Links and Notes for October 25th, 2024

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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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

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

Public Policy & Politics

Get in loser (Reddit)

“Get in loser. We’re using a trillion-dollar war machine against third-world peasants to funnel money to the Military Industrial Complex.”

As one commentator wrote, “Literally every President ever but ok lol”.

Harris Comes Out of the Closet on Israel by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post)

“If she wins on Nov. 5 and a Harris administration comes to be next Jan. 20, there will be no deviation whatsoever from the Biden regime’s limitless, unconditional support for Zionist Israel’s expanding campaigns of terror in West Asia . We know this now, after months of Harris’s “strategic vagueness”—how artful this New York Times phrase, an apologia for political deviousness in two words—because The Times has just published a remarkable piece of “news analysis” making it clear indeed that Harris’s campaign-trail talk “should not be confused with any willingness to break from U.S. foreign policy toward Israel as a presidential candidate.””

“A Harris administration will pay no more attention to popular opinion than the Biden regime has paid to date because American foreign policy must not be subject to the will of the electorate. It does not matter, therefore, how many Americans want the U.S. to stop supporting terrorist Israel’s genocide. The horror show shall go on.”

The Middle East war: a boring recapitulation by Slavoj Žižek (Substack)

“One of the surprising voices of reason comes from the top of the Israeli secret services. Recall the words of Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad:”

“We don’t have the luxury of waiting. We need a viable policy that deals with the presence in this area of both Jews and Palestinians. We are doomed to live together. I don’t want to say we are doomed to die together. And if our approach is that we are doomed to live together, we can’t simply live together with one side holding the upper hand and ignoring the aspirations of the other side. There must be the beginning of a meeting of minds.”

“Ami Ayalon, a former leader of Shin Bet, said something quite similar on January 14, 2023: “We Israelis will have security only when they, Palestinians, will have hope. This is the equation: Israel will not have security until Palestinians have their own state, and Israeli authorities should release Marwan Barghouti, the jailed leader of the second intifada, to direct negotiations to create one.”

“[…] the basic tragedy is that we all know mutual recognition is the only way to prevent total war, so mutual recognition is simultaneously impossible and necessary – in Lacanian terms, it is the only Real in the destructive mess of reality.”

“[…] strange fact noted by many observers: children in Gaza, who are continuously exposed to brutal events, very rarely show signs of post-traumatic stress. Why? Because they live in a permanent traumatic situation: they don’t have time to experience a traumatic event as a horror that occurred to them. In order to survive, they have to just go on with their lives, paying attention to dangers. Post-traumatic stress is already a form of relaxation.”

“Western “critics,” who supply arms to Israel, often claim that Israel has no clear plan of what to achieve. This claim is pure nonsense—Israel has a very clear long-term plan: to sabotage negotiations in order to expand its territory and create Greater Israel.”

“Here is Bernard Henri-Levy’s comment on Israel’s invasion of Lebanon:”

“Israel is not invading Lebanon; it is liberating it. This is a historic moment, not only for the Israelis but for the Lebanese, Arabs, Kurds, and Eastern Christians. To not understand this is to have lost all moral and political compass.”

Indeed. That guy is and always has been an embarrassment.

“The power of the UN paradoxically resides in its very impotence: the UN is the only remaining space for dialogue and negotiation, the only diplomatic body in which all sides participate, the only organization offering a legal space for negotiations. Its power resides in its very impotent neutrality. Without the UN, there is just wilderness, where local pragmatic alliances occur from time to time and where raw military force ultimately decides.”

“The terrifying prospect of the near future is thus clearly visible: in its “self-defense,” Israel will be “forced” to transform into Gaza-like ruins more and more of its neighboring land—West Bank, Lebanon (on October 15, 2024, Israel already ordered the evacuation of one-quarter of Lebanon’s territory)—and who knows which country will follow.”

It’s Iran. Obviously. Then perhaps Syria and Turkey. That’s the dream anyway, the dream of “greater Israel”. I don’t know where they’re going to find enough “proper” Israelis (read: Jewish Israelis) to fill it all but that’s the dream. Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly from 1985 comes to mind.[3]

“We are entering an era of violent struggles along false lines of distinction (where oppressing women means anti-colonialism, where bombing cities into ruins means fighting terrorism), and we should harbor no illusions: false struggles are often much more destructive than those for authentic emancipatory causes.”

“in Ukraine’s case, it means full Russian occupation and the obliteration of Ukrainians as a nation;”

As ever, though, Zizek’s Russophobia makes his opinion useless on discussing an end to war in Ukraine. What he describes is absolutely not what’s on the table. What’s on the table is that Ukraine would be neutral and would not have the eastern oblasts on which it had declared a civil war that had dragged on for eight years before Russia invaded.

“I don’t fear that the Middle East war will escalate into a worldwide conflict: none of the involved parties truly desires it or is ready to use nuclear arms.”

What an extraordinarily naïve thing to say. No-one wants to use them until it suddenly becomes unavoidable. One’s focus becomes so narrowed that nothing else matters but the next step on the path one had chosen long ago. What parts of the last year have seemed rational and non-confrontational to you, Slavoj? What makes you think that everyone is in control, is calm, and is cooly rational? Shall we make some more refugees? I hear a lot of Russian and Ukrainian in Switzerland now. So much noticeably more than ever before.

