thirdwave

Github Mirror

Week 10

Jacobin: "Don’t Be Fooled: Little Marco Rubio Is Still an Enemy of Labor"

🤣

Super Mario calls ECB, he is like "a-bond a-selling a-can a-raise a-rates, a-help us". ECB is like 'sure'.

I bet they do it to keep the bond rates low so indebted countries can turn over debt.

Why is the ECB buying up bonds.. u r mucking up the signal

The "changed strategy" is the one where Mexico itself became a wall.

Dec 2020: "[ICE] arrested and deported fewer people last fiscal year than in any other during President Donald Trump's term... a trend the agency has linked to restrictions forced by the Covid-19 pandemic and a changing strategy on the U.S.-Mexico border"

Khan is like boomer Trek, man.. and boomers are busy w other stuff, checking returns of their real estate, so lets see some other stories. Later ST material, or if you want to go "dark and edgy" a Firefly approach, and stay away from cuck.

TBH never really cared for the Khan story of Trek.. Khan is based on a Trek OS movie, which I watched many years ago, it was ok.. but sorta old now. No significance for me, at the level of say, Borg.

Beckley, Unrivaled: "China has large reserves of oil and natural gas encased in shale basins, but China has not been able to tap them and, according to some analyses, may never do so. One reason is that China’s shale deposits were left behind by prehistoric lakes and, consequently, have rock layers that are more ductile and less amenable to hydraulic fracturing than the brittle marine shales in North America. Another reason is that China lacks the water necessary for fracking"

Fossil based energy system was advantageous for US.. ample resources that are easy to get to.. But.. the planet is getting screwed in the process. Renewable fuels might give other nations little more advantage, but fine, we take it from there, every1 competes on other fronts.

Comparing energy delivery in kwh to crude oil. H2 energy density 39.7 kWh/kg. Typical tanker carries 400,000 barrels, 1 barrel oil gives 1/2 barrel gasoline, refn proc is 85% efficient, barrel is 0.158 m3, gasoline is 748.90002 kg/m3, has 12.88 kwh/kg energy density,

print ('%0.2f kwh' % (2000*1000*39.7))
print ('%0.2f kwh' % (400000*0.5*0.158*748.9*12.88*0.85))

79400000.00 kwh
259087047.52 kwh

Hey the tech will improve I am sure.. this isnt bad for first. Lets also not forget ammonia as an H2 carrier. Another good news is the proposed C-H2 ship uses its own fuel to propel itself; carrying zero emission fuel with zero emission!

PDF

That's a compressed H2 transport ship with 2000 tones of capacity.

Except for special ed and early students, there is absolutely no need for a teacher to be present in the old sense of the word.. It is even downright harmful that a random average .. wonderful person is teaching kids algebra, calculus. There can still be schools, but not necessarily with teachers in them.

I hope delivery of the lectures do not require a "live teacher". But Google is all about scale, so probably not.

Yes, great. Do this instead of that quantum bullshit.

"How Google's New Career Certificates Could Disrupt the College Degree"

Link

Dreams of Massachusettsification

Nice

A certain generation of socsci researchers are just way into f-ing Stata. And I am into reverse-engineering their .. wonderful code .. and porting it into 🐍

Yoshinori Sunahara - Summer #music

Link

Thucydides's Trap? Bih who dat Thucydides? Speaka English.

They are at 1/10th (which they got to with Western help, lets make this clear), does it make sense to help them so the ratio goes up to 1/3th, or 1/2? Such obscene help creates weird dynamics too, even movies become bizarre.

China looks like a paper tiger. But countries -and themselves- seeing CH otherwise can create problems. Spreading authoritarinism is not a-ok.

Another ex of CINC problems applied to UK/CH.

Beckley says his method has 8 percentage points more success in predicting results of conflicts, wars than CINC.

Let's use his method on a few countries,

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv('../../2020/07/gdpw.csv')
df = df[df['country'].isin(['Turkey','Greece','United States','China']) ]
df['gdp'] = df.gdpcap * df.population
df['mbindex'] = (df.gdpcap * df.gdp)/1e14
print (df[['country','mbindex']])

          country     mbindex
13  United States  12898.099255
51         Greece     43.463713
85          China   1363.010190
87         Turkey     68.576017

This is so sad... US has 10 times more pow than the next guy. My tegros are drowning down there in the list, next to, like, Greece.

