Week 46

"How to Fight Monopoly Power with FTC Chair Lina Khan" #Factually #Connover

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Andersen: "[Economist] James Tobin... described financial professionals' suddenly ballooning pay as 'high private rewards disproportionate to social productivity' ..

It’s ironic that just as we entered an economic era all about eliminating inessential middlemen and corporate bloat, one bloated sector filled with inessential middlemen, finance, has flourished as never before.

It’s ironic that one of the rationales for America’s 1980s makeover was to revive the heroic American tradition of risk-taking—given that so much of the story has turned out to be about reckless financiers insulating themselves from risk by shifting it to customers and, through the government, to taxpayers.

It’s ironic that finance, a service industry created to help business and the rest of us, so bubbly and booming on and on these last four decades, has mainly helped itself. 'There is no clear evidence,' the chief financial industry regulator of the U.K. and former vice-chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe concluded in 2010, 'that the growth in the scale and complexity of the financial system in the rich developed world over the last 20 to 30 years has driven increased growth or stability'"

Andersen, Evil Geniuses: ".. The final piece of financialization comes from the enormous growth of the so-called institutional investors, in particular mutual funds. Owning a share of stock isn’t the same as being a citizen of a corporate domain, but stock ownership used to be much more directly democratic, and the finance industry didn’t run the show... By the 2000s, most stock shares were being bought and sold by professional asset managers. The several biggest mutual funds are now the majority shareholders of 90 percent of the four hundred biggest companies, and such institutional investors control 80 percent of all the stock in all U.S. public companies... ​ Mutual fund companies are reincarnated equivalents of the excessively powerful trusts that made us enact antitrust laws in the first place. Economists and others across the ideological spectrum now worry about the effects of this new stratum of command and control. Because mutual funds have controlling interests in the big dominant competitors in almost every major business—food, drugs, airlines, telecommunications, banking, seeds, whatever—they aren’t naturally inclined to make those rival companies compete aggressively against one another"

H2 Central: "Germany and the Netherlands are strengthening cooperation in the field of hydrogen – King Willem-Alexander visits North Rhine-Westphalia working site"

H2 Central: "OCI Global and Röhm announce pioneering production of Methylmethacrylate (MMA) using bio-ammonia... OCI Global’s bio-ammonia can achieve a GHG reduction of >70% compared to conventional grey ammonia"

Frontline stat 11/11-11/17 - Russian gains around Stepove and north of Avdiivka.

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10X already..

Anadolu Agency: "Gaza death toll surpasses 12,000 amid relentless Israeli attacks"

CTV News Montreal: "A $4 B green hydrogen plant will be built in Quebec"

The Beekeper, Argylle, Fall Guy trailers look good. Machette, Money Monster, recommended.

CNBC: "Xi says U.S. and China can only be adversaries or partners, with no middle ground"

Hossein-Zadeh: "It is often forgotten... that for a few years after the war, [Stalin] assumed an exceedingly moderate posture... His nation had lost 25 million people in the war, was desperately in need of aid for rebuilding, and continued for a long time to nurture hopes of coexistence.. Evidence thus clearly suggests that the U.S. policy makers built the gigantic military-industrial complex not out of any genuine fear of Soviet military attack but out of other motives. Top among those motives, as pointed out earlier, was to establish a U.S.-led world capitalist order in which unhindered market forces would flourish, a world no part of which would be excluded from the free flow of trade and investment"

Oz Labor walked tightrope having to contend with anti-China stance of the previous administration and its Aukus, but when Kevin Rudd was appointed as US ambassador it became clear they did not want to be antagonistic towards China. Rudd is one of the most pro-China voices in Australia.

"MAN Engines presents groundbreaking hydrogen combustion engine for off-road applications"

Bloomberg: "UK’s Hydrogen Ambitions to Get a Boost From Gas Grids Project.. East Coast Hydrogen aims to connect up to 11GW to grid by 2030.. Capacity is enough to exceed government production target"

Paper: "In the midst of Africa’s mining boom, communities downstream from industrial mines face increased exposure to toxic waste...we compare villages downstream and upstream of mines before and after opening and find a 25% increase in 24-month mortality rates downstream"

PDF

Hey incorrect naming, identity issue isn't unheard of.. I believe even in India some are not happy with the word "India". They, including the current PM, want to change the name to Bharat.

The 100th, centennial has come and gone for so-called "Turks". Kemal "The GrandAncestor" was a mediocre political leader. His Turkist ideology is complete bonkers. The nation and its citizens need a name change and a new foundational story.