There’s a girl speaking Russian on my train from Basel to Zurich a couple of days ago. It’s clear as a bell. A guy on the train from Wetzikon to Uster was watching a Russian TV show on his phone. I’d never heard so much Russian before. It’s probably not great for an immigration system to have to buffer such large influxes of refugees. Although it’s hard for some to consider some of the people I hear speaking Russian as “refugees”, it’s unfair to expect people to become totally destitute before fleeing. On the other hand, many of these refugees seem to be quite well-off. But that’s another topic for another time.

“Netanyahu recently hinted that Israel (along with others) is preparing for regime change in Iran (the overthrow of the Islamic Republic). However, I still believe that Israel’s new provocations (in Lebanon and Iran) are ultimately intended to distract attention from Gaza and especially the West Bank, where ethnic cleansing is ongoing and increasingly “normalized,” reported like a weather update.”

In a sense, even this paragraph is part of the normalization, laconically (no pun intended) discussing regime change in inconsequential countries as if that’s a normal, moral thing to do. You are discussing how an ostensible ally to the Empire is considering a military coup as a means of distracting from the genocide it is perpetrating. You name its invasions “provocations”, deflating them of their evil intent.

“To conclude with what is, without a doubt, a crazy dream, let me propose what would have been a truly radical act by Hamas: to do what it did on October 7, 2023 (break into Israel), but upon reaching the kibbutzim, simply greet the inhabitants, offer them flowers or fruit, and then withdraw back to Gaza.”

Slavoj, sometimes your contrarianism makes you say such silly things. The Palastenians have tried the equivalent a thousand times. They’ve marched peacefully. If they’d just retreated, they would have been slaughtered in even larger numbers on that first day. And where the f@&k would they have gotten fruit from to give to the already relatively water-and fruit-rich Israelis in the Kibbutzim? Žižek’s analysis here really is quite infantile.

Polls are not votes by Jason Kottke

““Polls are not votes. The candidates are not deadlocked. There is no ahead or behind, even ‘with 72% of precincts reporting’ on election night. The way elections work is they’re 0-0 all the way up until the votes are counted and then someone wins.””

Tell me you think you’re going to lose without telling me that you think you’re going to lose.

Roaming Charges: Antic Dispositions by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch)

“More than half of Trump’s supporters don’t believe he’ll actually do many of the things he claims he’ll do (mass deportations, siccing the military on domestic protesters and political rivals), while more than half of Harris’s supporters hope she’ll implement many of the policies she claims she won’t. (end the genocide/single-payer) And that pretty much sums up this election.”

“ Barnett R. Rubin, former US diplomat: “Why do people keep saying that US politics is polarized? Look at the big picture. Genocide enjoys broad bipartisan support.””

“Ralph Nader: “Bernie Sanders keeps pressing Kamala Harris to authentically advance everyday on the campaign trail three winning issues— “raising the minimum wage, raising taxes on the wealthy and increasing social security benefits”, frozen for over 50 years.”

Those are not issues that anyone in the ruling elite cares about. They’ve never worked a minimum-wage job in their lives. They don’t want to be taxed more (because they are wealthy). They don’t need social security. Why would they fight for any of those things? Just because the vast majority of the electorate wants these things?

Gimme a break. Ralph, you are fighting the good fight. Bernie kind-of is, too. You’re both shouting into the void.

With Bernie, I don’t even believe he doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore. I believe that he knows he’s trying to get genocidal maniacs elected. Nader, too, seems to be letting his never-Trumpism to get away from him. Why doesn’t he appeal to Trump to support those three things? Does he truly believe that he has a larger chance of success with the Harris campaign?

“Harris told NBCNews this week that she supports raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. Astra Taylor: “A bold economic policy were today still in 2010.””

“Eugene Debs: “I’d rather vote for something I want and don’t get it, than vote for something I don’t want and get it.””

“People are seeing piles of dead cattle in the pastures and feed lots of California’s Central and San Joaquin valleys, victims of the quietly spreading H5N1 virus. According to the CDFA, 124 herds tested positive for H5N1; 315 tested negative. 13 dairy workers also tested positive. It is unclear how many cows have died, but their corpses are seen in piles along the roads of the Central Valley. Due to the large volume of dead animals …pick-ups have shifted from daily to every-other-day schedules.””

“To the claim that Charles shouldn’t be blamed for the abuses of his ancestors, let us quote the the Irish Republicans’ response to his great-grandfather King George V’s visit to Ireland in 1911: “We will not blame him for the crimes of his ancestors if he relinquishes the royal rights of his ancestors; but as long as he claims their rights, by virtue of descent, then by virtue of descent, he must shoulder the responsibility for their crimes.””

“The GAO reported that only 40% of the boats in the US Army’s fleet are seaworthy. Down from 75% in 2020.”

That sounds bad, I give you that. However, it is the army and not the navy, so maybe not as bad as it sounds?

On Gaza And Feelings Of Powerlessness by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“That was what Kamala Harris was saying when she told Americans that they need to vote for her, even though she will continue the Gaza genocide, if they want things like affordable groceries and abortion rights. She was saying, “You are powerless. There is nothing you can do to stop this. What are you going to do, vote for Trump? He’ll continue the genocide too. Vote for a third party candidate? They can’t win. We’ve closed off all the options by which you might try to end this. We’ve shut and locked all the doors. There’s no way out. You might as well relax and submit to the inevitable.””

I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for an immoral, unprincipled sack of shit and get it. Fuck you, Kamala, and fuck you, Trump. You’re both symptoms of the disease. It won’t change anything but I hope you both fall off of a cliff anyway. Take a long walk off a short pier. Walk east until your hat floats.