MB doesnt like the widely used military capability index CINC either. The famous Correlates of War project uses it, but I can see his point; like the GDP, it's a gross measure, does not account for costs..

His alternative method is GDP x GDP Per Capita. This punishes population size (GDP Per Capita is GDP divided by population), bcz the more people you have the more you are spending as well (especially for nondemocracies they spend on internal security). On the upside GDP Per Capita rewards innovation, it's a sign of efficiency, being able to produce more with less means there is innovation in the economy. The gross obviously has to enter the picture, at some level, that's why it gets multiplied.

On whether to use GDP for nation-power comparison

M. Beckley: "Despite the widespread use of GDP, however, few people know what it actually measures or recognize that it does not deduct costs. To begin, GDP counts production costs (inputs and externalities) as output. Spending money always increases GDP, even if the funds are wasted on boondoggles; in fact, the most common method of calculating GDP is called the 'expenditure method' and involves simply adding up all of the spending done by the government, consumers, and businesses in a country in a given time period. Thus, hiring workers always increases GDP, even if they spend all day getting drunk in the break room. Boosting production always increases GDP, even if the goods rot on the shelf and tons of toxic waste are released in the process. In fact, a country can increase its GDP by dumping toxic waste into the streets and then spending billions of dollars to clean it up...

Consequently, populous countries generate considerable economic activity simply by existing. Even a nation caught in a Malthusian hell, in which all output is immediately devoured, will post a large GDP if it has a big population. Finally, GDP counts security spending as economic output. GDP does not distinguish between guns and butter. It counts a 100 million dollar gulag the same as a $100 million innovation center. Hence, GDP fails to account fully for the economic costs of domestic instability and international conflict. In fact, GDP usually rises when a country mobilizes for war... In general, however, resources devoted to policing and protection drain wealth rather than create it"

Link

Hah. By CINC China is at the top. You know that shit aint true.

How to compare the power of countries? Some use CINC, a combined measure of iron and steel production, energy consumption, military expenditure, personel, etc.

CNBC: "India is turning to 'green hydrogen' in a bid to decarbonize its economy"

Lula comes out swinging. :)

"‘Brazil has no government’: Lula tears into Bolsonaro in comeback speech"

"Brazil Overtakes U.S. in Daily Covid-19 Deaths"

"@foxjust

2020 was the first year since 1947 in which more than 1% of the U.S. population died"

"With heating and cooling in buildings responsible for 40% of energy consumption and 36% of emissions, the importance of its decarbonisation is paramount. As the current annual renovation rate is below 1% and more than 70% of heating in buildings is supplied by old and inefficient boilers, buildings are unanimously recognised as a hard-to-decarbonise sector...

Direct electrification with heat pumps is not always economically feasible in every building and will double the peak demand for electricity in winter in most European countries... The town of Hassfurt in Germany demonstrates how a cogeneration unit running on hydrogen can be at the centre of the city’s long-term decarbonisation strategy"

Link

The Pacific has its own royals now.. Canada can dump UK ones and form its own CommonWealth (Calif, WA, Canada, whats the difference). Add the US as outside ally, Oz, NZ as members u have an empire for the Pacific. H&M can be Duke and Duchess of O.C.

Do TV anchors get a mood warning before they start reading the next news item? Like, "sad mood", "happy mood" etc. Stuff flows fast and u cld roll into a sad story smiling like a jackass.. Warning could help.

U cld say 2008-16 admin was also diverted, bcz of ISIS.

US was "diverted" away from Indo-Pacific 20 yrs ago. They are likely more intent to engage this time around.

"@screenqueenz

Elizabeth Banks to direct bear-centric thriller COCAINE BEAR for Universal. The film is based on true events from 1985; a 175-pound bear accidentally consumed over 70 ponds of cocaine that was dropped it from a plane by a smuggler"

MLK: "If a man hasn't found something he will die for, he isn't fit to live"

AlJazeera: "Myanmar’s military on ‘killing spree’ against protesters: Amnesty"

Go for it!!

