<n>Below are links to articles, highlighted passages<fn>, and occasional annotations<fn> for the week ending on the date in the title, <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=4085">enriching the raw data</a> from <a href="http://www.instapaper.com/starred/rss/1890855/5c1g08eoy9skhOr3tCGqTQbZes">Instapaper Likes</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/mvonballmo">Twitter</a>. They are intentionally succinct, else they'd be <i>articles</i> and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.</n> <ft><b>Emphases</b> are added, unless otherwise noted.</ft> <ft>Annotations are only lightly edited and are largely <i>contemporaneous</i>.</ft> <h>Table of Contents</h> <ul> <a href="#politics">Public Policy & Politics</a> <a href="#journalism">Journalism & Media</a> <a href="#labor">Labor</a> <a href="#economy">Economy & Finance</a> <a href="#medicine">Medicine & Disease</a> <a href="#art">Art & Literature</a> <a href="#technology">Technology</a> <a href="#llms">LLMs & AI</a> <a href="#sports">Sports</a> </ul> <h id="politics">Public Policy & Politics</h> <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1epihtg/just_own_it/" author="" source="Reddit">Just own it</a> <img src="{att_link}genocide_isn_t_a_dealbreaker.webp" href="{att_link}genocide_isn_t_a_dealbreaker.webp" align="none" caption="Genocide isn't a dealbreaker" scale="50%"> <bq>Not all <s>Trump</s><s>Biden</s>Harris supporters are <s>racist</s>pro-genocide, but all of them decided that <s>racism</s>genocide isn't a deal-breaker. Own it.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/myth-of-iron-dome-costly-lie-behind-israel-impenetrable-defense/288075/" source="Mint Press News" author="Robert Inlakesh">Myth of The Iron Dome: The Costly Lie Behind Israel's 'Impenetrable' Defense</a> <bq>While Israel claims that its Iron Dome air defense system intercepts between 90 to 99% of targets, Professor Emeritus Theodore Postal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) offers a starkly different assessment . <b>“I would say that the intercept rate is at best 4 or 5 percent,”</b> Postal said in an interview with the Boston Globe last October. He added that the interception rate is likely as low as one percent. Postal is known for debunking the effectiveness of the U.S. Patriot missile system. <b>After analyzing evidence, he found that the air defense system had managed to shoot down zero to one Iraqi Scud missiles fired at Saudi Arabia and Israel.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=119303" source="NachDenkSeiten" author="Jens Berger">Die Vermögensverteilung ist das Kernproblem – ein lesenswertes Interview im SPIEGEL, leider hinter der Bezahlschranke</a> <bq>Die Geschwindigkeit der Umverteilungsspirale von unten nach oben nimmt seitdem immer mehr an Fahrt auf. Steigende Immobilien- und Aktienpreise werden dabei von den klassischen Medien als Zeichen eines wirtschaftlichen Booms wahrgenommen. Das ist absurd, führen beispielsweise steigende Immobilienpreise doch nur dazu, dass es für die Mittelschicht noch schwerer geworden ist, sich selbst ein Haus zu bauen oder zu kaufen. <b>Stevenson spricht in diesem Kontext von einer „Enteignung der Mittelschicht und einem Übergang der Mittelschicht in Armut“. Schuld daran seien die Reichen und Mächtigen, die jegliches Maß verloren haben und nicht verstehen, dass sie den Ast absägen, auf dem auch sie selbst sitzen.</b></bq> <bq>Stevenson: <b>Reiche versuchen, ihren Reichtum und ihre Macht zu vergrößern. Aber sie sind dumm. Denn die Geschwindigkeit, mit der sie die Mittelschicht enteignen und die Lebensstandards für normale Leute verringern, ist so hoch, dass sie die westlichen Gesellschaften destabilisieren.</b> Und das sind dieselben Gesellschaften, die ihnen einen unglaublich luxuriösen Lebensstandard bieten. Wenn sie weise wären, würden sie versuchen, das soziale Konstrukt zu bewahren. Aber <b>die meisten reichen Leute sind einfach ungesund besessen davon, reicher zu werden.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://reason.com/2024/08/06/america-criminalizes-too-much-and-punishes-too-much/" source="Reason" author="Neil Gorsuch">America criminalizes too much and punishes too much</a> <bq>Today, sentencing changes like these can propel some sentences into the stratosphere. A defense attorney in Florida told The Economist that, looking at his clients' prison terms, it appeared to him that the United States was conducting <b>"an experiment in imprisoning first-time non-violent offenders for periods of time previously reserved only for those who had killed someone." One of his clients who had been convicted of fraud was sentenced to 845 years.</b></bq> <bq><b>Another group found that one out of every seven of those now incarcerated is serving a life sentence—more people in total than were serving any sentence in 1970.</b> And while crime tends to be a "young man's game," 30 percent of those serving life sentences were found to be over the age of 55.</bq> <bq><b>Our incarceration rate is not only eight times as high as the median rate in western European democracies, it is higher than the rates found even in Turkmenistan and Rwanda.</b> As in those of many states, federal prisons have been operating for years around or above 100 percent capacity. And those who emerge from our prisons often confront collateral consequences that haunt them for years—including the loss of voting rights, licenses, public benefits, jobs, and access to housing.</bq> <bq>As the late legal scholar William Stuntz once put it, <b>"too much law amounts to no law at all,"</b> for "when legal doctrine makes everyone an offender, the relevant offenses have no meaning independent of law enforcers' will. <b>The formal rule of law yields to the functional rule of official discretion."</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=329931" source="CounterPunch" author="Linda Pentz Gunter">Former IDF Sniper Says Dehumanization of Palestinians and a Rhetoric of Hate is Driving Israel’s Forever War in Gaza</a> <bq>“<b>You have to understand, Israelis we don’t see Gaza, we don’t see the streets of Gaza, we don’t see Gazans, we don’t hear about what is happening inside Gaza</b>,” Weiman said,</bq> <bq>At a talk Weiman gave to 18-year-old high schoolers in Tel Aviv just before traveling to Washington, <b>“they asked me to explain to them what is the Gaza Strip? Who lives over there? What is going on over there because we don’t have any idea.”</b></bq> <bq>“<b>The goal in that operation was to create an atmosphere where the Palestinians would attack us and then us as IDF snipers and soldiers can shoot them back</b>,” Weiman said. “It was the day to day routine of the Israeli occupation.”</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/10/israels-torture-archipelago/" author="Jeffrey St. Clair" source="CounterPunch">Israel’s Torture Archipelago</a> <bq>This week Turkey joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel before the International Court of Justice and its Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan warned the US and the European Union that: <b>”The owners of Israel must now take Israel by the leash and stop it. The region is no longer in a position to tolerate further Israeli provocations.”</b></bq> <hr> <bq>Kamala Harris responded to Gaza protesters chanting during a rally in Michigan: “You know what? If you want Donald Trump, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” <b>This is precisely how Harris blew her primary campaign. Get her off script and the paternalism and condescension erupt in full view.</b> Like Humphrey, Harris is tied to Biden’s worst policies and shows no inclination to break from them, almost certainly because she supports them.</bq> It's how Bush was. It's how Biden is. It's how Trump is, except for him, it's somehow a strength with his voters. But this kind of this won't fly for people who consider themselves to be empathetic. <bq>The anti-genocide protesters were right to interrupt Harris’s pre-fab speech, because it threw the Vice President off-script and made her give a genuine response on an issue she’s been deliberately opaque about. Now <b>she’s at least partially revealed herself and people can make a more a better assessment of her character and tolerance for an ongoing genocide.</b></bq> Terrible character. High tolerance for other people's pain, if it's politically expedient. No change. <bq>Ex-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, <b>“The Ben Gvirs and the Smotrichs” are “yearning” for an Iranian response, as massive as possible, that will lead to a regional war</b> they could use for ethnic cleansing, to “force out all the Palestinians from the territories.”