Week 47
WSJ: "The U.S. Economy Depends More Than Ever on Rich People.. The highest-earning 10% of Americans have increased their spending far beyond inflation. Everyone else hasn’t."
Parampil, Corporate Coup: "For multinational corporations seeking favorable rulings against sovereign governments for the 'crime' of reclaiming their land and resources, the venue of choice was the DC-based International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes tribunal (ICSID). Though ICSID described itself as “an independent, depoliticized and effective” institution, it was overwhelmingly partial to Western financial interests in practice. Andrés Arauz, an economist and former Ecuadorian presidential candidate who narrowly lost to millionaire banker Guillermo Lasso in 2021, became well acquainted with ICSID’s inner workings during his tenure in the leftist government of Rafael Correa. 'ICSID is not an independent arbitrator of justice,' he explained to me. 'ICSID is a neocolonial gatekeeper of transnational corporate impunity.'
Kennard, Silent Coup: "From El Salvador to South Africa – where we would go next – we’d hear a variation of the same thing: that surely the government officials who signed up to the international investor-state legal system [ICSID] didn’t know what they were getting into. They couldn’t have known that their countries’ independence would be at stake, when they ceded power to this system and its treaties and its tribunals. But it was clear, in black and white on our tray tables: some did know from the start, and make their concerns clear. A bloc of developing countries had opposed it, to defend their sovereignty. The system was set up despite this."
ICSID is worse than the mafia. "Worse" in the sense that Gen. Smedley Butler's statement what he'd done for US capitalism was worse than Al Capone's crimes ("The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents"). Butler was the most decorated Marine in US history, and he concluded his service had no honor. He fought in the service of cocksuckers, bunch of greedy investors.
Exxon must be seeing red.. They want Maduro and his party gone, period.
It seems to me the US Navy is there to collect. Eyy, a nice country you got here... Would be a shame if something happened to it.
"[2025] A US court has enforced ExxonMobil’s billion-dollar ICSID award against Venezuela"
"[2023] ExxonMobil has applied to a court in Washington, DC, to enforce an International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) award worth over US$985 million plus interest and costs against Venezuela in a 16-year saga over the expropriation of two oil projects."
"[2014] ICSID: Venezuela Must Pay Exxon $1.6B for Nationalizations"
CNBC: "Dutch halt state intervention at Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia, paving way for exports to resume"
TDB: "Children’s AI Teddy Bear Caught Giving Advice on Sex and Knives"
It's not "the 12 Day War", it is "the Boeing Iran War".. the GBU-57A/B MOP "bunker-buster" bombs were sold by them.
But at least the intervention seems to be a one-off, and did not take long. Compared to others it was not the worst.
u.random_ufo_sighting()
1977-06-15
Indiana (northern; outside sawmill), IN
2 hours of missing time with us having know idea where we wereWe where going to
sawmill lake to pick up a bed from a cabin my husbands grandmother was selling.
We were traveling in a large pickup truck. my husband and his grand mother were
in the cab with my infant son. my daughter who was five and myself were inside
a camper shell that had heavy curtains at the windows. My husband stopped 10
minutes from the cabin because my son needed to be nursed. When ((name deleted
--husband)) gave me ((name deleted--son)) he assured me we were just minutes
from the cabin, because he was worried about my comfort in the back of the
truck. Two hours later we were at the same stop sign only coming from another
direction. Again, he was at the back of the camper telling me he did not know
where we had been. His grandmother said she had never been lost before and she
had be going up there for fifty years. We called it our time in the twilight
zone and forgot about it till I picked up a book by bud hopkins and became so
scared i could not read it. so my husband finally asked to see the book after a
awhile he came to me and said the reason i was so frighten was because that it
happened to us. if you want to talk to my exhusband at some point i can give
you my son's e-mail address. also,in the early 60's there was a sighting with
several people out side of rome city, in. the craft was so slow that it was at
tree top level it was shaped like a saucer with no noise, i left my parents and
walked under the craft and it had a tripod of lights and it made the noise like
a clicking like it was taken pictures. my mother watched it for several hours
and she stated that it beamed down a blue light over the water for about a half
hour then took off at a high rate of speedn((NUFORC Note: Witness indicates
that the date of the incident is approximate. PD))
Some had a different take on the previous diagram
Robert Close: "Books on quantum mechanics often point out that the theory explains phenomena that had not previously been explained by classical physics. This is true. But one should ask why classical physics failed to explain these phenomena. Was it because classical models are intrinsically ill‐suited to describing nature? Or was it because realistic classical models were too complicated for physicists to analyze?