The world won’t change at all, you say? Perhaps not right away. You gotta wonder, though, if some Old Testament punishment wouldn’t put the so-called fear of God into politicians. It’s been so long since any of them even pretended to care what their constituents want, it’s hard even to imagine them doing anything but driving their own egos to greater personal success.

Big Mommy is Not Coming to Save Us by Freddie deBoer (Substack)

“This election is very tight because Kamala Harris is and has always been a limited politician who has particular difficulty speaking off the cuff, because the Democrats are a feckless center-right party who stand for nothing and thus can’t offer any compelling alternative to the Republicans, and because we live in a country with bozo citizens ruled by a corrupt and evil plutocrat class. But it’s also very tight because Donald Trump is extremely popular with about a third of the population in the United States, a county with an apathetic citizenry and an idiotic presidential election system, such that a guy only a third of the country likes can win the presidency.”

“This recent NYT piece asks nine members of their editorial team to reflect on who they’re voting for and why. All nine are voting for Democrats. It’s a bunch of plugs for Harris or the Democrats generally and one weird endorsement of an environmentalist who stole his wardrobe from the Lumineers tour bus. They couldn’t even find a single staffer to endorse a Republican for appearance’s sake, to ward off the obvious criticism. Not one!”

This is the same as, for example, ABC News, which hosted the Harris vs. Trump “debate”. Trump agreed to do a debate in a completely hostile format and the same people who are openly hostile to him won’t even give him credit for that.

“the only thing more indifferent to these complaints than the voters is the universe. Yes, Donald Trump is a monster. But so what? What does that have to do with politics? Nobody cares. They knew what he was in 2016, and they elected him anyway. You have to have a political plan to defeat him, an appeal to make ordinary, distracted, low-information voters prefer your agenda, and 21st century Democrats still don’t know what that plan looks like. Mostly because the Democrats are a party without an identity, and a vile party with an identity beats a party without one.”

The Democrats have an identity; they just don’t want people to know it. They are a corporatist, capitalist, pro-Empire party interested in power and wealth and wildly uninterested in policies that people care about. They are driving toward three potential world wars at once.

“There are no refs. Big Mommy is not coming to save you. There is no transcendent force out there that will restore justice for you if you beg. The people who believe there are mostly went through life as anxious, endlessly-striving Type A children of helicopter parents, which engendered in them a faith in an orderly universe that I’m afraid does not exist once you find problems your parents can’t fix”

We’re in Some Deep Shit by Howard Lisnoff (CounterPunch)

“Not to travel too far into the universe of minutiae, but both Trump and Harris are supporters of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and Israel’s expanding war in the Middle East, have absolutely no plan to reverse climate destruction, and will allow the decades-old party for wealth to continue with low personal and corporate taxes. Both of the duopoly’s jokesters will continue the policy to isolate and surround China militarily and through trade, with the Democrats worse on Russia, from where we’re told every evil emanates. US weapons manufacturers are experiencing a field day and no proposals to reverse nuclear war-fighting capacity are on anyone’s table.”

Bill Clinton defends mass murder of civilians in Gaza genocide by Jordan Shilton (WSWS)

““Arab Americans in Michigan think too many people have died,” Clinton said. “People who criticize it are essentially saying … look how many people you’ve killed in retaliation. So how many is enough for you to kill to punish them for the terrible things they did?”

“To this, Clinton replied, “What would you do if … one day they come for you and slaughtered the people in your village, you would say … I’m not keeping score that way. … It isn’t how many we’ve had to kill.””

Bill Clinton: unmitigated, lawless slaughter for revenge is the answer. Also Bill Clinton: I am an immoral, unethical being with no interest in any form of humanity or law. No forgiveness, no accommodation, no empathy, no quarter given. Slaughter “them” all, whoever they may be. Just pick some people are start killing them all, starving them all—as is your just right. There is no such thing as collateral damage because those animals all deserve it. This is the pinnacle of western diplomacy and philosophical thought This is what I hear from people with whom I’ve broached the subject of war and occupation. They don’t have principles. They are willing to look away from millions of innocent victims if it butters their bread.

Several weeks ago, a lady I’d just met asked me whether I wouldn’t also just slaughter everything that moved if my entire family had been wiped out. I really had to control myself from recoiling in horror, but I don’t think I succeeded completely. I told her that, no, I wouldn’t just start slaughtering people because … what the hell is that a kind of a thing for normal people to want to do? Her husband called me a pacifist, for which I thanked him for noticing and ask them why everyone isn’t a pacifist? Why isn’t that the default position instead of an odd outlier position?

Just yesterday evening, a good friend with whom I hadn’t really spoken deeply in a time also pointed out that he thought I was a pacifist. I must be expressing myself quite well, I guess.

“Clinton’s justification for the Israeli genocide flagrantly violates both criminal and international law, neither of which allows “revenge” as the justification for the murder of unarmed people.”

“Continuing his open defense of Israeli war crimes, Clinton declared the numbers of Gaza civilians killed is irrelevant “because Hamas makes sure that they’re shielded by civilians. They’ll force you to kill civilians if you want to defend yourself.””

As I was telling some colleagues over lunch yesterday: there are no decent people in U.S. politics. There is no-one coming to save the beleaguered, the downtrodden. If Europeans are satisfied with the outcome of the presidential election, it is only because they have egoistically determined that the bad person in charge will be good for them personally, and to hell with all of the people that their policies will hurt (no-one knows those kinds of people anyway).