</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/13/zqrc-a13.html" author="Andre Damon" source="WSWS">The political significance of the NATO-Ukrainian attack on Kursk</a> <bq>The Kursk offensive is of limited military effectiveness, but its political significance is substantial. <b>It is an immense political humiliation for the Putin regime and a demonstration that NATO has no “red lines” in its escalation against Russia.</b> The United States, Germany and the European Union have endorsed the Ukrainian offensive, all the while claiming not to have been involved in its planning and coordination. Such claims of NATO non-involvement are absurd. The attack comes just one month after the NATO summit in Washington, which formally transferred oversight of the arming and training of the Ukrainian army directly to NATO. <b>Ukraine’s Kursk offensive, using American and German tanks and long-range missiles, is in reality being coordinated from Washington, Berlin and London minute by minute.</b></bq> I wonder to what degree this is being allowed in order to show very clearly that NATO's purpose is to invade Russia. Putin's election is several months past. There will be political repercussions but no actual regime change. <bq>On Sunday, the Atlantic Council think tank published a blog post assessing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s response to the attack: Ukraine’s offensive is now posing serious questions about the credibility of Russia’s saber-rattling and the rationality behind the West’s abundance of caution. After all, the Ukrainian army’s current invasion of Russia is surely the reddest of all red lines. <b>If Russia was at all serious about a possible nuclear escalation, this would be the moment to make good on its many threats.</b> In fact, Putin has responded by seeking to downplay the invasion while pretending that everything is still going according to plan.</bq> Translation: Putin's a fucking pussy for not having used tactical nukes yet. The people at the Atlantic Council are absolute demons on Earth. And what if Putin holds back and doesn't use nukes? Will that not prove, in a sense, that Russia is a greater believer in humanity than NATO? How will NATO be justified in attacking a foe that has stricter moral guardrails than they have? If Russia's bluff were to be called and NATO were to storm in and dismantle it, would that be a good result? Would the dismantling of a nation unwilling to destroy humanity by an alliance that couldn't have cared less about risking humanity be a good thing? Of course not. But only journalists and historians generations from now will be allowed to parse this obvious conclusion from the situation. The ones today are all paid to write something else. They know which side their bread is buttered on. <bq>The NATO powers are all but daring Russia to make good on this threat, an action that could spark not only full-scale war between Russia and NATO, but a thermonuclear exchange capable of destroying all of humanity.</bq> No-one who has any influence cares. The prizes they seek for themselves are more important. They simply assume that anything bad that happens will continue to happen to other people while they continue to fail upwards, riding a wave of immorality to positions of ever-increasing comfort in a world that rewards stupidity, hypocrisy, mendaciousness, and sociopathy. <bq>[...] <b>the imperialist powers are not interested in negotiation. Rather, they are determined to dominate and to compel Russia to accept American dictates.</b> All of Putin’s pleading for the imperialist powers to be “rational” only increases their recklessness. <b>They are determined to militarily crush Russia, overturn its government and ultimately dissolve the country, using Yugoslavia as a model</b>, into a group of warring statelets that can be exploited by imperialism.</bq> This has been the goal since the early 90s. It has neither changed nor swerved from its course since then. The anti-Russia sentiment has been strong for decades and has only increased in the last eight years. <bq>Putin himself is under enormous pressure from a substantial section of the Russian oligarchy that wants an agreement with NATO that will allow them to access their Western bank accounts and their yachts. <b>This social layer fears the radicalization of the working class much more than it fears NATO.</b></bq> This is also a correct analysis. The Russian State represents its people as little as most NATO states represent theirs. Wars are waged in the interests of the rich using the poor, against their interests. <bq>[...] <b>it has become clear that imperialism is, indeed, very real, and it has selected Russia as a target for destruction.</b> There is no solution to the escalation of imperialist war outside of the building of a mass anti-war movement, based on the traditions of the October Revolution, uniting the workers of Europe, Asia, the Americas and <b>the whole world in the struggle to overturn the capitalist system that is the root cause of imperialist war.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/1erncva/the_long_term_effect_of_voting_for_the_lesser_evil/li0jb04/" author="notyourbrobro10" source="Reddit">Comment on The long term effect of voting for the “lesser evil”</a> <img src="{att_link}the_long-term_effects_of_voting_for_the_lesser_evil.webp" href="{att_link}the_long-term_effects_of_voting_for_the_lesser_evil.webp" align="none" caption="The long-term effects of voting for the lesser evil" scale="75%"> <bq quote-style="none">"Okay I'm fine with moving ever so slightly right if it'll keep me safe from the consequences of the drug war my government started on purpose, and declared before there was an issue with drug related crime as an excuse to persecute black people" "Okay I'm fine with moving ever so slightly rightward if it will protect me from Islamic people after the vicious and unwarranted attacks on American soil after decades of interference in foreign affairs in the ME necessitated the radicalization of a group to achieve autonomy from the West" "Okay I'm fine with moving ever so slightly rightward if it will protect me from the reality of the opioid zombies capitalism created by selling oversight for prescription drug access to the highest bidder" "WHY ARE WE FACING A FAR RIGHT EVENTUALITY WHERE WE BECOME NAZIS??? HOW DO I STOP IT??? Okay I'm fine with moving ever so slightly to the right if it protects me from moving further right into my eventual comeuppance I've fully earned by supporting ever previous rightward shift."</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/15/nvin-a15.html" author="Jordan Shilton" source="WSWS">Washington intensifies preparations for Middle East war with $20 billion arms sale to Israel</a> <bq><b>The decision by the United States to supply arms worth $20 billion to Israel one day after announcing the deployment of a second aircraft carrier strike group to the region marks a further step towards a Middle East war.</b> Backed by the entire ruling class, the Biden administration is determined to wage a catastrophic conflict targeting Iran, which it views as one front in a global eruption of imperialist violence against its rivals, which can only be stopped by the independent political mobilisation of the international working class.</bq> <bq>After facilitating Israel’s genocide in Gaza for over 10 months, the Biden administration plans to deliver over <b>50 F-15 fighter jets, advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles, 120mm tank ammunition, high explosive mortars and tactical vehicles. The delivery of the full fleet of jets is anticipated to take five years to complete.</b></bq> <bq><b>American imperialist strategists hope through war to fundamentally restructure the Middle East in Washington’s interests at the expense of its rivals.</b> Eliminating Tehran-aligned Hezbollah in Lebanon and Pushing Iranian forces out of neighbouring Syria would undermine the pro-Iranian Assad regime and open up Russian forces at their only Mediterranean naval base in Tartus to direct attack. Washington also hopes through war to undermine China’s increasing influence in the region, as shown by its brokering of a truce between Iran and Saudi Arabia last year, and its growing economic presence. <b>But these hopes are delusional. American imperialism has already killed millions of people across the Middle East and Central Asia during three decades of uninterrupted war</b>, and laid waste to entire societies. The devastation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria did nothing to reverse <b>American imperialism’s precipitous economic decline vis-a-vis its competitors</b> [...]