose student resistance group in Germany, but if you scratch their surface, they seem to be a combination of antivaxxers and white supremacists using entryism to the antivaxxer movement to recruit.

    1255:

    "but we're not talking about slaves, we're talking about conscripts being forced to work. It's different"

    1256:

    Paul @ 1245: On Covid,

    There are some stickers with anti vax propaganda appearing on lamp posts round where I live. (e.g "Imagine a disease so lethal you need a test to know you've got it"). They advertise some website called White Rose.

    Haven't seen them around Raleigh, North Carolina, although I think I've mentioned I don't get out much. Where would "round where I live" be for you?

    I googled "White Rose" and the other than the paid results from florists, "White Rose" seems to refer to an anti-Nazi group that arose from the University of Munich in 1942. Your anti-vaxxers appear to be misappropriating their legacy?

    1257:

    Paul @ 1246: On poisons in our environment.

    The Guardian has this article on one type. https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2021/aug/31/pfas-toxic-forever-chemicals-air-breathing

    Do they have any data whether these chemicals are just poisoning us or do they affect our genome so that we pass lasting effects on to our children (not that I have or ever will have any children, but that just frees me to worry about ALL the children)?

    1258:

    You're right, for (probably silly reasons) I was thinking of these as "volunteers" rather than conscripts, simply being redeployed to work that is different to what they thought they volunteered for. Even if it's in a context of "this is a mandatory condition of you firearms ownership" per the reference to the holy books the people in question revere (i.e. "militia" rather than "unaccountable group of armed men"). The stick is actually withdrawing the carrot* rather than force, but of course it won't fly for the same reason the much more modest sane gun laws won't either. This is a place for exploring the occasional implausible speculation, yes?

    • I could probably have chosen better metaphors there but meh.
    1259:

    Martin @ 1248: "italics"There wouldn't have been that many GRU Spetsnaz types in our area - if they've only got a few brigades of them, and the main effort is West Germany, then the available troops (and the submarines / trucks / trawlers to get them to the UK) are few and far between. Likewise, any saboteurs aren't going to be cutting-edge knife-between-the-teeth types. Given the inability of any small sabotage team to survive a stand-up fight, however well-trained, our aim was to deter them into picking someone else on their "list of things to break" (preferably to take on Commacchio Group RM at Faslane and Coulport, and let us sit back and watch the fireworks).

    There's a book I think you might like:

    RUSSIANS AMONG US: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories, and the Hunt For Putin's Spies.

    Although it's about the FBI and Soviet Illegals in the U.S. before and after the fall of the Soviet Union (shades of Rita Douglas's Grandpa Kurt), it does include the SPY SWAP that brought Sergei Skirpal to live in the U.K.

    1260:

    Moz @ 1251: I thought that was why the UK is following the USA is following China in turning prisons into proper factories? Real, honest, functional training camps where defective workers are persuaded to function properly in society.

    Maybe. I don't know. I don't think the U.S. Prison-Industrial Complex actually manufactures any goods for public consumption. By U.S. law, they're not allowed to compete with private enterprise, so anything they manufacture can only be used by Government Agencies (or perhaps other Prison-Industrial Complex entities).

    I like the song and it was a good excuse to link to it in a comment. If something I post seems absurd, first consider whether I might mean for it to be absurd (or maybe just entertaining).

    1261:

    I was thinking more of the re-education/brainwashing function than the slave labour aspect.

    But I thought forced labour was used inside prisons to operate the kitchens and laundries etc? Presumably on the basis that no business in the USA can produce ready to eat food, or clean clothing?

    1262:

    skulgun @ 1255:

    Why? The SA-80 is a bit shorter than the Lee-Enfield, but what was so different that it required a complete re-write?
    FM 22-5 didn't get a complete re-write when the M1 gave way to the M-14 or when the M-14 gave way to the M-16.

    If you look at pictures of Army basic training now after the M4 got adopted widely you'll see that the "order arms" position is just carrying the rifle the other way around and straight up and down, instead of on the ground, so much so that drill sergeants just march people around at order arms for D&C. I think the Marines have stuck with the M16A4, though.

    I'm not sure what you're getting at. When we did any movement at "Order Arms" you lifted the rifle slightly (an inch or two so the butt wouldn't drag). I found a video on YouTube (searching for "Manual of Arms M4) and it looks like they're doing it the same way today (2016) we did it when I went through Army Basic back in 1975.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZEegEN6dCk

    I did find a Coast Guard Basic company doing a Manual of Arms test, and noticed they were still using the M1 Garand (2011) but the movements are all the same.

