Links and Notes for November 1st, 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 They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts.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
• Labor
• Economy & Finance
• Science & Nature
• Art & Literature
• Technology
• Programming
• Fun
• Video Games

Public Policy & Politics

How a Secluded 1984 Conference Forged Israel’s Unprecedented Influence Over US Media by Kit Klarenberg (Scheer Post)

“Israel’s rapacious bloodlust and casual contempt for Arab lives had hitherto been, by and large, successfully concealed from the outside world. Suddenly, though, scenes of deliberate IDF airstrikes on residential housing blocks, Tel Aviv’s trigger-happy soldiers running amok in Beirut’s streets, and hospitals overflowing with civilians suffering from grave injuries, including chemical burns due to Israel’s use of phosphorus shells, were broadcast the world over, to nigh-universal outcry. As veteran NBC news anchor John Chancellor contemporarily explained to Western viewers:”

“What in the world is going on? Israel’s security problem, on its border, is 50 miles to the south. What’s an Israeli army doing here in Beirut? The answer is we are now dealing with an imperial Israel, which is solving its problems in someone else’s country, world opinion be damned.”

This was in 1982. Utterly inconceivable today.

“In September 1982, an Israel-backed armed Christian militia, Phalange, entered Sabra, a Beirut neighborhood home to many Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Nakba. Over a two-day span, they slaughtered up to 3,500 people while mutilating and raping countless others. Again, unfortunately for Tel Aviv, mainstream journalists were on hand to document these heinous crimes first-hand.”

This was masterminded by Ariel Sharon, I believe. It was covered by Robert Fisk in his book The Great War of Civilization. It was documented in the film Waltz with Bashir.

“There was extensive discussion of how to present “unpalatable policies” to Western populations, and counter the perception of Israel as “Goliath steamrolling” across West Asia, against adversaries “outgunned, outclassed and outmanned” with “no capacity to resist.” The necessity of training the Jewish diaspora in countering criticism of Israel was considered paramount.”

““Actions” such as “blowing up houses,” which were “difficult to explain,” could be preemptively justified or at least relativized by placing them “in context” while “[drawing] analogies that others will understand.” This would “help others to interpret their meaning,” per Tel Aviv’s perspectives.”

“One attendee boasted of their personal success in this regard: One day CBS News Radio reported that an American soldier had been hurt by stepping on an Israeli cluster bomb at the Beirut airport. I called CBS to point out that no one had established the bomb was an Israeli one. One hour later CBS reported that an American soldier had stepped on a bomb; this time the report omitted any reference to Israel.””

“Buoyed by its success, the operation soon expanded to include school and university students worldwide, training them to act as vigorous advocates for Israel in classrooms and on campuses. Graduates of these Israeli-funded programs frequently enter influential fields, including journalism, where they continue to promote Hasbara narratives and defend Israel’s actions.”

“Coverage nearly always frames Israel’s actions as “self-defense” against “terrorist” threats, with Western journalists keenly aware of potential repercussions for diverging from this narrative.”

Portents of Chaos by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post)

“America is simply not, to put this point another way, a tolerant nation. It does not encourage its people to think: It requires them to conform. Alexis de Tocqueville saw this coming two centuries ago in the two volumes of Democracy in America. We are now, post–Clinton, treated to the spectacle of full-dress liberal authoritarianism, and if you do not like the term there are others. De Tocqueville, prescient man, called it “soft despotism.” I’ve always favored “apple-pie authoritarianism.””

Unheeded Warnings: Sagan, Eisenhower and the Ultimate Gamble by David S. D’Amato (CounterPunch)

“As Sagan noted in the book, the yield of nuclear weapons has been underestimated consistently since the very first explosion, the test code-named Trinity, on July 16, 1945. The blast that came from “Gadget,” the nickname of the bomb itself, was equal to more than 20,000 tons of TNT— about four times stronger than scientists working on the Manhattan Project had expected.”

“Current U.S. gaslighting about its broken promises—facilitated as usual by the Western corporate media—is perfectly consistent with its general approach to relations with other sovereign states: any U.S. promise, even its treaty obligations, can be ignored or discarded freely without reasons or consequences, because the United States sees itself as running the world.”

“There had also been talks in Paris in January of 2022, and there was a high level of optimism for fruitful negotiations on a ceasefire. Ukraine remained open to neutrality at that point, which is consistent with a permanent commitment to neutrality that was explicit in its 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty. [1] Ukrainian neutrality and its nuclear weapons-free status were further memorialized in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. The general terms on the table during the negotiations of March 2022, which were mediated by the Turkish, were an affirmation of Ukraine’s neutral status, a Russian move back to the borders in place before its 2022 invasion, and an opening of further talks on the Crimean Peninsula and the Donbas.”

“Whatever one thinks of Russia, the United States has repeatedly made it clear that injecting itself to disrupt these talks was in no way an effort to help the people of Ukraine—quite to the contrary, its goal was and is to bleed Russia using Ukrainian bodies, and it has indeed cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives. U.S. support of the Ukrainian government has also conveniently meant that tens of billions of dollars have been funneled to American weapons manufacturers (as of this writing, United States aid to Ukraine since 2022 totaled about $175 billion).”

“[…] with friends like the United States, Ukraine doesn’t need enemies. Importantly, none of this has anything to do with one’s assessment of Russia. Putin’s Russia has an abysmal record of domestic political repression, human rights abuses, censorship and attacks on journalists, and torture. In United States-Russia relations, there is no good guy. Without a thoughtful and nuanced understanding of the interests and key security concerns of both, further escalations are virtually guaranteed, aggravating the risk of an exchange of nuclear weapons.”

“Leahy’s words remind of the difference between acknowledging war as a historical fact and giving ourselves over completely to a debased, mindless philosophy of wanton destruction and open contempt for civilian life. He laments the advent of the “new concepts of ‘total war,’” dragging us back into “cruelty toward noncombatants.” “These new and terrible instruments of uncivilized warfare represent a modern type of barbarism not worthy of Christian man.””

“It seems necessary to quote at length from decorated military leaders like them because today’s chicken-hawk politicians are so hideously unembarrassed in their public ignorance. Knowing nothing of the stakes, they push and provoke, putting threats and violence in the place of diplomatic relations with other global powers, believing, as children might, that this makes the United States strong. Whatever their faults, Eisenhower and Leahy understood that the use of nuclear weapons demonstrated profound moral degeneracy and thus weakness, not the projection of global strength. The public conversation has buried their opinions, just as it has buried the old-fashioned notion that elected officials should be public servants, not cringeworthy, self-dealing, power-lusting celebrities.”

Using Any Metric, the U.S. Gamble to Harm Russia by Bombing Nordstream Was a Failure by Eve Ottenberg (CounterPunch)

“Moscow just rerouted its cheap natural gas to the east and has been making money there, hand over fist. Similarly with its sanctioned oil: Moscow sells it to India, which raises the price and sells it to Europe. Russia is now the world’s fourth largest economy measured by purchasing power parity, edging out Japan, and is relatively unscathed by impotent western sanctions.”

