Week 40
Question
How does the dynamic of “opressed left leading to far-right” work?
Fucka me, fucka you
Left is there to help, providing social safety net, etc. If they are opressed, as in Brazil (Lula is the most popular politician, if he was not jailed he would won the election, polls confirm this), the public thinks “the guy who would help me is in jail, establishment is trying to hurt me, so I’ll elect someone worse to hurt everyone”. It’s simple, really.
Spot the robot dog dancing to UpTown Funk is simultaneously both terrifying and hilarious.
Not scary
.. but cool.
EFF
Stupid patent of the month [on VR]: Does the ‘599 patent belong to the true inventors of VR? No. The patent itself acknowledges that VR already existed when the application was filed in mid-1999. Rather, it claims minor tweaks to existing VR systems such as having participants see pre-recorded videos.
Ha ha
Comment
Military / Industrial / Media / Financial / Prison complex. This name keeps getting longer. Another one is LBTQA - keeps getting longer. Both are related to corporate Dems somehow. By only focusing on the latter and related issues, they forgot to limit the former.
Yes
Voit
Today’s result pretty much completely rules out generic versions for both the most popular SUSY models [relating to String Theory, and “multiverse”] still standing (Split SUSY), as well as the most popular class of GUTs. This provides another nail in the coffin of the SUSY-GUT paradigm
But but..
I just saw Spock’s father in an alternate universe in ST Disco. With a goatee! How can SUSY be wrong?
(I kid you not - TV-movie land is still workin this thing..)
R. Roberts
If you think the economy is a zero-sum game and getting rich makes people poor, you have trouble explaining the last 250 years. That wealth can be created and not just rearranged or come at someone’s expense is so basic but may be the single most important insight of economics.
Inequality breeds discontent
The rich need to fix it for their own good.
If QE money printing causes house prices to rise and new home buyers are priced out of the market this is not good. The rich would still afford those homes bcz QE would “raise their boat”. This is inequality.
Roberts is probably libertarian and does not like most FED actions, so maybe he’d be against QE himself, but even then, there are many areas the free market does not work, contributing to inequality. Health insurance for example. Or policing, or the fire department. Or education.
The most crucial part of the modern economy is completely outside of the free market forces. Banks create new money while giving credit, since they cannot do this for everyone, they need to select potential winners. Demand outstrips supply for credit, pricing cannot work, so credit is not allocated according to free market rules, it is rationed.
Zizek
How strange today in our society the scope of what is possible and what is impossible is distributed [oddly]. On the one hand media is telling us soon we will be immortals, eternal life, singularity, collective mind, we will travel not only to the Moon but to Mars… Almost everything is possible. But it’s not possible to raise taxes for the 1%.
Yes… very strange
History
Rudolf Diesel, before he made diesel engines, made ammonia engines.
Too bad he stopped
Ammonia might make a comeback though. Ammonia is clean-fuel, either through H2 or on its own, it creates zero emissions.
Here’s a dystopian vision of the future: A real announcement I recorded on the Beijing-Shanghai bullet train. (I’ve subtitled it so you can watch in silence.)
Yuck
BTW, Uygurs are being opressed in China, through that system, and more. Here is one dissident.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eViswN602_k
One report says a million Uygurs are in Chinese concentration camps..
https://mobile.twitter.com/izakyol/status/1055688867435737088/video/1
Will NYT make a cover photo of that?
Or do we wait until Trump takes the other side of the issue so they can hit him with it? Like in case of / bcz of Saudis MSM suddently remembers the war in Yemen?
Comment
But Romer is a 2018 Nobel Prize winner!
No
The prize is called Riksbank [Swedish central bank] prize in economic sciences in honour of Alfred Nobel. It was abbreviated to Nobel Prize later. Alfred Nobel was a chemist, engineer, inventor, who liked blowing shit up (he invented the dynamite). There is no way he would have authorized giving money to economics which wasn’t even considered a proper science then. Some would argue of course, it still isn’t one now.
Article
In the context of rising emissions, this makes a [hydrogen powered] plane like Element One — designed to create zero-emissions — absolutely transformative. The aircraft would use ultra-light hydrogen fuel cells (stored either as a gas or liquid) to tackle the industry-wide challenge of battery density not matching traditional fuel density (in other words the weight of batteries needed to power aircraft could be overwhelming).
Right
Battery based electric plane (with battery enough for hours of flight) would require battery so big it’d have trouble taking off.
Question
But I heard battery based electric plane mentioned in Iron Man 2!
Yes
That was the E. Musk cameo wasn’t it.. Fine. And I saw an Atari ad in 80s Bladerunner. Was Atari the future…?
It’s just a movie.
Question
How about that Khabib / McGregor fight?
It was fine
The debacle in the end is not out-of-the-ordinary. Similar altercations happened before - nothing special there.
But these fights are too slow. I would put a limit to grappling, with the cage and limitless grappling the matches gravitate away from real-life scenario, it becomes just a sport. Also Khabib is a good athlete, but word is he got to title without facing off w too many top dogs. I watched one of his earlier fights (with Tibau, competent fighter), he could not do a single take-down - little weird for a hot-shot wrester. In the end he won by points, which surprised many. I think “they” (the man behind the scenes) let the kid through because he looks more hip - he has a “thing” with the hat, backstory, the bear etc..
It’s a show, and shows need marketing. NBA needed to expand in China all of a sudden Yao is playing in NBA. Did US run out of good basketball players? No. If someone from your country is playing in the league you’d be more willing to watch it.
Comment
Immigrants are more productive than natives, as measured by number of patents
That assumes patents are good measure of innovation
The paper here says otherwise. Wright Brothers made a small improvement to existing flight tech and patented. Fo da money.. (blocking further innovation in the field for another 20 years the paper also says). Immigrants might be “hungrier”, hence more patents because the need for $$$. That doesnt mean they are more innovative than natives.