“The bourgeoisie’s endorsement of fascistic violence in pursuit of its economic and geostrategic interests is not limited to the United States. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the Bundestag in October,”

“When Hamas terrorists hide behind people, behind schools, then we end up in very difficult waters. But we’re not shying away from this. This is why I made it clear at the United Nations that civilian sites could lose their protected status if terrorists abuse this status. That’s what Germany stands for—and that’s what we mean when we refer to Israel’s security.”

“The resurgence of capitalist barbarism not seen since the first half of the twentieth century is linked to the eruption of a new redivision of the world between the imperialist powers. All of the red lines that supposedly separated ostensibly democratic regimes from the fascist dictatorships of the past have been obliterated in the struggle for raw materials, markets, and geopolitical influence.”

I fear to even ask how many of my friends and family would agree with Baerbock’s statement, instead of recoiling in revulsion. The only people who propose to strike civilians are those who know that no-one they care about will ever be similarly targeted. They know that they can attack with impunity but they’re still interested in appearing to be playing by some rules.

No-one with any principles believes that they care about this, but they continue to pretend to, so that their supporters can continue to pretend that they, too, care about rules. In the meantime, they’re slaughtering civilians right and left and blaming on the civilians. Since they are forced to murder by their victims, they can’t possibly be held to account, can they? Of course not. What would we even hold them to account for? They’ve done nothing wrong! They’re done only the noble work of fighting for freedom and justice.

Vote However You Feel; This Whole Show Is About Feelings Anyway by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“No matter how you vote, Democrats will continue to win approximately half the time, and Republicans will win the other half.

“No matter how you vote, the ever-expanding abuses of capitalism and plutocracy will continue making life worse for ordinary Americans.

“No matter how you vote, the US war machine will continue inflicting nightmarish mass military violence on people in other countries in order to maintain its globe-spanning empire.

“No matter how you vote, the profit-driven systems which rule our world will continue exterminating our biosphere at an alarmingly rapid rate.

“No matter how you vote, the empire’s looming confrontations with Russia and China guarantee more world-threatening nuclear brinkmanship in the near future.

“No matter how you vote, people in the global south will continue to be robbed and exploited to give the western citizenry of the imperial core enough cheap stuff to keep them pacified and compliant.”

Journalism & Media

Israel’s War on Journalism by Chris Hedges (Substack)

“There are some 4,000 foreign reporters accredited in Israel to cover the war. They stay in luxury hotels. They go on dog and pony shows orchestrated by the Israeli military. They can, on rare occasions, be escorted by Israeli soldiers on lightning visits to Gaza, where they are shown alleged weapons caches or tunnels the military says are used by Hamas. They dutifully attend daily press conferences. They are given off-the-record briefings by senior Israeli officials who feed them information that often turns out to be untrue. They are Israel’s unwitting and sometimes witting propagandists , stenographers for the architects of apartheid and genocide, hotel room warriors. Bertolt Brecht acidly called them the spokesmen of the spokesmen.”

“As the playwright Harold Pinter said: US foreign policy could be best defined as follows: kiss my arse or I’ll kick your head in. It is as simple and as crude as that. What is interesting about it is that it is so incredibly successful. It possesses the structures of disinformation, use of rhetoric, distortion of language, which are very persuasive, but are actually a pack of lies. It is very successful propaganda. They have the money, they have the technology, they have all the means to get away with it, and they do.”

“All CNN journalists reporting on Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review by the network’s Jerusalem bureau prior to publication, a bureau that is required to abide by rules set down by Israeli military censors.”

“Retired general David Petraeus, one of the authors of the 2006 U.S. Counterinsurgency Manual used by U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, argues that persuading the public that you are winning — even if, as in Afghanistan, you are trapped in a quagmire — is more important than military superiority. The domesticated media is vital in perpetrating this deception.”

“The most important impediment to Israel’s mass hypnosis are the Palestinian journalists in Gaza. This is why the kill rate is so high. It is why U.S. officials say nothing. They, too, hate real journalists. They, too, demand reporters domesticate themselves to scurry like rats from one choreographed press event to the next.

“The U.S. government says and does nothing to protect the press because it endorses Israel’s campaign against the media, as it endorses Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“Journalists, along with the Palestinians, are to be extinguished.”

How America Sanitizes the Horror of Its Wars by Noam Chomsky (Literary Hub)

“Winston Churchill captured the dominant sentiment when he said that “the government of the world must be entrusted to satisfied nations,” because rich countries had no “reason to seek for anything more,” whereas “if the world-government were in the hands of hungry nations there would always be danger.” Leo Welch of the Standard Oil Company expressed a similar aspiration when he said the US needed to “assume the responsibility of the majority stockholder in this corporation known as the world,” and not just temporarily, but as a “permanent obligation.””

“From 1939 to 1945, extensive studies conducted by the Council on Foreign Relations and the State Department resulted in a policy they called “Grand Area” planning. The Grand Area referred to any region that was to be subordinated to the needs of the American economy and was considered “strategically necessary for world control.” “The British Empire as it existed in the past will never reappear,” mused one planner, and thus “the United States may have to take its place.” Another stated frankly that the US “must cultivate a mental view toward world settlement.””

George Kennan was wrong. Lying about intentions has worked much better. The power grab he described happened but it continues to be sold as a noble fight for human rights, democracy, etc.

“This policy of military and economic supremacy is openly stated everywhere from the 1940s planning documents to the National Security Strategies put out by the George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. Implementing it has not just involved ignoring democracy and human rights, but often actively opposing them with tremendous ferocity.”

Yes, of course, but Empire still says that it is doing what it does for peace and human rights and democracy. And it works! Again and again! It simply lets others get their beaks wet—just a dab—and they’ll not just join the chorus, they’ll lead it, singing Empire’s praises, while it gathers even more power to not only subjugate the vermin, but to keep sycophantic allies in their place, eternally vassalized.