The historical evidence points to the latter explanation. The earliest conception of the aether consistent with the behavior of light waves was Thomas Young’s observation that light seemed to behave like transverse waves in an elastic solid. This theory was successfully applied to the study of light by a host of now‐famous 19th century scientists, with contributions from Boussinesq, Cauchy, Fresnel, Green, MacCullagh, Navier, Stokes, Rayleigh, Riemann, Thompson (Lord Kelvin), and others (Maxwell used a more complicated aether model to derive the equations of electromagnetism). Yet in spite of the elastic solid’s conceptual simplicity, and the extensive effort spent analyzing it, no exact description of its physical behavior could be produced. The reason for this failure is the non‐Abelian nature of finite rotations. Nineteenth‐century scientists did not have the mathematical tools needed to describe arbitrary variations of orientation, and even modern condensed matter theorists have shied away from the attempt (Kleinert 1989). Today, the mathematics of rotations is well‐understood for quantum mechanical systems. This fact makes it reasonable to suppose that rotations in classical elastic solids might also be described by similar mathematics"
Rashkovskiy: "Are there photons in fact? There are two opposing points of view on the nature of light: the first one manifests the wave-particle duality as a fundamental property of the nature; the second one claims that photons do not exist and the light is a continuous classical wave, while the so-called “quantum” properties of this field appear only as a result of its interaction with matter. In this paper we show that many quantum phenomena which are traditionally described by quantum electrodynamics can be described if light is considered within the limits of classical electrodynamics without quantization of radiation. These phenomena include the double-slit experiment, the photoelectric effect, the Compton effect, the Hanbury Brown and Twiss effect, the so-called multiphoton ionisation of atoms, etc. We show that this point of view allows also explaining the “wave-particle duality” of light in Wiener experiments with standing waves. We show that the Born rule for light can easily be derived from Fermi’s golden rule as an approximation for low-intense light or for short exposure time. We show that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for “photons” has a simple classical sense and cannot be considered as a fundamental limitation of accuracy of simultaneous measurements of position and momentum or time and energy. We conclude that the concept of a “photon” is superfluous in explanation of light-matter interactions"
Wave-Particle duality problem, solved. Class dismissed.
D_OVER_LAMBDA = 20;A_OVER_LAMBDA = 4
NUM_ATOMS = 15000; TAU = 5.0
MIN_SIN_THETA = -0.05; MAX_SIN_THETA = 0.05
def relint(sin_theta, d_over_lambda, a_over_lambda):
alpha = np.pi * d_over_lambda * sin_theta
beta = np.pi * a_over_lambda * sin_theta
sinc_beta = np.where(beta != 0, np.sin(beta) / beta, 1.0)
rel_I = (sinc_beta**2) * (np.cos(alpha)**2)
return rel_I
def exctprop(rel_I, tau):
return 1.0 - np.exp(-rel_I * tau)
atpos = np.random.uniform(MIN_SIN_THETA, MAX_SIN_THETA, NUM_ATOMS)
I_over_Imax_at_atoms = relint(atpos, D_OVER_LAMBDA, A_OVER_LAMBDA)
P_exc_at_atoms = exctprop(I_over_Imax_at_atoms, TAU)
random_draws = np.random.rand(NUM_ATOMS)
excited_atoms_indices = P_exc_at_atoms >= random_draws
excited_positions = atpos[excited_atoms_indices]
plt.figure(figsize=(10, 6))
plt.subplot(1, 2, 1)
y_tmp = np.random.uniform(-1, 1, len(excited_positions))
plt.scatter(excited_positions, y_tmp, s=2, color='black', alpha=0.5)
plt.yticks([])
plt.xlabel(r'Screen Position ($\sin\theta$)')
plt.subplot(1, 2, 2)
hist_bins = np.linspace(MIN_SIN_THETA, MAX_SIN_THETA, 50)
counts, edges, _ = plt.hist(excited_positions, bins=hist_bins, density=True,
color='skyblue', alpha=0.6, label='Simulated Dots (Histogram)')
sin_theta_line = np.linspace(MIN_SIN_THETA, MAX_SIN_THETA, 500)