“[…] prime minister Olaf “Liver Brain” Scholz cut off his country’s nose to spite its face: No cheap energy from Moscow, even for the flagship German car corporation Volkswagen, currently mulling up to 30,000 job cuts, when it closes several German plants. The company also ended its longstanding job security arrangements with the country’s unions. And what has caused this manufacturing debacle? Abrupt withdrawal from cheap Russian energy. And other sundry imbecilic sanctions. Europe, with the Teutonic nation leading the way, decided to commit economic suicide.”

“Europe depended vitally on cheap Russian energy. In truth, Moscow subsidized European industry and protected it from American economic predation – who knew? Evidently not the Europeans, who apparently in their degraded arrogance just took this sweet deal for granted.”

“Washington’s vassalization project for Europe is complete, and demonstrating Germany’s abject submission, its president recently awarded Joe “Nordstream Bomber” Biden a medal. I mean, is this the height of masochism or what?”

Why Are Close Elections So Common? by Manon Bischoff (Scientific American)

“The nonconformity factor produced a surprisingly realistic result. An initially balanced state develops more and more into a 50–50 election result over time. In addition, the network splits into two parts, with neighboring units usually occupying the same state. The researchers emphasized in the paper that social networks are much more complex, though. Their structure is not limited to two dimensions, and the connections between people can be much more complicated. Nevertheless, as a first approximation, the model delivers results that are close to real-life scenarios.”

What does that even mean, though? This is pure correlation, with no hypothesis. Or is the hypothesis that this factor can predict an election’s outcome? Or that it somehow constrains electoral democracy? What complete bullshit science. Stop wasting my time.

Genocidal Scorecard by Chris Hedges (Substack)

“As the ICC Prosecutor has warned, ‘if we do not demonstrate our willingness to apply the law equally, if it is seen as applied selectively, we will be creating the conditions of its complete collapse. This is the true risk we face at this perilous moment.’””

It’s already long since happened. The U.S. has rarely, if ever, followed the law.

“The constant displacement — many Palestinians have been displaced nine or 10 times — from one part of Gaza to another is accompanied by calls from Israeli officials to “renew settlements in Gaza” and encourage the “voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens” to other countries.”

“[…] pushed over 84 percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza into “a shrinking, unsafe ‘humanitarian zone’ covering 12.6 percent of a territory now reconfigured in preparation for annexation.” Satellite imagery indicates that the Israeli military has built roads and military bases in over 26 percent of Gaza, “suggesting the aim of a permanent presence.””

“Access to water has been restricted to a quarter of pre-7 October levels. Approximately 93 per cent of the agricultural, forestry and fishing economies has been destroyed; 95 per cent of Palestinians face high levels of acute food insecurity, and deprivation for decades to come.””

They will not suffer deprivation for decades. They aren’t meant to survive the year.

Boomer gegen Millennials? Wir haben keinen Generationen-, sondern einen Klassenkonflikt by Jens Berger (NachDenkSeiten)

“um Alt und Jung und noch weniger um Alt gegen Jung, sondern um Arm und Reich oder besser Arm gegen Reich. Wir haben keinen Generationen-, sondern einen Klassenkonflikt. Entlarvend sind in diesem Zusammenhang die in diesen Geschichten immer wieder propagierten „Lösungen“ für den angeblichen Generationenkonflikt, haben sie doch gar nichts mit der Generationenfrage, dafür jedoch verdammt viel mit der Vermögensfrage und der angestrebten weiteren Verteilung von unten nach oben zu tun.”

“Man fokussiert sich auf die Ausgabenseite und ignoriert die Einnahmenseite. Dabei muss man schon mit dem Klammerbeutel gepudert sein, um die Lösung nicht zu sehen. Die Energiewende kostet Geld, die Vermögenden in Deutschland haben Geld. Man muss nur eins und eins zusammenzählen. Doch unsere Meinungsmacher ziehen lieber die Quadratwurzel aus einer imaginären Zahl, betten sie in eine holomorphe Integralformel ein und bekommen einen Generationenkonflikt als Antwort. Bei diesem absurden Spiel sollten wir nicht mitmachen.”

Israel and Its Neighborhood, An Interview with Ambassador Chas Freeman by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post)

“Hamas’s leaders take the position that Arab societies should be governed by those with support at the ballot box rather than by princes, generals, dictators, or thugs. Arab rulers who fall into these authoritarian categories naturally find this position threatening.”

“[…] as the saying has it, no one wants to get into a pissing contest with a skunk. That is especially the case when the skunk is backed by a country as powerful and prone to coercive actions as the United States. The supporters of Zionism have a well-deserved reputation for the vicious slander of their critics and determination to ostracize them. This intimidates most people and governments

“Tactically, with a few honorable exceptions, countries have opted to wring their hands while sitting on them. But the strategic (i.e., the long-run) implications of Israel’s self-delegitimization will be far-reaching. International law and the global majority may have temporarily been set aside by risk-averse governments, but tolerance of Israel by their publics as a practitioner of evil is clearly wearing ever thinner.”

Notes on a Phony Campaign: Strange Days by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch)

“The Green Party’s VP candidate, Butch Ware, came out for national limits on abortion this week…”

“[…] I won’t go into the fine points of it, but of course, there have to be limitations. There have to be regulations of abortion without any question.”

Hey, Jeff, you’re so contrarian that you’ll just disagree with anything. What’s wrong with what Butch said? Of course there have to be limits, you utter dolt. Sometimes you’re so frustrating. Suppose you have a lady who’s incredibly pregnant, like she’s about to give birth in a week, maybe less. The baby is healthy, viable. There are no health complications. She just decided now that she doesn’t want it anymore. Would you not limit her ability to terminate that baby? Or are there really no limits as long as the baby is still technically inside another person’s body? At that point, you would probably have to perform a C-section just to get the child out; should the state not apply a limit on acknowledging her wishes to kill the baby before it comes out? I feel like not having a limitation there would put on extremely shaky moral territory. It’s perhaps a contrived hypothetical but it’s not out of the question. Everything under the sun can happen. If you were to say, well, yes, then I would opt to save the baby despite the mother’s wishes, then you would be placing a limitation on the right of a mother to abort a baby she is carrying. Would you obligate medical staff to help her abort the baby at that late stage, as the law, having not placed any limitations on her right to abort a baby that she is carrying, would require that she get medical treatment according to her wishes, not the wishes of her doctors. Why can’t any of you people conceive of a woman wishing for something really bad sometimes? The limitations people like Ware are talking about aren’t there to make women suffer; they’re there to prevent horrible moral disasters that inevitably crop up. Stop being such a juvenile ass, St. Clair.

“The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on the necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba. Result of the vote:

“In favor: 187

“Against: 2 (Israel, US)

“Abstain: 1 (Moldova)”

Helter Shelter by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch)

“Most of the livestock in Gaza has been killed or died of starvation. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), nearly 15,000 (95 percent ) of Gaza’s cattle have died, and nearly all calves have been slaughtered. Fewer than 25,000 sheep (43 percent) and only around 3,000 goats (37 percent) remain alive. In the poultry sector, only 34,000 (one percent) of the birds have survived.”