</bq> The people in charge aren't truly interested in the long-term continuation of American Empire. They are interested in extracting from the American empire what they can for themselves. Promoting the American empire is a means to that end, as the channels through arms companies, energy companies, etc. are well-greased. <hr> <a href="https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-no-prisoners-end-of-the-road-election/" author="James Howard Kunstler" source="Clusterfuck Nation">The No Prisoners, End of the Road Election</a> <bq>So, stand by now to see whether Kamala Harris and Tim Walz come out of next week’s convention Mixmaster the same way they went in: as bona fide candidates. At some point Ms. Harris will have to demonstrate some fitness for high office besides being a go-go dancer and a laugh riot. Tim Walz acts so unhinged in front of every audience that I expect the campaign to stuff him in a broom closet when the convention is over — should he actually still be on the ticket when all is said and done. <b>It seems at this point that the brooding Matron of Chappaqua will never get her “turn” in the White House after all. It must gall Hillary to see history change her out for an equity hire with half a brain.</b></bq> <h id="journalism">Journalism & Media</h> <a href="https://rall.com/comic/to-save-democracy-switch-out-puppets" author="Ted Rall" source="">To Save Democracy, Switch Out Puppets</a> <img src="{att_link}ted_rall_8-12-24.jpg" href="{att_link}ted_rall_8-12-24.jpg" align="none" caption="Ted Rall 8-12-24" scale="50%"> <bq><b>Woman:</b> A president propped up by hidden puppetmasters through years of dementia has stepped aside in favor of his vice president - who becomes the nominee without campaigning or making promises or winning a single vote! <b>Man:</b> How is this OK? <b>Woman:</b> To save democracy!</bq> <hr> <a href="https://rall.com/comic/just-like-biden" author="Ted Rall" source="">Just Like Biden</a> <img src="{att_link}ted_rall_-_8-14-24.jpg" href="{att_link}ted_rall_-_8-14-24.jpg" align="none" caption="Ted Rall - 8-14-24" scale="50%"> <bq>Things have been moving so fast, we just realized that Kamala still hasn't given an interview. Nor has she held a press conference. She always uses a teleprompter. So, I've been wondering: Is she senile too?</bq> <hr> <a href="https://rall.com/comic/blind-faith-in-harris-walz" author="Ted Rall" source="">Blind Faith in Harris/Walz</a> <img src="{att_link}ted_rall_-_8-16-24.jpg" href="{att_link}ted_rall_-_8-16-24.jpg" align="none" caption="Ted Rall - 8-16-24" scale="50%"> <bq><b>Man:</b> The presidential candidate who hasn't told us her issue opinions now has a veep we've never heard of! <b>Woman:</b> "They" say he's a good progressive. Who says religion is dead?! I believe! <b>Other man:</b> Hello, Mr. Phish! I got your text. Want my credit card number? Kamala Harris, a candidate who has yet to share her policy positions, has selected Tim Walz, an obscure Midwestern governor Democrats are being told is progressive.</bq> This is a good reason why there's so much scamming, so many security leaks, so much phishing, and so much identity theft in the U.S.: in order to maintain the myths of the nation, the populace is so inculcated with propaganda that it has no idea what's true anymore. It has no idea who's an authority. It just inhales and regurgitates anything it hears. <hr> <a href="https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/nobody-would-vote-for-any-of-this" author="Caitlin Johnstone" source="Substack">Nobody Would Vote For Any Of This Bullshit Without Extensive Manipulation</a> <bq>[...] you’ve got candidates like Jill Stein saying normal, sane and common sense things about peace and justice while being framed as an extremist lunatic by the consent manufacturers of the mainstream press. And <b>when Stein loses in this aggressively manipulated information environment within this aggressively manipulated electoral system, it will be framed as evidence that her politics were seen as too fringe and kooky for the mainstream public.</b></bq> <bq>Whenever I talk about this dynamic during a high-profile election season I am always inundated with a deluge of knee jerk point-missers asking “Well who SHOULD we vote for then??”, <b>which is kind of like Morpheus telling Neo he’s been living his whole life in the matrix and Neo going, “Okay but how do I get my boss to give me a raise in my cubicle job where I work?”</b> It doesn’t matter, Neo. The whole thing’s an illusion. What matters is getting people to open their eyes to this reality so that real meaningful action can be taken.</bq> <bq><b>If you really grasp what’s being pointed to here, you won’t keep getting swept up in the mass psychosis of election season hysteria, and party politics won’t have any gravitational pull on your mind.</b> Instead, your focus will be on helping people to realize that this is all a carefully manufactured illusion, because until enough of us are awake to the real world, there’ll be no chance of using the power of our numbers to overthrow the tyrants who’ve been pulling the wool over our eyes this entire time.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/fake-revolutions-everywhere-you-look" author="Caitlin Johnstone" source="Substack">Fake Revolutions Everywhere You Look</a> <bq><b>They serve up fake revolutions to stop you from waging a real one.</b> Here, fall in line with this billionaire military-industrial complex plutocrat, he’s leading the resistance. Here, fall in line with this oligarch-backed presidential candidate, he’s waging a populist war against the Deep State to Make America Great Again. Don’t like right wingers? No problem! <b>Join progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders and AOC who’ll support the same establishment interests as Elon Musk and Donald Trump</b>, but they’ll do so while paying lip service to social justice and equality to make you feel nice inside.</bq> <bq>The trick is to ignore the words and watch the actions. <b>Is someone being elevated to prominence by the very establishment they claim to oppose? If they are, they’re not its enemy.</b> Are they taking meaningful concrete actions which go against the planet-dominating interests of the US-centralized empire we live under? If they’re not, then they’re not part of any meaningful “resistance”. <b>Are they playing to either side of the two-party scam, both sides of which are complete tools of imperial control? If they are, then they’re not an enemy of the powerful.</b> Are they constantly feeding into partisan feuding and divisive culture war wedge issues which threaten the powerful in no meaningful way? If they are, then the powerful are cool with them.</bq> <bq>If we can get enough people ignoring the sideshow distractions and focusing on the actual machine that is the real source of their discontent, we stand a real chance at dismantling this thing. <b>Letting the revolutionary zeitgeist get bogged down in fake revolutions waged by fake resistance fighters will keep us chasing shadows until these bastards get us all killed.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/he-had-two-babies" author="Caitlin Johnstone" source="Substack">He Had Two Babies</a> <bq><b>Here, in this dystopian civilization, it’s considered rude to even bring it up.</b> [genocide] Here in Australia the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has canceled the performance of acclaimed pianist Jayson Gillham after <b>he dedicated a piece to the historically unprecedented number of journalists who have been killed in Gaza since October.</b> The MSO called this dedication “an intrusion of personal political views on what should have been a morning focused on a program of works for solo piano,” adding that <b>“The MSO understands that his remarks have caused offence and distress and offers a sincere apology.”</b> “Offence and distress.” At a dedication to murdered journalists. At a concert hall.</bq> <bq><b>Here in this fake, fraudulent civilization, we ignore the screaming.</b> We ignore the screaming and we go to concert halls in our best dress and our finest jewelry and <b>demand an apology if anyone around us should make us feel uncomfortable with our support for a murderous apartheid state that is currently conducting a genocide.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-empire-is-the-real-enemy" author="Caitlin Johnstone" source="Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix">The Empire Is The Real Enemy</a> <bq>[...] telling someone who’s complaining about systemic problems to change their circumstances as an individual is just telling them to <b>make sure it’s someone else at the bottom of the societal pyramid instead of them.