Links and Notes for April 29th, 2022

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Economy & Finance
• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Science & Nature
• Philosophy & Sociology
• Technology
• Programming

Economy & Finance

Elon Musk’s Other Merger Worked Out by Matt Levine (Bloomberg)

“Tesla is now valued as “a first-of-its-kind, vertically integrated clean energy company.” Whether the Acquisition played a large or small part in Tesla’s impressive growth is not clear, but there can be no doubt that the combination with SolarCity has allowed Tesla to become what it has for years told the market and its stockholders it strives to be––an agent of change that will “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy” by “help[ing] to expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy.””

This is a statement by the judge in a case against Tesla. Jesus. You can almost hear his wet panties hitting the floor.

“Put another way: you need a way to convert the stonk into one or more other assets that are, fundamentally, uncorrelated, while still convincing the ape army that you are doing this all in character. The persona has to have a good reason to buy this asset, good enough to keep the stonk afloat to arrange for a very large purchase funded in large part by high-priced bank loans predicated in large part on the assumption that this new asset is indeed more-or-less uncorrelated from the stonk.”

“If it had to pay all of that compensation in cash, its cash flow would be negative, which does not leave a lot of money to service the debt. I guess getting rid of some employees would help with this.”

This sounds like standard LBO stuff, absolutely standard practice for private equity.

“Musk has gotten bored with all of this and decided that actually, when he said he had “funding secured” for that buyout, he did. (He just absolutely did not.) So he went to court and said, in effect, “actually I should not have settled, can we forget about the whole thing, particularly the part where some long-suffering securities lawyer is theoretically in charge of reviewing my tweets?” And the judge said no. The judge was obviously going to say no. This is dumb.”

“What’s the point? It will just be an exhausting slog of litigation and mean tweets and he will emerge unchastened and richer than ever, and then he will try to stop the SEC lawyers from ever getting jobs in the private sector. Why should they bother? What is the point of trying to enforce the law against Elon Musk? This is also called “legal realism.””

Public Policy & Politics

Katrina vanden Heuvel on Russia, Ukraine, the War and the US by David Barsamian (Scheer Post)

The transcript is a bit difficult to follow at times. I recommend the podcast instead, linked from the top of the page.

“Cuba is respected in the region, but you now have Chile. You have a leftist president who, by the way, received the Letelier-Moffitt Award a few years ago. You have Allende’s granddaughter as defense secretary. You have in Colombia, likely a leftist, who participated in the rebel negotiations. In Honduras, Xiomara Castro, the wife of the ousted leader Manuel Zelaya was recently elected president. Lula may well come back in Brazil. It’s a very interesting moment in the region.”

Roaming Charges: Playing for Keeps by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch)

“By a 49-47 vote, the Senate passed a measure preventing Biden from using climate change as the basis to declare a national emergency. Senators Mark Kelly and Joe Manchin joined all Republicans in voting Yes.”

“In one five-year period, Lake Powell, a reservoir that was doomed the moment the floodgates closed on Glen Canyon Dam, went from 100 percent capacity to only 34% full.”

“According to the National Interagency Fire Center, more than a million acres have already burned across the US since the start of this year, more than double the total for the same period last year.”

Fingers in their ears. La, la, la.

Nausea Rules by James Howard Kunstler (Clusterfuck Nation)

“How’s that ban on Russian oil working? Do you understand that US shale oil — the bulk of our production — is exceptionally light in composition, meaning it contains not much of the heavier distillates like diesel and aviation fuel? ‘Tis so, alas. Truckers just won’t truck at $6.49-a-gallon, and before long they’ll be out of business altogether, especially the independents who have whopping mortgages on their rigs that won’t be paid. The equation is tearfully simple: no trucks = no US economy.”

“Are Germany, France, and the rest of that bunch really so dead-set on jamming Ukraine into NATO that they’re willing to go full medieval for it? By which I mean sitting in the cold and dark with empty plates. That’s a hard way to go just to prove somebody else’s point.”

Journalism & Media

Online Censorship of Ukraine Dissent Is Becoming the New Norm by Alan Macleod (Scheer Post)

“Earlier this month, Google AdSense sent a message to a myriad of publishers, including MintPress News, informing us that, “Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war.” This content, it went on to say, “includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim-blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens.””

This is just open censorship about unsettled political issues. Google has decided what the truth is and further discussion will be hidden from the public eye as much as they are able. At the same time, they work as hard as they can to ensure that they have no competitors in the same space, ensuring that the views that they allow through, that they support, are the only ones left standing.