I_over_Imax_line = relint(sin_theta_line, D_OVER_LAMBDA, A_OVER_LAMBDA)
P_exc_line = exctprop(I_over_Imax_line, TAU)
P_exc_line_normalized = P_exc_line / np.trapezoid(P_exc_line, sin_theta_line)
plt.plot(sin_theta_line, P_exc_line_normalized, color='red', linewidth=2,
label=r'Theoretical $P_{\text{exc}}$ Distribution')
plt.xlabel(r'Screen Position ($\sin\theta$)')
plt.legend()
plt.tight_layout()
The code above can replicate the simulation described below. The graph looks like Rashkovskiy's Figure 1. So using the formulas he is describing, one can obtain the interference pattern that Copenhagen QM folk thought they needed wave-particle duality to explain.
Rashkovskiy: "Here, I show that the double-slit experiment can be easily explained in terms of classical electrodynamics if we take into account the discrete structure of matter (a screen, a detector) and the specific nature of the interaction of light with matter, which is described by the Schrodinger equation (or other wave equation of quantum mechanics)... The calculation proceeds using the Monte Carlo method: at each time, the probability of excitation of each unexcited (non-ionised) atom will be calculated. The calculation for each atom is continued until its excitation (ionisation) occurs.. Comparing Fig. 1 with the real picture of the “accumulation of photons” on the photographic plate in the double-slit experiment, we see that the calculated pattern is completely consistent with the experimental interference pattern and the model completely reproduces the results of these experiments"
"@troed@sangberg.se
Access to a non-billionaire owned and authoritarian-proof social network is self-defence.
Today Mastodon became one of the open source projects I donate to. They're simply that important."
Pikkety, A Brief History of Equality: "Here we must underline another essential lesson to be learned from the period 1914–1980, namely that fiscal progressivity made it possible to reduce inequalities not only after taxes, but also and especially before taxes (sometimes called predistribution, in contrast to redistribution)... Concretely, the 80–90 percent tax rates implemented under Roosevelt and during the postwar period led companies to put an end to the most astronomical remunerations, whose cost increasingly appeared to be excessive when compared with the real benefit to the manager and with alternative uses. These super-remunerations melted away, which left more funds to be invested and used to raise lower salaries. The data show that the redistributive effect of confiscatory tax rates was principally the result of predistribution, which also implies that a simple examination of the effective tax rates paid by the various centiles allows us to measure only part of the total effect."
"@GeofCox@climatejustice.social
There's a fascinating analysis of the actual effects of very high marginal tax rates in Thomas Piketty's 'Brief History of Equality': it's 'predistribution'. Companies simply stop paying out very high salaries, dividends etc, and instead reinvest profits - and this was in fact one of the reasons we had both higher growth and higher marginal tax rates together in the post-war period, and why when Reagan and Thatcher came in and started to lower tax, it gradually strangled growth."
Nowadays ppl refer to TAD when they cannot afford something... That means the enterpreneurship angle of the phrase is irrelevant. If you expect regular people to be able to afford basic necessities, you are saying an average person working at an average job should be able to afford things to survive, without being a mega grinder and a hustler, then The American Dream is a middle / working class statement. But perhaps it had always been so... US, with its vast land provided opportunities that would have clouded the true meaning of the phrase.. Land was plenty and cheap, u could build a shack on it, it was easy. Now that there are many layers of gatekeepers to get to your necessities, the roadblocks become obvious.
