Week 4
NPR: "ICJ says it's 'plausible' Israel committed genocide in Gaza"
AP News: "ICJ genocide case: World court demands Israel limit deaths"
Reuters: "ICJ.. ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention and to ensure its troops commit no genocidal acts in Gaza"
European Commission: "We take note of today's order of the International Court of Justice on South Africa's request for the indication of provisional measures. The EU reaffirms its continuing support to the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. Orders of the International Court of Justice are binding on the Parties and they must comply with them. The EU expects their full, immediate and effective implementation"
Cyril Ramaphosa on the ICJ order
H2 Insight: "Thyssenkrupp Steel launches tender for up to 151,000 tonnes of annual clean hydrogen supply in Germany.. Steelmaker is seeking ten-year contracts for green or blue H2 to reduce emissions at country's largest steel mill"
Reuters: "H2 Green Steel has raised 4.75 billion euros ($5.17 billion) in new funding for its planned flagship plant in the northern Swedish town of Boden, which will be the world's first large-scale green steel project.. The company, founded in 2020, has signed debt financing of 4.2 billion euros, added equity of close to 300 million euros from investors and been awarded a 250 million euro grant from the EU Innovation Fund, it said in a statement on Monday"
The New European: "[Tory] dissent has broken out once again, unsurprisingly with Europe and Brexit as its heart. This time, the squabble is over suggestions that Sunak has 'offered to sacrifice some of Britain’s Brexit freedoms in a bid to re-establish devolved government in Northern Ireland', as the Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday. The theory is that by promising no extra trade barriers in the Irish Sea, the prime minister will be able to persuade the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to end its two-year boycott of Stormont, the Northern Irish parliament... Putting up no new trade barriers would effectively mean Britain tying itself to EU standards governing products sold in the bloc. This is good news for British exporters"
404media: "Inside a Global Phone Spy Tool Monitoring Billions [by an Israeli company called Patternz].. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary apps, including popular ones such as 9gag, Kik, and a series of caller ID apps, are part of a global surveillance capability that starts with ads inside each app, and ends with the apps’ users being swept up into a powerful mass monitoring tool advertised to national security agencies that can track the physical location, hobbies, and family members of people to build billions of profiles, according to a 404 Media investigation"
Clean Technica: "Syzygy is headquartered in Texas, which has become the epicenter of renewable energy activity.. 'Syzygy has pioneered a new technology that harnesses the energy from ultra-high efficiency artificial lighting to e-crack ammonia, removing the need for combustion,' the company explains, crediting Rice University in Houston for developing the underlying system.
The heart of the technology is the Syzygy’s trademarked 'Rigel' photoreactor and proprietary photocatalyst, which the company credits for extracting hydrogen from ammonia with maximum efficiency... Syzygy has reached the production level of 5 tons of hydrogen per day at its testing center in Houston. 'In 2025 we’ll be ready for 10-ton installations, and then for 100-ton projects in late 2026,' says.. CEO Trevor Best"
The Guardian: "Australians earning less than $150,000 are set to benefit from changes to the stage-three tax cuts package from July, after federal cabinet approved plans to change the tax code. This includes those earning less than 45,000, who were set to miss out under the stage-three tax cuts legislated under the previous Coalition government... Those earning between 50,000 and 130,000 will see the biggest benefit from the reported changes, according to modelling"
See the problem is on the surface state, not the "deep state". Muckers are all visible, at upper ranks. There's that undersecretary too, the Chevron bitch, what's her name.. Nuland. As in Niu York of Ukraine I guess.. There you go. On the outer edges, albeit in influential positions, heavily tied into private interests, screwing things up for everyone. They are your enemy. Visible, out there for everyone to see.
Some at State claim Blink is a flaming Zionist. Involvement w/ private industrial Likud complex is a sign too.. not a good one.
The Lever: "Blinken Stranded After Davos By Boeing, His Old Client.. The Secretary of State previously advised the airline manufacturer; on his return from the World Economic Forum, he ran into one of its troubled 737 planes"
LBC: "David Cameron calls for ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and pushes Benjamin Netanyahu for two-state solution"
Politico: "Finland to Israel: ‘Enough is enough’ in Gaza"
Clean Technica: "More Bad News For Fossil Fuels: Green Hydrogen Is Making Green Steel Happen.. Steelmaking was once thought to be difficult if not impossible to decarbonize, with a key step in the process fully dependent on coal or natural gas. Well, that was then. The world’s first and biggest full scale green steel plant is taking shape in Sweden, with an assist from green hydrogen. That leaves about 1,000 steel plants around the world yet to decarbonize, but at least it’s a start"
Also recommeding Sixty Minutes (2024), Reacher S2.
