As regular readers (all 4 of you!) know, I recommend people look at videos on China's propaganda news network CGTN to get an idea of what the nation is thinking - or perhaps more accurately, what the government wants the nation to think. (Or is it what the government wants other governments to think the nation is thinking? Who knows?)
Anyway, the advent of the recent semi-built space station is being used for what looks to Western eyes like some extremely corny and old fashioned manufactured patriotism. Have a look at all the saluting and reverence at this press event where the latest three taikonauts were introduced:
And then the send off ceremony when the blasted off a few days ago:
The thing is, it's hard to know whether the Chinese public is also cynically aware of how intensely media manufactured this looks, or are they genuinely swept up in this space based patriotism.
I also am always amused at how they are obviously pretty good at this space stuff now, except for an apparent inability to design sleek and futuristic uniforms and spacesuits. These always look to me to pretty baggy and daggy to me - like they are still being designed with a left over Mao era vibe.
If ever they have a death on a mission (and surely they are bound to eventually), I hate to imagine the media dramatics that would be around the funerals.
The
information capacity of the universe has been a topic of great debate
since the 1970s and continues to stimulate multiple branches of physics
research. Here, we used Shannon’s information theory to estimate the
amount of encoded information in all the visible matter in the universe.
We achieved this by deriving a detailed formula estimating the total
number of particles in the observable universe, known as the Eddington
number, and by estimating the amount of information stored by each
particle about itself. We determined that each particle in the
observable universe contains 1.509 bits of information and there are ∼6 ×
1080 bits of information stored in all the matter particles of the observable universe.
But but - this doesn't include the information possible by how you arrange the elementary particles, does it? It's all a bit confusing...
I find it hard to fault the arguments in Greg Jericho's recent piece about why nuclear power is not the saviour for Australia.
I do tend to wish, however, that governments everywhere were trying to come up with very specific and concrete proposals as to how they are going to swap to all renewable energy in a relatively short space of time. Making targets alone is not really enough.
It’s gratuitous since he wasn’t obliged to say anything about
Powell’s passing. It’s narcissistic, turning Powell’s death into a
complaint about Trump’s critics. It’s petty in that it’s unwilling to
honor Powell’s accomplishments, of which there were many. It’s obsessed
with media coverage, particularly how other figures are covered relative
to how Trump himself is. And it’s dishonest inasmuch as Trump doesn’t
actually care about the Iraq WMD debacle or Powell’s role in it. That
was the low point of Powell’s public service and so it’s cited here
opportunistically, to bolster Trump’s case against Powell to the reader.
To 45, there’s only one test of a man’s value: Was he pro-Trump or
anti-Trump?
If Powell had supported him, Iraq would have been forgotten and Trump would have celebrated his career.
There was an article at Forbes recently that summarised a study which argued that the world could make significant inroads in clean energy by vastly expanding the amount of roof top solar panels - particularly in the densely populated parts of India and China, they argue.
I still say it should be a compulsory part of the building code in most of Australia, along with a minimum amount of home battery storage. An extra $20,000 or so on your average build (which is around $300,000) isn't going to kill anyone, especially when you get the savings on electricity and gas costs.
Here's the video you always knew you wanted to see - explaining the loose Japanese zoning laws that allow for a very highly mixed use of land in very small spaces:
This guy's videos are always good and interesting. He does make the interesting point at the end that the Japanese system seems both very capitalistic (allowing lots of freedom within a certain moderate set of restraints) but also sort of socialistic in the living spaces it develops (cars are not king; shops and facilities within walking distance - and neighbours living very close by - giving a sense of community).
I think the key thing he perhaps misses here is that Japanese communitarian cultural values came first; its not as if the zoning laws created them. And the Japanese are perhaps also inclined to just put up with certain inconveniences because of those values - such as people in apartments and houses living with loud talking drunks coming out of the pub or restaurant downstairs at 11.30pm every night to catch the last train.
So, it's probably a mistake to think that such zoning would work as well in Western countries.