“On October 29, an Israeli airstrike on an apartment complex in Beit Lahya left at least 93 Palestinians dead or went missing under the rubble. Hasan Salem: “They hit the staircase first to prevent anyone from fleeing.””

“On October 31, Israeli airstrikes targeted the upper floor of the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia, north Gaza, igniting a fire in the hospital’s warehouse. The Hospital’s Director, Husam Abu Safiyeh, says there are 120 patients and one doctor left in the hospital after Israel’s forcible evacuation of the medical compound last week. Later, an Israel airstrike on a marketplace in central Gaza City killed 93 Palestinian civilians and wounded dozens more.”

“On November 2, Israel bombed the Sheikh Radwn primary care health clinic in northern Gaza, where Palestinian families were lined up to get their kids vaccinated for polio. According to the WHO, six people, including four children, were injured in the attack. The area had been subject to an agreed-upon “humanitarian pause” to enable the vaccinations.”

“A couple of weeks after the US warned Israel that it needed to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza or risk the US restricting weapons shipment, the Netanyahu government responded by passing a law outlawing UNWRA, the primary distributor of aid in Gaza.”

“Officials in Israel’s Foreign Ministry warned against legislation to cut official ties with UNRWA, saying it might jeopardize Israel’s membership in the UN for violating the body’s charter. The Knesset approved it anyway.”

Israel says: 😙 😙 😙 DILLIGAF? This is part of the plan. If you’re trying to starve people out of territory that you want to settle, then letting someone else feed them is counterproductive.

“Haaretz: “While Israeli society as a whole has activated its denial mode regarding Gaza, the horrifying images – and the policy, statements and reality behind them – are causing some Israelis to protest war crimes, or even utter the word genocide.””

I really hope that this is true. Very few people in Switzerland to whom I’ve spoken are willing to utter the word. They kind of flinch when they hear it, because it’s crimethink (Wikipedia).

“The UK’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, scolded those who call the Israel-Gaza war a genocide, claiming it “undermines the seriousness” of past genocides. Yet, the UK, ICJ and the ICTY all recognize the Srebrenica massacre as an act of genocide, where 8,000 men and boys were killed and over 20,000 women and children were displaced.”

Well, of course, because people like Lammy think that genocide is a political cudgel that only they can use to get what they want.

There are quite a few scholars who question whether it’s useful to continue to call what happened in Srebrenica a genocide when it was so clearly a naked political designation to clear the way for NATO to dismantle a staunch Russian ally, Yugoslavia. And now, of course, several of my neighbors, co-workers, and friends originally came from Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, and Albania. America pushes its policy of war and the flotsam from its wars wash up on the shores of European countries, their lives initially shattered but slowly mended over much time.

“After Amos Schocken, the publisher of Haaretz, suggested that sanctions should be imposed on Israel over apartheid in the West Bank, Israel’s Justice Minister Yariv Levin announced he’s putting forward a bill to impose 20-year prison sentences for Israelis who advocate for sanctions.”

Turn the screws. See how far you can go, how much you can get away with.

“Reporter: State Department officials identified 500 incidents of civilian harm in Gaza involving US weapons, but they have not taken action

“Matthew Miller, State Dept: We’re reviewing a number of incidents

“Reporter: Isn’t it inconceivable that more than a year now and you guys are still yet to definitively assess that any ONE single incident violates international humanitarian law

“Miller: It’s a difficult process.”

Life is a joke when it’s always other people who die.

The Mainstream Western Worldview Pretends The Global South Does Not Exist by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“[U.S. presidential] debates will feature five or six minutes on “foreign policy” with the remaining two hours dedicated to “domestic policy” and culture war wedge issues despite the White House’s relationship with foreign countries having orders of magnitude more significant real-world consequences.

“Americans discuss election results as though the whole thing revolves around them and their feelings and how much more convenient or inconvenient the next president might make their lives, while Europeans discuss what the results might mean for NATO expenses and trade agreements.

“The fact that the next US president will be committing genocide, starving people with economic sanctions and increasing Washington’s stranglehold on earth’s population by any amount of violence and tyranny necessary barely ever enters into the conversation.”

If it does enter the conversation, it is taken as a given and good thing that this will continue. The reason they don’t spend any time discussing it is because they don’t understand how it can be questioned at all.

“You see it in politics, but you see it throughout our culture too. In our movies, our shows, our conversations, our thoughts. We don’t really think about all the exploitative imperialist extraction of resources and labor that makes our lifestyles possible, even though it directly affects damn near every waking moment of our lives. You wouldn’t be reading this sentence right now had not this exact dynamic led to a highly complex electronic device making its way into your field of vision.”

“We just conduct ourselves from moment to moment like this relationship isn’t happening. It’s as though we’re all walking around with living people strapped to our feet like slippers, but we’re just laughing and talking about the weather and celebrities and how we’re feeling about this and that without ever acknowledging the existence of the human beings we’re standing on top of.”

“This is going to have to change if we’re to become a conscious species and create a healthy world together. Our perception of the world is going to have to reflect the actual world, not just the small cloistered segment which exists within the confines of western civilization. We’re going to have to start thinking about humanity as a whole and stop living the lie that we are not intimately interconnected with the lives on every populated continent.”

The first hurdle is to acknowledge that we are using them—and not the other way around. The story that most people believe about the impinging hordes is that they are impinging hordes from outside, eager to steal our wealth from us. The reality is that we are already stealing from them and they are just trying to get their stuff back. We have to acknowledge the exploitation, then try to figure out a way of living the way we would like to live, but without exploitation. We will have to change, but more significantly than just holding hands. It’s possible that our slaves will want reparations. They may not be ready to hold hands and sing kumbaya.

The song The Basics by Junkyard Empire (Bandcamp) just played in my list. At the end, you hear some spoken words, snippets of interviews,

“question: Who’s wrong in the first place? Israel or Palestine?

“Noam Chomsky: I’ll take Israel. In the last few weeks, the most ferocious and destructive weapons were U.S. helicopters, supplied in the full knowledge that they were going to be used for those purposes, reminiscent of the Taliban, if you look closely.

“Unknown New Yorker: The radical Muslim must be defeated, unless we’re going to all ruin western civilization.

“Chanting: Free free Palestine! Free free Palestine! Free free Palestine!

“Unknown New Yorker: If Hamas cannot differentiate between civilians and army, then we don’t need to either.

“Radio broadcast: Israel bombed an apartment house, which had [girls?] playing on the roof. The [relief?] now is to stop the bombing immediately. This cannot go on. It’s a disaster.”

According to the Bandcamp page, the song was released in 2009 with the Rebellion Politik album. Apple Music actually has it but says it’s from 2011.

13-15 years old and it sounds like it could have been written a week ago.