They filmed the movie in a single, unbroken shot, hence the name. There are some theatrical aspects to that but the camera angle still matters (in theatre you don't control that), it looked like the production meant to show scenes in a specific way, so it had to hit those points in a continuous shot, that is tough to prepare for.
One More Shot, sequel to One Shot - interesting concept.
Corporate wing of the CA Democrats are so scared of any type of Wealth Tax talk they don't know know where to hide whenever the issue comes up. This is from the "left" of the US politics. Massive budget holes, massive wealth accumulation, it is clear where the fix is, yet Dems argue among themselves how much social services they can cut and whether they can, pretty-please, maybe give the lower income folk a tax cut once in a while.
Without water you can't build a "vibrant" city, dumbass
The Urbanist: "Now billionaire and former Walmart executive Mark Lore has dreamt up plans for building another utopian city in the desert, Telosa.. Some of the greatest expenses in Telosa will be related to the city’s environmental challenges. Building on cheap land in the desert comes with disadvantages, most notably lack of water – which incidentally is already a major challenge for U.S. cities like Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, and Atlanta. Critics have noted that the climate crisis will only worsen water shortages"
Stick around
Governator Ahnuld of course did not fix that problem, he inherited it, then kicked the can down the road.. Fixing that hole would mean taxing people like himself.
$68 BILLION budget gap? See how wealth tax comes up when the issue is big budget gaps. It is the only way.
The Sacramento Bee: "California Democrat pushes wealth tax as $68 billion deficit looms... A California Democrat is renewing his efforts to tax wealthy residents’ net worth as a potential solution to closing the state’s 68 billion spending gap... Assembly Bill 259 would institute a 1% tax on the net worth of residents with more than 50 million dollars in assets, with a 1.5% bracket for those with more than 1 billion"
"@josephcox@infosec.exchange
New: Google News is boosting AI-generated garbage articles that rip-off other peoples' work"
From an Opium Wars payback / 'correction' POV blockade also makes sense - CH gets a redo through a third war, in the first two they failed to defend homeland, but they will defend China this time, a China including of course Taiwan. They extend the borders to contain the island and wait for the foreigners to arrive. Fucka me, fucka you.
NYT: "Widening Mideast Crisis : Blast That Killed About 20 Soldiers Linked to Israeli Effort to Create Gaza Buffer Zone.. The soldiers had been planting explosives as part of a plan to demolish Palestinian neighborhoods close to the border when Gazan militants fired on them, according to Israeli officials"
"@bert_hubert@fosstodon.org
Software is now (rightfully) considered so dangerous that we tell everyone not to run it themselves. Instead, you are supposed to leave that to an 'as a service' provider, or perhaps to 'the cloud'...
The assumption is then that 'the cloud' is somehow able to turn insecure software into a secure service. Yet even the past year, we’ve learned that Microsoft’s email platform was thoroughly hacked, down to classified government email (update: it happened again!). There are also well-founded worries about the security of the Azure cloud. Meanwhile, industry darling Okta, which provides LOG IN SOLUTIONS got comprehensively owned. This was their second breach within a year. Also, there was a suspicious spate of Okta users getting hacked subsequently"
Cool
"@agrinsted@fediscience.org
'Ice is a remarkably strong solid. When its normalized strength (σs/μ) is compared with that of other solids at the same fraction of their melting point (T/TM), ice is found to be among the strongest and hardest. ' (ashby and frost, 1982)"
Mother Jones: "Global Millionaires Say Yes to Taxing Extreme Wealth, Poll Finds"
I see he changed his mind on neoliberalism, disavowed it. Good for him.
Francis Fukuyama's favorite president: Theodore Roosevelt, because -wait for it- he created the national park system. If he hadn't 'all these beautiful places would be commercialized'. Wasn't this guy some big bleeping pro-market guy? Capitalism won, it was all over, it was the End of History? #NovaraMedia
CH's A2/AD investments, its big navy, big as in numbers not necessarily deep sea faring capability, makes more sense for a regional blockade scenario too. In a hot war many actors in the area can take potshots at them. With a blockade countries must decide specifically to break blockade and risk escalation.