I like using laundry detergent in pod form. They are convenient and not at all messy to use (well, subject to what I am about to say); it's easy to take a couple if you are going away for a few days and might need to wash clothes during the break; and they don't run any risk of gunking up pipes in the way the usual method of getting the detergent into a front load washing machine apparently can. They're also very clear in terms of working out value, as there is a simple and direct cost per wash on the price ticket on the supermarket, given they have to show unit price. (And by the way, they are a product on which supermarkets do this rotating specials thing continually - there always seems to be one brand which is on special for about 32 cent per pod, whereas the full price of the more expensive brands is close to $1. I only buy them on the cheaper pricing.)
But, I have found with the new front loading washer in my house that they can sometimes get squished against the window/door and fall into the rubber seal crease at the bottom, and take too long to get properly dissolved. This is because the way to use them in a front loader is said to be to put them in the drum and then load clothes on top of them. But, front loaders add water slowly, so they can be stuck spinning around for a while before everything gets wet enough for it to burst, and in the meantime can they move into the worst location for water contact.
My life hint, after trying worse methods (such as cutting them with scissors, or squeezing them with a cloth in the machine 'til they burst) is to briefly rinse the pod you are about to use under cold water and then put it in the machine. This seems to give the dissolving process a head start, and I have noticed that the detergent seems to be released quite quickly this way.
I do actually like watching the start of the cycle in our front loading machine to tell when the detergent seems to be released. Family members do think it rather odd when I do this, but we all have our special interests. :)
You can thank me for this important life advice, and I look forward to being the new Jordan Peterson.
I only noticed this commentator because someone I more or less trust (I forget who now!) linked to one of his tweets, which sounded sensible.
But man, I don't think I follow anyone else who swings so wildly between sounding more or less sensible, to just ridiculous.
He is, I gather, a small government libertarian type, and as such takes a "a pox upon both your houses" attitude towards the political parties in the US. But (I am reminded very much of Jason Soon) the thing that really seems to agitate him the most is Left wing identity politics. Which, as I have been saying for years, is a bit nuts in terms of how to prioritise serious problems.
Anyway, to illustrate my point of how wildly he swings, have a look at these examples. Is he always serious? I think so, but it's hard to tell.
I would pretty much bet a $1,000 that he is single, though!
Remember the early, quite funny, "Uncle Roger" video in which he took orders at a well regarded Singaporean food takeaway cafe at a market in London run by a young, blond, part Asian woman? I didn't remember her name, but it's Elizabeth Haigh, and her reputation has just taken a serious nosedive after a cookbook she published has some pretty extensive plagiarism from another Asian woman's cookbook from 2012.
It really does appear very blatant - and I would guess that the only way she could retain some credibility would be if it turns out it was largely ghost written, and the ghost writer is the one who did the copying. I mean, that's not good, when you claim to telling personal anecdote; but it's still a bit better than being the person doing the cutting and pasting with full knowledge.
I hadn't heard about this before: the important role cadaver smell detecting dogs (and one dog in particular) have played in some American murder convictions - yet based on some very dubious science.
A Sydney primary school has asked parents to make sure their children do not watch the popular Netflix series Squid Game, which depicts “extreme violence and gore”, because students are mimicking the games in the playground.
On what should I blame the modern parental de-sensitisation to violence being viewed by kids? The parents themselves being de-sensitised by ever increasing violence in movies, TV and video games, I expect.
As someone who remembers as a child in the 1960's seeing some relatively B grade movie in the cinema (I forget what it was now) which featured a guy getting shot with a harpoon in his stomach, and feeling that was really kind of disturbingly violent, it is completely surprising to me that parents do not think that kids can imagine the effect of violence to a more visceral degree than adults.
I haven't watched Squid Games. I saw some of the violent first game while my daughter was watching it and thought it didn't look like my sort of thing. I have seen commentary saying that it is worth watching even if it makes you uncomfortable, but I am not so sure. I have never been one for the dystopia "games played to the death" scenarios. Always seemed a bit silly to me. Unless we're talking gladiator era stories, I guess.