“[…] nobody else could interfere, and “nationalism” (the control of the country’s resources by its own people) was a serious threat. As a State Department memo put it in 1958, “in a Near East under the control of radical nationalism, Western access to the resources of the area would be in constant jeopardy.””

“Policy in Latin America, CIA historian Gerald Haines explained, was designed “to develop larger and more efficient sources of supply for the American economy, as well as create expanded markets for US exports and expanded opportunities for the investment of American capital,” permitting local development only “as long as it did not interfere with American profits and dominance.””

“Another State Department expert reported that “Latin Americans are convinced that the first beneficiaries of the development of a country’s resources should be the people of that country.”

“These mistaken priorities ran directly counter to Washington’s plans. The issue came to a head in a February 1945 hemispheric conference, where the United States put forth its “Economic Charter of the Americas,” which called for an end to economic nationalism “in all its forms.”

“The first beneficiaries of a country’s resources must be US investors and their local associates, not “the people of that country.” There can be no “broader distribution of wealth” or improvement in “the standard of living of the masses,” unless, by unlikely accident, that happens to result from policies designed to serve the interests of those with priority.”

“[…] maintaining control of the world’s energy supplies; barring unacceptable forms of independent nationalism; and keeping the U.S. domestic population from sticking their noses in.”

“Chris Hedges, who spent decades as a war correspondent for The New York Times, writes: If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be harder to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of the schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan or Ukraine and listen to the wails of their parents, the clichés about liberating the women of Afghanistan or bringing freedom to the Afghan or Ukrainian people would be obscene.”

„Friedenspreis“ für Applebaum, Orden für Biden: „Merkt Ihr nischt?“ – Tucholskys Zitat ist auffordernder denn je by Frank Blenz (NachDenkSeiten)

“ich bin mir sicher, ein jetzt lebender Kurt Tucholsky würde darin schäumen vor Aufgebrachtheit über die grassierende Kriegsgeilheit, den fortgesetzten nimmermüden Hass gegen Russland, über die Rüstungsorgien, über die Ignoranz und Arroganz, die sich im meinungsführenden, etablierten Betrieb der politischen, intellektuellen und medialen Klasse und deren angeschlossenen Kreise zeigen.”

“Doch ein solches Tucholsky-Buch auf der Frankfurter Buchmesse präsentiert, das würde wohl gleich als „umstritten“, als hetzerisch, querdenkerisch, kurz als untragbar für unsere freie, demokratische, gelenkte Gesellschaft betitelt und diffamiert werden. Einen Preis erhielte es nicht.”

“Die mit dem Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels getätigte Auszeichnung der US-amerikanischen Journalistin Applebaum wirkte für mich wie ein Signal: Da geht es lang und wer nicht folgt, der ist ein mindestens Verirrter, einer, der vom rechten Weg des Mainstreams abgekommen ist.”

“Unser Bundespräsident juchzte geradezu und bekam sich gar nicht mehr ein, als er den US-Präsidenten Biden ein „Leuchtfeuer der Demokratie“ nannte.”

“[…] der Verleihung der „Sonderstufe des Großkreuzes des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik“ an den Demokraten bei dessen Besuch in Berlin. Es ist die höchste Auszeichnung, die Deutschland zu vergeben hat.”

“Die Buchhändlerin hat weiter den Spruch eines berühmten Schriftstellers, Erich Maria Remarque, auf die Seite gestellt:”

“Ich dachte immer, jeder Mensch sei gegen den Krieg, bis ich herausfand, dass es welche gibt, die dafür sind, besonders die, die nicht hingehen müssen.”

“In meiner Heimatregion gibt es (noch) eine durchaus vielfältige Kulturlandschaft. Diese wird gehegt und tapfer gepflegt von aktiven Kulturschaffenden, die sich permanent mit der Tatsache konfrontiert sehen, dass Kunst und Kultur als Luxus, als etwas, das man sich leisten können muss, betrachtet wird. Oft wird das Wort „Einsparpotenzial“ ausgesprochen, es hallt wie eine Dauer-Drohung über der Kultur.”

“Es ist schäbig, dass wir, als eines der reichsten Länder auf dem Kontinent, an der Kultur „sparen“. Wir knausern an Dingen, an Ideen, an Personal und Ausgaben – die unser Leben ausmachen. Bei Dingen, die unser Leben nicht ausmachen, wird Geld verschleudert,”

“[…] bei all dem Zusammenbrechen, bei all dieser Wirklichkeit eines Landes der zu vielen seichten Dichter und bequemen Denker, eines Landes, das sich zunehmend verrät und billig demontiert wird hin zu einer kriegerischen, dummen Nation – es kann von den Wachen nur gesagt werden: Wir merken es. Allein, es herrscht Ohnmacht.”

“Während bei Kultureinrichtungen gespart wird oder diese geschlossen werden, an schäbigen Konzepten der Eindämmung unserer wirklichen ideellen Werte herumgebastelt wird, schreien die Eliten unserer Volksparteien, deren Auftraggeber, ihre Freunde und Sympathisanten und die, die dazu gehören wollen, nach noch mehr Geld für Rüstung, Abschreckung, NATO, für die Wehrpflicht usw.”

Yeah, Yeah, UNRWA Is Hamas. Everyone Israel Hates Is Hamas. by Caitlin Johnstone (Notes from the Edge of the Narrative Matrix)

“Stupidity is being framed as a sign of patriotism. Gullibility is being framed as a sign of rejecting antisemitism. In this morally bankrupt and perverse civilization, the noblest thing you can be is a blithering imbecile.”