Picking talent who can already innovate, or accepting students into programs / grants that crank out innovators is different. Looking at broad population, incentives one cannot make the OP’s comment categorically.
Today I want to touch upon one trend [… it ] gets far too little attention. There is currently a struggle of enormous consequence taking place in the United States and throughout the world. In it we see two competing visions for the future. On one hand we see a growing worldwide movement torn apart authoritarianism to an oligarchy and kleptocracy, on the other hand we see a growing movement toward strengthening democracy toward respecting diversity toward fighting for equality realism and for economic social racial and environmental justice.
This struggle has consequences for the entire future of the planet economically socially [..] We see massive and growing income and wealth inequality where the world’s top 1% now owns more wealth than 99%, where a small number of huge Wall Street and international financial institutions exert enormous impact over the lives of billions of people in countries throughout the world.
Further and importantly many people in industrialized countries are questioning whether democracy can actually deliver for them. They look at their lives they look at what is going on in their families and they find themselves working longer hours for lower wages than they used to they’re falling further and further behind. In the United States they see billionaires buying elections and they see a political and economic elite growing wealthier even as their own children’s future grow dimmer. In these countries we often have political leaders who exploit these fears of economic insecurity by amplifying resentments stoking intolerance [..]
It should be clear by now that Donald Trump in the right-wing movement that supports him is not a phenomenon unique to the United States. All around the world in Europe in Russia in the Middle East in Asia Latin America and elsewhere we are seeing movements led by demagogues who exploit people’s fears prejudices and grievances to gain and hold on to power. Just this past weekend in Brazil’s presidential election right-wing leader Bolsonaro who has been called the Donald Trump of Brazil made a very strong showing in the first round of voting. He has a long record of attacks against immigrants minorities women against LGBT people . [..] He has praised Brazil’s military dictatorship. He has said. among other things, in order to deal with crime police should simply be allowed to shoot more criminals. This is the person who might soon lead the world’s fifth most populous country and its ninth largest economy. Meanwhile at the same time Brazil’s most popular politician former president Lula de Silva is imprisoned on highly questionable charges and prevented from running again despite polls that showed that he was in first place. Brazil is one example there are others which I will discuss but I think it’s important that we understand that what we are seeing now in the world is the rise of a new authoritarian axis while the leaders who make up this axis may differ in some respects they share key attributes.
Bernie hit the nail on the head
Lula (the left) is in jail, the result: right wing demagogue Bolsonaro. In US the left has been pushed aside in gentler (but effective) ways, the result: Donald Trump. In Turkland too, the left was brutally opressed during the 80s coup (all political spectrum felt the heat, but the left was especiallly targeted and opressed), the result: well, we see the mess now. In Russia you could argue Putin is the result of oligarchs running amok. With no left keeping the rich in check, the rich plundered state resources. When Putin was elected he had one mandate: seek and destroy. Seek and destroy he did, he had a shit list (of businessman), and dirty laundry on the people in that shit list, he took them out one by one. Now there is a different oligarchy, and kleptocracy, but they are connected to someone (at least it is assumed) who garnered more votes than the next guy.
These “leaders” though, mostly, cannot build. They are a freak of nature, they are there to destroy. To build, we need progressive politics and a rearrangement of the polity around it. Otherwise there will be demagogues, and senseless polarization.
Story
After he won the Nobel Prize, Max Planck went around Germany giving the same standard lecture on the new quantum mechanics. Over time, his chauffeur memorized the lecture and said, “Would you mind, Professor Planck, because it’s so boring to stay in our routine, if I gave the lecture in Munich and you just sat in front wearing my chauffeur’s hat?” Planck said, “Why not?” And the chauffeur got up and gave this long lecture on quantum mechanics. After which a physics professor stood up and asked a perfectly ghastly question. The speaker said, “Well I’m surprised that in an advanced city like Munich I get such an elementary question. I’m going to ask my chauffeur to reply.”
Nice
De Vany
[Paraphrasing] Gorillas were vegeterian. Meat allowed humans to trade stomach mass for brain mass. We gained better mobility, became smarter. Gorillas are nearly extinct.
Right
We got here not by being vegeterians. But I am not against vegeterianism; there are many sources of protein nowadays. Also the new meat replacement products are great.
B. Shapiro
[Politicon, parahphrasing] Sweden, Norway blah blah tax 60K earning on average 60%, this is how they can offer healthcare.
Scare tactic
Canada taxes 25% on average for 60K and they have single payer. Health insurance is not too hard or expensive (not sure which one BS was referring to, insurance or delivery, but he muddled through it all anyway, “soundbyting”, equating “free health” with high tax). M4A will be cheaper and more effective then US’s current scheme, that’s for sure. This is not a problem the “free market” can solve.
Forbes
There is a great irony that spans the presidential terms of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. President Bush, widely viewed as a Texas oil man, presided over eight straight years of declining U.S. crude oil production. In the year 2000, just before President Bush took office, U.S. crude oil production averaged 5.8 million barrels per day (bpd) according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). During President Bush’s last year in office, 2008, U.S. crude oil production averaged 5.0 million bpd.
The irony is that President Obama - who is not viewed as a friend of the oil and gas industry - has presided over rising oil production in each of the seven years he has been in office. [..] From that low point in 2008, U.S. oil production has grown each year to reach 9.4 million bpd in 2015 – a gain of 88% during Obama’s presidency. This is in fact the largest domestic oil production increase during any presidency in U.S. history.
MIA EPA
Yes “shale was getting started” right when Bam started his 1st term, and WH did sour on shale later. But it took some time while shale did serious environmental damage. EPA should have clamped down on them hard and fast.