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

    I didn't see the one change I do know about, route marching with a weapon. You no longer carry it at "sling arms". You carry it at low ready.

    1263:

    Moz @ 1263: I was thinking more of the re-education/brainwashing function than the slave labour aspect.

    But I thought forced labour was used inside prisons to operate the kitchens and laundries etc? Presumably on the basis that no business in the USA can produce ready to eat food, or clean clothing?

    Fortunately I don't have personal experience to go on, but I don't think kitchens & laundries in prison are necessarily "forced labor". Sitting alone in a cell day after day probably gets mighty boring.

    Prisoners are fed and have a place to sleep. If they want any additional amenities they "earn" them by working. Most prisons have a commissary where you can purchase small comfort items. Prisoners pay for those items with scrip earned by working.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrip

    Plus, if you've ever heard the phrase "time off for good behavior", working can help you actually get a reduction in the time you have to stay in prison.

    It can advance the date you become eligible for parole. Staying busy working a prison job helps you stay out of trouble so you don't lose any "good time" credits.

    1264:

    James Madison was as much the driving force behind the US Constitution as anyone. And took a lot of notes on the process that survive to this day.

    He was all about militias instead of standing armies. The 1770s and 1780s left a bad taste in his mouth about those and many other early leaders of the US. They figured they would do with state militias that would be called up in times of need.

    The events of 1812 and the few years after than convinced him the "just call up the state militias" was a really bad idea in the world as it existed. And he wrote letters saying such. But by then the 2nd amendment was in place and so far not to dislodged.

    JM was the president who got his house burned down by the British Army.

    1265:

    video

    Those are fullsize M-16s, notice the conventional non-telescoping buttstock. The new ones do have all picatinny rails instead of any fixed sight though.

    I hope pdf links are allowed, I forget if they're not.

    https://www.milsci.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/sitefiles/tc3_21x5.pdf

    TC 3-21.5 version of 2012, page B-4 (appendix)

    https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/DR_a/ARN32297-TC_3-21.5-000-WEB-1.pdf

    TC 3-21.5 version of 2021, page 5-3.

    I didn't see the one change I do know about, route marching with a weapon. You no longer carry it at "sling arms". You carry it at low ready.

    Very good change haha. But yeah I was talking in the context of drill-type marching, not a patrol or a ruck march.

    I realize I'm committing the sin of telling grandma to suck eggs here.

    1266:

    Ah, you mean men!

    Yes indeed! At least in that I think of certain traits associated with conservatism and certain versions of masculinity as being part of the same construct, or outcomes of the same ideology. Surely most traditional constructions of masculinity are primarily about shirking some kinds of work?

    1267:

    The reason that the British Armed Forces have repeatedly opposed any "Politicians' Really Good Ideas" about National Service is that it just wouldn't work.

    It works where society supports it; see Israel, or Switzerland; arguably in the USSR (although Dedovshchina made it a horrible experience). It doesn't work if enough of your recruits just don't want to be there. What can you do if they say "No"? Or do a minimal, half-arsed job of things? Consider the breach rates for "Community Service" sentences as an example; one-third failure rates the norm.

    You can get society support more easily if there's an easily identifiable threat: see Finland, where we have conscription for men (with some options like civil service) and still a pretty good general support for that system. ISTR something on the order of 80% of young men do the army service - women can apply voluntarily.

    During my lifetime civil service has become a more acceptable choice and nowadays nobody really even asks about the military service. It used to be that employers would ask about that and perhaps promote people with leader training into management positions, but that is not common nowadays.

    The service time is, I think, 6-12 months, depending on the position and the specific job. It's a short time, yes, and my experiences with the system are decades old, so I can't really tell how it is now - I did my service and learned at least basic soldiering skills, and to use some weapons. In a conflict I'd expect the conscripts to be trained more extensively, though I'm not sure we would have the time to do that nowadays. (Preparing for the last conflict and all that, though I think there's more work done on that than what I see. :) )

    Personally, I have conflicted views on this. I kind of think we need some kind of deterrent for our friendly Eastern neighbour, and I see problems with a small professional army in this context, but the current system is not ideal, either. Especially when it seems to me there are more and different kind of conflicts possible, compared to the 'Russian tanks over the border in Karelia' scenario, I think we could do more with teh civil service. That of course generates problems with cheap labour, as stated above, though.