I do hope Gina is feeling isolated though. I would expect she's been on the phone to Barnaby a lot lately. He is giving the impression of feeling under pressure - and as I said in my last post, is this just because the government is being told bluntly by its top public servants that it just has to start being credible on the issue?
I also assume, though, that part of the government's problem may be that there are absolutely no public servant heads prepared to advise them there is any plausible way to deny climate change is real and that Australia can go it alone in ignoring it. Mind you, that has probably been the gist of the advice for years, but are they at the point of saying "Look, pretending to do something effective has become untenable"?
It was a colourful and unusual High Court hearing
involving the mining magnate, running over several days instead of the
usual one.
Mr Palmer's companies were represented
by senior barristers but he represented himself, breaking down as he
told the court he'd been personally targeted as a Queenslander.
The
case harks back to decisions made by an earlier Liberal government
about Mr Palmers's Pilbara Balmoral South iron ore project.
The project has never gained the necessary approvals, despite mediation.
Controversial Queensland academic Peter Ridd has lost a High Court
battle over his sacking for disparaging remarks about colleagues working
on the impact of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef.
...why isn't anyone commenting on how the comic book artwork in that panel looks...bad:
I mean, what's with that jawline and cheek on the left? Looks like it's made of metal instead of flesh.
Anyway, Allahpundit explains that Josh Mandel, who sees the End of America because of a comic book only a handful of adult fanboys will read, is a Republican Ohio Senate primary candidate.
Allahpundit goes onto explain that the conservative performative uproar is due to Superman being the ideal American (or alien identifying as American), and:
He’s great because he’s good, the personification of our idealized past.
It’s no wonder then that Mandel and other nationalists would take
special offense to the character now displaying a trait that was
forbidden in the era when Superman became an icon. It’s a cultural
affront insofar as it signals that the America of today is fundamentally
different from the America of the “glory days” of the mid-20th century.
That core grievance is the whole reason Trump and Trumpism became a
thing, notwithstanding Trump’s own tolerant views of gays.
True, except its overlooking somewhat that the character is Superman's son, not Superman himself.
This comment appears at one of the offspring blogs of dead Catallaxy after a fairly ordinary (that is, by Rafe standards) post whinging about renewable energy:
Meanwhile, the rest of us are agog at how the Murdoch press has turned on a dime, no doubt confusing/dismaying its rusted on readers:
I haven't seen much on Twitter about how Sky News is covering this, only this, also from Kevin:
So, Murdoch is trying the tactic of populist anti-climate change advocacy on Sky News, while trying to convince readers in the most populist titles of print that its real and the government just has to act.
How's that meant to make sense? When can we expect the Sky News hosts to start attacking the editorial line taken by their companies print editors?
Keith Pitt, the resources minister, made headlines this week when he opened the boondoggle bidding on net zero. Pitt told
Phil Coorey at the Australian Financial Review if Scott Morrison wanted
agreement from the Nationals on a net zero target ahead of the Glasgow
climate conference, he should put $250bn on the table.
Yes, that’s “b” for billion.
According
to Pitt, if this transition was actually on, Australians taxpayers
should bear the risks. Pitt floated a cartoonishly bad idea where
taxpayers would underwrite the financing and insurance of fossil fuels –
including for overseas-owned companies – all because naughty Australian
banks weren’t inclined to make bad bets.
If
you’ve missed Pitt’s parable of the bad banks, let’s recap that quickly:
bad banks are now more interested in virtue signalling to their
obnoxiously woke inner-city clientele than backing salt-of-the-earth
fossil fuel projects in the regions.....
But before anyone could say Venezuela, Pitt’s
Queensland Nationals colleague Matt Canavan – a former Productivity
Commission economist now apparently estranged from capitalism – was out
and about with a different parable.
Canavan
told a mildly startled Kieran Gilbert on Sky News that Australians
should be prepared to pay higher interest rates in order to stare down
international financiers managing carbon risk in global markets.
Canavan’s Big Idea™ was actually wilder than Pitt’s, but it attracted
significantly less attention.