“Per the rules of the western empire you are a religious extremist if you want to fight against an occupying force who has been abusing you your entire life, but you are not a religious extremist if you want to carpet bomb the middle east to help fulfill a Biblical prophecy.”

“The US presidential race is very openly a contest between two oligarch-owned Zionist war whores, and yet after the results are announced next week you’re still going to hear half the country going “OMG election interference! The election was stolen from us!”

“It already was, you dopes. It was stolen before the race even started. The rest is just narrative.”

“Harris and the Democrats have repeatedly attacked Trump for not starting a war with Iran when he was president. She criticized him for making John Bolton sad when he refused to bomb Iran. How is that less insanely pro-Israel than anything Trump has said?

“If you want to argue that Harris will be better on reproductive rights or something then go ahead, but when it comes to Gaza don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”

People Aren’t Garbage. Partisan Politics Is by Matt Taibbi (Racket News)

“campaign writers only talk to people at campaign events, so the pool of quotes is automatically pared to holders of Very Strong Political Opinions. Second, the odd “Who cares?” answer is instinctively culled by campaign writers as commercially/politically unhelpful. Non-voters or even just people who care more about other things than Harris/Trump — UFOs, knitting, the girl in biology class — ruin the suspension of disbelief. You end up reading copy that hugely over-represents that strange subset of people who define themselves by their votes.”

“The numbers of non-voters exposed how inconsequential presidential politics was for most people. It measured the number of people left behind or out, and leaving the non-enthused out of the shot was journalism’s way of covering the holes in the charade.”

Economy & Finance

Retiring the US debt would retire the US dollar by Cory Doctorow (Pluralistic)

“When billionaires like Warren Buffet tell Jesse Eisinger that he doesn’t pay tax because “he thinks his money is better spent on charitable works rather than contributing to an insignificant reduction of the deficit,” he is, at best, technically wrong about why we tax, and at worst, he’s telling a self-serving lie. The US government doesn’t need to eliminate its debt. Doing so would be catastrophic. “Retiring the US debt” is the same thing as “retiring the US dollar.””

This is the main premise but it feels like sophistry. I’m intrigued, though.

“Everyone desires USD because almost everyone in the USA has to pay taxes in USD to the government every year, or they will go to prison.”

This is the attitude to taxes in these countries. You don’t pay them to fund a nice society. You pay them to avoid jail. Such a pleasant philosophy.

“The underlying liquidity of the USD is inextricably tied to taxation, and that’s the first reason we tax.”

That cannot be true.

“[…] the US government wouldn’t have the looming threat of taxes with which to coerce us into doing the work to build highways, care for the sick, or teach people how to be doctors, engineers, etc.”

As noted above, I don’t think that this is the only way to think about running a society or community but OK, I guess that’s how the U.S. thinks of taxes. It explains a lot.

“So a bond isn’t a debt – it’s more like a savings account. When you move money from your checking to your savings, you reduce its liquidity, meaning the bank can treat it as a reserve without worrying quite so much about you spending it. In exchange, the bank gives you some interest, as a carrot.”

“Taxation isn’t a way for the government to pay for things. Taxation is a way to create demand for US dollars, to convince people to sell goods and services to the US government, and to constrain private sector spending, which creates fiscal space for the US government to buy goods and services without bidding up their prices.”

Huh.

Science & Nature

Srinivasa Ramanujan Was a Genius. Math Is Still Catching Up by Jordana Cepelewicz (Quanta Magazine)

“It became apparent to Hardy and his colleagues that Ramanujan could sense mathematical truths — could access entire worlds — that others simply could not. (Hardy, a mathematical giant in his own right, is said to have quipped that his greatest contribution to mathematics was the discovery of Ramanujan.) Before Ramanujan died in 1920 at the age of 32, he came up with thousands of elegant and surprising results, often without proof. He was fond of saying that his equations had been bestowed on him by the gods.”

“The statements had been proved 20 years earlier by a little-known English mathematician named L.J. Rogers. Rogers wrote poorly, and at the time the proofs were published no one paid any attention. (Rogers was content to do his research in relative obscurity, play piano, garden and apply his spare time to a variety of other pursuits.) Ramanujan uncovered this work in 1917, and the pair of statements later became known as the Rogers-Ramanujan identities. Amid Ramanujan’s prodigious output, these statements stand out. They have carried through the decades and across nearly all of mathematics. They are the seeds that mathematicians continue to sow, growing brilliant new gardens seemingly wherever they fall.”

“Consider an integer such as the number 4. It can be broken up into parts in a finite number of ways: You can write it as 4, as 3 + 1, as 2 + 2, as 2 + 1 + 1 or as 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. Mathematicians say that the number 4 has five “partitions.” Bigger numbers have far more partitions: The number 200, for instance, has nearly 4 trillion. Partitions are so basic that “people have thought about them as long as people have thought about mathematics,” said Andrew Sills (opens a new tab) of Georgia Southern University.”

“This trend of the Rogers-Ramanujan identities surfacing in various fields of mathematics continued into the 1990s and 2000s. They appeared in number theory, in the study of central functions called modular forms ; in probability theory, in work on Markov chains; and in topology, in polynomials used to distinguish and classify knots. Each time, the identities could be re-proved using techniques from those fields — and each time, mathematicians could exploit those connections to produce new identities, planting more and more seeds in Ramanujan’s garden.”