</b> Even if the person making the complaint got a better-paying job than the one they had, their old job would be filled with someone else who would find themselves struggling to make ends meet in the same way. <b>Our entire capitalist system is built on the premise of the existence of a permanent underclass of exploited and underpaid laborers</b>, and an individual moving out of that underclass doesn’t change the existence of that underclass. It’s like if someone radioed for help saying “Our ship sank and we are drowning at sea!” and was told, “Okay well just climb on top of your fellow passengers so that they drown instead of you.” That’s why I say this attitude is sociopathic. <b>How broken does your sense of empathy have to be for you to see “Just make sure someone else is being abused by our systems instead of you” as a valid response to complaints about systemic problems?</b> How devoid of basic human compassion do you have to be to be satisfied with that kind of position?</bq> <bq>Until election season the leftier end of the political spectrum in the US was pretty unified in opposing the Gaza genocide. <b>Now that November draws closer as the Democrats run a genocidal candidate, there’s a split between those who oppose genocide and those who just want to feel nice about themselves.</b></bq> They can plead ignorance but they better have the receipts. <bq>This split emerges time and time again in western politics, and it’s ultimately a divide between people who seek an end to the warmongering US-centralized empire and <b>those who just want the empire to have a kinder, more diplomatic face so that they can feel nice feelings about the political status quo in their country.</b></bq> <bq>The progressive Democrats and the real anti-imperialist leftists have a lot of shared smaller goals and wind up on the same side of many common issues, but <b>in the big picture they are still squarely at odds with each other, because one seeks the end of the empire and one seeks to maintain it.</b> Their ultimate goals are diametrically opposed, which will keep being highlighted every time <b>those goals come into conflict with each other.</b></bq> <bq>Trump’s presidency oversaw huge new cold war escalations against Russia, genocidal atrocities and deliberate starvation in Yemen, brutal new starvation sanctions on nations like Venezuela, Iran and Syria, brinkmanship with Iran, massively expanded bombing campaigns, turning the situation with Israel into an incendiary tinderbox, and the arrest of Julian Assange. But <b>if you ask the average American liberal what was the worst thing Trump did during his time in office, they’ll start babbling about Russian collusion and insurrections and a conspiracy to end American democracy.</b> They spent the entire time ignoring all of Trump’s worst crimes and <b>shrieking hysterically about pretend nonsense and rude tweets.</b></bq> This is 100% the point. We just met some vocal Kamala Harris supporters who probably didn't even wouldn't have remembered who she was two months ago. They have no idea what she stands for but they're super gung-ho about her beating Trump. Because Trump is 100% evil. They have no idea why, though. They don't blame Trump for all of the evil shit that he did <i>because they actually approve of that stuff.</i> That's why they 100% don't care that Kamala would do that stuff, too. They hate Trump for all of the pretend reasons that they've been ordered to hate him for by the media, just like the now, suddenly, love Kamala Harris because they've been ordered to love her by the media. <bq><b>And it’s just as bad with Trump’s supporters, who generally have no idea that Trump even did those things.</b> They believe he spent four years “fighting the Deep State”, waging a brave populist revolution against the establishment to Make America Great Again. <b>They’re just as clueless as the Democrats as to what Trump actually did</b> [...]</bq> I don't give them that much credit. I think that they're actually aware of those things but, just like the Democrats, they actually <i>approve of the evil stuff.</i> <hr> <a href="https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/democrats-are-pigs" author="Caitlin Johnstone" source="Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix">Democrats Are Pigs</a> <bq>This idea that professors shouldn’t discuss “politics” in class with regard to an active genocide, or that a pianist deserves to have his concert canceled because he expressed “political views” by dedicating a piece to the journalists who’ve been killed in Gaza, or <b>that we shouldn’t bring up Gaza in polite company because it’s talking about “politics” — these are symptoms of a civilization that has gone stark, raving mad.</b> Our visceral response to what we are witnessing is no more “political” than our reaction to someone stomping on puppies would be “political”. This isn’t one of those “oh yeah well you have your opinion and I have mine and that’s cool” things. <b>Human beings are being butchered by the thousands in full view of the whole world. You don’t get to run cover for this by filing it away under the label of political opinion.</b></bq> <bq>Saying Iran and Hezbollah should not retaliate when Israel goes on an assassination spree in the capital cities of their countries is exactly the same as telling the world that <b>Israel gets to kill whoever they want whenever they want with no consequences.</b></bq> <bq><b>The only way to believe Democrats are significantly better than Republicans</b> or vice-versa is to both (A) be <b>unable to distinguish actions from words</b> and (B) to completely <b>ignore foreign policy.</b></bq> <h id="labor">Labor</h> <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/13/dock-a13.html" author="John Conrad" source="WSWS">Dockworker union issues 60-day strike notice ahead of potential walkouts on US East Coast</a> <bq><b>A strike would shut down 6 of the 10 busiest ports in the US.</b> According to Maersk, “a one-week shutdown could take 4-6 weeks to recover from, with significant backlogs and delays compounding with each passing day.” Over the last several years, the major maritime shippers have raked in tens of billions of dollars. <b>In May, the container shipping industry reported profits of $5.4 billion for the first quarter of 2024.</b> Corporate America, as it did at UPS, on the railroads and on the West Coast docks, is appealing to the Biden administration to directly intervene to prevent a strike. But there can be no doubt that, behind the scenes, the White House is already intimately involved, as they have in every major contract over the past four years. <b>In particular, the administration wants to avoid a strike weeks before the US presidential elections and, above all, ensure no interruptions to the supply of weapons to US-backed wars abroad.</b></bq> <h id="economy">Economy & Finance</h> <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=330270" source="CounterPunch" author="Richard D. Wolff">Capitalism’s Unequal Distribution Deprives You of True Freedom </a> <bq>Oxfam, a global charity, reported that <b>2022’s 10 richest men together had six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people on earth.</b> The lack of democracy inside workplaces or enterprises is both a cause and an effect of capitalism’s unequal distribution of income and wealth.</bq> <bq>Although revolts against monarchy eventually retired most kings and queens (one way or another), similarly rich dictators reemerged inside capitalist enterprises as major shareholders and CEOs. Nowadays, their palaces imitate the grandeur of kings’ castles. <b>The fortunes of kings and top CEOs are similarly extreme and attract the same kind of envy, adulation, and reverence.</b></bq> <bq>In the past, inequality provoked references to rich capitalists, variously, as <b>“robber barons”</b> or as “captains of industry” (depending on the public’s feelings about them). <b>Today, they’re referred to as “the rich” or sometimes “the superrich.”</b></bq> <bq><b>The freedom of the rich is not just different; their freedom negates the freedom of others. Unequal income and wealth always provoke anxiety among the rich. They fear the envy their wealth excites and invites.</b> To protect their positions as systemically privileged recipients of income and, thus, accumulators of wealth, the rich seek to control both political and cultural institutions. <b>Their goal is to shape politics and culture, to make them celebrate and justify income and wealth inequalities, not to challenge them.</b> We turn now to how the rich shape culture to their benefit.</bq> <bq>In European feudalism, access to culture for most serfs was shaped chiefly by what the church taught. In turn, the church carefully structured its interpretation of the Bible and other texts to reinforce feudal rules and traditions. Lords and serfs funded the church to complete the system. In modern capitalism, secular public schools undertake formal education alongside or instead of churches and other private schools. In today’s world, <b>school education celebrates and reinforces capitalism. In turn, the state taxes employers and mostly employees to fund public schools and subsidizes private schools (which also charge students).