I don't know how people find the time to consider themselves thoroughly expert in their opinions on matters of interstate politics. I find I can barely know enough about the politics of my own state, let alone others.
Having said that, and speaking with only fleeing glimpses of his performance on the news: that Dominic Perrottet strikes me as physically and vocally uncharismatic. He keeps reminding me a bit of an aged version of how David Byrne looked in his old Once in a Lifetime video, and with a similar awkwardness.
I tried making lamb rogan josh (a recipe name that keeps making me wonder if I mixing it up with Rogan the broadcaster), and it was considered successful.
Given the variation in recipes on line, I will note that it was this one I followed, although in somewhat simplified form (I couldn't find the cloves in the cupboard for example). I also didn't bother blitzing the onion to a paste, and just used jar ginger and garlic, which makes for a much quicker prep. Also - some passata instead of tomato paste plus a tomato. And just a bit of sunflower oil instead of ghee - that's probably much healthier, too. [Oh, wait a minute: it was some other recipe that insisted on it being ghee, not this one.]
But - this spice mix worked well for 600 g of lamb:
1tsp fennel seeds
1tsp cumin seeds
3 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp garam masala
2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp red chili powder
(The seeds were toasted and ground.) It's not a hot curry, just one with lots of flavour. Cardamom is important - I like the burst of flavour when you bite into a cardamom pod. Use more than 4...
Update: I'll just add the rest here too, because link cancer may mean I lose it:
Onion Paste:
1 large red or brown onion, roughly chopped
Water
Ginger Garlic Paste:
4cm piece ginger, peeled and chopped
5 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
Water
4 tbsp oil
4 green cardamom pods
5 cloves
2 dried bay leaves
1 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp canned diced tomatoes or 1 tomato, diced
600g lamb, cut into small bite sized pieces
1 1/2 tbsp natural yogurt
Salt to taste
To cook:
Heat oil in a large casserole over medium-high heat. Stir fry cardamom, cloves and bay leaves for 1-2 minutes.
Add
onion paste. Cook, stirring, for 1-2 minutes or until the raw smell
disappears. Add ginger garlic paste. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or
until fragrant.
Stir in spice mix. Cook
for 1 minute or until aromatic. Add tomato paste and canned tomatoes.
Cook, stirring often, for 1-2 minutes.
Add
lamb. Season with salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes.
Stir yogurt into the curry. Cover lamb with 250 ml hot water. Bring to
the boil.
Reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer, covered and stirring occasionally, for 30-40 minutes or until lamb is cooked through.
One of the few advantages of the anonymous chat room participation on the net is that it can alert you to the fact there are people in certain fields who you would not want to be dealing with. Given this comment at one of the new Catallaxies...:
...if I were a patient in the SA hospital system, I would take it as a warning to ask for reassurance that the anaesthetist or surgeon is COVID vaccinated.
I missed watching this video put out by Sabine Hossenfelder some months ago:
It deals with, although too briefly, the question of whether it is possible to consider the 4 dimensional spacetime universe as being embedded in a higher dimensional universe. I mean, the idea of extra dimensional objects (or beings) being able to pass through our lowly 3 (spatial dimension) universe was very popular for a while in 20th century science fiction, but I don't think it ever got a mention much in real physics, and I never understood why. (And yes, I know that string theory was about compacted extra dimensions, but that's different.)
She said (with no further explanation, and starting at about the 6 min 30 second mark) that yes, you could consider our universe to be embedded in higher dimensions and to be expanding into them, but it (generally) takes 10 dimensions to make this work, and as they are understood (or "constructed"?) to be non observable, it is not scientific to think they are real.
Well, now I need to know why it takes 10 dimensions...
