Week 35

Ahmari, New Statesmen: "In 2016, Trump’s opposition to neoliberal globalisation and free trade shocked the centre. Fast-forward eight years, and his critique of globalisation has attained the status of conventional wisdom among the establishment.

Team Biden widened Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods and complemented them with a raft of industrial strategies aimed at ensuring domestic manufacturing independence, especially in the semiconductor and green sectors. On antitrust, the Biden administration this summer successfully concluded a case against Google that was launched under Trump. Bidenism..represented continuity with Trumpism.

Important differences persist, most notably on immigration. As the Republican nominee for vice-president, JD Vance [.. said] the Biden administration refused to see open borders as an element of neoliberalism that helps firms 'do the same things with cheaper and cheaper labour'. But even on that issue, Harris is now presenting herself as a long-time hawk. It’s an implausible claim, but the rhetorical concession to border discontent is notable all the same"

NYT: "Sahra Wagenknecht, a former Communist, has founded her own party to respond to German grievances about migrants, crime and the dangers of the war in Ukraine...

It has taken off like a rocket, running third in three states in elections starting on Sunday, all in the former East Germany, where she grew up.

There, her party is polling between 15 percent and 20 percent, well ahead of any of the three parties in government in Berlin but behind the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, the front-runner in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg. Nationally, her party is polling as high as 9 percent, forcing her way into the conversation before federal elections in September 2025"

TNW: "Sweden’s been stealthily using hydrogen to forge green steel. Now it’s ready to industrialise"

Good move.. but we cannot rely on businesses to do the right thing, gov/state power needs to stand at the ready with its big stick to "lead" the way.

"@dakkar@s.thenautilus.net

LEGO saw extra profits, and decided to cut their margins to reduce pollution!"

CNN: "Lego plans to ditch oil in its bricks for pricier renewable plastic as profits surge"

BTW Ed Witten won the Fields Medal for his work on QFT and topology not String Theory.

Kuznick: "The [WWI] war years [brought] unprecedented collusion between large corporations and the government in an attempt to rationalize and stabilize the economy, control unfettered competition, and guarantee profits—something that the top bankers and corporate executives had striven for decades to achieve"

An article on the blockade scenario was shared before.. Link below

[-]

WION: "China lacks ability to 'fully invade', has other options to threaten: Taiwan defence ministry.. The report said that in May when China staged war games around Taiwan shortly after Lai Ching-te took office as the new president, Chinese coast guard ships were sent for the first time on interception and inspection drills off the east coast.

China's aim with the drills was to practice cutting off communication with the outside world and blockade Taiwan, and boarding foreign cargo ships is an option China could take, short of open conflict, the ministry said"

It appears like UA Kursk incursion not only did not slow down RU Donetsk advances, but when Pokrovsk falls, it might be blamed for the losses in the East bcz the criticism will be Kursk front diverted resources from the East.

WION: "Netanyahu and Gallant exchange fiery words after Israeli PM prioritises stationing troops over saving hostages"

Economist: "Why Texas Republicans are souring on crypto.. Playing the state’s energy market has become more profitable than mining bitcoin"

Defund battery electric cars, the grid, keep subsidies for clean fuels. It is too late for "all of the above" option, gov needs to choose. Electrification and battery electric proved too inferior to provide a solid base for long-term green transition.

Politico: "Republican fight over green subsidies heads toward a boiling point.. No Republican voted for the Inflation Reduction Act two years ago, and conservatives consistently charge that its hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for electric vehicles, wind, solar and other technologies will drive up prices, distort the markets and benefit China. But the law is undeniably bringing federal money, private investments and jobs into communities around the country overwhelmingly represented by Republicans — and the once-united opposition is fraying"

Funny...