</b></bq> <bq>The rich funded costly, broadly targeted anti-tax campaigns that found a receptive audience among the already-overtaxed average citizens. <b>Once deprived of the tax revenue from the rich, local politicians either (1) shifted more of the tax burden onto average citizens, (2) cut public services in the short run, and/or (3) borrowed money</b> and thereby risked having to cut public services in the longer run to service city debts. Among those they borrowed from were sometimes the same corporations and the rich whose taxes had been reduced after they funded successful anti-tax campaigns.</bq> <bq>Corporations and the rich hire accountants skilled in hiding money in foreign and domestic places that evade reporting to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Called “tax havens,” those hiding places keep funds that remain untouched by tax collectors. <b>In 2013, Oxfam published findings that the trillions stashed away in tax havens could end extreme world poverty—twice over.</b> Yet since the revelation of this shocking statistic, the inequality of wealth and income has become more extreme in nearly every nation on earth. Tax havens persist.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/12/lkoo-a12.html" author="Nick Beams" source="WSWS">Market gyrations a symptom of a deep-seated crisis</a> <bq>An article in the FT cited a fund manager who recalled that at the time of the nuclear plant explosion at Fukushima in 2011 there was talk of evacuating Tokyo, but <b>all it took to wipe billions off the Japanese markets was a “soft US jobs report and a modest hike in the Bank of Japan’s overnight rate to send the Nikkei average down 12 percent in a day”</b> and that the whole market was “trading like a penny stock.” In the space of a week, the article noted “<b>the broad Topix Index lurched drunkenly from being one of the best performing benchmarks of 2024 to one of the worst</b>, and then back to narrowly positive territory.”</bq> <bq>The basic problem with all the analysis in the financial press is that while it provides some important and significant data, <b>it is at best superficial because it does not seek to probe the underlying forces at work in the capitalist system.</b> It deals only with the transmission mechanisms by which the fundamental historic crisis of the capitalist system is expressed in the financial markets.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=119340" source="NachDenkSeiten" author=" Jens Berger">Börsenkauderwelsch</a> <bq>Wenn Sie sich zum Beispiel eine Aktie kaufen, dann muss auf der Gegenseite jemand anders ihnen diese Aktie verkaufen. Das Geld fließt also von Person A zu Person B. <b>Das Unternehmen, dessen Aktie hier gehandelt wird, hat mit der ganzen Transaktion überhaupt nichts zu tun. Sie „investieren“ somit nicht in das Unternehmen, sondern geben das Geld einer anderen Person</b>, und was die damit macht, ist unbekannt und hat dann ohnehin nicht mehr mit dem Aktienhandel zu tun.</bq> <bq><b>Wenn Ihr Geld nicht dem Unternehmen, dessen Aktie sie kaufen, zufließt, „investieren“ sie auch nichts in das Unternehmen.</b> Sie wetten vielmehr auf den künftigen Preis dieser Aktie – eine reine Finanzspekulation, losgelöst von der Realwirtschaft.</bq> <bq>2023 hatten alle Börsengänge von Aktiengesellschaften in Deutschland zusammen ein Volumen von 1,9 Milliarden Euro. Im gleichen Jahr wurden allein am Handelsplatz Frankfurt am Main Aktien im Wert von 1,2 Billionen Euro gehandelt – mehr als das 600-Fache. <b>Das „Investitionsvolumen“ des deutschen Aktienmarktes beträgt also weniger als 1,3 Promille des gesamten Handels. Hier wird nicht investiert, hier wird spekuliert.</b> Warum sprechen die Medien dann stetig von Investitionen?</bq> <bq>Echte Gewinne und Verluste sind aber nur die Gewinne und Verluste, die auch realisiert wurden. Anders als bei den Buchgewinnen und Buchverlusten sind die realisierten Gewinne und Verluste jedoch streng genommen ein Nullsummenspiel. Oder <b>um es mit einem Aphorismus des Bankers Amschel Meyer Rothschild zu sagen: „Ihr Geld ist nicht weg, mein Freund, es hat nur ein anderer.“</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/06/the-undemocratic-reality-of-capitalism/" source="CounterPunch" author="Richard D. Wolff">The Undemocratic Reality of Capitalism</a> <bq>The employer is an autocrat within a capitalist enterprise, like a king in a monarchy. Over the past few centuries, monarchies were largely “overthrown” and replaced by representative, electoral “democracies.” But kings remained. They merely changed their location and their titles. <b>They moved from political positions in government to economic positions inside capitalist enterprises. Instead of kings, they are called bosses or owners or CEOs. There they sit, atop the capitalist enterprise, exercising many king-like powers, unaccountable to those over whom they reign.</b></bq> <bq><b>Employers hire lobbyists—people who work full time, all year round, to influence the candidates that get elected.</b> Employers fund “think tanks” to produce and spread reports on every current social issue. The purpose of those reports is to build general support for what the funders want. In these and other ways, <b>employers and those they enrich shape the political system to work for them.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-08-05/the-good-trades-have-gone-bad" source="Bloomberg" author="Matt Levine">The Good Trades Have Gone Bad</a> <bq><b>Market crashes usually have the same mechanism. People like a thing, so they buy it, so it goes up. More people like it, so they buy more of it, so it goes up more. It goes up steadily enough that people think “ehh I should borrow some money to buy even more of this thing,” so they do. Eventually a lot of very leveraged investors own a lot of the thing.</b> Then something goes wrong with the thing, its price goes down, the leveraged investors get margin calls, and they have to sell the thing to pay back their loans. Their losses are big enough that they have to sell other things, things that were fine, to pay back their loans on the thing that went wrong. <b>The big leveraged investors who owned a lot of the thing that went wrong also all own the same other things, also with leverage, so there is a generalized crash in the prices of the things that big leveraged investors own.</b></bq> <bq><b>When a hedge fund has a highly concentrated position that starts to fall, it often needs to start selling assets and cutting risk elsewhere in the portfolio to satisfy its risk models.</b> When a lot of funds have been buying the same things, that process can pressure a variety of investments, including some seemingly remote from the original bet.</bq> <bq>if Charles Schwab customers perform better (worse) this month than Robinhood customers, <b>that will tell you something about the value of shutting off the website for the morning of a crash. I don’t know what you do with that information? What if it worked really well and Schwab customers saved billions? Do you intentionally shut off the website next time? Do you advertise it? Do regulators mandate it?</b> People sometimes ask me what regulatory changes I would make if I ran the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and “I would pull the plug on retail brokerages during big down days” is a possibly interesting platform, though you’d want to study it first.</bq> <bq>We investigate the factors influencing cryptocurrency returns using a structural vector auto-regressive model. The model uses asset price co-movements to identify the impact of monetary policy and risk sentiment in conventional markets on crypto asset prices, with minimal reverse spillover.</bq> This is how you describe an asset class that you want people to buy but not to understand. It sounds so sophisticated that your mind shies away, hopefully simultaneously convinced that the failure to comprehend lies with yourself rather than with the person explaining it. <bq>Part of the crypto story is “there was a long benign market in which interest rates were low and risk appetite was growing, so people kept buying crypto and it kept going up.” That is a very correlated story, one in which crypto is a risk asset like any other tech stock. But part of the crypto story is “that long benign market brought people into crypto , and they stayed”: <b>What happened was not just that Bitcoin went up along with tech stocks, but also that people who used to invest in tech stocks discovered crypto, so that crypto became an asset class.</b> That is not entirely reversed by a risk-off day in the markets, though crypto still does go down when risk appetites decline.