Don’t Blame Me for Not Voting for Your Unbelievably Rotten Candidate by Nick Gillespie (Reason)

“It’s not too much to ask for candidates who aren’t colossal assholes, mental incompetents, or fakers that routinely lie and dissemble about all sorts of stuff. Your parties don’t stand for anything consistent or appealing or responsible or responsive. You’re not going to win elections easily until you stand for something consistent, productive, and respectful of the people you seek to govern.”

“They each threaten free speech in their own ways and traffic in delusion (Trump, for instance, can’t admit he lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020, while Kamala won’t say when she knew that President Joe Biden’s brain was cooked).”

“Whatever else you can say about Trump and Harris, this much is indisputable: They are not popular. Each is pulling under 50 percent of voters the day before the election. And their parties aren’t exactly reeling them in, either. Per Gallup’s survey during the last two weeks of October, just 29 percent of Americans identify as Republican and just 32 percent as Democrats—figures that are near all-time lows. Let the partisans explain why the rest of us are so misguided in our indifference or hostility to these candidates and their parties. Maybe one of these years, those partisans will get around to figuring out how to appeal to people outside of the shrinking groups who already agree with them.”

Partisan Press Conference (Episode 3) by Reason TV (YouTube)

Christ almighty, this is wonderful. SNL dreams of being this funny.

On the Occasion of This Election, Let Me Talk to You About Bill Clinton by Freddie deBoer (Substack)

“On Tuesday I’ll vote at the local elementary school. On the presidential line I will be voting for Jill Stein, not out of any particular regard for Stein at all but as a protest against a system that gives me a choice between a far-right party that constantly pulls the country to the right and a center-right party that constantly allows the country to be pulled to the right. I am a leftist; the Democrats are a relentlessly anti-left party. They are allergic to attempting to reorient the country in a more leftward direction, and so constitutionally timid and self-loathing that they wouldn’t try even if they wanted to. In democracy you vote for the parties and candidates that represent your interests. The Democrats never have. No matter what the “blue no matter who” crowd says, it is always the job of candidates and parties to earn votes, to deserve them. That I’m expected to vote for politicians who don’t represent my values is a symptom of the fundamental brokenness of our country. Well, as I’m in a position where my vote makes no difference, at least I can vote in protest of a country with two right-wing parties and no other options.”

“Democrats sacrifice everything to appear to be the reasonable party while Republicans ruthlessly pursue their agenda. That’s why American domestic policy is to the right of where it was when I was born in 1981.”

I disagree. I think that the people in charge of the Democrat party—and most, but not all, of the people who represent it—are essentially right-wing in their thinking about policies across the spectrum of politics. They are capitalists to the core. The revere wealth. They are essentially Hayekian in their economic thinking. This is a core belief that governs all of their other thinking. They are neoliberals. They are not failing to get another agenda done. They are trying to screw over people they deem useless just as much as Republicans do. There is nothing to save in that party.

“Clinton presided over the most significant ideological change in one of the two major parties in modern history, and that change was to drag the Democrats (even further) to the right. He said that “the era of Big Government is over,” which was one signpost in his broad effort to make it okay for Democrats to abandon compassion as a policy goal, to leave behind the very groups they supposedly spoke for. He made cruelty and callousness political virtues within the party.”

“Why bother to have two parties at all? Tongue-clucking Democrats love to scold people who equate the two parties, but by the end of Clinton’s administration there was nothing to distinguish the two. That’s why his ample personal flaws took center stage. What else would the GOP attack?”

It’s the same thing this election. Why not attack Trump’s stupid tariffs? Oh, because Harris is probably going to do pretty much the same thing. Why not attack Trump’s vicious attacks on Muslims in general and Palestinians generally? Oh, because Harris is trying to top him there, too.

There follows an utterly devastating summary of Bill Clinton’s record, both political and personal. Then this,

“[…] were Bill Clinton on the ballot today, Democrats would insist that I had to vote for him, to fundraise for him, to withhold all criticism of him, and to do so with a smile on my face. They would say that, since the alternative is Donald Trump, I have to grin and support a man whose politics and policies are utterly contrary to my own and whose personal conduct has been repetitively repellant. That’s the one principle they believe in above all others, the absolute ethical superiority of moral compromise. It’s an entire political party built on an addiction to violating your own personal morals and ideals in the name of appearing to be A Grown Up, a party of Jon Chaits who see no greater ethical purpose than proving to everyone what a mature being you are by selling out your most basic values. The Democrats have no way to get out of this; they have elevated compromise to such an exalted place that the intelligentsia of the party essentially defines seriousness as a willingness to compromise.”

I feel that this is a too-generous interpretation of the Democrat party. I don’t really believe that they have any principles to compromise with compromise. I can’t tell the difference between a party without any principles that lies about having them—and describes its justification in detail—and a party with principles that it consistently compromises by doing pretty much the exact opposite—but always with a reason that they can also describe in detail.

“This policy of Democrats acting like they’re sorry for having an agenda at all, building a party identity of self-loathing, has been the dominant one during my lifetime, and it’s demonstrably a failure. The Republicans are a despicable party, but they are a political party. The Democrats are an anti-party.”

Again, I like this analysis and I think that it’s mostly correct, although I think it’s helpful to point out that the crux of the disorder in the Democrat party is that their espoused principles are so at-odds with their lived principles. This is not because they don’t know what they want or that they’re confused; it’s because they want to get enormous and relatively easy funding from people who do not share those principles. There is no way to fight for a principled agenda while taking money from unprincipled sources. There is no way to fund the fight for the downtrodden with the money of those doing the trodding. That is the twist at the heart of the Democrat party. It’s a relatively easy and clear explanation, though. There’s no great mystery about it. The Democrat party might wish that it could fight for the principles that it used to have—and that it thinks it still has—but they would have the easy money and then convince themselves it will, eventually, someday, allow them to be able to fight the good fight. Instead, they delay the good fight so long that they’ll never get around to it. For all practical purposes, it’s the exact same as if they’d never had those principles in the first place.

“The anti-abortion people had a plan and unapologetically pursued it and, I’m sorry to say, succeeded in that goal. That’s what you’re supposed to do! That’s what all of this is supposed to be, the practice of politics to win electoral victories that give you the power to bring the country more in line with your moral values. You win political victories to make policy changes. You don’t win political victories to win more political victories. I mean, what’s the point?”

Agree 100%. This is how it’s supposed to work; they manipulated the system, but they also did politics for decades to get what they wanted. It was a terrible, stupid, mean, ego-driven, and paternalistic thing that they wanted, but you could learn a lot from their methods, their gumption, and their chutzpah.

“Democrats have elevated hating Stein voters, like Nader voters before them, into a communal value that’s far more important than hating Republicans. (Dick Cheney, welcome to The Resistance.) They never, ever ask why exactly the Democrats and their candidates are so weak, so flagrantly unpopular, that their elections could maybe sorta kinda be derailed by Ralph Nader and Jill Stein.

“I guess all that I want is for the Democrats to ask themselves, do you really want to be the party that’s opposed in principle to Americans voting according to their moral values? And if the answer is yes, what exactly do you think you’re getting in the bargain? What is all the compromise for?”