Jestrab: "Much of the public discussion around a China-Taiwan conflict centers on an invasion; however, a number of factors make this the least likely scenario. The primary reason why an invasion scenario is unlikely is that it runs contrary to the PRC’s strategic objectives and reasons for seeking unification. An invasion would result in significant direct physical violence against the people of Taiwan, the population that the CCP seeks to rule. Additionally, the PRC gives priority to economic development as a 'central task' of its continued growth. An invasion would certainly result in harm to the Chinese economy due to international sanctions and significant destruction to Taiwan’s infrastructure and economy.
Geographic factors also make an invasion difficult, including the fact that two-thirds of the country is rugged mountains and 80 percent of the population lives in urban environments. Achieving success during an invasion would likely require preemptive attacks on US and allied forces, and there would be limited de-escalation options if this occurred. The historical precedent is that the United States is highly committed to wars it enters after being attacked. Unlike an invasion scenario, a blockade could be reversable, and the level of force used could be adjusted...
A blockade is the most likely and dangerous scenario, due to Taiwan’s reliance on maritime trade to sustain its economic prosperity. Moreover, a nonkinetic blockade is appealing to the PRC, as it is the lowest level of coercive action that could remain below the threshold of open hostilities and still achieve its national objectives...
A successful blockade disrupting maritime trade would shutter Taiwan’s economy. Rationing of scarce energy and food reserves, amplified by a lack of viable resupply plans, would generate fear and uncertainty among the Taiwanese population — in sustaining their lives, getting their next meal, and maintaining their personal economic security. The PRC’s actions would grind day- to-day life on the island to a halt. Democracy is more sensitive to economic disruptions than other forms of government, and a successful blockade could result in panic"
Paper by Marek Jestrab claims a blockade of Taiwan is more likely than an Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That sounds right.
TDB: "If there was ever a state that Nikki Haley could win, New Hampshire would have been it (and no, avoiding a landslide loss doesn’t count). Assuming her candidacy continues.. it won’t get any easier from here... It’s over"
A win is still a win. Plus it was Haley who had to win this one to matter in the race. NH electorate on paper should have favored her more. Democrat leaning less conservative state right? If she won NH she could have spun that "see I can win among Dem leaning elect, and I'm conservative enough, so vote for me". The plan did not work.
Politico: "Trump wins New Hampshire Republican primary — but not by much"
Arab News: "Trump defeats Haley in New Hampshire to move closer to White House nomination"
The Guardian: "US oil lobby launches eight-figure ad blitz amid record fossil fuel extraction.. Campaign pushes idea oil is ‘vital’ to global security and capitalizes on war in Gaza to escalate production, climate advocates say"
In other words hydrogen allows Moon to become a gateway to other planets. Without it the whole concept would be impossible. What a magic element.
MIT Technology Review: "The moon is a treasure trove of valuable resources.. there’s one resource in particular that has excited.. virtually anyone with a vested interest in making spaceflight to distant worlds more affordable. It’s water... Why? If you split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then liquefy those constituents, you have rocket fuel. If you can stop at the moon’s orbit or a lunar base to refuel, you no longer need to bring all your propellant with you as you take off, making your spacecraft significantly lighter and cheaper to launch. That’s important because Earth’s atmosphere and gravitational pull necessitate use of tons of fuel per second when rockets launch. Creating a sustainable source of fuel in space could reduce the costs and hazards associated with heavy liftoffs"
Bryan Johnson anti-aging diet.. Guy takes 30 supplements a day. Excessive. The simplification of meals themselves are fine, the ingredients do not look unbalanced. But the approach is too veggy, animal fat is missing. No wonder dude's fat levels dropped too low once and he risked a heart attack.. Sounds like a bored billionaire with too much time and money on his hands.
Texas Standard: "Federal grant will bring hydrogen truck fueling to Texas.. The $70 million awarded to the North Central Texas Council of Governments will add hydrogen fuel stations to existing truck stops along the highways of the Texas Triangle"
Al Monitor: "EU presses Israel on two-state solution after war in Gaza"
These people are pissed #ISR
Frontline UA/RU 01/10 - 01/22. Visible RU gains in Avdiivka.