"@mergesort@threads.net

A useful hack for achieving 5 9's of uptime is to lower your standards. It's much easier to hit 9.9999% uptime than 99.999%"

Al-Monitor: "A top UN aid official on Thursday questioned 'what has become of our basic humanity,' as the war in Gaza rages and humanitarian operations struggle to respond. Joyce Msuya, acting head of the UN's humanitarian office (OCHA), said that 'we cannot plan more than 24 hours in advance because we struggle to know what supplies we will have, when we will have them or where we will be able to deliver. Civilians are hungry. They are thirsty. They are sick. They are homeless. They have been pushed beyond... what any human being should bear,' she told the Security Council"

The Cradle: "[2024/06] The US-based chip giant Intel Corp is halting a $25 billion chip manufacturing project in Israel Calcalist reported.. The Israeli news agency writes that Intel’s decision to stop the building of the multibillion-dollar factory after 'Intel's suppliers received in recent days notice of the cancellation of contracts for the supply of equipment and materials required for the establishment of the company's new factory.'..

Since the beginning of the war in October of last year, Israel has suffered economic consequences... Venture capitalist investments in Israel peaked in 2021 at $29 billion, but as of 2024, foreign investment has sunk to around 5 billion"

Firstpost: "Despite gains in Kursk, Ukraine at risk of 'operational catastrophe' if [Pokrovsk] falls to Russia"

#Frontline #UA #RU 08/19 - 08/30

[-]

There is a scene in the movie Mars Attacks!, aliens visit the Congress one of them prepares to give a speech, then they pull out their weapons and vaporize everyone. An old lady watching on TV goes "haha they blew up the Congress!". I saw live audiences losing it on that one. I guess dislike of Congress runs deep.

Airport Technology: "H3 Dynamics has been selected as the fuel cell supplier for EU-funded research project HyPoTraDe’s modular hydrogen powertrain system"

"@adub@kolektiva.social

My university has converted our office telephones to Microsoft Teams. when i grumbled about this to a favourite sysadmin, this is how they responded 🔥

'Microsoft has actually brilliantly leveraged the lousy security landscape -- for which they are in no small part responsible -- to capture even larger market-share, as we now need commercial entities to produce the software required to protect us from their failures, and therefore need a more uniform environment to achieve the necessary scale. The uniformity then guarantees an ever greater scale for the inevitable conflagration. Monocultures guarantee one big fire instead of a bunch of small survivable ones. We really have no interest in learning from evolution, in no small part because it would produce fewer billionaires.

— Local Cranky IT Guy' [shared with permission]"

Reuters: "Industrial gases firm Linde said on Tuesday it would invest more than $2 billion to build a clean hydrogen facility for supplying to Dow's (DOW.N), opens new tab Path2Zero production complex in Alberta, Canada.

The facility would be the largest clean hydrogen production site in Canada upon completion in 2028 and would also supply to other customers along with Dow, the company said. Linde had announced a $1.8 billion investment in another clean hydrogen plant in the U.S. last year amid increasing interest in the clean burning fuel"

Undark: "Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, the utility that serves Questa, Taos, and other municipalities across three New Mexico counties and two pueblos, is hoping to build a green hydrogen plant in Questa to store renewable energy as it works toward completely eliminating fossil fuels from its energy grid. The utility is already using 100 percent renewables during the day, but it still relies on fossil fuels for energy at night..

In 2022, the Department of Energy named Questa one of the pilot communities for its Communities Local Energy Action Program, which supports low-income and energy-burdened communities that are shifting away from a fossil-fuel-based economy. Since then, Kit Carson Electric has been seeking funding for a green hydrogen project at a Chevron-owned molybdenum mine that is currently a Superfund site. The project would bring back a handful of the 300 permanent jobs that were lost when the mine closed in 2014. Questa’s mayor, John Ortega, thinks the technology could provide other economic opportunities as well, attracting eco-minded businesses while making Questa a trailblazer in green hydrogen and long-duration energy storage"

Kuznick: "On April 2, 1917, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war, saying, 'the world must be made safe for democracy.'... Hundreds of people were jailed for criticizing the war, including IWW leader 'Big Bill' Haywood and Socialist Eugene Debs. Debs spoke out repeatedly against the war and was finally arrested in June 1918 after addressing a large crowd outside the prison in Canton, Ohio, where three Socialists were being held for opposing the draft. Debs ridiculed the idea that the United States was a democracy when it jailed people for expressing their views..