</bq> <bq>What should you make of this if you are an investor in AI startups? (What should you make of it if you are the FTC?) <b>Is the takeaway something like “we are pumping money into companies so that they can spend it on Alphabet’s or Microsoft’s or Amazon’s computing power, build some cool AI technology, and then get hired back at Alphabet or Microsoft or Amazon at higher salaries”?</b> Are venture investors subsidizing Google’s research budget, and getting Google researchers nice raises?</bq> <h id="medicine">Medicine & Disease</h> <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/09/wskf-a09.html" author="Benjamin Mateus" source="WSWS">New study finds Long COVID is one of the most common diseases globally</a> <bq>[...] this week, <b>based on wastewater data, infection modelers estimate that COVID infections have once again climbed above 1 million cases per day</b>, a staggering figure, to which the CDC is completely indifferent. COVID modeler Dr. Mike Hoerger of the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative, in a social media discussion with this writer, said that presently, <b>on average, every American has been infected between three or four times.</b> In a rare show of concern, <b>the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that COVID-19 was spreading across the globe, with positivity rates in Europe above 20 percent.</b> In opening their August 6, 2024, news report on COVID, they warned, “The UN health agency is also concerned that more severe variants of the coronavirus may soon be on the horizon.”</bq> <bq>[...] the “forever COVID” policy is not a misguided public health construct. It is a <b>calculated and coordinated approach to ensure pandemic threats would not impede the unfettered accumulation of surplus value off the backs of the working class.</b> If the sick and infirm fall by the wayside, these <b>social losses are seen as financial gains by the class that seeks to extract from the working class every minute of their potential labor power and avoid the cost of their “lingering on.”</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02299-w" source="Nature" author="Richard Van Noorden">Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed?</a> <bq>For more than 150 trials, Carlisle got access to anonymized individual participant data (IPD). By studying the IPD spreadsheets, he judged that 44% of these trials contained at least some flawed data: impossible statistics, incorrect calculations or duplicated numbers or figures, for instance. And <b>26% of the papers had problems that were so widespread that the trial was impossible to trust, he judged — either because the authors were incompetent, or because they had faked the data.</b></bq> <bq>They’ve scoured RCTs in various medical fields, such as women’s health, pain research, anaesthesiology, bone health and COVID-19, and have found dozens or hundreds of trials with seemingly statistically impossible data. Some, on the basis of their personal experiences, say that one-quarter of trials being untrustworthy might be an underestimate. <b>“If you search for all randomized trials on a topic, about a third of the trials will be fabricated,”</b> asserts Ian Roberts, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.</bq> <bq>But faked or unreliable RCTs are a particularly dangerous threat. They not only are about medical interventions, but <b>also can be laundered into respectability by being included in meta-analyses and systematic reviews,</b> which thoroughly comb the literature to assess evidence for clinical treatments. Medical guidelines often cite such assessments, and physicians look to them when deciding how to treat patients.</bq> <bq><b>“Untrustworthy work must be removed from systematic reviews,”</b> says Stephanie Weibel, a biologist at the University of Wuerzberg in Germany, who co-authored the review.</bq> Obviously. <bq>Overall, Mol and his colleagues have alleged problems in more than 800 published medical research papers, at least 500 of which are on RCTs. So far, the work has led to more than 80 retractions and 50 expressions of concern. Mol has focused much of his work on papers from countries in the Middle East, and particularly in Egypt. One researcher responded to some of his e-mails by accusing him of racism. <b>Mol, however, says that it’s simply a fact that he has encountered many suspect statistics and refusals to share data from RCT authors in countries such as Iran, Egypt, Turkey and China — and that he should be able to point that out.</b></bq> <bq>For Sotiriadis, the merit of this protocol was that <b>it avoided his having to declare the trials faulty or fraudulent; they had merely failed a test of trustworthiness.</b> His team ultimately reported that it excluded the Egyptian trials because they hadn’t been prospectively registered and the authors didn’t explain why.</bq> Six of one; half-dozen of the other. <bq>Alfirević’s team, meanwhile, has found in a study yet to be published that 25% of around 350 RCTs in 18 Cochrane reviews on nutrition and pregnancy would have failed trustworthiness checks, using the CPC’s method. <b>With these RCTs excluded, the team found that one-third of the reviews would require updating because their findings would have changed.</b></bq> <bq>He warns that the numbers of systematic reviews and meta-analyses that journals publish have themselves been soaring in the past decade — and many of these reviews can’t be trusted because of shoddy screening methods. “An untrustworthy systematic review is far more dangerous than an untrustworthy primary study,” he says. <b>“It is an industry that is completely out of hand, with little quality assurance.”</b></bq> <bq>Avenell’s team reported that it had carefully and repeatedly e-mailed authors and journal editors of the 88 reviews that cited Sato’s retracted trials to inform them that their reviews included retracted work. <b>They got few responses — only 11 of the 88 reviews have been updated so far — suggesting that authors and editors didn’t generally care about correcting the reviews.</b></bq> <bq>Mol, from his experiences investigating the Egyptian studies, blames <b>lack of oversight and superficial assessments that promote academics on the basis of their number of publications</b>, as well as the lack of stringent checks from institutions and journals on bad practices.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/13/qmqx-a13.html" author="Bill Shaw" source="WSWS">Over 1.3 million Americans are now being infected with COVID-19 each day</a> <bq><b>Current levels of transmission exceed those seen during 91 percent of the pandemic to date and are the highest ever seen in mid-August during the entire pandemic.</b> This deepening summer wave is the 9th wave of the pandemic in the US and is taking place amid a complete cover-up by the Biden administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the corporate media, all of whom have conspired to impose the homicidal “forever COVID” policy of unending mass infection, death and debilitation with Long COVID.</bq> <img src="{att_link}cdc_covid-19_heat_map,_higher_transmission_shown_with_deeper_red.jpg" href="{att_link}cdc_covid-19_heat_map,_higher_transmission_shown_with_deeper_red.jpg" align="none" caption="CDC COVID-19 Heat Map, Higher Transmission Shown with Deeper Red" scale="50%"> <bq>A key strength of the new version of the PMC model is that it incorporates three sources of data. The first is the NWSS data from the CDC. The second is BioBot wastewater data that used to be funded by the CDC, which has increasingly been less publicly available. <b>The third source of data is the “true case” data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which correlated wastewater levels with daily new cases and was regularly updated through April 1, 2023.</b></bq> <bq>[...] the deliberate use of “welcoming” and “cool” colors in COVID-19 maps by the CDC serve to downplay the danger to the public of current transmission levels. <b>The Collaborative’s red-shifted map paints a much more accurate picture of just how high transmission—and therefore the danger—is.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/covid-19-is-now-the-10th-leading" author="Andrea Tamayo" source="Your Local Epidemiologist">Covid-19 is now the 10th leading cause of death</a> <img src="{att_link}deaths_by_covid_vs._flu_2022_-_2024.webp" href="{att_link}deaths_by_covid_vs._flu_2022_-_2024.webp" align="none" caption="Deaths by COVID vs. Flu 2022 - 2024" scale="50%"> In 2022, it was the 4th-leading cause of death. It's still much deadlier than the flu. <hr> <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/08/16/vzbq-a16.html" author="Nancy Hanover" source="WSWS">As new school year opens, COVID-19 surge forces abrupt classroom closures in the US</a> <bq><b>On Monday, August 12, Jefferson-Abernathy-Graetz (JAG) High School in Montgomery, Alabama closed, moving to remote learning. Fifteen educators reported COVID-19 infection after last week’s two-day orientation.