Wiki: "The 'American Dream' is a phrase referring to a purported national ethos of the United States: that every person has the freedom and opportunity to succeed and attain a better life.. Originally, the emphasis was on democracy, liberty, and equality, but more recently has been on achieving material wealth and upward social mobility"
LLM based Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) can be useful.. I had a RAG tool to summarize what I've written / shared about TR identity so far. Results below. It did okay.. It was able to connect my writings with Gellner, and Tolay (Anatolian migration).
AIPAC, Meet AZAPAC - Anti-Zionist America PAC
IC: "Gaza: As Cold and Rain Assault Homeless, Israel Blocks Entry of Tents.. The health situation in the Gaza Strip is catastrophic as the population drinks contaminated water with high salinity"
IC: "Are Secretive Israeli Front Organizations Trying to Empty out Gaza? Palestinians sent to South Africa.. When a chartered flight carrying more than 150 Palestinians from Gaza landed in Johannesburg last week, confusion filled South African airwaves"
Sergey A. Rashkovskiy: "Quantum mechanics without quanta.. In this paper, I argue that light is a continuous classical electromagnetic wave, while the observed so-called quantum nature of the interaction of light with matter is connected to the discrete (atomic) structure of matter and to the specific nature of the light-atom interaction. From this point of view, the Born rule for light is derived, and the double-slit experiment is analysed in detail. I show that the double-slit experiment can be explained without using the concept of a “photon”, solely on the basis of classical electrodynamics. I show that within this framework, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for a “photon” has a simple physical meaning not related to the fundamental limitations in accuracy of the simultaneous measurement of position and momentum or time and energy. I argue also that we can avoid the paradoxes connected with the wave-particle duality of the electron if we consider some classical wave field - “an electron wave” - instead of electrons as the particles and consider the wave equations (Dirac, Klein-Gordon, Pauli and Schrödinger) as the field equations similar to Maxwell equations for the electromagnetic field. It is shown that such an electron field must have an electric charge, an intrinsic angular momentum and an intrinsic magnetic moment continuously distributed in the space. It is shown that from this perspective, the double-slit experiment for “electrons”, the Born rule, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Compton effect all have a simple explanation within classical field theory. The proposed perspective allows consideration of quantum mechanics not as a theory of particles but as a classical field theory similar to Maxwell electrodynamics"
It would be much easier to stop stirring shit up in people's backyards, respecting their security concerns. But the franchise minded US foreign policy wants to "open a new store" at all locations. Wants to spread, like virus, constantly multiplying, reaching new places.
Defense contractors probably don't care whether the system can work or not.. They will count their Benjamins either way. Create a hype, pull the government wallet into it, then rake in the profits. Repeat.
IC: "A March 2025 report by the American Physical Society found that 'creating a reliable and effective defense against even [a] small number of relatively unsophisticated nuclear-armed ICBMs remains a daunting challenge.' Its report also notes that 'few of the main challenges involved in developing and deploying a reliable and effective missile defense have been solved, and… many of the hard problems we identified are likely to remain so during and probably beyond'...
Proponents of the Golden Dome project argue that it’s now feasible because of new technologies being developed in Silicon Valley, from artificial intelligence to quantum computing. Those claims are, of course, unproven, and past experience suggests that there is no miracle technological solution to complex security threats... Of course, the weapons contractors salivating at the prospect of a monstrous payday tied to the development of Golden Dome are well aware that the president’s timeline will be quite literally unmeetable."
Annual BTC change, down 0.17% against USD. Crypto can help transacting where bank transfers are not easy, but currently not suitable as a store of value. USDT is directly tied to dollar, it won't lose against dollar, but has no yield, 1 year treasury would have yielded >4% in the same period.
I remember one UKIP kerkuffle during the days of Brexit, one UKIP guy told off a black British person "why don't you go back to Blackland". It had made me laugh then, it was such an odd thing to say..