All things German were vilified in a wave of intolerance masquerading as patriotism. Schools, many of which now demanded loyalty oaths from teachers, banned the German language from their curricula. Iowa, not taking any chances, went further and, under the 1918 'Babel Proclamation,' banned the speaking of all foreign languages in public and over the telephone. Nebraska followed suit. Libraries across the country discarded German books, and orchestras dropped German composers from their repertoires. Just as French fries would later be renamed 'freedom fries' by a know-nothing Congress furious at French opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, their World War I counterparts renamed hamburgers 'liberty sandwiches,' sauerkraut 'liberty cabbage,' German measles 'liberty measles,' and German shepherds 'police dogs.' German Americans faced discrimination in all aspects of life"

Ask Linux experts, who contribute to a free open source OS, they will teach you how it's done.

Firstpost: "On July 19, a faulty software update from CrowdStrike caused the crash of approximately 8.5 million Windows devices, leading to widespread disruptions, including grounded flights and missed hospital appointments. The financial toll of this incident is estimated to be in the billions. This event has drawn sharp criticism from regulators and business leaders, who are scrutinizing the level of access that third-party software vendors have to the core, or kernel, of Windows operating systems.

The kernel is a critical part of an operating system, and any bugs within it can lead to catastrophic failures, such as the infamous 'blue screens of death' that appeared globally during the CrowdStrike incident. Critics argue that the failure to address these vulnerabilities sooner reflects shortcomings in how Windows handles third-party security software. As a result, Microsoft is now under pressure to implement changes that would better protect its systems from similar errors in the future"

u.baci_top_product("Japan", "USA")

$ 18,093,951,993.0
Vehicles: with only spark-ignition internal combustion reciprocating
piston engine, cylinder capacity over 1500 but not over 3000cc

u.baci_top_product("USA", "Japan")

$ 6,296,588,595.0
Petroleum gases and other gaseous hydrocarbons: liquefied, propane

Congress is full of bought out weirdos who stock trade on legislation, on peoples dime, go to work only to serve themselves and their donors. They deserved ten times worse.

That's not too much.. it is fitting. The whole thing was not a big deal.

WION: "First rioter to enter US Capitol sentenced to 53 months"

Jon Stewart.. he actually drew blood with that one #DNC #Clinton

Interesting Engineering: "Astron’s hydrogen engine achieves record 60% efficiency with 0 emissions.. Astron’s H2Starfire achieves these using two sets of counter-rotating rotors: one aluminum half does the intake and compression jobs, while the titanium half at the rear handles expansion and exhaust... The company claims it has achieved another major milestone by eliminating the need for water cooling. This has also helped it reduce the complexity of its design and weight, which gives it an efficiency boost. H2Starfire’s design is quite linear and avoids the use of apex seals... the engine is frictionless, and its tolerances are so tight that only timing gears and bearings need oiling. This has been achieved with a simplistic design of the engine, which consists of only 82 parts"

NYT: "The flames and smoke from a burning Mercedes-Benz electric sedan spread rapidly through the underground parking lot of an apartment complex in South Korea this month. The fire damaged almost 900 cars, and 23 people suffered smoke inhalation.

It took firefighters more than eight hours to put out the blaze, which reached temperatures above 1,500 degrees Celsius, according to officials in Incheon, the city near Seoul where the fire broke out around dawn on Aug. 1...

[A]cross South Korea, one of the world’s biggest car producers, it caught the public’s attention because of its scale and intensity, and it raised safety fears"

"@sidereal@kolektiva.social

Academics today: 'You need to go to a different school for grad school than your BA. Preferably in a different region. And then you need to work at a bunch of other schools, moving your family around like you're in the dang Army, while lowkey not even getting paid as much as many people in the Army do.'