The answer to the first question is “yes” or, more precisely, “yes, because we don’t care what anyone else thinks, especially the filthy electorate” because the answer to the second question is “power and control of the empire for four more years. Filthy, filthy, filthy, filthy lucre. Pure and simple.”

If the Democrats Want to Win, Someday They’ll Need to Give People Something to Vote For by Freddie deBoer (Substack)

“Democrats think that getting your vote is essential, constantly tell you how important your vote is, act like getting your vote could turn the tide of world history. But they’re not willing to actually appeal to you to get your vote! That’s the one thing they won’t do, try to engage in respectful persuasion. Because sneering at lefties always comes first.”

“Why did I receive so many more arguments attacking Jill Stein, who I don’t care about, than I did arguments that the Democrats are actually good? Is that not bizarre? Does it not signal that you don’t actually think the Democrats are any good either?”

“I will say it again: it literally cannot both be true that lefties are too small in number for the Democrats to be worth appealing to and so many in number that we can blow a presidential election.”

“[…] until liberals and Democrats are willing to make a radical break from a scenario that allows conservatism to win even when Republicans lose, we’re all stuck. Maybe today marks the end of the Trump era. And then you’re staring down a Vivek Ramaswamy presidency in four years. Because Democrats stand for nothing. You can get mad at me. Or you can change the party.”

Episode 417: The White House Always Wins by TrueAnon (Patreon)

This was a very long but also very good episode. At about 01:30:00, the discussion turns to the candidates more concretely.

Trump is an incoherent maniac. Chaos.

Harris is a completely empty suit. She has revealed nothing but how stupid she seems, unable to chain words that mean anything together. She is either unwilling to tell us what she really thinks (because it’s appalling and would lose support) or is unable to express herself. Both are absolutely terrible and not any better than Trump.

⁠I don’t believe we’ve ever – or perhaps only rarely – heard Harris say what she actually thinks. Her persona consists of committee-approved talking points that don’t necessarily relate to what those talking points were last week. There is no through-line of principle of basic morality guiding any of it.

Every time I’ve heard her speak, it’s been utterly content-free or just inconsistent with espoused principles. It’s an illness that pervades both parties: Democrats are saving democracy, but also kicking Green party candidates off the ballots. Harris supports this. She was an utter harridan about Jill Stein. She sicced AOC on her.

We are left to believe that her platform differs from the most appalling details of Trump’s in nothing other than minor details that matter only to a fervent base that is so materially comfortable that they can afford to self-pleasure on the identity of the candidate.

It’s an utter fiasco, a shitshow, a clusterfuck. Anyone who expresses anything other than disdain for either candidate, either party, or anyone in the ruling class is to be immediately suspected of being a moron, having been brainwashed, being part of that ruling class, or an aspirant to reap some of the leavings from its table.

Both Trump and Harris are horrifying. I just don’t know how you look at a candidate like Trump and think: ‘like that, but with the other genitals.’

At about 02:08:00, they demolish the myth that a Harris would be “more receptive” to pressure. Are people are absolutely blind to the last year’s worth of pressure having had zero effect on the Biden administration’s policy in the Middle East. Even with the threat of losing the presidential election hanging over them, they were completely unwilling to budge even a millimeter on anything. What kind of a f@&king moron believes that they will budge once that pressure is off? That’s delusional on a level so deep that it’s stupidity. Bernie Sanders was peddling this line, for example, which just shows that he’s either completely compromised or a doddering senile old man like his best friend Biden.

At 2:10:00, they say

“Brace: People are like, ‘she’s going to lose because she’s not pro-Palestine.‘ Are you out of your mind? If she were pro-Palestine, this would be a landslide for Trump.
Liz: Yeah, this country is extremely pro-Israel.
Brace: People always say, ‘everyone secretly agrees with me, but they have to say something else’
Liz: … The secret majority … the silent majority …
Brace: This poll says that young people are dissatisfied with capitalism … are you out of your fucking mind? Have one of those people tell me who the president is.”

Stein Wins! by Ted Rall

“Shelly Jackson, a 37-year-old dental hygienist who has voted for both Democrats and Republicans, said she decided to vote for Stein after determining that she was unhappy with both Harris and Trump. “Neither of them had much to say, or at least not much to say that was credible or intelligent, about the biggest issues we face as a nation: climate change, stagnant wages, poverty, unaffordability of healthcare. After I did some research, I found third-party and independent candidates like Chase Oliver and Cornel West who were intelligent and thoughtful. Trump was obsessing over a murdered squirrel and Harris—even she didn’t know what she was saying. In the end, I went with Stein.””

Dear President Biden by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice)

“Commute the sentences of all federal death sentences to life in prison.

“Pardon all the people recommended for pardon by the DoJ pardon attorney. And probably a few more.

“Direct the DoJ to revisit all sentenced prisoners over the age of 55 for consideration of whether continued incarceration satisfies the parsimony clause.”

Hey, sounds good, Scott! Welcome back.

“Provide Ukraine with as much military aid as you’re authorized to provide, immediately, and remove all conditions on its use. Be a fucking ally rather than a micromanager of other people’s wars. Same with Israel, even though Israel has its own internal issues that need to be addressed. At least they can prevent a nuclear-powered Iran from blowing up Tel Aviv now, and New York later.”

Oh, Yeesh. You’re a wildly uninformed psycho who shouldn’t even bother having an opinion on foreign policy. Yikes. There’s stupid on your stupid. His next sentence is “End the idiocy of the fringe left.” Um, sure, OK.

Trump Wins The White House. Again. by Jonathan Pie (YouTube)

“[…] why America would vote for a convicted felon, a fraudster, a known liar, and adjudicated rapist who paid off a porn star with campaign finances and then lied about it […]”

This is funny and it’s all more-or-less true but it’s not even the worst of it. He ordered the murder of General Suleimani while president. He bombed Syria without reason while president. He ordered the drone-bombing of innocent people while president. He wielded sanctions like a truncheon. He didn’t shut down Guantanamo. He is virulently opposed to immigration and pledges to shut down the borders. He is an enthusiastic supporter of Israel’s genocide. He pledges to not only continue but expand the economic war on China specifically, and Asia, in general.

I could go on, but the question is, why don’t people list these crimes when talking about Trump? Killing thousands of innocent people is surely worse than some bookkeeping fraud?

Because none of the latter set of much more grievous crimes sets him apart from the Democrat party. They support all of that as well and just as enthusiastically. That’s all part of running the empire and is therefore—pardon the phrase—unimpeachable.

“Once again, the Democrats have absolutely failed to effectively address the concerns of millions of Americans, particularly the millions who voted for Trump before and just voted for him again. Kamala Harris has completely ignored a genuine beef these people have.

“A huge section of America thinks the state is corrupt and wields too much power over normal people’s lives and just serves the rich and the powerful. And they’re not wrong.