But in US, if powers that be let it happen, there could've been a Blackland, a black version of everything. It's a big joke now, Eddie Murphy's "black Pavarotti", or the Jamie Foxx line in a movie "black Spiderman". But there nearly was black city, in a potentially black state, Tulsa, Ohio. This town already had a "Black Wall Street", as it was called back then. But after some race riots the place was destroyed. USG probably did not want a city, or a state, smack in the middle of America that could one day seperate itself, or act like a fifth column against it. So they destroyed it. Integration was more preferable compared to an ethnic state within USA.
Many in US who are labeled racist, or Nazi are actually, at most, a segregationist. There is nothing fundamentally wrong, or "white" about that. Mohammad Ali was a segregationist. His ideological opponent was MLK, and MLK's vision was adopted eventually, not his. There are black people to this day who would prefer segregation rather than integration.
Bloomberg.com: "China Ramps Up Green Hydrogen With Support From New 5-Year Plan"
RDS is somewhat damaged.. The left never liked him anyway bcz of that Gitmo stuff, and MAGA right (the real, not the fake) will find his Israel-First stance disqualifying.
TAC: "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is rebuilding his status among conservatives. The governor was once the darling of right-wing media and touted as the man to replace President Donald Trump as the leader of the American Right. His failed presidential bid sunk his starry reputation and made it appear his political career would end along with his term as Florida governor. But DeSantis has not given up hope for another go at the White House...
While DeSantis’s other issues are crafted to make the governor seem new and different from past conservatives, his stance on Israel will be resolutely standard fare. Other hopefuls question America’s current relationship with Israel, but DeSantis insists our civilization depends on firm support for the foreign nation...
This could be a wedge issue for him to separate himself from Vance. While Vance supports Israel, DeSantis could follow the lead of some conservative commentators who try to attack the vice president due to his association with Tucker Carlson, MAGA’s most prominent critic of Israel. DeSantis could compete for donor support by presenting himself as the true friend of Israel, unlike Tucker friend J.D. Vance.
This stance will undermine his effort to appeal to the Online Right, but that effect may be offset by greater support from the conservative establishment"
CNN: "A crucial system of ocean currents may be on course to collapse. [Iceland] just declared it a national security threat"
Steinberg and co demonstrated continuous, smooth average flow paths. That can support the wave-only interpretation of Robert Close. Per aether model if photons are continuous wave structures (solitons), the 'average trajectories' might be the energy flow through the elastic soup, then the discrete detection events are wave-detector interactions. IOW the weak measurements are revealing the underlying continuous wave nature that standard strong measurements cannot pick up.
"Steinberg and colleagues found a way to measure the average trajectories of many photons going through the two slits. To do that, they used a weak-measurement function of photons emerging from an optical fiber. That’s something that generations of physicists have learned cannot be done, as standard measurements reveal only the size or 'amplitude' of the wave function and not its full mathematical complexity"
Robert Close: "Why bring back the aether?.."
#Roth #WaveParticle #Aether
Chantal Roth: "Using simulations and classical field theory (inspired by Maxwell, Kelvin, and recent work by Close and Rashkovskiy), I show how familiar 'quantum' outcomes like spin-½ and Stern-Gerlach splitting can arise from deterministic wave evolution. I also explore the idea that gravity is a form of refraction and that space contraction and time dilation are natural wave effects.
This ontological approach offers intuitive explanations, and may help bridge the gap between quantum theory and general relativity..
In this model, both the Schrödinger equation and also the Dirac equation have a real physical meaning, that is quantum physics has an underlying reality and a wave function is not just a probability density, but consists of actual deformations in an elastic solid – our universe. This elastic solid can be thought of as the 'fabric of space'"
Another aether model.. Things are getting interesting
#Ukraine 11/08 - 11/16
Firstpost: "South Africa’s Competition Commission secures a $40 million settlement from Google to support local news outlets"
NYT: "Zelensky’s Image Is Stained as Corruption Inquiry Shakes His Inner Circle.. The revelations are a remarkable reversal for the Ukrainian president, who once presented himself as a leader who would clean up the country’s politics"
CNBC: "European markets close lower as AI bubble fears mount.. European stocks finished lower on Friday as worries about an artificial intelligence bubble and the global economy shook investor confidence."