    Anyway the main public opinion seems to be for the conscription army here. Also some of it is obviously professional - we're now in the process of updating the fighter planes we have, and most of the public discussion is on which one we should pick, and the pilots and much of the other Air Force people are professionals. There are some voices against the whole process, but even the fact that some of the military personnel involved deeply in the process have gone to work at some of the military aviation companies hasn't really made a mark against the buying proceeding as planned. I'm not sure they'd be the best place to spend the money anyway.

    (Also 'fun' things about this is that I did get a lot of modern fighter plane ads on Twitter. Not sure where I'd park one, though.)

    1268:

    JBS @ 1259: Do they have any data whether these chemicals are just poisoning us or do they affect our genome so that we pass lasting effects on to our children?

    This isn't my area of expertise, but here is what I think I know:

    More data on PFAS (and a lot of other background poisons) here. Oh, and while doing the reference checking for this I encountered this list of mutagens produced by normal cooking. Perhaps the caveman who rejected fire and cooking as "unnatural" was on to something. Carcinogens are not a modern invention, its just that in previous times we didn't have the knowledge to identify them, and in any case there were lots of more dangerous things to worry about than a bit of burnt meat.

    Note that "mutagen" in that second link means "causes mutation in bacteria, so probably causes cancer in humans". Chemicals that mess with our DNA generally cause cancer rather than mutation in descendants. Cancer happens when one cell, out of all the billions in the body, accumulates enough mutations to evade all the internal security mechanisms and starts to replicate itself out of control. At the cellular level you could almost call it "evolution in action", just like a bacterium evolving antibiotic resistance. Meanwhile a mutation that affects the next generation happens when a germ-line cell gets a mutation. Interestingly, the DNA repair functions for germ-line cells seem to be 5 to 10 times more efficient than for the rest of the body. There is also something called "germ line sequestration", which basically means that these cells get picked out very early on in embryonic development and then kept apart from all the other "somatic" cells. From a biological point of view your germ-line cells really are your Crown Jewels, and are guarded appropriately.

    But what happens when, despite all the precautions, a mutation does manage to get into a sperm or egg DNA? There are four basic answers.

    Mostly: The embryo fails to develop properly and a miscarriage happens.

    Sometimes: Not much. The redundant copy from the other parent works fine, and as long as the children don't marry anyone with a mutation in the same gene nobody notices.

    Rarely: The parents spend most of their child's short life desperately searching for a cure for a genetic disease that nobody has ever seen before.

    Even rarer: The child is actually fitter and stronger as a result of the mutation.

    Are such events happening more often these days due to increasing amounts of Polyputthekettleon in the environment? I'm not aware of any strong evidence either way, but that's because we've only been able to track this kind of mutation in the last decade or so, and we'd need to go back a few centuries to have any real idea. Maybe when a full genome sequence can be done for $10 someone will get the funding to go and sequence an entire graveyard looking for odd mutations and hence infer the rate. But the rate of childhood cancer (which is probably a good proxy) has been increasing over recent decades.

    1269:

    JBS @ 1258: White Rose ... Where would "round where I live" be for you?

    Sorry, I should have said. UK south coast.

    1270: 1245 - No (West of Scotland). 1247 - Farmers here are complaining about "lack of seasonal labour, even at £500/week". There are 2 main issues here; the season in question is typically 6 weeks, and if you were claiming benefits before, you then have no income for about 3 months whilst you make a new claim. Somehow the Con party can't see why this discourages people from even applying for temporary jobs! 1248 Para the last - CND would be found at the A813 access to the CSB Faslane South Gate, and giving succour to road accident victims in that area. 1254 in reply to #1203 - The SA-80 is a bit shorter than the Lee-Enfield"; exactly, given that I specifically wrote about "parade and ceremonial drill".
    1271:

    Martin Reading that wiki on the Cudlipp/King treasonous plot ... I find it VERY INTERESTING that Grease-Smaug was involved

    23 SAS - the Territorial Unit? ( The real "Artists Rifles" ) I used to know one of their officers - still exchange notes at Mid-winter.

    1272:

    You are right about jobs like nursing, but wrong that there is no alternative to something equivalent to slave-driving. There are plenty of much lesser penalties which, together with realistic, precise targets and good supervision, work reasonably well. Conscripts in armies, prisoners in many systems, and pupils in schools like those I went to are all examples.