“Trump didn’t create this belief; he just used it. He harnessed it to his own ends. But he is the only person talking about these things. He’s voicing concerns that nobody else is and, when Donald Trump says he plans to dismantle the Deep State and reclaim democracy from Washington, that might sound chilling or perhaps a bit authoritarian. But to many normal, sane Americans, that sounds amazing. Taking a flamethrower to governmental institutions is a genuinely attractive offer to millions of Americans.

“It’s not about left or right or good versus evil. It’s not about MAGA. It’s not about religion or abortion. They just feel powerless. They feel the state doesn’t protect them from injustice; it just protects itself. And Kamala Harris has completely ignored the issue, handing Trump the keys to the White House, as well as the Senate, and possibly the House in the process, whilst thinking ‘we’re right and he’s wrong and that’s good enough for us. Shame on them.‘

“The feeling all across America is: ‘at least he’s going to do something; at least something will change.‘ If you’re going to go head-to-head with a man who is willing to lie through his teeth to get elected—who will say anything to get elected—then you better have something better to say yourself.”

• I’ve been telling people for years that Trump will be president again because there is no party in the U.S. willing to offer a compelling alternative that is actually different in any other than superficial ways.
• The Dems are more interested in power and wealth than in politics. The politics is just a means to an end. Same as Trump.
• The Democrats have learned nothing from 2016. They learned the wrong lessons from 2020. The red wave is pretty clear proof.
• Just because people don’t understand Trump’s charisma doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
• ⁠The Dems have a huge, self-constructed blind spot that has cost a lot.
• The Dems had a similarly democratic character in Bernie Sanders but … he’s fighting on the wrong side of the class war, so they kicked him twice.
• Bernie’s not perfect, perhaps not even great anymore (especially given his kowtowing to the Democrat party), but he would have wiped the floor with Trump in both 2016 and 2020. We’d have been in a better place if he’d been the candidate.
• At least now people can stop pretending that Kamala Harris is anything other than an empty suit, a corporate-lawyer-looking person from whom 85% of the population naturally recoiled (not an empirical measurement) who can’t express a single cogent thought.

4D Chess: Democrats Admit Trump Actually Won In 2020 And Is Now Unable To Serve Third Term (Babylon Bee)

That’s actually a great joke, BB. Congrats.

Tweet by Briahna Joy Gray (Reddit)

“If you were able to overlook a genocide and cast a vote for Harris, you already know how a conservative was able to overlook Trump’s extremism and vote for him.”

Journalism & Media

Democrats' 'Stolen' Election Claims | FLASHBACK by Matt Orfalea (YouTube)

This is an excellent recap of the election denialism from 2016. Donald Trump didn’t invent it but the denialism from 2016 has been utterly memory-holed (Wikipedia).

The Radicalization of Ta-Nehisi Coates by John-Baptiste Oduor (Jacobin)

“Whereas he was able to write in 2016 that “whiteness confers knowable, quantifiable privileges, regardless of class — much like ‘manhood’ confers knowable, quantifiable privileges, regardless of race,” in The Message, he starts from the premise that racial categories are far less fixed than they seem from the vantage point of the United States.”

Also because that statement is trash, utterly lacking in precision. Is something an advantage if you don’t use it? If you’re not in a position to profit from it? Did Coates mean “the advantages conferred that can also be used by a given person outweigh the disadvantages that weigh against that person”? If you’re a white male, you have certain advantages but, if you’re too poor or ugly, those advantages are wiped out and actually start to work against you, as everyone either sneers at your inability to cash in your advantage or assumes that you’re resentful because of how ugly and fat you are that they will preemptively discriminate against them.

“But where Coates distinguishes himself from other liberal critics of Israel is in his insistence that its failings are constitutive features of its existence as a Jewish state. The problem with Israel is, Coates writes, that it is a nation in which no “Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere.” The reason for this is that Israel is only a “democracy for the Jewish people,” in the same way, Coates suggests, that America throughout much of the twentieth century was only a democracy for whites.”

Does that distinguish Coates, though? There are a lot of people saying that ethnocracies cannot be demoncracies.

“[…] the discrepancy between the growing unease with Israel’s criminal behavior in Gaza”

It is criminal behavior, but it’s clearer to call it what it is: Genocide. “Criminal behavior” is mealy-mouthed. It’s like calling a violent rape “sexual overtures”.

“Even during the early years of the British mandate (1920–1948), a period unfortunately unmentioned by Coates, the demand of the most “progressive” wing of the Zionist movement — marginal figures like Hannah Arendt, Martin Buber, and Judah Magnes — was for Jewish control over immigration and land purchases in Palestine, despite the fact that the Jewish population of Palestine was less than a third of its total during this period. This “irredeemable minimum” requirement, in Arendt’s words, of the Zionist left in the early twentieth century was not tolerated by any Palestinian faction.”

TIL that Arendt’s limpid philosophy didn’t extend everywhere.

In Election Aftermath, Hollywood Smashes Records for Lack of Self-Awareness by Matt Taibbi (Racket News)

“Joe Rogan is the most influential media figure in America, and it’s not close. The current tally for his interview of Trump 12 days ago is 46,696,792 views. When he interviewed Edward Snowden, 38 million people turned in. Five years ago, 18.3 million listened to then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. JD Vance this year reached 15.3 million. No one in conventional media sniffs these numbers. For comparison’s sake, Anderson Cooper was CNN’s top performer in October, with an average primetime viewership of 890,000.”

“Everyone who’s done Rogan’s show travels to his studio in Texas and does three hours. It’s the deal. Harris didn’t decline, she just insisted Rogan travel to Washington and limit discussion to an hour. He passed. Remember, he didn’t need her. She needed him. Desperate to persuade men and independents, the Democratic candidate passed on reaching 45 or 50 million people outside the party bubble. That’s no trifle. It’s sending a powerful message that you don’t want those votes, especially when the same candidate didn’t hesitate to travel to be ritually tongue-bathed by Reichskomödiant Stephen Colbert or the weird sisters of The View, visited eight times.”

“This is what comedians like Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers are saying every time they do long routines mocking the dipshit hayseeds who support the evil one. Fallon just had to announce the Tonight Show — the Tonight Show — would only air four nights a week instead of five. Kimmel’s show is down 11% from five years ago, while the Tonight Show lost 41% of its audience, and Myers, who had to fire his band, was down 32% versus 2019.”

Labor

MLK: The reality of capitalism… (Reddit)

MLK − Capitalism thrives on the backs of the poor

The article Overcoming Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘three evils of society’ by Thomas W. Fraser (Resilience.org) confirms that MLK did actually say this.

“We have deluded ourselves,” argued King, “into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of Black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor — both Black and white.”

Economy & Finance

Gold price surging to new record highs calling into question role of the dollar by Nick Beams (WSWS)

““Something strange has happened to the price of gold over the past year,” he wrote. “In setting one record level after the other, it seems to have decoupled from its traditional historical influencers, such as interest rates, inflation and the dollar. Moreover, the consistency of its rise stands in contrast to fluctuations in pivotal geopolitical situations.””