Academics then: 'In 1740, aged 16, [Immanuel Kant] enrolled at the University of Königsberg, where he would later remain for the rest of his professional life.'"

"@jonny@neuromatch.social

The crypto crash was fast and not very sad. The LLM crash will be long and slow and painful and a lot of beguiled suckers will have a decade of their life pulled out from underneath them when the free compute dries up and the platform logic switches from seize territory to exploit"

Libertardism especially the US version, is full of contradictions... They could have championed equal opportunity in competition, but their patron saint threw a curveball, he lent his support to big corporations just so the government he disliked so much could be kept subservient to business.

Many of these Silicon Valley libertarian libertards fund companies relying on so much free open source software that if the public knew, their entire political movement would be ridiculed.

"Study: Air purifier use at daycare centres cut kids' sick days by a third.. The results of the study at two Helsinki daycare centres are still preliminary but promising, a researcher says"

A whole new sect sprung up because of debt, inequality. Like I said the root of all religion is poverty, inequality. Religion is left-wing that's why they scare the powerful, and are co-opted, transformed to serve the elite.

Wiki: "Jakob II... was a descendant of the Fugger merchant family.. [researchers] estimated his overall wealth to be around $400 billion in today's money, equivalent to 2% of the GDP of Europe at that time... The Fugger family.. [had] a direct business relationship with the Roman Curia. In the year 1500, Jakob Fugger loaned the Vatican the money necessary to build the new St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, as well as other buildings within the Vatican. To repay Jakob the massive amount of money owed, Pope Leo X had to heavily tax the German people as well as sell indulgences, which was heavily unpopular with a large group of monks, including Martin Luther. Partly because of the corruption within the church, Martin Luther was prompted to write his Ninety-five Theses"

Labor was crushed, and voila! Enter the Gilded Age.

Kuznick, The Untold History of the US: "The 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s witnessed some of the bloodiest labor struggles in [US] history. In 1877, striking railroad workers and their myriad supporters from all parts of the working class paralyzed much of the nation’s rail traffic as capitalists, haunted by memories of the revolutionary workers who created the Paris Commune of 1871, conjured up their own nightmare visions when several cities, including Chicago and St. Louis, were shut down by general strikes...

The struggles intensified in the 1880s as the Knights of Labor exploded on the scene, successfully striking Jay Gould’s 15,000-mile railroad network in 1885. Gould was no ordinary robber baron. Having once boasted that he could 'hire one half of the working class to kill the other half,' he was perhaps the most hated man in the nation. And the Knights, with their appeal to class unity and democratic socialist philosophy, was no ordinary labor federation. Gould’s capitulation to the Knights’ demands, in what the business newspaper Bradstreet’s called a 'complete surrender,' shocked the nation. Knights membership skyrocketed around the country, jumping from 103,000 on July 1, 1885, to over 700,000 a year later. The movement was dealt a crushing blow, however, when authorities nationwide used the death of seven policemen in Chicago’s Haymarket Square in May 1886 as an excuse to not only destroy the anarchists, who were involved in the incident, but to go after the Knights, who forswore violence and were completely uninvolved in the Haymarket events"

NYT: "China to Hold Live-Fire Drills Near War-Torn Myanmar.. Beijing likely wants to signal to Myanmar’s junta leaders that they should return to peace talks [with rebels] and de-escalate the conflict, analysts said"

"@ProPublica@newsie.social

DOJ Files Antitrust Suit Against RealPage, Maker of Rent-Setting Algorithm.. The suit, which comes in the wake of a ProPublica investigation into the #Texas company, accuses RealPage of taking part in an illegal price-fixing scheme to reduce competition among landlords to boost prices — and profits"

Pro Publica: "Rent Going Up? One Company’s Algorithm Could Be Why... 'Never before have we seen these numbers,' said Jay Parsons, a vice president of RealPage.. Apartment rents had recently shot up by as much as 14.5%, he said in a video touting the company’s services. Turning to his colleague, Parsons asked: What role had the software played?