</b> Officials said they would reassess the situation and possibly reopen the building by Friday, at which point they said masks and disinfectant wipes would be made available to students. The same day as the Alabama closure, Humboldt schools in western Tennessee called off classes at Stigall Primary. <b>Officials informed parents by letter that the school would be closed for “sanitizing” due to an “uptick in COVID.”</b> A later report said an undisclosed number of students and staff tested positive for COVID-19, while others were symptomatic.</bq> <bq>As scientists have demonstrated and nearly five years of COVID deaths have underscored, <b>the key to fighting COVID is disinfection of the air. Without the use of HEPA filtration in all indoor spaces and other mechanisms, including Far-UV light, schools will dramatically exacerbate the spread of the disease.</b> Despite the use of these methodologies by the ruling elites to protect themselves—at the Davos Economic Summit or at the White House, for instance—no such measures are in place for millions of schoolchildren.</bq> <h id="art">Art & Literature</h> <a href="https://www.the-hinternet.com/p/at-the-willie-nelson-concert-at-the" source="Hinternet" author="Justin Smith-Ruiu">At the Willie Nelson Concert, at the Indian Casino, in Wheatland, California, with Mom, in the Summer of 2024</a> <bq><b>It is always a jolt for me to be reminded that, even with artists I really care nothing about, I still know basically every single line of every single song. What else might have filled up my memory, in the absence of such phrases as “suckin’ on chili dogs”? I don’t know. The possibilities are infinite.</b> I only know that what did end up getting lodged in there constitutes who I am no less fundamentally than, say, the prayers of the rosary or my people’s myth of the Creation might have done. Human existence itself displays a mastery of leitmotifs, I find, that even the likes of Richard Wagner could only faintly imitate in art. <b>I walk into the supermarket and I hear “Hurts So Good”, and it induces in me a sense that indeed, after all this time, I am still at the center of the same story.</b></bq> <bq>[...] to this crowd Dylan is just another musician who’s been around for ever. I had been hoping to try out a little joke on the people seated around me —“I’m still angry about him going electric”, I was going to say, and <b>if they replied “Wait, what year were you born?” I was going to say “1972; I was born angry”—, but I found no one who seemed to be in possession of sufficient historical memory to have any hope of landing it.</b></bq> <bq>Is this play-list charged up with genius too? I’m not in a position to say, but <b>Dylan is always there to remind me that my raw aesthetic judgment is something quite different from, and less than, the full use of my historically informed critical faculties.</b></bq> <bq><b>This is the prevailing feeling in the presence of Willie and his worshippers: that ours really is a country of outlaws, and wastrels, and trash, which is to say of beautiful souls, continually renewing the mythos Willie has been appointed to sing.</b> This is the America that’s left over when you consider this country in abstraction from its power — its laws, its wars, its wealth. I don’t want to say it’s the “true” America, since the outlaws obviously could not exist at all if there were no law to be “out” of. <b>In 2024, it seems, historical dynamics have brought it about that the plain old Stars and Stripes now stand as a symbol of Outlaw America, while authoritarian America, the America that worships soldiers and cops, has moved on to decidedly non-standard vexillological innovations. I know which side I’m on.</b></bq> <h id="technology">Technology</h> <a href="https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/15/private-law/" author="Cory Doctorow" source="Pluralistic">Apple vs the "free market"</a> <bq>It's not illegal for you to run an app you buy on your phone without Apple's blessing. But <b>the technical step needed to let you run software you buy on a gadget you own is a felony</b>, so all those activities become de facto felonies. Jay Freeman calls this "felony contempt of business model" – but you could also call it "private law." In passing DMCA 1201, Congress said to companies like Apple, <b>"Just add a digital lock to anything you make, and then you can create felonies out of thin air, which the US courts will prosecute on your behalf."</b></bq> <bq>[While] regulators are no longer allowed to regulate, but, <b>thanks to DMCA 1201, corporations can just make up rules out of thin air and give them the force of both criminal and civil statute.</b> The government can't govern, but corporations can.</bq> <bq>Apple doesn't enforce its ban on adult content equally. If Tumblr allows adult content, it gets kicked out of the app store. But Apple chooses not to enforce its sexual material ban against Reddit or Twitter, where the policy is "go nuts, show nuts." <b>Apple's choosing the winners and the losers here, creating the "market distortion"</b> that conservatives warn us against.</bq> <bq>Not every app has to pay this fee – for example, Uber is exempted from it. But smaller ridehailing apps – say, one created by a driver co-op – gets soaked for the full amount, meaning that it can't possibly compete against Uber. <b>Apple is effectively crowning Uber the perpetual overlord of ride-hailing apps.</b></bq> <bq>It's not just businesses that compete with Apple that get wiped out by Apple's position as de facto supreme planner of the economy. <b>Many businesses simply can't exist in a world in which 30% of their revenue is creamed off by another business.</b> For that matter, Apple couldn't survive under that regime. As Slashdot's theodp writes, Apple netted $97b on revenues of $383b last year. <b>If Apple had to pay a 30% app store tax on that gross revenue, it would be down $115b, for a net loss of $18b.</b></bq> <bq>In modern corporate orthodoxy, the state is an enforcer for corporate will. That's the animating force behind <b>"binding arbitration" waivers, the now-ubiquitous contract terms that require you to give up your right to sue no matter what the other party does to you.</b> These waivers are in your phone contract, your employment contract, your travel tickets, your concert tickets, your doctor's office forms, and the terms for most services: By forcing you to click "OK" to a binding arbitration waiver, corporations transform the courts from entities that interpret and enforce the law to entities that <b>force the public to surrender every right and protection Congress ever gave them, in favor of the unilateral decisions of a corporate arbitrator paid by the company that wronged them.</b> This is more private law – the state existing as an enforcer for the whims and fiat of corporate strategists. It's a terribly neat illustration of <b>Wilhoit's law, "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"</b></bq> <bq>When a company unilaterally removes your ability to access the courts – while preserving its own right to have the courts force you to seek justice from its arbitrators – they incinerate every regulation, every law, and replace it with "whatever we feel like." The law protects them, it binds you.</bq> <h id="llms">LLMs & AI</h> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bart-jaworski_productmanagement-productmanager-prioritization-activity-7223695065527824385-VLW2" author="Dr Bart Jaworski" source="">Post</a> <img src="{att_link}new_ai_feature,_existing_roadmap,_actual_user_needs.jpeg" href="{att_link}new_ai_feature,_existing_roadmap,_actual_user_needs.jpeg" align="none" caption="New AI feature, existing roadmap, actual user needs" scale="75%"> <hr> <a href="https://macwright.com/2024/07/18/llms-democratizing-coding" author="Tom MacWright" source="">Would LLMs democratizing coding be a pyrrhic victory?</a> <bq>But it does make me wonder whether the adoption of these tools will lead to a form of de-skilling. Not even that programmers will be less skilled, but that the job will drift from the perception and dynamics of a skilled trade to an unskilled trade, with the attendant change - decrease - in pay. Instead of hiring a team of engineers who try to write something of quality and try to load the mental model of what they’re building into their heads, <b>companies will just hire a lot of prompt engineers and, who knows, generate 5 versions of the application and A/B test them all across their users.