“They took functions that counted partitions and used them to build a special formula. When you plug any prime number into this equation, it spits out zero. When you plug in any other number, it instead spits out a positive number. In this way, the partition identities can give you a way to pick out the entire set of primes from the integers, Ono said. “Isn’t that crazy?””

“By tapping into the rich mathematical theory of modular forms, he and his colleagues found that this formula was just a glimpse of a much larger class of prime-detecting functions — infinitely many, in fact. “That’s mind-blowing to me,” Ono said. “I hope people find it beautiful.” It indicates a deeper relation between the partitions and multiplicative number theory that mathematicians are now hoping to explore.”

Studies of migraine’s many triggers offer paths to new therapies by Amber Dance (Knowable Maganzine)

“Migraine is the second most prevalent cause of disability in the world , affecting mainly women of childbearing age. A person may have one migraine attack per year, or several per week, or even ongoing symptoms. Complicating the picture further, there’s not just one kind of migraine attack . Migraine can cause headache; nausea; sensitivity to light, sound or smell; or a panoply of other symptoms. Some people get visual auras; some don’t. Some women have migraine attacks associated with menstruation. Some people, particularly kids, have “abdominal migraine,” characterized not so much by headaches as by nausea, stomach pain, and vomiting.”

“[…] scientists later recognized that constricting blood vessels is not the main way triptans relieve migraine; their action to quiet nerve signals or inflammation may be more relevant. Ditans, a newer class of migraine drugs, also act on serotonin receptors but affect only nerves, not blood vessels, and they still work.”

“Questions remain, though. One is whether, and how well, CGRP blockers work in men. Since three to four times as many women as men have migraine, the medicines were mostly tested in women. A recent review found that while CGRP blockers seem to prevent future headaches in both sexes, they haven’t been shown to stop acute migraine attacks in men as currently prescribed.”

That is unusual.

“[…] the evolving story of migraine is one of many types of triggers, many types of attacks, many targets, and, with time, more potential treatments. “I don’t think there’s one molecule that fits all,” says Levy. “Hopefully, in 10, 15 years, we’ll know, for a given person, what triggers it and what can target that.””

In summary, we still really don’t know enough yet to really address chronic migraines.

Technology

Removal of Russian coders spurs debate about Linux kernel’s politics by Kevin Purdy (Ars Technica)

I had skimmed it and saw pretty incendiary and uncommonly stupid (and therefore disappointing) comments from Torvalds about him being Finnish, so that’s why it’s OK to be anti-Russian and then calling anyone who disagreed with the decision a Russian troll.

Oh, OK, Linus, nice to see how logical and reasonable you are. When the chips are down and your master (the U.S. empire) calls you to heel, all of a sudden you fetch that stick with the best of them.

This is just another way for the empire and the empire-adjacent to pretend that they’re the good guys. It’s a nakedly political act that has no place in an open-source project, one that is so central to how the world runs. This is all ludicrous and no way to run a civilized project in a civilized society. This greatly diminishes the reputation of Linux, in my eyes.

Their reasoning seems to have begun with: we have no choice but to conform to illegal sanctions imposed by the world’s mafia boss (the U.S. empire) because Linux is, apparently, not just an open-source operating system but is, somehow, obliged to follow U.S. sanctions. That’s a bit of a wake-up call, I guess?

It’s a shame that a prime maintainer being a Finnish nationalist (and probably fervent NATO supporter) would lead to changes in the Linux sources. I’m exaggerating a bit for effect but it’s a valid interpretation of what happened. Linux open-source model isn’t immune to empire and its propaganda. It should have no place there but it does.

Throwing all Russians off of the maintainer’s list because of their national origin is wrong. Would they throw all Israelis off because of what their government is doing? Of course not. “We” support that invasion and slaughter. What about throwing all U.S. Americans off of the list because of their nation’s century of global aggression? Inconceivable. Is Dr. Richard Hipp allowed to throw maintainers off of SQLite because he thinks they’ve run afoul of his ⁠code of ethics (SQLite)?

They should have forced the U.S. empire and its vassals to fork it themselves if they wanted to remove the maintainers they don’t like.

Programming

Help us choose the final syntax for Masonry in CSS by Jen Simmons and Elika Etemad, with Brandon Stewart (WebKit Blog)

“[…] the CSSWG resolved to adopt mixed track-sizing for masonry-style layouts in September. It’s a fantastic milestone! With this consensus, the CSSWG published a First Public Working Draft of CSS Grid Layout Module Level 3.”

“Repurposing: “Adaptation of some existing piece of data for a new purpose” is a core function of the design of the web. The HTML Design Principles calls this “Do not Reinvent the Wheel”. Extend an existing technology instead of inventing something new for the same or similar purpose.

“Use What Is There: An existing API might not be ideal. Maybe you wish we could go back and start over. But we can’t. Use what’s there, and forge the best path forward. “Throwing away software that works, although imperfectly, and teaching everybody something new would be a huge waste of resources.””

“Developers already struggle with trying to understand the difference between Flexbox and Grid, and when to use which one. Far too many developers are responding to this burden by just using Flexbox for every single thing, and never using Grid. Adding yet another layout mode is liable to compound this challenge. Typing out four lines of code instead of three is not a significant developer burden. Having to memorize multiple sets of similar syntax with divergent names, allowable values, and defaults is far more of a burden.”

“The Just Use Grid option leans into the idea that CSS Grid is a major layout mechanism for web pages, and we should keep expanding it to be more and more powerful. The New Masonry Layout option seems to say, no, we should keep Grid as Grid, and add new segregated display types each time we add more layout capabilities.”