    But, more importantly, almost everyone (particularly in the UK and USA) is fixated on the use of sticks rather than carrots. Carrots work, provided that they are worthwhile, the person believes in the honesty of the system, and hasn't lost all hope. It is possible to rebuild the last two by judicious use of both stick and carrot, but the operative word is 'judicious'.

    1273:

    This needn't even be a direct benefit to the person. Personal account:-

    I am on haemodialysis in a teaching hospital, so we have student nurses on placements cycling through the ward regularly. It was one's last day on placement yesterday, and I took the time to say "Thank you" to her. She was positively made up that a patient would take the time to thank her.

    1274:

    Part of the reason it was risible was precisely because such a raid had ceased to be a serious threat by 1979. Yes, infiltration probably happened, but the USSR was sane enough not to use violence where subterfuge would work better. The same was not necessarily true while Stalin lived, and we weren't sure for a while afterwards.

    I know perfectly well what a week's food etc. weighs; in 2019, I walked (alone) from Newtonmore to Blair Atholl spending 6 nights out on the way. A FAR saner way would be a few forged documents, pose as tourists, hire a car, pick up the military equipment, buy food in restaurants/shops, and take a few days out to do the operation. Who would notice anyone short of a two-headed monster in August? Simples :-)

    Also, remember that Thatcher was from the south, and we have a lot of sites that are regularly demonstrated at, for one reason and another.

    1275:

    Don't believe the polemic.

    1276:

    Yeah. That's why the UK abolished universal conscription in 1957; by then, Germany was stable and Krushchev was stabilising the USSR. The country rightly failed to see why we should remain on a war footing.

    1277:

    Part of the reason it was risible was precisely because such a raid had ceased to be a serious threat by 1979.

    Presumably because by then, all the Spetsnaz were busy in Afghanistan? Otherwise, I'm not sure of the significance of that date.

    We're not talking about peacetime here. We're talking about the Transition to War - those couple of weeks when it's obvious that the USSR is mobilising its reserves, the ships and submarines are being stored for war and sailing, the technicians are working overtime to bring as much to operational readiness as possible, the ammunition trucks are heading out of the depots... and hopefully, the politicians and diplomats are trying to find a way to climb down.

    Meanwhile, the TA has been mobilised, the "Protect and Survive" leaflets are being handed out, and the Government is switching to its war plans. The ROC is manning its posts, and the PYTHON teams are heading out to their Continuity of Government locations.

    Yes, infiltration probably happened, but the USSR was sane enough not to use violence where subterfuge would work better.

    I would suggest that Moscow saw violence as a routine tool of policy. In the 1950s: DDR, Hungary; 1960s: Czechoslovakia; 1970s: Afghanistan; not to mention "advisors" in the brushfire proxy wars until the USSR fell apart. Since then, Georgia, Litvinenko, Crimea, Donbass, Skripal.

    I would also note that the USSR leadership was getting increasingly paranoid in the early 1980s (see: Ex ABLE ARCHER).

    I know perfectly well what a week's food etc. weighs; in 2019, I walked (alone) from Newtonmore to Blair Atholl spending 6 nights out on the way.

    Hard work, isn't it? Note that they won't just be carrying food and shelter; weapons, ammunition, radios, and spare batteries are pretty hefty items. Meanwhile, they won't be moving in daylight, or on tracks - it's cross-country night movement only.

    A FAR saner way would be a few forged documents, pose as tourists, hire a car, pick up the military equipment, buy food in restaurants/shops, and take a few days out to do the operation. Who would notice anyone short of a two-headed monster in August?

    It's probably the only choice. Barring the occasional short-range coastal raid, the more likely approach is a van or couple of cars, maybe a long-distance lorry. Unfortunately, the UK is a singularly hostile environment for terrorists/saboteurs - an island with lots of practice against PIRA, right-hand-drive vehicles, and occasional information flow to Special Branch from criminals (who may be thieves, but hate terrorists).

    As I said, it's not peace but Transition To War. No-one is going on holiday, because the airports have all closed, and British Airways is working flat out to get the TA to Germany, and the Army families back from BAOR on the return flights... Try to take a van or car anywhere near critical infrastructure, and you'll start to encounter very curious police and soldiers, looking for small groups of military-age males. Buy food in restaurants/shops, and your accent had better be flawless.