'I think it’s driving it, quite honestly,' answered Andrew Bowen, another RealPage executive. 'As a property manager, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually.'

The celebratory remarks were more than swagger. For years, RealPage has sold software that uses data analytics to suggest daily prices for open units. Property managers across the United States have gushed about how the company’s algorithm boosts profits.

'The beauty of YieldStar is that it pushes you to go places that you wouldn’t have gone if you weren’t using it,' said Kortney Balas, director of revenue management at JVM Realty"

A rule-of-thumb for every budding scientist out there; do not be discouraged if your new theory does not agree with modern findings, most if not all of those findings themselves are suspect. You have a brand spanking new theory about gravity but it does not agree with "cosmic microwave background"? Before doubting your theory, doubt CMB, see if CMB was measured correctly and look into the background, work of the dipshits who thought CMB it was a slam dunk of all slam dunks in cosmology. Same goes for other so-called findings, the expanding universe, red shift measurements, "black holes", dark matter, dark energy.. None of these concepts can be taken at face value.

A mistake such as the one indicated below cannot be a one-step, "highest layer" error. Science layers knowledge on top of knowledge, each new layer assumes to previous ones are fine... The latest problem, the crisis, cannot just be just the last layer being bad, the crisis is so horrendously bad, it has to go many layers down.

At this point you have to question if the universe is expanding at all..

Live Science: "James Webb telescope confirms there is something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe. Depending on where we look, the universe is expanding at different rates... the problem, known as the Hubble Tension, has the potential to alter or even upend cosmology altogether. In 2019, measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed the puzzle was real; in 2023, even more precise measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cemented the discrepancy.

Now, a triple-check by both telescopes working together appears to have put the possibility of any measurement error to bed for good. The study, published.. in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, suggests that there may be something seriously wrong with our understanding of the universe"

Streaming Wars: I don't think studios jumped on the streaming bandwagon because they had gone mad, they were rightfully scared because Netflix's declared goal backed with Wall Street money truly threatened them all. Consumers lost as a result. ME made a good point elsewhere, Netflix was the common delivery method, the common format like DVD or Blueray was, for all content, when studios started to compete with Netflix "the format", the consumers did not benefit, the common medium for online content delivery was lost.

#MidnightsEdge #Connover

#RFKj #FDA #NIH

[-]

"rbreich@masto.ai

Kroger:

• Had gross profit margins above 20% over the last 5 years

• Is using 'dynamic pricing' to gouge us further

• Paid its CEO $15 million, 502x a typical Kroger employee

• Wants to acquire Albertsons so you have nowhere else to shop"

Happy birthday indeed

"@IPngNetworks@ublog.tech

Happy birth date, Linux!"

"@RichardJMurphy@mas.to

KPMG, which is the UK's worst firm of auditors - measured by fines paid -has been given a £223 million contract to train civil servants"

i24 News: "[2024/06] Arab League Rescinds The Classification Of Hezbollah As A Terrorist Group"

#Frontline #Sudan #RSF #SAF 07/02 - 08/18

The update is somewhat old, from the 18th, but shows changes compared to 07/02. RSF made gains within that period.

[-]

PV Magazine: "The Hydrogen Stream: NEOM starts recruitment campaign for 'world’s largest' green hydrogen plant construction.. The green hydrogen plant, which is an equal joint venture between ACWA Power, Air Products and NEOM, will produce up to 600 tonnes of carbon-free fuel daily when fully operational at the end of 2026"

"@BalooUriza@social.tulsa.ok.us

Good man[ual, of Unix] pages are a detailed but readable cheat sheet for how to use your software.

Bad man pages tell you to check a wiki or join Discord or aren't included/weren't written at all.

Quit trying to make me google the answer when that shit doesn't work anymore. Quit locking documentation behind Discord. Ship a manpage by default, you never know when the website or internet connection isn't gonna work"

Someone has a lot to gain from the carnage obviously.. Carnage creates chaos, that means good business. Chaos can spread, that means repeat businesss, companies can always "upsell" or "cross sell". Right? Isn't that how it works?