Politico: "The [US] administration’s dramatic about face all but assured that the plan — which funds the government in two tranches into January and February — would make it into law... That doesn’t mean there weren’t hard compromises for Biden and allied Democrats to swallow. The deal again leaves out the White House’s chief legislative priority: a nearly $106 billion defense supplemental that would fund aid to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific"

RU FM says Palestinians even wanted to start talks wout preconditions once bcz Putin asked but then Netan changed his mind. ISR never misses an oppurtunity to cause Palestinians to miss an opportunity. Netan must have received "the call" from "the complex" saying chaos makes us more money, stop or else, he chickened out.

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Arab News: "Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday urged Israel to end the 'indiscriminate killing of Palestinians' in Gaza, in his sharpest criticism of Israel since war against Hamas broke out over a month ago"

Politico.eu: "Germany suggests UN take control in Gaza after Israel-Hamas war ends"

Carscoops: "Hydrogen, Not Electricity, Could Be The Future Of Everything From Motorsport To Trucking.. Green vehicles mean battery-powered vehicles, right? That’s the message we’re being fed on a daily basis.. But having got off to a slow start in the green race, hydrogen power is shifting into high gear, winning fans in industries as varied as motorsport, trucking and plant machinery. And it might even save our beloved combustion engines from extinction [via clean fuels]"

KED Global: "Samsung C&T to build world’s largest liquid hydrogen tank"

H2 Fuel News: "Pump up the volume: Hydrogen hits the big time.. Partnering with Air Liquide, Siemens Energy is scaling production of electrolyzers using standardization and automation"

Tried SBC + HDMI into mobile monitor, meh. Power req of monitors are somewhat demanding. Their economics did not lead them into such improv sadly, stock droid tablet can go on for a day wout problems acceptable as dumb viewscreen.

Single Board Computer, fine. Wireless keyb into SBC with *nix, Android tablet for remote desktop VNC (via local net). Worked well so far.. Best of both worlds, full-blown Unix on board, fast viewing through cheap tech. Durable, easy to carry for both. Power req is minimal, tablet only a dumb viewscreen like those dumb terminals of yesteryear. Tablet can also be used for occasional seperate net, media consumption.

TPG Online Daily: "Caltrans signed an $80 million contract with Stadler Rail, Inc. of Bussnang, Switzerland, to deliver zero-emission hydrogen passenger trains. The contract includes a base order of 80 million for the first four trainsets between Merced and Sacramento with options for up to 25 additional trainsets that can be used throughout California"

"Australia’s first hydrogen fuel cell prime mover is now available to buy"

Graeber, Debt: "Almost all the bubbles of the eighteenth century involved some fantastic scheme to use the proceeds of colonial ventures to pay for European wars. Paper money was debt money, and debt money was war money, and this has always remained the case. Those who financed Europe's endless military conflicts also employed the government's police and prisons to extract ever-increasing productivity from the rest of the population" via @categulario@bookwyrm.welhaba.mx

NYT: "More Than 400 U.S. Officials Sign Letter Protesting Biden’s Israel Policy The signers, representing some 40 government agencies, reflect growing internal dissent over the administration’s support of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza"

Politico: "State Department staffers offered a blistering critique of the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war in a dissent memo obtained by POLITICO, arguing that, among other things, the U.S. should be willing to publicly criticize the Israelis... It reflects the sentiments of many U.S. diplomats, especially at mid-level and lower ranks, according to conversations with several department staffers as well as other reports.. The memo has two key requests: that the U.S. support a ceasefire, and that it balance its private and public messaging toward Israel, including airing criticisms of Israeli military tactics and treatment of Palestinians that the U.S. generally prefers to keep private"

The crowd was bussed in by AIPAC. When reporters talk to individuals they repeat the same talking point over and over again. So not only bussed, someone gave them a script.

Pro-Israel gathering in DC? What about it?

"Could Israel's war on Gaza boost arms sales?" #AlJazeera

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"[Seattle-based appellate judge] rules automakers can record and intercept owner text messages.. by using vehicles’ on-board infotainment systems to record and intercept customers’ private text messages and mobile phone call logs"

SF Writer Charlie Stross: "[T]he influence of science fiction on our environment seems to have been gathering pace throughout my entire life. The future is a marketing tool... It's becoming increasingly unusual to read a report of a new technology or scientific discovery that doesn't breathlessly use the phrase 'it seems like science fiction'. The news cycle is currently dominated by hype about artificial intelligence (a gross mis-characterisation of machine learning algorithms and large language models). A couple of years ago it was breathless hype about cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies—which turned out to be a financial services bubble that drained a lot of small investors' savings accounts into the pockets of people like convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried"

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The Pal prime minister from the PA is talking a bunch on F24. Poor guy sounds distressed, understandably so. I realized how little we heard of them in recent years - ISR plan to cut them out of the discourse clearly worked. It was all about Hamas Hamas Hamas, ISR spox talking shit about them, that took all oxygen out of the room and now here we are.