    After the first bomb goes off, or the first car breaks down, crashes, or gets stopped; and is found to have a handful of rifles and a big bag of explosives in the back? Or the first saboteur caught inside the wire, turns out to have Eastern European dentistry? Roadblocks everywhere. All of Thatcher's techniques against flying pickets suddenly gets turned into counter-terrorist tracking (or was it the other way around? We've got this toolset, seems a shame not to use it...)

    1278:

    Yep. Spetsnaz were a very credible threat against West Germany, precisely because they could drive across the boarder in long-distance trucks (and reportedly regularly did so for recce and familiarization purposes). More land to hide in, much easier to reach by a variety of routes, not surrounded by a gigantic moat and occupied by locals with weird and unfamiliar customs like driving on the wrong side of the road.

    1279:

    Why? The SA-80 is a bit shorter than the Lee-Enfield, but what was so different that it required a complete re-write?

    It's a lot shorter. The old L1A1 / No.4 rifle drill involved resting the butt on the ground, and holding the rifle at the top of its handguard while standing at ease. That just doesn't work with the L85, unless you can touch your knees while standing up straight.

    Of course, the All-Arms Drill Wing at Pirbright (at the Guards Depot) promptly saw their career dreams come true, and spent weeks trialling stuff and rewriting the drill manual to cope. The cynics and comedians claimed that the one overarching guideline was "Must Not Look Like Red Army" (weapons carried across the body). As a result, the rifle is carried all the time, never rested (and the sling isn't used on parade).

    The advantage of being an hofficer, of course, was that I didn't have to carry a rifle on parade - and as I commissioned in the days of the L1A1, I never had to learn L85 drill properly :)

    1280:

    "We're talking about the Transition to War"

    I wasn't, and there was nothing said in 1979 that the HSF was need solely for that. I completely take your point that, in THOSE circumstances, you need people on watch so that the fighting troops can prepare.

    1979 was the date of the change that started what I was talking about, including the creation of the HSF, though the legal change was the Reserve Forces Act 1980. And, having found that, the row I remember about using the TA as more than an emergency and home defence force was DEFINITELY then and not 1996, and explains why it couldn't be used to reinforce the BAOR in the 1960s but could in the 1980s. To quote the key parts of sections 11, 12, 13 and 38:

    "A person to whom this section applies shall be liable to be called out for permanent service in any part of the world when warlike operations are in preparation or progress, subject to sections 12 and 13(1) below. ..."

    "A member of the Territorial Army shall not be liable to be called out under section 11(1) above unless there is in force an order of Her Majesty, signified under the hand of the Secretary of State, authorising the calling out under that section of members of the Territorial Army. ..."

    "A member of the Home Service Force shall not be a person to whom section 11 above applies, and the Secretary of State may by regulations provide - ..."

    "A A person to whom this section applies by virtue of section 39 below may, in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of State, be called out in any year for training in the United Kingdom or elsewhere - ..."

    Yes, it WAS Thatcher that triggered the row I recall, not Major - though I fully agree that Major massively reduced even the 1980 restrictions.

    1281:

    "Imagine a disease so lethal you need a test to know you've got it"

    This was a thing on Facebook 6 months back or so with some of my relatives. (USA) By then I had given up pointing out obvious flaws in their thinking.

    1282:

    Carrots work, provided that they are worthwhile, the person believes in the honesty of the system, and hasn't lost all hope. It is possible to rebuild the last two by judicious use of both stick and carrot, but the operative word is 'judicious'.

    Carrots do not work for everyone. There is some subset of people who just flat out refuse to work within the system. Trump? A relative I have. And others. I have no idea what the percentage is of the total population but some folks would rather "get around the system" than work with it.

    1283:

    spare batteries are pretty hefty items

    A few years into the Afghanistan mess the US Army realized they had to change things when everyone on a 3 day foot patrol had to carry 88 AA batteries.

    I suspect things have changed in the 15 years or so since but maybe not for the better.

    1284:

    EC @ 1278 Footnote The Navy stopped taking conscripts about 1954 (?) & the RAF about 1955/6 Though I thought the cut-off date was 1961 - or was that when the last poor buggers got out? AND, of course, the Army had been screaming to get rid of conscription by 1955, but the politicos were well behind the curve on the usual "team spurts" lies about "making a Man of you" - & had to be kicked quite hard.