“Journalist and filmmaker Abby Martin was deeply troubled by the news. “It is really disturbing that this is the trend that we are on,” she told MintPress, adding: It is a preposterous declaration considering that the victim is whoever we are told by our foreign policy establishment. It really is outrageous to be told by these tech giants that taking the wrong side of a conflict that is quite complicated will now hurt your views, derank you on social media or limit your ability to fund your work. So you have to toe the line in order to survive as a journalist in alternative media today.””

“Smaller, independent creators have also been purged. “My stream last night on RBN was censored on Youtube after debunking the Bucha Massacre narrative… Unreal censorship going on right now,” wrote Nick from the Revolutionary Black Network. “My video ‘Bucha: More Lies’ has been deleted by YouTube’s censors. The Official Narrative is now: ‘Bucha was a Russian atrocity! No dissent allowed!’” Chilean-American journalist Gonzalo Lira added.”

“Facebook and Instagram also instituted a change in policy that allows users to call for harm or even the death of Russian and Belarussian soldiers and politicians. This rare allowance was also given in 2021 to those calling for the death of Iranian leaders. Needless to say, violent content directed at governments friendly to the U.S., such as Ukraine, is still strictly forbidden.”

“Meanwhile, The New York Times published a hit piece on anti-war journalist Ben Norton, accusing him of spreading a “conspiracy theory” that the U.S. was involved in a coup in Ukraine in 2014, while claiming that he was helping promulgate Russian disinformation. This, despite the fact that the Times itself reported on the 2014 coup at the time in a not-too-dissimilar fashion, thereby incriminating its own previous reporting as Russian propaganda.”

“Google’s new updated rules are vaguely worded and open to interpretation. What constitutes “exploiting” or “condoning” the war? Does discussing NATO’s eastward expansion or Ukraine’s aggressive campaign against Russian-speaking minorities constitute victim blaming? And is referencing the seven-year-long civil war in the Donbas region, where the UN estimates that over 14,000 people have been killed, now illegal under Google’s policy of not allowing content about Ukraine attacking its own citizens?”

“A sure sign that you are reading Russian propaganda, PropOrNot claimed, was if the source criticizes Obama, Clinton, NATO, the “mainstream media,” or expresses worry about a nuclear war with Russia. As PropOrNot explained, “Russian propaganda never suggests [conflict with Russia] would just result in a Cold War 2 and Russia’s eventual peaceful defeat, like the last time.””

“This, for Martin, is a sign of the increasingly close relationship between Silicon Valley and the national security state. “Google willingly changed their algorithm to backpage all alternative media without even a law in place to mandate them to do so,” she said. Other social media juggernauts, such as Facebook and YouTube rolled out similar changes. All penalized alternative media and drove people back towards establishment sources like The Washington Post, CNN and Fox News.”

This is much less about a principle and much more about a corporate war that is shoring up a dying business model. The platforms are complicit with the dying media dinosaurs (or maybe they’ll survive if they keep this up?) At any rate, there is no principle here. It’s just capitalism and companies knowing which side their bread is buttered on. The platforms are all not just hosting the world’s media and information, but are simultaneously beholden to the world’s largest military and colonialist empire for huge contracts. Also, the ad buys on non-alternative content are much, much more lucrative. They’re trying to get rid of troublesome freeloaders and hiding behind a shield of liberally sanctioned censorship to do it.

““What Lockheed Martin was to the twentieth century, technology and cyber-security companies will be to the twenty-first.” Since then, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM have become integral parts of the state apparatus, signing multibillion-dollar contracts with the CIA and other organizations to provide them with intelligence, logistics and computing services.”

“Last year, Twitter also announced that it had deleted hundreds of user accounts for “undermining faith in the NATO alliance and its stability” – a statement that drew widespread incredulity from those not closely following the company’s progression from one that championed open discussion to one closely controlled by the government.”

““The United States will need to rely on the power of its technology sector to ensure” that “the narrative of events” globally is shaped by the U.S. and “not by foreign adversaries,” they explain, concluding that Google, Facebook, Twitter are “increasingly integral to U.S. diplomatic and national security efforts.””

They’re saying the quiet part out loud. They’re not even trying to hide it. There is no daylight between this and the CCP.

“The U.S. has frequently leaned on social media in order to control the message and promote regime change in target countries. Just days before the Nicaraguan presidential election in November, Facebook deleted the accounts of hundreds of the country’s top news outlets, journalists and activists, all of whom supported the left-wing Sandinista government.

“When those figures poured onto Twitter to protest the ban, recording videos of themselves and proving that they were not bots or “inauthentic” accounts, as Facebook Intelligence Chief Nimmo had claimed, their Twitter accounts were systematically banned as well, in what observers coined as a “double-tap strike.””

“This meant that Iranians could not share a majority viewpoint inside their own country – even in their own language – because of a decision made in Washington by a hostile government.”