“The US used its dominant economic might to fashion an international monetary system based on the dollar. It rejected a proposal by the chief British negotiator, John Maynard Keynes, for the establishment of an international currency, bancor. Just as the US fought to advance its interests, Keynes’ proposal was intended to defend the position of a declining British empire and curb the dominance of the US.”

How to tax billionaires by Thomas Piketty (Le Monde)

“[…] the sums amassed by the world’s wealthiest individuals over the last few decades are quite simply gigantic. Those who consider this a secondary or symbolic issue should take a look at the numbers. In France, the combined wealth of the 500 largest fortunes has grown by €1 trillion since 2010, rising from €200 billion to €1.2 trillion. In other words, all it would take is a one-time tax of 10% on this €1 trillion increase to bring in €100 billion, which is equal to all of the budget cuts the government is planning for the next three years.”

“[…] how would billionaires pay this 10% tax on their wealth increase? If they don’t make enough profit in a year, they’ll have to sell some of their shares – say 10% of their portfolio. If finding a buyer is challenging, the government could accept these shares as payment for taxes. If necessary, it could then sell these shares through various methods, such as offering employees to purchase them, which would increase their stake in the company. In all cases, net public debt will be reduced accordingly.”

The U.S. Has Failed Its Children – In the Most Unconscionable Ways by Pam and Russ Martens (Wall Street on Parade)

“[…] the National Association of Realtors released their annual Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. It showed that by the time Americans have saved enough money for a downpayment to buy their first home in America, they will be close to middle age. The study recorded the median age of first-time home buyers as the oldest in the history of the study, at 38 years of age. (In the 1980s, first-time home buyers were in their 20s.) At the same time the age of first-time home buyers was hitting a record high, the percentage of first-time buyers was hitting a record low – just 24 percent of the market in the latest survey. That is the lowest percentage share of first-time home buyers since the National Association of Realtors began conducting the survey in 1981.”

Science & Nature

Dangerous Hype: Big Tech’s Nuclear Lies by M.V. Ramana (CounterPunch)

“In the aftermath of catastrophic accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima, and in the face of its inability to demonstrate a safe solution to the radioactive wastes produced in all reactors, the nuclear industry has been using its political and economic clout to mount public relations campaigns to persuade the public that nuclear energy is an environmentally friendly source of power.”

You always lose me at catastrophic. No-one died from radiation at either Three-mile Island or Fukushima. We don’t have a solution for storing waste from fossil fuels either. Well, we do. We store it in the air, all around the planet. This brainless knee-jerk anti-nuclear attitude that fails to distinguish between nuclear power and the nuclear industry (in the west).

“This is the argument that the growth in data centres, propped up in part by the hype about generative artificial intelligence, has allowed proponents of nuclear energy to put forward. It remains to be seen whether this hype about generative AI actually materializes into a long-term sustainable business: see, for example, Ed Zitron’s meticulously documented argument for why OpenAI and Microsoft are simply burning billions of dollars and why their business model might “simply not be viable”.”

Why a Pint is Bigger in the UK than in the US by Brad Kelechava (ANSI Blog)

“Here is the breakdown of volume between the two countries:”

• The British Imperial fluid ounce is equal to 28.413 milliliters, while the US Customary fluid ounce is 29.573 ml.
• The British Imperial pint is 568.261 ml (20 fluid ounces), while the US Customary pint is 473.176 ml (16 fl oz).
• The British Imperial quart is 1.13 liters (40 fl oz), while the US Customary quart is 0.94 L (32 fl oz).
• The British Imperial gallon is 4.54 L (160 fl oz), while the US Customary gallon is 3.78 L (128 fl oz).

“While the American system of measurement often is referred to as the Imperial System, this usage is erroneous. The US, ever since the formative years of the New World-nation, has used the US Customary System. The Imperial System, alternatively, was established in 1824 for Great Britain and its colonies. Even today, decades after officially switching to SI (metric) units, volume in the UK is measured in British Imperial units.”

“[…] an American fluid ounce was defined originally as the volume occupied by an ounce of wine, while the Imperial fluid ounce was defined as the volume occupied by an ounce of water. This made the US Customary fluid ounce a little larger, since alcohol is less dense than water.”

Art & Literature

William Gibson 'The Peripheral' by Politics and Prose (YouTube)

At about 38:40 or so, someone asked about his process,

“Lady: Do you know where you’re going when you set out?

“Gibson: No, I don’t. And it’s when you ask me now, you’re asking somebody who’s been doing it for like 30 years or a little bit more, and I no longer know how I’m doing it. I just don’t. I don’t think of it. It’s like the story of the the old fiddle-maker and people said, ‘how do you make those fiddles?’ and he said, ‘I start with this block of wood and I take off everything that’s not the damned fiddle.‘”

That short story reminded me of a video I’d recently seen,

The Process of Making a Cello. A High-End Japanese Cello Crafted by One Artisan in Six Months. by ProcessX (YouTube)

At 42:45, he tries to describe his process anyway,

“You can get the the objects down and the room down and and get the characters down and you can’t get the characters to move around or you can’t get them out of the room because you just don’t know how. And there’s not really any way to teach anyone how to do that. You just have to keep doing it, until one day you get them out of the room and down the stairs and they’re in the street. And it’s people become people.

“I’ve never met anyone who became a good writer of fiction who hadn’t read a great deal of fiction. And we have to learn to become good readers. But we do it so young that we forget that it’s a complex cultural act that we had to learn to do, by trial and error.

“And becoming a writer is the same way. You just have to keep trying to do it. It’s one of those things—if you do it for like 300 hours, you’d be pretty competent. But most people are unwilling to ever put 300 hours into it.”

There are just some notes I made for a recent documentation review.

• A shepherd named Shepard shepherds data parameters

• Use “said” when you’re referring back to one or more items that you don’t want to list again. It’s a sort of fancy neutral pronoun to refer to the subject. E.g., Say you have the sentence

  “The parameters A, B, C, and D are shown to the user; after the user has chosen values for them, the application submits them.”

  Here, we’ve used “them” twice, which feels a touch awkward. We could instead spice things up with

  “The parameters A, B, C, and D are shown to the user; after the user has chosen values for said parameters, the application submits them.”

• Use “respectively” when you’re applying multiple values to previously named items. E.g.,

  “The user will calibrate A and B, setting them to appropriate input and output values, respectively.”

  You can also use “corresponding”, as in

  “The user will calibrate A and B, setting them to their appropriate corresponding input and output values.”

Technology

3D printing buildings without cement by Rupendra Brahambhatt (Ars Technica)

““3D printing can allow you to save some material because you can place material directly where it’s needed. However, at the same time, usually, you have a large proportion of mortars, additives, and accelerators in the material mix, which all make the CO 2 per volume very high,” Vasey explained. This isn’t the case with structures constructed using impact printing, as the method doesn’t require additives like cement and uses naturally occurring, less carbon-intensive materials. However, the researchers currently use 1 to 2 percent of a mineral stabilizer, which is less harmful and more recyclable than cement. “But in the future, we don’t want to use any additives or stabilizers at all. Our method could be completely circular, meaning that the parts could be deconstructed and reused in future buildings without going to landfill,” Vasey told Ars Technica.”