Update: OK, so according to this explanation in AEON, the 10 dimensions that Sabine mentions is about the extra compacted dimensions that are relevant to string theory - but as I said before, I didn't think compacted dimensions were relevant to the idea of our universe being embedded in extra dimensions that it can expand into. Anyhow, here is the explanation:
If moving into four dimensions helps to explain gravity, then might thinking in five dimensions have any scientific advantage? Why not give it a go?
a young Polish mathematician named Theodor Kaluza asked in 1919,
thinking that if Einstein had absorbed gravity into spacetime, then
perhaps a further dimension might similarly account for the force of
electromagnetism as an artifact of spacetime’s geometry. So Kaluza added
another dimension to Einstein’s equations, and to his delight found
that in five dimensions both forces fell out nicely as artifacts of the
geometric model.
The mathematics fit like magic, but the problem in this case was that
the additional dimension didn’t seem to correlate with any particular
physical quality. In general relativity, the fourth dimension was time; in Kaluza’s theory, it wasn’t anything you could point to, see, or feel: it was just there in the mathematics. Even Einstein balked at such an ethereal innovation. What is it? he asked. Where is it?
In 1926, the Swedish physicist Oskar Klein answered this question in a
way that reads like something straight out of Wonderland. Imagine, he
said, you are an ant living on a long, very thin length of hose. You
could run along the hose backward and forward without ever being aware
of the tiny circle-dimension under your feet. Only your ant-physicists
with their powerful ant-microscopes can see this tiny dimension.
According to Klein, every point in our four-dimensional
spacetime has a little extra circle of space like this that’s too tiny
for us to see. Since it is many orders of magnitude smaller than an
atom, it’s no wonder we’ve missed it so far. Only physicists with
super-powerful particle accelerators can hope to see down to such a
minuscule scale.
Once physicists got over their initial shock, they became enchanted
by Klein’s idea, and during the 1940s the theory was elaborated in great
mathematical detail and set into a quantum context. Unfortunately, the
infinitesimal scale of the new dimension made it impossible to imagine
how it could be experimentally verified...
It goes on to explain that the idea got revived in the 1960's to help explain the weak and strong nuclear forces:
Kaluza’s and Klein’s ideas bubbled back into awareness, and theorists
gradually began to wonder if the two subatomic forces could also be described in terms of spacetime geometry.
It turns out that in order to encompass both of these two forces, we have to add another five dimensions to our mathematical description. There’s no a priori
reason it should be five; and, again, none of these additional
dimensions relates directly to our sensory experience. They are just
there in the mathematics. So this gets us to the 10 dimensions of string
theory. Here there are the four large-scale dimensions of
spacetime (described by general relativity), plus an extra six ‘compact’
dimensions (one for electromagnetism and five for the nuclear forces),
all curled up in some fiendishly complex, scrunched-up, geometric
structure.
And there's more explanation that Witten came up with 11 dimensions:
There are many versions of string-theory equations describing
10-dimensional space, but in the 1990s the mathematician Edward Witten,
at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (Einstein’s old haunt),
showed that things could be somewhat simplified if we took an
11-dimensional perspective. He called his new theory M-Theory, and
enigmatically declined to say what the ‘M’ stood for. Usually it is said
to be ‘membrane’, but ‘matrix’, ‘master’, ‘mystery’ and ‘monster’ have
also been proposed.
So, what about the type of extra "large" dimensions that was the subject of Flatland and science fiction? Well, it might be there, as AEON explains:
In 1999, Lisa Randall (the first woman to get tenure at Harvard as a
theoretical physicist) and Raman Sundrum (an Indian-American particle
theorist) proposed
that there might be an additional dimension on the cosmological scale,
the scale described by general relativity. According to their ‘brane’
theory – ‘brane’ being short for ‘membrane’ – what we normally call our Universe
might be embedded in a vastly bigger five-dimensional space, a kind of
super-universe. Within this super-space, ours might be just one of a
whole array of co-existing universes, each a separate 4D bubble within a
wider arena of 5D space.
OK, that's more like it.
Update: I realised on the weekend (because Youtube pointed it out to me) that Sabine Hossenfelder had done earlier videos on the extra dimensions idea, explaining the stuff that appeared in the AEON article above. I didn't previously realise that the idea of compacted extra dimension had been around for so long, with string theory really just reviving it.