"Capsule gets $1.5M to build ‘super simple’ decentralized social media [on Dfinity’s decentralized network]"

Link

"@rcbregman

... The child tax credit in the Rescue Plan is a basic income for children. It'll cut child poverty in half. IN HALF!!! The word 'historic' is overused but this seems very very historic to me"

Lula is free for politics. Excellent news. The Left needs good leadership.

Private Government, good book. Some excerpts here.

Marx missed that same point about the Second Wave; thinking too highly of the masses.

People power.. Sure..

Remember 2006 TIME Person of the Year?

And what happened since? Think grasshopper.

Forbes: "Fossil Fuel Air Pollution Kills Twice As Many As Previously Thought"

"Indian-Irish partnership to produce green hydrogen... Ireland’s Fusion Fuel Green has agreed to set up a demonstrator plant in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu"

Actually Dem div indirectly caused Rep division later. If everyone stuck to one side, -ism, none of that wld take place. Had to happen this way I guess..

Divisions Trump trig'd at the Reps remind me of Clinton triangulation with the Dems. At the time Reps probably enjoyed that, seeing the in-fighting on the other side (until BC started encroaching on their shit, then they panicked). What goes around, comes around, a kind of division hit them too in the end.

"@maxwellstrachan

journalism is a public service playing by the rules of private enterprise—a contract that appears increasingly untenable"

Bloodbath at HuffPo. Frankly hadnt read their stuff for a while..

"@emmaladyrose

Today I got laid off at HuffPost, after a decade of work I am so incredibly proud of. I am one of 47"

She just kept betting on tech, TSLA etc. People thought this was some kind of genius but all they did was betting on tech when it happened to be doing well, when it was time for tech (growth stocks). When the situation turned they could not see it coming. Their playbook had one page. They were like that broken clock showing the right time once a day.

🤣 🤣 🤣

"Why once hot ETK Ark Innovation ETF Katie Wood lost all her profits in 2021"

If we can fix the physical goods side by truly substituting knowledge for atoms, building everything on demand, and the energy side with renewable fuels (that relies on common ingredients), we could have a route.. Absent these, might have to change incentives to encourage less growth.

Govs may want it bcz it means more taxes in the future, easing debt repayment. Companies want growth bcz their investors need returns. All that cld be fine but even with services dominating the economy, more growth still means more shit. As in physical shit, goods and materials, leading to resource extraction, a plundered planet. See excerpts.

"Why does everyone want growth?"

Wired article on lithium production.

Was that RoyalExit? So many exits over there

ITM is a BUY

Lots of doubters showcased, yes. Unfort'ly have to follow such characters because the landscape is littered with dipshits in all walks of sci/tech blowing smoke up everyone's ass.

"Quan. supremacy" is achieving a computation through quantum comp that no regular computer can match. Kalai is raising doubts on Goog supremacy claims.

"@GilKalai

[Scientists] proposed a general method for simulating quantum circuits and announce that they could generate samples from the Sycamore circuit with much better fidelity. This sheds doubts on Google's 'supremacy' claims"

1989, 2008 as beginning/end of certain ideologies? World is looking for a new system, in a funk.

More from UCDP conflict dataset...

"Yearly Datasets covering 1946 - 2019", "UCDP Dyadic Dataset version 20.1". Conflict records are (global) events where at least 25 ppl died, for each dyad-year. "Dyads", meaning action pairs (A attacks B is a dyad), are captured at yearly granularity (A attacks B in a year N times, appears once in record). Simple plot here on all dyad action occurences per year, it can give a general idea on violence level throughout the world,

import pandas as pd, zipfile
with zipfile.ZipFile('ucdp-dyadic-201-csv.zip', 'r') as z:
      df =  pd.read_csv(z.open('ucdp-dyadic-201.csv'))
df = df[['year','side_a','type_of_conflict','intensity_level']]
df.groupby('year').size().plot()
plt.axvspan(2008,2008,color='y')
plt.axvspan(1989,1989,color='y')
plt.axvspan(2016,2016,color='y')
plt.savefig('out.png')

There was decrease soon after 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Kept on going down past 9/11, past the invasion of Iraq.. But, I guess bcz by 2008-10 Iraq became FUBAR (one example), vio picked up. Started to decrease little before 2016, but still did not go down to 2010 levels.