Programming

Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone by Ulysse Carion (SSOReady)

“With computers, we project the Gregorian system into the future and past, which is called the proleptic Gregorian calendar and isn’t historically accurate but nobody really cares except Russian revolution nerds.

“This calendar system is pretty much good enough, and barring any rationalist coups d’etat, is the one we’ll be stuck with for a long time. It does one thing well: it’s very good at keeping the sun at the same place in the sky across the years. It doesn’t let the months drift around the seasons like the Roman calendar did.

“Technically, this “keep the sun roughly in the same place whenever it’s the same time-of-day” is called “mean solar time”. And that’s why GMT, Greenwich Mean Time, is called that way. It’s about the mean solar time of the English observatory in Greenwich.”

“You (and by you I mean your cloud provider) can just run your clocks slower around the time of the leap second, and pretend to everyone else over NTP that their clocks are running fast. This is called leap smearing.”

“(Aside: All this stuff comes from POSIX. GNU’s docs about the POSIX TZ env var, which TZIF builds on, are the best I know of online for this stuff.)”

“The 7200-second, i.e. 2-hour, jump is Antarctica/Troll. Fitting.”

<+00>0<+02>-2,M3.5.0/1,M10.5.0/3

“So, during the winter (i.e. the northern summer) they use Norway time? But there are like 6 people over the winter at Troll? Do these 6 souls appreciate their contribution to software esoterica? I hope they do. Apparently they use like four different times during the year down there in practice, but there’s no syntax to express that.”

“Australia/Lord_Howe, which has a powerful 30-minute DST transition:”

<+1030>-10:30<+11>-11,M10.1.0,M4.1.0

“10h30m ahead of UTC standard, 11h DST. Love this for them. Running cron jobs on an hourly basis doesn’t in practice have very weird interactions with DST. Everywhere else on the planet, every 60 minutes you’re back to the same spot on the clock. Except Lord Howe Island. Heroes. On the first Sunday of October, a 60-minute timegap only puts you halfway around the clock. All your cron jobs are now staggered relative to the local wall clock.”

“[…] almost every standard (except ISO8601, whatever) is just a file, and you can read it. You are smart. You can do it. Embrace the weirdness of Greenland’s daylight savings. Believe in yourself.”

Unsafe Rust Is Harder Than C by Chad Austin

“[…] uses spinlocks which look great in microbenchmarks but have no place in userspace software.”

“The pinned-aliasable crate solves a related problem: how do we define self-referential data structures with mutable references that do not miscompile? Read the motivation in the crate’s doc comments. It’s a situation required by async futures, which are self-referential and thus pinned, but have no desugaring.”

This is one of those paragraphs that are so jargon-filled that it is impenetrable to anyone outside of the area of interest. “mutable”, “crate”, “async”, “pinned”, etc.

ExecutionContext vs SynchronizationContext by Stephen Toub on January 27, 2021 (Microsoft DevBlogs)

“ExecutionContext needs to flow from the code issuing the await through to the continuation delegate’s execution. That’s handled automatically by the Framework. When the async method is about to suspend, the infrastructure captures an ExecutionContext. The delegate that gets passed to the awaiter has a reference to this ExecutionContext instance and will use it when resuming the method. This is what enables the important “ambient” information represented by ExecutionContext to flow across awaits.”

“My expectation is valid if SynchronizationContext doesn’t flow as part of ExecutionContext. If it does flow, however, I will be sorely disappointed. Task.Run captures ExecutionContext when invoked, and uses it to run the delegate passed to it. That means that the UI SynchronizationContext which was current when Task.Run was invoked would flow into the Task and would be Current while invoking DownloadAsync and awaiting the resulting task. That then means that the await will see the Current SynchronizationContext and Post the remainder of asynchronous method as a continuation to run back on the UI thread. And that means my Compute method will very likely be running on the UI thread, not on the ThreadPool, causing responsiveness problems for my app.”

Measure What You Optimize by Cliff L. Biffle (Cliffle)

“The compiler has noticed that we initialized the array and then overwrote it completely. The zeros stored to the array were dead stores, and the compiler applied dead store elimination to get rid of them. This is not unique to rustc: back-porting this change to the C program shows that gcc does the same thing.

“For small and predictably-sized structures — the sort of thing you’d allocate on the stack — it’s almost never a performance win to use uninitialized memory. Dead store elimination is the sort of thing modern compilers can do while wearing a blindfold and riding a unicycle.”

“The answer comes back to local reasoning. Since the function is missing the unsafe modifier, and contains no unsafe blocks in its body, I don’t need to read the rest of the program to tell that this function can’t…”

• Dereference a null pointer,
• Read off the end of an array,
• Use uninitialized memory inappropriately,

“Optimizations usually add complexity. The complexity is often worthwhile. But if the “optimization” doesn’t improve performance, then we’ve just added complexity for no good reason. In the case of optimizations that do subtle things with memory, there’s also a real risk that the added complexity introduces crashing bugs and security flaws.

“Unless you’re writing assembly language, your program is not a list of literal instructions that a computer will obey. It will be analyzed, massaged, optimized, scheduled, etc. by an intermediary first — in the case of Rust and C, that’s the compiler.

“This is why, if you have demanding performance requirements, it’s critical to check that your optimizations have done what you expect, by looking — directly or indirectly — at the compiler’s output.”

Fun

Tru…

This was puzzle on Wednesday after the election. If we hadn’t already eliminated the “M”, I could have sworn that the NYT was trolling me.

Video Games

Build-a-Brrr by Noah Caldwell-Gervais (The Baffler)

“Frostpunk 2 rejects these elements in pursuit of a grungier, sharper edge. By pitching itself beyond contemporary settings into a post-apocalyptic world of intense scarcity and deathly cold, it goads players into creating cities more brittle and flawed than anything within the genre standard, subjected to pressures designed to shatter them completely.”

“In a scenario called “The Refugees,” players manage a much smaller—and poorer—population of working-class families. The settlement is eventually inundated by the disenfranchised upper-class of the pre-apocalypse, now starving and dressed in rags. Accommodating the refugees would strain the city to its breaking point but turning them away is a massacre—at the end of the world, then, does every life count, does forgiveness matter?”

“Frostpunk 2 remains a unique in its resonance with the world’s absurdity: choosing between political factions who both have positions I revile; navigating a body politic that will never unite behind long-term good when there are short-term gains to be made; and reckoning with the fact that I will make selfish choices for my own comfort and insulation against the coldness of the world.”

“Take Snowpiercer and the novel on which it is based, whose ice-age steampunk aesthetic inspired much of Frostpunk. In both, our survival depends on an engine that runs on blood; we’re all stuck on this train together and have to keep it on the tracks. Snowpiercer concludes that it is better to let the train crash than swallow the lies of our rulers. Frostpunk 2 is much more skeptical. It posits that once survival is no longer the only consideration, most of us would be right back on our bullshit.”