    David L Some of us otherwise "reasonable" people ( Stop sniggering at the back there! ) will emulate Kipling's pack-camels & will flat-out refuse to co-operate, because I'm "NOT BLOODY GOING TO" Which is what I would have done if conscription had carried on - I simply was not going into the Army ... not going to play your stupid game ,,,

    1285:

    From Wikipedia - "In the United Kingdom, conscription has existed for two periods in modern times. The first was from 1916 to 1920, the second from 1939 to 1960, with the last conscripted soldiers leaving the service in 1963. Known as Military Service from 1916 to 1920, the system of conscription from 1939 to 1960 was called National Service, but between 1939 and 1948, it was often referred to as "war service" in documents relating to National Insurance and pension provision."

    1286:

    There is a lot to say for the Soviet approach of using heavier, simpler and mechanical devices rather than fancy electronics. Much of that was the state of their electronics industry and the, er, intellectual calibre of many of their recruits, but there's nothing like making a virtue out of necessity :-)

    1287:

    You have to understand that I have a cousin who would rather make $10k in a con than $13k in direct pay for a similar effort.

    1288:

    "I would also note that the USSR leadership was getting increasingly paranoid in the early 1980s"

    Are you implying that it was not justified paranoia? With St. Ronnie in the WH?

    Fuck, I was terrified that the SoB would think he was in a movie, and for a climax, push The Button.

    1289:

    But carrots do work for a lot of people, to varying degrees. But in the US, the wrong (they're not right) only believe in the stick, period.

    1290:

    Not bloody going? Sometime - who knows, if Glasgow wins, and if you're interested, I tell you my own personal version of Alice's Restaurant, in two part harmony an' feeling, all 10 min or so of it.

    1291:

    Speaking from the US here, what's that about the "intellectual capabilities" of the troops? See the issues they've had recruiting, and who they're letting in.

    1292:

    Remember I am talking about the USSR. They were notoriously incapable of handling complex or delicate machinery, even by USA recruit standards. One of the main design criteria that Kalashnikov used was that his rifle had to be nearly recruit-proof.

    1293:

    I know this won't matter to the rest of y'all, but Raleigh is getting a new Barnes & Noble Bookstore today.

    https://abc11.com/barnes--noble-bookstore-near-me-and-barns/10992002/

    But for me, it means there's now a REAL bookstore within walking distance of my house.

    1294:

    skulgun @ 1267: > video

    Those are fullsize M-16s, notice the conventional non-telescoping buttstock. The new ones do have all picatinny rails instead of any fixed sight though.

    I hope pdf links are allowed, I forget if they're not.

    https://www.milsci.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/sitefiles/tc3_21x5.pdf

    TC 3-21.5 version of 2012, page B-4 (appendix)

    [ ... ]

    I realize I'm committing the sin of telling grandma to suck eggs here.

    No problem. It was something I didn't know. We should always be open to learning new stuff, particularly if it turns out the old stuff we already knew is obsolete.

    We didn't have many M-4s in my unit and I wasn't assigned one of them (they all went to the Bradley guys). I retired 15 years ago, and I doubt I'd done the manual of arms for 30 years before that.

    I did notice the manuals still show "sling arms" with the muzzle UP, and I know that was changed while we were in Iraq. "Sling arms" with muzzle DOWN was a mandate from the Army Safety Center ... so that if a soldier had a negligent discharge the bullet would go into the ground at his/her feet rather than up into the air to come down who knows where.

    I was assigned additional duty as the Brigade Safety NCO during our deployment and negligent discharges were part of my remit.

    1295:

    ""Imagine a disease so lethal you need a test to know you've got it""

    Like cancer, then?

    What colour are these things? It would be useful to have something like "blue thing on a lamp post" as a cue to investigate at close range, with a view to experimenting with methods of removal or altering the wording to ridicule it.

    As for "White Rose", what that mostly signifies to me is the local brand of filter coffee we had in an office in York which was strong enough to make you see funny colours. I guess some people have been drinking too much of it.

    1296:

    "You can get society support more easily if there's an easily identifiable threat"

    That approach probably does work well in Finland, but the trouble is that in too many places it's simply an encouragement to the government to manufacture one.

    1297:

    "Buy food in restaurants/shops, and your accent had better be flawless."

    Na... do it in a supermarket, then the only linguistic skill you need is the ability to recognise the phrase "Unexpected item in bagging area".