Pfui. Orthogonality FTW. 🙌🏼

“If the CSSWG went in this direction, we’d end up with three sets of grid layout properties. The next time there’s another idea, would we feel compelled to create a fourth copy of the same properties?”

“We believe it is better for these layout modes to be intertwined. We want the CSSWG to think through new additions — like grid-default-column — and make them work for the original Grid use cases, the masonry-style layout use cases, and anything else that comes along in the future. We don’t want a new feature for one to get left out of the other because it’s easier to implement in one mode vs the other. We want CSS to be a consistent, coherent, predictable system.”

Agree 100%. 💯

“Understanding how this works is definitely not easy! It requires a sophisticated understanding of how auto sizing works — arguably the hardest part of layout on the web. The proposed default is often not going to magically work with “only one line of code”. As a developer, you still have to do all the work to control track sizing. The needed CSS is just applied to the items and/or their content instead of the layout container. It’s a return to how it worked when everything was float-based — when we controlled layout by sizing the content.”

“[…] by asking the browser to scan all the items to find their sizes, and then calculate the track sizes, it loses the performance advantage of reading the size directly from the defined track value instead.”

This is a well-formulated argument against the separate syntax, saying not only does it ruin orthogonality, it also will almost never be as succinct as the contrived supported examples suggest, and the additional CSS required in order to get the desired effect will be onerous, if not impossible, for developers to write.

References Available Upon Request by Cliff L. Biffle (Cliffle)

“You, the programmer, can check for these errors and convince yourself that the program is correct. But to do so, you need to read both the functions and their callers. In a bigger program with complex dataflow, checking might require you to read the entire program.

“This is a case of global reasoning. Global reasoning is hard — you might decide that you’re willing to pay the cost of some asserts to avoid having to reason about the whole program. (I would!) The alternative is local reasoning, where you can convince yourself that a part of a program is correct by reading that part only. I prefer to be able to use local reasoning, because I have other work to do.”

“These rules are part of the type system, so they’re checked at compile time, and have no run-time cost. (In fact, they can enable compiler optimizations that aren’t possible in C.)”

A comparison of Rust’s borrow checker to the one in C# (em-tg)

“Here’s my theory: C# already had an equivalent to all of these things in its “unsafe” subset, so when introduced, ref-safety changes were typically framed as “bringing the performance of safe code closer to that of unsafe code,” which is arguably the opposite perspective of Rust’s “bringing the safety of high-performance code closer to that of high-level languages.” Perhaps that framing makes people miss that although the two languages are pushing in opposite directions, they might actually be getting closer together.”

“scoped ref is a new reference type which promises to never return the reference or assign it to an output parameter. In Rust terms, each C# function really has two lifetimes associated with it, “caller-context” and “function-member”, with the latter used for scoped ref and the implicit ref this […] Just like we can “scope” a ref parameter, we can “unscope” the implicit ref this with the [UnscopedRef] attribute.”

I seem to be reading more and more stuff about Rust lately.

• A comparison of Rust’s borrow checker to the one in C#
• Unsafe Rust is harder than C
• You Can’t Write C in Just Any Ol’ Language
• References Available Upon Request
• Let futures be futures
• The Watermelon Operator

What has case distinction but is neither uppercase nor lowercase? by Raymond Chen (The Old New Thing)

“These digraphs owe their existence in Unicode not to Hungarian but to Serbo-Croatian. Serbo-Croatian is written in both Latin script (Croatian) and Cyrillic script (Serbian), and these digraphs permit one-to-one transliteration between them.”

“The fact that dz is treated as a single letter in Hungarian means that if you search for “mad”, it should not match “madzag” (which means “string”) because the “dz” in “madzag” is a single letter and not a “d” followed by a “z”, no more than “lav” should match “law” just because the first part of the letter “w” looks like a “v”.”

This is the kind of article I imagine an AI will eventually be capable of generating in order to distract me into subservience.

Possible Future CSS: Tree-Counting Functions and Random Values by Roman Komarov (Kizu.Dev)

This is another mathematical master class in using CSS variables and calculations to get at values like “sibling count” and “sibling index”, two values that are in a future proposal for CSS Values and Units Module Level 5 (w3C).

Here’s a taste of the code for getting a random value in CSS,

.random-example {
  & li {
    --random-part-from-sibling:
      pow(var(--sibling-index), 3)
      -
      pow(var(--sibling-index), 2)
      +
      var(--sibling-index);
    --random-part-from-count: var(--children-count);
    --random-limit: var(--closest-prime);
    --random-value: calc(
      mod(
        var(--random-part-from-sibling)
        *
        var(--random-part-from-count)
        *
        var(--seed, 0)
        ,
        var(--random-limit)
      )
      /
      var(--random-limit)
    );
  }
}

As always, it’s stunning how quickly the browser CSS and layout engine efficiently updates values, invalidating only the parts that are affected, even with deeply nested calculations. I went through the article in Opera Beta on an M1 MacBook Pro (from 2020), with a relatively new version of Chromium and it was smooth as silk, with no CPU spikes and no sluggishness (as Komarov indicated might happen in Safari).

He first defines the sibling-count and sibling-index functions, then builds randomness on top of those. He uses this toolkit to build grids that know how many items they have so that he can keep the grid a square with random transforms and coloring. Finally, he even stacks them, with random overlapping and z-order control.

Finally, he links some amazing CSS demos where people built things that could use this functionality in CSS (but have had to make do with JS for now). See Ana Tudor’s many examples or Una Kravets’s radial menu, or Amit Sheen’s demos