The Times of Israel: "The Kremlin’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized what she labeled as Berlin’s 'unfettered support' for the Jewish state, and accused it of systematically ignoring the plight of non-Jewish European minorities, particularly Slavic peoples in the then-Soviet Union, who were massacred during the Holocaust"
Fermi's Paradox asked 'Where is everybody?' meaning extraterrestrial aliens, implying given the vastness of the universe and long time it has existed, there should be advanced extraterrestrial civilizations throughout the universe. The Drake equation aimed to answer that question quantitatively, estimates how many active civilizations there are in the galaxy right now. Using numbers by Andrew Dessler,
$$ N = R_* \cdot f_p \cdot n_e \cdot f_l \cdot f_i \cdot f_c \cdot L $$
$R_*$: Number of civilizations with which humans could communicate. Recent estimates suggest about 2 new stars are formed in the Milky Way every year.
$f_P$: The average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets. Most stars have planets, estimate 0.9.
$N_e$: Assume 1 in 5 of stars with planets has a planet in the habitable zone, 0.2.
$f_l$, $f_i$, $f_c$ : The fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point, develop intelligent life, and develop a technology that releases detectable signs. Wild guess all 0.1.
$L$: The length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals. Unknown, Dessler assumes advanced civilizations last for ten million years.
"%d planets" % (2 * 0.9 * 0.2 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 10*1e6)
Out[1]: '3600 planets'
But if "instead of 10,000,000 years, advanced civilizations last only 10,000 years", then
"%d planets" % (2 * 0.9 * 0.2 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 10000)
Out[1]: '3 planets'
If advanced civilizations last on average only 1,000 years, due to, well perhaps some kind of catastropy hits them all, then
"%0.2f planets" % (2 * 0.9 * 0.2 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 1000)
Out[1]: '0.36 planets'
which shows why we are the only one, and "there is no one else". And btw we will likely go extinct, lose the civilization we built before our 1000 years are up due to the climate, nuclear war or some other artifact of modernity.
That is the answer to "where is everyone?", they are all dead due to one catastrophy or another, not reaching and staying at the level where they could contact anyone alive like them (us, in this case).
"@wilbr@glitch.social
When you think about it, a lot of the UFO sightings really could be temperature inversions. Odd light formations are already a feature of antenna arrays and planes, so the main freaky part is that they'll appear and move impossibly quickly and completely silently. Rather than lights (or craft) disobeying the laws of physics, it makes a lot of sense that between our eyes not working great in the dark and optical illusions working better with high contrast that we're seeing a hot air lens"
Reshare
"@respectmyplanet@mstdn.social
Imagine mandating a technology where selling points in the dead of winter are: 1) dont run the heater. 2) dont pay attn to the range estimate, you could lose 40% of that. 3). Dont let it sit in cold overnight if its below 20% charge. 4) It might take a long time to charge when its cold which can be exacerbated by long lines & cars bricked blocking chargers. 5) Virtually none of the raw materials for the powertrain come from USA or Europe. They predominantly come from countries that dont like you"
The diva cunt and the Thiel types around him have no pull, and no understanding of politics.. Bunch of overly rich mupmupers flailing around, clueless. Ironically their understanding of tech is even worse.
RDS shouldna thrown his lot with the monkey boy, that was his first mistake.
Politico: "How DeSantis collapsed in the glare of a presidential campaign"
Jerusalem is massively segregated apparently #Peled
There goes another claim of legitimacy for Zionists on the land they inhabit.
King David was a myth? 🤣 It's like the King Arthur of Brits.. that mfka did not exist either.
Wiki: "In 2007.. [researchers] stated that the archaeological evidence shows that [during the tenth century BCE] Judah was sparsely inhabited and Jerusalem no more than a small village. The evidence suggested that David ruled only as a chieftain over an area which cannot be described as a state or as a kingdom, but more as a chiefdom, much smaller and always overshadowed by the older and more powerful kingdom of Israel to the north. They posited that Israel and Judah were not monotheistic at the time and that later 7th-century redactors sought to portray a past golden age of a united, monotheistic monarchy in order to serve contemporary needs"
Phys.org: "New material opens up possibility of converting water pollutants into hydrogen gas.. WPI Researchers have developed a material to remove urea from water and potentially convert it into hydrogen gas. By building these materials of nickel and cobalt atoms with carefully tailored electronic structures, the group has unlocked the potential to enable these transition metal oxides and hydroxides to selectively oxidize urea in an electrochemical reaction"
"@baldur@toot.cafe
'The EU is just protectionism!'