Bloomberg: "As governments and industries seek less-polluting alternatives to hydrocarbons, the world’s biggest crude exporter doesn’t want to cede the burgeoning hydrogen business to China, Europe or Australia and lose a potentially massive source of income. So it’s building a $5 billion plant powered entirely by sun and wind that will be among the world’s biggest green hydrogen makers when it opens in the planned megacity of Neom in 2025.

The task of turning a patch of desert the size of Belgium into a metropolis powered by renewable energy falls to Peter Terium, the former chief executive officer of RWE AG, Germany’s biggest utility, and clean-energy spinoff Innogy SE...

That should mean plenty of potential customers for the plant called Helios Green Fuels... Saudi Arabia possesses a competitive advantage in its perpetual sunshine and wind, and vast tracts of unused land. Helios’s costs likely will be among the lowest globally and could reach $1.50 per kilogram by 2030, according to BNEF. That’s cheaper than some hydrogen made from non-renewable sources today

For starters, Helios will produce 650 tons of hydrogen a day by electrolysis – enough for conversion to 1.2 million tons per year of green ammonia. Air Products will buy all of that ammonia, which is easier to ship than liquid or gaseous hydrogen, and convert it back upon delivery to customers...

Germany said it needs 'enormous' volumes of green hydrogen, and it hopes Saudi Arabia will be a supplier"

Link

This is how important the legal system is. I bet UEA set up this English based seperate court system to pull in visitors, investment.

"[UAE] DIFC Courts began operations in 2006 and was established to manage cases relating to companies licensed by the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Free Zone. DIFC Courts is an English language court based on those operating within the UK’s common law system. Originally set up to manage cases for DIFC companies only, today any company in the UAE can opt-in to use DIFC Courts for legal matters; all that is required is a clause in a new contract or an amendment to an existing one. Differing to onshore courts, DIFC Courts hears cases in English"

Link

WSJ: "Study of Aggressive Covid-19 Strain in Brazil Suggests Limits of China Vaccine"

It is somehow pleasant seeing Rob dealing with a random jagoff tuber.

"@nickmartin

Replying to @OliviaMesser

I experienced something similar at the beginning of a period of being uninsured. CVS wanted to charge 750D for a month's supply of a medication. Thankfully I didn't pay, and I quickly learned that Walmart sold it for $25. Mom and pop pharmacies are usually good about this too"

"@OliviaMesser

Sans insurance for a few days bc paperwork issue. Pharmacy charged me $500 for a month’s worth of medicine I have to take. With GoodRX the same pharmacy would fill the same amount for 13ish. I HATE this. WHICH IS IT?? If it’s not worth $500, WHY are you asking me to pay that

This country’s healthcare system is so broken, and sometimes you’re randomly presented with irrefutable and absurd evidence of how arbitrary the dollar amounts assigned to meds and services are. It makes me want to scream"

Ride Along 👍. That part where IC corners a guy and he gets scared starts singing "mamasay mamasa mamakusa". It was funny..

I see.. Whether The Line picks up or not, the area oppo to Sharm El Sheik can still generate some returns.

I started patching up MIT Strang lecs.. this is some next level shit

TechCrunch: "Hyzon Motors' hydrogen fuel ambitions include two US factories"

"HyPoint has unveiled the first operable prototype version of its turbo air-cooled hydrogen fuel cell system ... Testing has shown that HyPoint’s turbo air-cooled hydrogen fuel cell system will be able to achieve up to 2,000 watts per kilogram of specific power. Dr. Alex Ivanenko, founder and CEO of HyPoint, told Avionics International that their technology has drawn interest from a wide range of aircraft developers"

Link

"@dylanmatt

Still kind of stunned and heartened at the scale of the American Rescue Plan. The 2009 stimulus was 5.5% of 2008 GDP. The Rescue plan is 9.1% of 2020 GDP. And it creates a child allowance that will (knock wood) be very hard to roll back"

Calibro 35 - You, Filthy Bastards! #music

Link

"Venezuela to introduce 1-million-bolivar bill"

US side softened then; that's good.