Politico: "Administration allies say they are fed up with the Defense Department’s third-most senior leader and his foreign policy surprises...The uproar also underscored an increasing ideological split in the GOP between its Reaganite defense hawks and a growing wing of restraint-oriented Republicans, which includes Colby, who question traditional U.S. military commitments."
u.random_ufo_sighting()
1864-05-16
Cave Springs, GA
In 1864, prior to airplanes, a white object was observed about half a
mile high and moving rapidly toward the south.A Confederate soldier's
war journal was published as "Blood & Sacrifice," by Blue Acorn Press,
Huntington, WV in 1994.On Page 140, the author reports, "Prior to our
arrival at Cave Springs, quite early in the forenoon in fact, a white
object was observed in the sky to the southeast, apparently about half
a mile high and moving rapidly toward the south. We decided that it
was a balloon, and that the enemy was endeavoring by that means to
ascertain the strength of the reinforcements that were coming to
Gen. Johnston." The book editor notes that Union General Sherman's
troops did not have balloons with them on the Atlanta Campaign. It
should also be noted that observation balloons were tied to the ground
and only moved vertically up and down. If a balloon were untethered
by accident, it would only move as fast as any winds prevailing at the
time, or certainly not "rapidly." The observer (book author) was a
Sergeant in Company B, 46th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, and later
Sergeant Major, and finally Acting Adjutant of the Regiment. He had
been a school teacher prior to the War Between The States, and the
book is a very factual chronology of his daily experiences during the
War.((NUFORC Note: We express our sincere gratitude to the individual
who took the time, and trouble, to submit this report. Indeed, there
are many published articles and books, which suggest to us that the
UFO phenomenon has been occurring for a long, long time, and that it
did not begin in June 1947, as many people believe. PD))
We should name wars after the company that profits most from it. Like the second Iraq War should be named as "The Haliburton Iraq War". The Vietnam War is "The Brown & Roots Vietnam War". The "first" Iraq war could be "The Lockheed Iraq War".
"Brown & Roots was a Texas-based defense contractor many see as one of the leading companies profiting during the Vietnam War. Brown & Roots, also known as Kellogg Brown & Root, was a Texas-based company known for giving U.S. President Lyndon Johnson a blank cheque when he ran for the U.S. Senate. Because of President Johnson’s connection to Brown & Roots and how the war escalated under President Johnson, many believe that Pres. Johnson and Brown & Roots worked together on the war to ensure it continued and was profitable."
Fukuyama is also the author of the infamous book End of History which argued anti gov pro biz (voodoo) ideology of neoliberalism had triumphed, and all that was left to do was spreading it all around the world... Today's Fukuyama, having changed his mind, sees a bigger role for the state, even argues why some services are distinctly unsuited to be privatized. This guy was the king neocon, neolib... Look at him now.
The Caravan Mag: "[2015] Fixing the state.. The Evolution Of Francis Fukuyama.. The sudden chaos caused by US-led invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan helped Fukuyama to understand the crucial role of public administration in holding a country together, and to overcome his conservative distaste for strong states. The result was an elegantly argued discourse on public administration, State Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century, released in 2004. This was a deep meditation on the institutional requirements for effective state-building; Fukuyama directly questioned the international community’s emphasis on democracy over the brick and mortar of public administration in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Butch Ware: "If California gets universal healthcare, the whole country is getting universal healthcare because that's how it actually happened in Canada. One province got it and then it ended up happen across the country. And California is the most populous and wealthiest state. Whatever happens here is going to set the pace"
From: Kelly Friendly
Date: January 7, 2015 at 5:01:26 PM PST
To: "Lawrence H. Summers"
Subject: idea for jefferey e.
Perhaps you should suggest Jefferey talk to Joe Lockhart at the Glover
Park Group. He has helped Clinton and General Petraeus.
Joe is great and he likes you a lot. LMK if you want to reach out to
him. He is an old friend....
Some strange characters show up in these emails
"@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social
The emails are pretty wild as they casually talk about hacking people and companies, SEO and Wikipedia misuse to hide pedo things etc."
"We created a searchable database with all 20,000 files from Epstein’s Estate"