    "Or the first saboteur caught inside the wire, turns out to have Eastern European dentistry?"

    Er... how do you tell? Hammer and sickle hallmarks on the fillings, or what?

    1298:

    "some folks would rather "get around the system" than work with it."

    Devise a system where the most feasible workarounds also give rise to the desired consequences.

    I can't call a specific instance to mind at the moment but I am jolly sure this has actually been done historically.

    1299:

    Remember I am talking about the USSR. They were notoriously incapable of handling complex or delicate machinery, even by USA recruit standards.

    Not quite (at least, no more than Western recruits - the old joke being that if you leave an infantry soldier in the desert with an anvil and a cannonball, he'll break one and lose the other).

    The big advantage of conscription is that (if you do it right, and don't allow exemptions - see Dick Cheney, Donald Trump, and other Fortunate Sons) you get the entire population bell curve - your brightest lads and lasses, not just the "didn't enjoy school" types. The Soviets picked the brightest and best, and packed them off to the Navy, Air Force, and Strategic Rocket Forces (the places with the complex and delicate machinery). They picked the really athletic types, and packed them off to the Desantnyy and Spetsnaz. They picked the shortest of the remainder, and let them be tank drivers (ISTR an urban myth that if you were over 5'8" or so, the driver's seat of a T-55/T-62/T-64 was an uncomfortable place to be - any ex-conscript Finns may know the truth of this). The infantry got the rest; the lads who only needed to understand "when the back door of the BMP opens, run round the side and shoot anything in front of you"...

    When it works, however, it can be quite impressive. One year, the winners of the NATO tank gunnery competition were the Dutch conscripts (who beat the German conscripts in 2nd, and the American professionals 3rd)[1]; the Israelis manage to run their cyber-warfare and special forces units with conscripts; and I've no doubt that Soviet youth was just as capable - possibly more so, given their mass exposure to Young Pioneers / DOSAAF.

    There's a completely different philosophy between Western and Soviet military equipment. The West tends to build exquisite gear, designed for a long peacetime service life and a possible war; the Soviets built rugged equipment, designed for a short wartime existence, and replaced it more often during peacetime. Why put the effort into an airframe that will survive more than 2000 flying hours, or aircraft engine that lasts longer than 700 flying hours? Any aircraft will be lucky to last more than 20, perhaps 50 hours in a shooting war...

    The advantage of a centrally-planned economy meant that the Soviets selected the same AT-6 SPIRAL missile on their helicopters, as on certain armoured vehicles; their armoured vehicles and their new attack helicopters used the same 30mm gun (and hence ammunition). Commonality of supply makes logistics rather easier...

    [1] The British stopped entering in the 1980s, when they discovered that "just pick a decent Troop from one of the Squadrons in a Regiment, and send them along" is a recipe for competitive embarrassment, when compared to "hand-pick the best crews from across the Brigade[2], and have them practice that exact range shoot on the actual range, for months in advance". That, and the notoriously unreliable Chieftain/Challenger 1 didn't do so well in a course of fire designed for Leopard/M1...

    [2] The 1991 Gulf War could be said to have proved that lovingly-hand-picked-teams-on-a-prescriptive-range isn't necessarily the best way to generate effective wartime tank crews. Once they actually got their hands on a reasonable scaling of spare parts, the "unreliability" tag evaporated. The Royal Armoured Corps units present, finished the war with the highest availability rate for Allied tanks (i.e. compared to M1 / M60 / T-84 from other nations), and a record that still stands for the longest-range tank-on-tank kill; a Challenger 1 gunner from SCOTS DG managed a first-round hit on an Iraqi tank at 5400m or so.

    1300:

    And I'm not going to bet on which one he breaks...

    [2] Yeah, a rifleman is always at a disadvantage on a range designed to find the best gunfighter. Get him onto a rifle range (like, say, the Iraqi desert though...)

    1301:

    Er... how do you tell? Hammer and sickle hallmarks on the fillings, or what?

    Apparently medical examiners have lists of dental repair materials and such which points to countries and times.

    It is/was a standard thing in crimes TV in the US.

    1302:

    Pigeon @ 1297: What colour are these things?

    Here is a typical sample: https://www.flickr.com/photos/duncan/51108909001

    1303:

    Easily improved by the use of a small can of black spray paint. Personally I'd take a still picture first if there were a chance of an appearance before a judge. A nearby town, somebody put up a neo-Nazi stickers on a bunch of poles a year or two ago, and one or more townies bragged about tearing them all off, and got praise, not trouble.