"The U.S. and the European Union agreed Friday to suspend tariffs on wine, luggage, produce and other goods related to a longstanding dispute over government subsidies to Boeing Co. and Airbus"

Here is an O'Neill Cylinder. Look at that thing turn.. Oh yeah baby! Lookit!

Biden obviously knows all this.. So when he said "I spoke to the King, not to the prince" it was to placate ppl in his own party who dont like MBS. But in reality whether you are talking to the King or the prince, you are always talking to the prince.

:) That's some funny shit.

"During the Obama presidency, I heard stories, since confirmed, of two senior U.S. officials, on two separate occasions, meeting with King Salman in his palace office. While talking, the king gazed at a picture frame on his desk. Off in a corner, the crown prince sat at a desk, diligently typing on a computer. The officials soon realized what was going on: MBS was typing out what the king should say; the picture frame was, in fact, a computer screen, and the king was reading aloud the script by the crown prince"

Link

"The Parliamenterian" is an excuse.. The votes werent there for 15MW, and WH didn't want to spend pol capital on it, that's why it's dead.

Jacobin: "Despite America’s two-party duopoly, third parties have played a crucial role in shaping US politics for good and ill — from bringing us pro-worker reforms and the welfare state"

Link

I find the way ppl just throw around random info as extremely archaic. In the future more journalists will do what I just did below; looking for legit, well curated datasets, and run analysis on them.

Looking at Jan 2021 (Feb data is not in yet)

import pandas as pd
pd.set_option('display.max_columns', None)
df = pd.read_csv('https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/candidateged/GEDEvent_v21_0_1.csv')
pd.set_option('display.max_rows', 100)
pd.set_option('display.max_colwidth', 20)
df1 = df[(df['side_a'] == 'IS' )]
print (df1[['side_b','deaths_b','country']])

                  side_b  deaths_b       country
339            Civilians         0   Afghanistan
340            Civilians         0   Afghanistan
341            Civilians         0   Afghanistan
362              Taleban         5   Afghanistan
399            Civilians         0  Burkina Faso
400            Civilians         0  Burkina Faso
401            Civilians         0  Burkina Faso
411                 JNIM         0  Burkina Faso
570            Civilians         0          Iraq
714            Civilians         0    Mozambique
715            Civilians         0    Mozambique
716            Civilians         0    Mozambique
717            Civilians         0    Mozambique
718            Civilians         0    Mozambique
731            Civilians         0         Niger
737  Jama'atu Ahlis S...         3         Niger
768            Civilians         0       Nigeria
820             Yan Gora         0       Nigeria
837            Civilians         0      Pakistan
907            Civilians         0         Syria
950                  SDF         0         Syria
951                  SDF         0         Syria
952                  SDF         0         Syria
953                  SDF         0         Syria
954                  SDF         0         Syria
956                  HTS         1         Syria

I'd say attacks are lower than average. And just looking at Syria I can't see how 66 number can be reached. Sounds too high.

(Also; IS killed 5 Taleban, in Afganistan??? WTF?)

Let's check 2020. I am going to use Uppsala Conflict datasets, montly IS activity plot,

import pandas as pd
pd.set_option('display.max_columns', None)
df = pd.read_csv('https://ucdp.uu.se/downloads/candidateged/GEDEvent_v20_01_20_12.csv',parse_dates=True)
df1 = df[(df['side_a'] == 'IS' )]
df1['date'] = pd.to_datetime(df1['date_start'])
df1['mon'] = df1.date.dt.month
df1.groupby('mon').size().plot()
g2 = df1.groupby('mon').sum()['deaths_b'].plot()
plt.legend(['Attacks','Deaths'])
plt.title('IS Activity')
plt.savefig('out.png')

Monthly occurence of attacks globally hover around 30.

Was it that high? 🤔 Plus what's missing here is context, what is the trend, and how many deaths were there, etc.

"North Press Agency counted 66 military operations, which the Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsible for, in north and east Syria during January and February, 2021"

Link

"‘Kill them’: Duterte wants to ‘finish off’ communist rebels"

Link