#Protests

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Ian Miell: "I have just returned to front end development after 20-odd years.

Oh. My. God.

What happened? Maintainability and simplicity used to be a feature, now it's considered a bug"

Why does Israel rely so much on bombing? Bombs are a money maker for the military-industrial-likud complex. A soldier on foot shooting a rifle is chump change. That won't move the stock value at all. You need to rely on big ticket items, like a BOMB. They will move the dial.

Revisionist Zionists have a real hard-on for that al-Aqsa Mosque don't they..? They want to destroy it, bomb it, and rebuild their temple in its place.

There is an improved version of the Ukraine map shared earlier allowing comparison between any two dates. Members and long-time readers can find that on my primary site.

There is the occasional support for Israel in the odd developing country, but that likely has to do with weapon purchases than anything else. The US laws that prohibits sale of certain weapons to certain countries can be by-passed by selling those weapons to Israel who promptly resells them to the prohibited country.

I worked at an customer analytics project, pre-911, our team bought personal data from Experian. The info was at some incredible detail. >300 million US/Canada citizens. We received it, and put it on an external hard drive, it sat there on our desk, getting connected to occasionally, it is still hilarious to think bunch of programmers at a private firm took that from another private firm, with no checks or balances whatsoever. Now such data hoarding is a cottage industry.

"@dangillmor@mastodon.social

Experian is a criminally negligient 'credit bureau' that hoovers up personal information, sells it, and lets identity thieves easily steal 'your' account. There is absolutely no accountability because Congress doesn't give a damn -- and Experian blatantly doesn't give a damn"

Arab News: "British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak brought back former leader David Cameron as foreign minister on Monday.. The return of Cameron suggested Sunak wanted to bring in more centrist, experienced hands rather than appease the right of his party which supported Braverman"

Reuters: "UK's Sunak brings back Cameron, sacks Braverman"

The Independent: "[11/11] Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley resisted pressure from senior Tories to ban a pro-Palestinian demonstration on Saturday, prompting Home Secretary Suella Braverman to write an article for The Times which made allegations of police bias over the protests"

H2 Insight: "Siemens Energy officially inaugurated its new 1GW PEM electrolyser factory in Berlin this morning, in the presence of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck"

"@grmpyprogrammer@phpc.social

.. Chat[GPT]-powered [coder aid] tools will spit out all sorts of crummy code full of bugs and impossible to test, and then companies will try and pay poverty wages to fix it. I get paid what I get paid because of what I know — I will not work for anyone who thinks my job is to correct the output of a bullshit machine"

Business Insider: "In October, Cruise lost its permit in California entirely after an incident in which a pedestrian was dragged beneath one of its driverless vehicles 20 feet after it ran her over after she was first struck by a different car. GM, Cruise's parent company, then paused all Cruise robotaxi operations nationwide"

Ukraine/Russia frontline comparison as a browsable map, comparison between 10/24 (blue) and 11/11 (red). RU advances around Avdiivka are clear to see. Another avoidable war but being executed thanks to the West and their arms lobby.

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The Shadow World, Feinstein

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Reshare, Medea Benjamin #Hedges

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Hossein-Zadeh: "Frightened by the specter of peace and/or peace dividends [after the fall of the Berlin Wall], beneficiaries of military spending frantically sought to invent and substitute 'new threats' for the 'communist threat' of the Cold War era, thereby preempting the realization of peace dividends.

In pursuit of this goal, beneficiaries of war and militarism found a strong, well-established network of politically savvy allies: radical Zionist proponents of 'greater Israel.' Because the interests of these two powerful groups converged over fomenting war and political convulsion in the Middle East, an ominously potent alliance was forged between them— ominous, because the mighty U.S. war machine was now supplemented by the almost unrivaled public relations capabilities of the hard-line pro-Israel lobby in the United States. The alliance is unofficial and de facto; it is subtly forged through an elaborate network of powerful militaristic think tanks"

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"Show me who makes a profit from war, and I’ll show you how to stop the war" -- Henry Ford