Yes. THAT’S WHAT IT’S FOR. The entire goddamn point of the EU is to protect domestic European production. That’s the reason it was invented in the first place. It’s not there to beat European consumers into submission for US tech companies"
"@reichenstein@mastodon.social
So Apple loses in court and is now forced to allow developers to offer a link to pay for the app outside AppStore. So... In response, Apple's Masters of Evil lawyer team draws up a set of new 'laws' ('give us full access to your books so we can still take our 1/3 of your revenue there!') to undermine that ruling and reaffirm their old legally denied practice...
I have written about the shackles of paying 30% of productivity software revenue at length—and I have learned that Apple users do neither understand nor care about indie dev economics as long as they get a new shiny iPhone next season"
"We are not rich enough not to have to". That is hilarious. @Twocantravel
Jake Johnson: "Survey results released Tuesday.. show that nearly three-quarters of millionaires in G20 countries support higher taxes on extreme wealth, which they view as an increasingly dire threat to democracy. The poll was conducted by the London-based firm Survation on behalf of the Patriotic Millionaires, an advocacy group that campaigns for a more progressive tax system. The survey, which polled over 2,300 millionaires in G20 nations, found that 74% 'support higher taxes on wealth to help address the cost-of-living crisis and improve public services'...
'We, the very richest, are sick and tired of inaction, so it's hardly surprising that working people, at the sharp end of our rigged economies, have lost all patience,' said Guy Singh-Watson, a British entrepreneur and member of Patriotic Millionaires U.K.
The poll was released as 260 millionaires and billionaires signed a letter imploring the dozens of world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos to raise taxes on rich people like them, warning that a continued failure to 'address the dramatic rise of income inequality" would be "catastrophic for society'"
Stock markets are breaking records, same reason; too much concentrated wealth looking for assets to buy. Sometimes that is stocks, sometimes real estate, even crypto - anything with enough liquidity will be a target.
REIT is an ETF, an indirect way to bet on real-estate
Even Robinhood monkeys are getting into that action. "I'm gonna buy some REITs broo!"
Look at the median home price.. Clearly a trader needs to bet on asset prices going up, because the rich is gobbling up assets, their wealth increases, and they buy more assets.
#BEV
"@respectmyplanet@mstdn.social
Imagine mandating a technology where selling points in the dead of winter are: 1) dont run the heater. 2) dont pay attn to the range estimate, you could lose 40% of that. 3). Dont let it sit in cold overnight if its below 20% charge. 4) It might take a long time to charge when its cold which can be exacerbated by long lines & cars bricked blocking chargers. 5) Virtually none of the raw materials for the powertrain come from USA or Europe. They predominantly come from countries that dont like you"
Heise Online: "The 'BSR HyAirport' project for a hydrogen infrastructure for climate-neutral flights in the Baltic Sea region officially started on Tuesday. 16 airports, airlines, research institutions and technology companies from Germany, Scandinavia, the Baltic States and Poland want to work together with 24 partners"
Al-Monitor: "Hezbollah warns Israel against continued 'aggression'"
Arab News: "Leaders of Non-Aligned Movement or NAM countries have denounced Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and demanded an immediate ceasefire there, during the annual summit of the 120-member bloc"
Politico: "Defense in Davos: US on back foot as world roils around it.. Day after day, the officials faced questions about the political tussle over providing more aid to Ukraine, congressional polarization, the optics of supporting Israel despite the suffering of Palestinians and a growing bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen"
Politico: "The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell on Friday openly accused Israel of having financed the Palestinian militant group Hamas... 'Hamas was financed by the Israeli government in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority,' Borrell was quoted as saying by Spanish newspaper El País. Borrell was speaking at Spain’s University of Valladolid, where the Spanish politician was awarded an honorary doctorate"
NYT: "Some Israeli commanders said the government’s two main goals were mutually incompatiable. To eradicate Hamas, the military would have to engage in a lengthy war that would most likely cost the hostages’ lives"
Arab News: "US Democrats push Biden administration over civilian toll in Israel’s Gaza campaign.. The letter to.. Blinken, led by US Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Jamie Raskin, was signed by 60 Democratic House of Representatives members, reflecting concern, especially on the left, over the steep toll on Palestinian civilians of Israel’s campaign against Hamas"
Income equality increased massively after 30s in Germany, from GINI level 30 up to 44 between Depression and WWII, see paper here. The terrible thing about it was its fluctuation which IMO gave ppl the impression their well-being was on knife's edge, which could have led them to a certain demagogue with a funny mustache.