</b></bq> This is an entirely plausible scenario. It would be a continuation of externalizing software-development costs onto customers. If it could simultaneously reduce development costs, then the reduced quality of the product doesn't matter. Hey, it's possible that software quality is too high with actually trained engineers writing everything but I seriously doubt it. You could argue that lowering standards will eventually result in lowered expectations, which is what I've seen anecdotally over decades. <hr> <a href="https://martinfowler.com/articles/exploring-gen-ai.html#memo-09" author="Birgitta Böckeler" source="Martin Fowler.com">Exploring Generative AI</a> <bq>I did ask all three of my tools, “How do I run this application?”. But the list of steps suggested were extensive, therefore I had a long feedback loop in front of me, combined with very low confidence that the AI suggestions were correct or at least useful. <b>For GH Copilot and Bloop, who only had access to the codebase, I suspected that they made up quite a bit of their suggestions, and the list of actions looked very generic.</b> The Wiki-RAG-Bot was at least based on the official Bahmni documentation, but even here <b>I couldn’t be sure if the bot was only basing its answer on the most current run book, or if there was also information from outdated wiki pages that it might indiscriminately reproduce.</b></bq> <bq>While the results of the “where is this in the code?” questions were usually not 100% accurate, they did always point me in a generally useful direction. <b>So it remains to be seen in real life usage of these tools: Is this significantly better than Ctrl+F text search</b>? In this case I think it was, I wouldn’t have known where to start with a generic string like “organization”.</bq> <bq>For older applications and stacks, development environment setup is usually a big challenge in onboarding. <b>AI cannot magically replace a well-documented and well-automated setup.</b> Outdated or non-existing documentation, as well as obscure combinations of outdated runtimes and tools will stump AI as much as any human</bq> <bq>The ability of AI to generate unit tests for existing code that doesn’t have unit tests yet all depends on the quality and design of that code. And in my experience, <b>a lack of unit tests often correlates with low modularity and cohesion</b>, i.e. sprawling and entangled code like I encountered in this case. So I suspect that <b>in most cases, the hope to use AI to add unit tests to a codebase that doesn’t have unit tests yet will remain a pipe dream.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://quartzmountain.org/article/things-to-do-in-ilion-ny" author="Lazar Odonnell" source="Quartz Mountain">12 Fun Things To Do In Ilion, Ny</a> I'd heard the term <i>Splash Pad</i> and wondered what it was. A quick search showed this article, which makes me a little suspicious because DuckDuckGo isn't supposed to know where I am. But that's not the point I wanted to make. What's more interesting is that, when I started reading through the list, almost none of them exist. Some of them have never existed. The article was posted last summer. <ol> The Remington Arms Museum has been closed for as long as I can remember. The picture for <iq>attend[ing] a concert at the Ilion Little Theatre</iq> shows a band rocking out on a giant, laser-lit stage. It's actually the <i>Ilion Little Theater Club</i> and it shows local plays. The Crystal Springs Golf Course is in New Jersey. There is a golf course and it's pretty Glimmerglass State Park is a 45-minute drive away. I'm almost certain that there is no <i>Ilion Municipal Building Museum</i>. The <i>State Bowling Center</i> has been closed for two years. The picture is of the <i>Remington Arms</i>, which closed this year---and has nothing to do with bowling other than geographical proximity. The <i>Ilion Cinema</i> does not exist. There used to be a theater many decades ago, but it was small. The picture is of a massive theater that holds many hundreds, if not thousands. There is no <i>Annunciation Recreational Park</i>. There is an <i>Annunciation Church</i> but you can't play tennis there. <i>H.M. Quackenbush Park</i> does not exist anywhere in the area. There is no large mansion in Ilion. The photo is completely fictitious. There is no <i>Ilion Farmer's Market</i>. The photo is completely fictitious. There is no <i>Ilion Beer Co</i>. </ol> My in-laws said that this is prevalent: my mother-in-law says that she's seen advertisements for beautiful retirement communities in the area that don't exist. The comment on the article is: <bq>I had the pleasure of visiting Ilion, NY last summer and it was such a delightful experience. One of the highlights of my trip was exploring the Glimmerglass State Park. With its breathtaking views of Otsego Lake and the array of outdoor activities available, it was the perfect place to spend a sunny day. I also enjoyed checking out some of the local shops and trying the delicious food at the charming cafes and restaurants in Ilion. The warm and welcoming atmosphere of the town made me feel right at home. I can't wait to visit again!</bq> That lady did not go to Ilion. She is lying. The downtown is not charming. I could be, but it's not. I see charm through nostalgia-tinged glasses because I grew up here. There are no cafés. There are few restaurants---there is a pizzeria and a Chinese restaurant that hasn't had on-site dining since COVID began. There are no local shops to speak of, unless you mean the <i>Dollar General</i>. As noted above <i>Glimmerglass State Park</i> is a 45-minute drive away, in a completely different county. To top it all off, the only mention of a splash pad is for the H.M. Quackenbush Park, which, as noted, does not exist anywhere in the area. I learned nothing about splash pads. The page <a href="https://mysplashpad.com/what-is-a-splash-pad/" author="" source="MySplashPad">What is a Splash Pad?</a> explains: <bq>A splash pad is a recreational water system that provides interactive and safe entertainment for children of all ages. Splash pads come in all sizes, from giant splash parks that feature thousands of square feet of spray features and ground sprays, to smaller residential systems that you can enjoy in the comfort of your own backyard. Often referred to as a “zero-depth” water attraction, splash pads are often preferred by parents of small children over swimming pools. A splash pad still offers a fun and exciting way to play in water without the risk of drowning or other hazards often associated with swimming pools.</bq> <img src="{att_link}splashpad4.jpg" href="{att_link}splashpad4.jpg" align="none" caption="Splash Pad" scale="65%"> It's a shitty substitute for a pool where there's no risk of learning how to swim. <h id="sports">Sports</h> <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/15/usa-lets-athletes-cheat-with-steroids-as-it-accuses-russia-china-of-violating-anti-doping-rules/" author="Ben Norton" source="Scheer Post">USA Lets Athletes Cheat With Steroids, as It Accuses Russia & China of Violating Anti-Doping Rules</a> <bq><b>WADA criticized the hypocrisy of the United States</b>, writing, “It is ironic and hypocritical that USADA cries foul when it suspects other Anti-Doping Organizations are not following the rules to the letter while it did not announce doping cases for years and allowed cheats to carry on competing”. Russia was banned from the 2020 and 2022 Olympics over allegations that its athletes used prohibited drugs. The US has accused China’s team of doping, leading to harassment of Chinese athletes in the 2024 Olympics in Paris. <b>The average Chinese swimmer was subjected to 21 drug tests, compared to just six for US swimmers and four for European and Japanese swimmers.</b></bq> <bq>The United States has politicized sports for many decades, but the <b>tensions have dramatically escalated in recent years as Washington has waged a new cold war against China and Russia.</b> In 2020, the US Justice Department accused Russia and Qatar of bribing FIFA in order to host the World Cup in 2018 and 2022, respectively. After facing bans in 2020 and 2022 on allegations of doping, Russia was again barred from the 2024 Olympics, this time on explicitly political grounds. <b>The executive board of the International Olympic Committee, which is largely dominated by Western countries, called to prohibit Russia and Belarus due to the war in Ukraine. The United States, on the other hand, faced no consequences after invading Iraq in 2003</b> [...]</bq> <bq>The IOC lists 16 executive board members on its website. Of these 11, or <b>69%, are from Western countries – despite the fact that the West only represents around 14% of the world population.</b> Just five members of the committee are from the Global South, although they all represent countries that are Western allies and are <b>largely subordinated to the political interests of the Global North: Argentina, Fiji, Jordan, the Philippines, and Singapore.</b></bq>