    1304:

    The West tends to build exquisite gear, designed for a long peacetime service life and a possible war; the Soviets built rugged equipment, designed for a short wartime existence, and replaced it more often during peacetime.

    A long peacetime service or until some Marine loses it, though I suppose USAF aircraft are a little harder to misplace.

    I still remember this strip as one of the more painfully accurate ones. I'm not even a Marine and I think I worked with this kid.

    1305:

    A cousin who got drafted in the mid 60s and would up in Viet Nam.

    Before then he had been absolutely sure that most human behaviors were of a "nurture" thing.

    After his experience with the Army he came to the conclusion that there were slugs moving through society masquerading as people.

    1306:

    Not to derail the fossil fuel conversation I'll put this here.

    Last night I discovered the movie "Iron Sky" from 2012. Space Nazi's on the moon invading Earth to create the 4th Reich.

    Steam punk Nazi's. Who knew?

    With all kinds of side riffs into: Sarah Palin as President. Dr. Strangelove Independence Day and more.

    Enough stereotypes to keep an HR group busy for years.

    I'm sure I missed a few details as I was nearly sleeping during the last half.

    1307:

    It's a fun little film.

    I've been told the sequel isn't as good, although I haven't seen it so don't know that for sure.

    1308:

    The sequel is just as deranged. It riffs off the whole hollow earth and lizards masquerading as people nonsense. There is also an amusing sub-plot about a cult of apple tech users that, literally, worship Steve Jobs.

    But I would expect no less of the people that gave us "Star Wrecked: In the Pirkinning." That is a nicely observed parody of both Trek (of various eras) and Babylon 5.

    1309:

    David L @ 1308: Not to derail the fossil fuel conversation I'll put this here.

    Last night I discovered the movie "Iron Sky" from 2012. Space Nazi's on the moon invading Earth to create the 4th Reich. Steam punk Nazi's. Who knew? With all kinds of side riffs into:
    Sarah Palin as President.
    Dr. Strangelove
    Independence Day
    and more.
    Enough stereotypes to keep an HR group busy for years. I'm sure I missed a few details as I was nearly sleeping during the last half.

    It's the brain child of Finnish Star Trek fans who made several parodies called Star Wreck

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wreck

    All of the Star Wreck "films" area available for free download from the internet.

    The most recent one Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning , featuring Captain James B Pirk as the commander of the C.P.P. Potkustartti (Kickstart) is a DAMN GOOD, professional quality feature length film, especially considering it was created in a two room flat by five friends & several dozen acquaintances.

    If you need it, I have Iron Sky on DVD, along with the sequel Iron Sky: The Coming Race

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC8Z6i59s7o

    1310:

    Pigeon @ 1300:

    "some folks would rather "get around the system" than work with it."

    Devise a system where the most feasible workarounds also give rise to the desired consequences.

    I can't call a specific instance to mind at the moment but I am jolly sure this has actually been done historically.

    The ironic thing is that in many (if not most) situations, someone trying to "get around the system" has to work harder to do so than they would have to work to get on within the system.

    1311:

    You have to account for two factors:

    1) They may not have the skills/knowledge to use the system.

    2) They may get a psychological reward for 'beating' the system.

    1312:

    #1193 - For the avoidance of doubt and explanations, the main difference between a Garand .30-06 and a Lee-Enfield 0.303 appears to be the mechanical fit of the ammo to the chamber and where they were made (similar size magazine, mass and muzzle velocity of bullet, both bolt action, similar range and accuracy).

    Err, not quite. Yes, the Garand and the SMLE (Short Magazine Lee Enfield) were the primary US and British rifles of WW2 and did have similar sized magazine capacity, mass and muzzle velocity of bullet, range and accuracy; but they were not both bolt action rifles. The SMLE was a classic (the classic according to some) bolt action rifle where the shooter fired a round and manually worked the bolt to eject the case and load the next round, so they could shoot again. The Garand was not.

    The M1 Garand was the first widely issued semi-automatic service rifle that would fire one shot each time the trigger was pulled until the 8 rounds in the magqazine were exhausted. The shooter did not need to perform any manual operation to load or eject spent cases.

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    This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on August 10, 2021 10:55 AM.

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