IAP: "Any remaining defenders of liberalism must ask themselves not why the liberal order has failed to put an end to the genocide in Palestine, but why the liberal order so eagerly supports and sustains it"

Ian Allan Paul: "Liberal Infernos.. The liberal order overseeing and administering the genocide in Palestine is built upon the marriage of egalitarian values and exterminating violence, upon the intimate coupling of supposedly hallowed rights and the hell it unleashes upon the world. Arms must continue to be delivered, just as their use must be denounced and condemned. Demonstrations must be celebrated, just as orders must be given to smother them with tear gas. Everything thus burns twice, as the fuel of liberal politics and the fuel of liberal carnage, feeding an inferno whose fires rage ever more democratically. If there is no need to resolve the formal tension between its abstract ideals and its violent realities, this is because liberalism is the indefinite elaboration of this contradiction. For every sanctified constitution, there is a detention camp that will never close; for every promised equality, there is an economy imposing its cruel hierarchies upon every area of life; for each civic norm, a mob of police marching through the streets drunk on power..

It is a bleak irony that the liberal regimes that defined themselves through their opposition to the genocides of the 20th century now resolutely cooperate with one another to facilitate genocide in the 21st. Indeed, any remaining defenders of liberalism must ask themselves not why the liberal order has failed to put an end to the genocide in Palestine, but why the liberal order so eagerly supports and sustains it. Alliances remain firm, logistical supports stay online, trade routes flow, the international system survives, while an entire people is buried beneath burning debris"

[-]

Observer: "How the U.S. Is Building a Sustainable Hydrogen Economy.. The U.S. Department of Energy's Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs Program uses economic clusters to drive innovation, cut costs and acceleration green hydrogen adoption across the country... The term 'cluster' as an economic construct was explained by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter in 1998 as 'geographic concentrations of interconnected companies and institutions in a particular field.' The sprawling set of activities around the production of wine in California is one of many examples Porter advances. The great benefit of clusters, Porter says, is that they encourage interactions across cluster members that foster a variety of productivity enhancements...

[Take] ammonia producer Atlas Agro, natural gas utility AltaGas, and public transit provider Lewis County Transit. The heterogeneous nature of these parties notwithstanding, it can quickly be seen that each is a potential consumer of green hydrogen... For Atlas Agro, green hydrogen is the main feedstock for the production of green ammonia. For AltaGas, green hydrogen could be blended into its pipeline natural gas to reduce its carbon footprint. For Lewis County Transit, green hydrogen will fuel its small but growing fleet of fuel-cell-powered transit buses. Porter argues that the co-existence of suppliers and customers in a cluster can create a virtuous cycle in which heightened awareness of customer needs drives improvement of product/service bundles"

Not funny anymore..

The Onion: "[2013] 2012 Was Once Considered Hottest Year On Record, Man In 2024 Remembers Wistfully"

Amithaba Ghosh: "[1997] The central issue in cosmology is the true nature of the observed cosmological red shift. Though it is assumed to be due to an expansion of the universe, till now there is no conclusive evidence in favour of the dopplerian origin of the cosmological red shift... A phenomenological model of inertial induction [Ghosh (1984, 1986a)] has been found to explain the cosmological red shift without any universal expansion. Besides this the model also yields exact equivalence of the gravitational and inertial masses and an exponential attenuation of G eliminating the gravitational paradox. The important point to be noted is that this model suggests a number of other observable effects also and such effects are not only found to be present but also explain a number of unexplained results. The model does not have any adjustable free parameter though it yields excellent quantitative results in all these different problems"

[-]

The Drive: "British firm Emissions Analytics spent three years studying tires. The group found that a single car’s four tires collectively release 1 trillion 'ultrafine' particles for every single kilometer (0.6 miles) driven. These particles, under 100 nanometers in size, are so tiny that they can pass directly through the lungs and into the blood. They can even cross the body’s blood-brain barrier"