They will kill globalization, which is good. It will increase diversification and self-reliance. You can’t trust the banks or information platforms … or even food-distribution.

I Went on Joe Rogan’s Show, and I Don’t Regret It by Ben Burgis (Jacobin)

“I’d been watching Rogan on screens since the late 1990s when I was a regular viewer of Newsradio. (I’m very old.)”

I had completely forgotten that role.

“[…] see Joe Rogan as a person who’s right about some things and wrong about others and who should book a lot more socialists on his show. But even with the Left’s actual enemies, there are excellent reasons for us to lean into the value of free speech and open debate instead of always trying to find a hall monitor to shut them up for us.”

“If socialism means not just state ownership but the extension of democracy to the economic realm, if we really believe with C. L. R. James that “every cook can govern,” we need to trust ordinary people to read or view or listen to whatever they want and make their own determinations about what’s true. If we don’t believe that, we don’t really believe that every cook can govern. We believe that benevolent technocrats should govern. And that’s just not my politics.”

“Even the most modest of the changes we want are only going to be achieved by an organized working class over the course of a long and hard struggle. But if we’re going to expand the tent a little, never mind mobilize millions to fight for the things we want, we’re going to have to learn to talk to people like that guy at the bar — and Joe Rogan.”

I’ve been doing this for years. It’s a long and lonely road, but it’s the only one I know. It’s occasionally satisfying—and you learn a lot more yourself.

Just Keep It Off My Timeline! by Freddie deBoer (SubStack)

“As I’ve documented before, a core dynamic in left-of-center American politics is the transition from “lol that’s not happening” to “lol of course that’s happening and it’s good.” Extreme social justice ideals from cultural studies departments were never going to spread outside of campus, you dumb idiot, and then they did, and suddenly they always knew that would happen and were in favor of it.”

“[…] heavy-handed attempts to censor extremism are bound to fail because the flow of information cannot be stopped in the digital era − that we can’t ban ideas, as a matter of fact, so there’s no matter of principle to discuss.”

I disagree. I mean, of course it can’t be stopped entirely, if it really wants to be free. But it can be slowed and its effect blunted tremendously. You’re not banning, but certain ideas get worldwide, free, hyper-scaled, feature-rich, well-established, well-known, well-respected, and monetized distribution that also happens to be not only the default but the only source many people use, making it a de-facto monopoly. You’re tilting the playing field at scales heretofore unimaginable. Some people are talking to only neighbors whereas those with approved ideas get a megaphone that transmits to billions from space.

“Drug cartels communicate around the world effortlessly. When ISIS was being pursued by the entirety of the Western military and intelligence establishment, they still actively recruited. In English! They got white middle-class teenagers to fly to goddamn Syria to sign up! And you’re telling me that tweaking Twitter’s terms of service is going to eliminate the ideology that wasn’t ended by a war that killed 4% of the world’s population? What the fuck are we talking about here?”

“Twitter, in other words, is where they wage busy little PMC lives. And they’d prefer that space be pleasant for them. They have eliminated the existence of any contrary opinion in their personal lives and private lives, and now they want to do the same in Twitter, which as sad as it is to say is the center of their emotional lives. Which is why it’ll never stop at “the really bad stuff.” The things that liberals believe should be eliminated from social media have grown and grown as time has gone on, and will continue to grow.”

“I both pity and envy people like Collins. People like him are absolutely certain about everything. They don’t believe there are any hard political questions. They don’t think there are any tensions or contradictions in their ideology. They never, ever think there’s any criticisms to be made of their side. They blow through life unconcerned that they might ever get anything wrong.”

“I need free speech because I don’t have the faith this army of sneering white dudes has that I know everything, that every debate has already been settled and we just need to let the goodies rule over the baddies.”

The “Gentlemen’s Agreement”: When TV News Won’t Identify Defense Lobbyists by Matt Taibbi (TK News)

“Joe Biden last week authorized another $800 million in military aid to Ukraine. This second major tranche of weapons came on the heels of weeks of passionate advocacy from former national security officials calling for heavy spending on reinforcements. Somewhere in the past, these commentators usually have impressive credentials. However, the more recent jobs of these commentators are often paid gigs helping military contractors “achieve their business objectives.””

“Is the goal to end the war as expeditiously as possible, or to “see Russia weakened” through a costly proxy battle for the sake of the next Ukraine? This crucial question is rarely even addressed. What if what Zelensky “needs next” is diplomatic aid in addition to weapons? Because nobody gets paid to lobby for not-war, you’re unlikely to hear the idea raised.”

Valhalla Whining by Chapo Traphouse (YouTube)

“Matt Christman: That is the future of politics, politics as entertainment. As we’ve all said a million times, everyone has given up on any fantasy, even, of things getting better. Everyone is kind of bracing themselves for things getting worse. Politics, and the spectacle that we absorb politics through, does offer the fantasy of our ideological enemies, our enemies who we blame for things getting worse to be punished some way, to feel bad. And so, things like “what’s a good movie?” boil down to “will this movie make people that I dislike feel good when they watch it?” And, if it does, that makes it a bad movie. Because, to the movies … to be good, should make people I don’t like, feel bad. If they make them feel good, if they provide them with the basic pleasure that filmed entertainment is supposed to provide—hypothetically—an apolitical audience, then they have failed. Because they’re not consciously provoking and undermining and upsetting people we don’t like.”

MSM Celebrates the Disinformation Governance Board by Useful Idiots (YouTube)

“Biden: A special thanks to the 42% of you who actually applauded. I’m really excited to be here tonight with the only group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have.

“Aaron Maté: So, this is Biden acknowledging that he a low approval rating—and the media does, as well. And, these are the people who he’s supposed to represent, right? [those who think poorly of him] Biden represents the people—and the media does too, […] or else what is the media there for? But they’re basically laughing at the fact that no-one likes them—because they don’t care. Because they don’t actually take their mandate seriously, of representing the people, they’re laughing at that. Because their real job is to represent the people who control the country, a club that they want to be a part of.”

Science & Nature

We nuked American kids, too: Downwind from the bomb by Jeremy Bloom & Bill Heller (RedGreenAndBlue)

This article was re-published in 2020, and was originally written in 1987,

“The thyroid cancer rate (which is independent of population growth) doubled in upstate New York between 1941 and 1962, and has continued to climb since then at a slower pace. As of 1980, we were coming down with thyroid cancer at six times the rate for the U.S. as a whole. For leukemia, upstate New York has nearly double the national rate; and in the counties of the Capital region, the rates are as much as 50 percent higher still.”

Philosophy & Sociology

Songs for Invertebrates by Justin E.H. Smith (Hinternet)

“Here however it is no longer an exciting fantasy of some glistening and steely posthuman future, but rather only a sad reminder of the condition of our present, in which we have all become next-to-human, filtered through machines for aggressively commercial ends. Auto-Tune —you will not be surprised to hear from me if you are a regular reader of The Hinternet—, is the most veridical artistic mirror yet of our age of algorithmic capitalism. My friends at the gym do not seem to hear it, but I hear it, and I feel as though it is killing me.”

Technology

Your AI can’t tell you it’s lying if it thinks it’s telling the truth. That’s a problem by Rupert Goodwins (The Register)

“An AI backdoor exploit engineered through training is not only just as much a problem as a traditionally coded backdoor, it’s not amenable to inspection or version-on-version comparison or, indeed, anything. As far as the AI’s concerned, everything is working perfectly, Harry Palmer could never confess to wanting to shoot JFK, he had no idea he did.”

“[…] these machine monitors deem you too robotic, they spring a Voight-Kampff test on you in the guise of a Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart – more widely known, and loathed, as a Captcha. You then have to pass a quiz designed to filter out automata. How undignified.”

“Meanwhile, there’s no need to give up on your AI-powered financial fraud detection. Buy three AIs from three different companies. Use them to check each other. If one goes wonky, use the other two until you can replace the first. Can’t afford three AIs? You don’t have a workable business model.”

Monkey JPG real estate by Ryan Broderick (Garbage Day)

“When Otherside launched this weekend, it set off a massive frenzy in the crypto world. Yuga Labs made $310 million on the first day. Users purchased their Otherdeeds using an altcoin called ApeCoin, which is run by a DAO of Bored Ape holders and is what Yuga Labs uses for most of their projects. ApeCoin runs on the Ethereum blockchain. Look, I’m sorry, I’m trying my best to explain all this in readable human language, but there’s only so much I can do. Basically: people bought what they thought was video game real estate deeds using a crypto coin run by a group chat of monkey JPG collectors. idk man.”

Programming

Did We(b Development) Lose the Right Direction? by Stefan Judis (YouTube)

This is a good talk about using the incredible power of modern browsers and of leaving some of the frameworks we’re leaning too heavily on behind.

“You’re shaping tomorrow’s job market based on the technology choices you make today.”

Is .css a bad idea? Is inlining the way forward? by HTTP 203 / Google Chrome Developers (YouTube)

This video contains a very interesting discussion on improving performance in web sites. They take a look at inlining CSS directly in the HTML.

This is a sample web site that has almost 7MB of JavaScript and 2.7MB of CSS.

Fat Web Site

We need to become “anti-JavaScript web developers”.

On awaiting a task with a timeout in C# by Raymond Chen (The Old New Thing)

This is a nice article full of examples of how to await a Task with a timeout in different ways.