Wilson points out that having rejected traditional religion, Lawrence
more or less designed his own, though his understanding of just what
this meant never seemed entirely clear. “For all his claims to prophetic
vision,” Wilson writes, “Lawrence had little idea what was going on in
the room let alone in the world,” she observes.
I've never especially followed what Rod Dreher might be saying: he's quite popular with people at Catallaxy, which is a good sign he is a wrong headed and probably offensive conservative. But I had noticed that he had become one of the Right's fanboys of Hungary and Orban - and this marks him as "conservative willing to discard democracy if it means propping up his losing side in the culture wars" and therefore not worthy of serious consideration.
However, I can't resist noting the well deserved ridicule he has received on Twitter and elsewhere for his lack of a self filter when discussing circumcision. It's also hard to believe he couldn't see the reaction he would get. Is he just dumb, or did he run with "let's just see how much Twitter chatter I can provoke"?
Update: One of the ideas of Dreher's that is lately often mentioned favourably at Catallaxy is his "Benedict Option":
There was a time when Christian thinkers like Dreher, who writes for The American Conservative,
might have prepared to fight for cultural and political control.
Dreher, however, sees this as futile. “Could it be that the best way to
fight the flood is to … stop fighting the flood?” he asks. “Rather than
wasting energy and resources fighting unwinnable political battles, we
should instead work on building communities, institutions, and networks
of resistance that can outwit, outlast, and eventually overcome the
occupation.” This strategic withdrawal from public life is what he calls
the Benedict option.
I find it a pretty laughable idea, but here's Melbourne's sometime depression sufferer Arky speculating on the same thing, more or less:
Human’s require each other for economic, social and procreation
reasons. In order to enjoy all the benefits of human society you have to
move in proximity to other people. However, as these times of raving
covidity prove that more and more of our fellow humans are complete
douche nozzles of the lowest order, the question sneaks into our
consciousness: Is it really worth hanging around with these complete
penises?
If in order to work you need an, at this point, open ended series of
jabs with weird concoctions; if schooling means sending your child to a
progressive indoctrination centre where they might also require an open
ended series of those weird concoction stabs for zero net benefit to
themselves; when socializing means being harangued by cultists; if being
entertained requires also to be lectured; if indeed, the entire
structure of the society you live within is riddled with that which you
find repugnant; is the warmth worth the pain anymore?
Mind you, here he is in comments in a different thread:
I have said in other places that it feels mean to criticise a guy who writes posts explaining that he has suffered depression, but he now spends all his time catastrophising about how Australian government response to COVID has all been about e-vil control over the population, and despairing that people were not rebelling against it. He is, of course, against COVID vaccination.
I am sorry, but I have little sympathy for a person, whether prone to depression or not, if he does not have enough sense to contemplate that he might be the one who is wrong and being led up the garden path by bad faith, blind culture war warriors. He also sounds like he has serious anger issues.
Anyway - my message to all the Benedict Option fans at Catallaxy (and libertarians anywhere longing to set up their new utopia in the middle of no-where): please, go ahead and do it. You're a danger to the rest of us.
I forgot to post about this when I saw it recently. Given my view that satellite based global positioning is an incredible thing that is greatly under-appreciated, I just thought this was interesting:
SpaceX's Starlink satellites may be used for navigation and global
positioning in addition to their core function of broadband Internet, a
new research study suggests.
Engineering researchers external to SpaceX found a way to use the Starlink constellation signals for navigation similar to the capabilities provided by global positioning satellites
(GPS), which are used in the United States and several other countries.
The study represents the first time Starlink was used for navigation by
researchers outside of SpaceX, the team members stated.
Researchers
triangulated the signals from six Starlink satellites to fix upon a
location on Earth with less than 27 feet (eight meters) of accuracy, the
team reported in a statement.
That's pretty comparable to the typical GPS capabilities of a
smartphone, which typically pinpoints your spot on Earth to within 16
feet (4.9 m), depending on the conditions....
Kassas noted that Starlink's accuracy, using this methodology, will
increase as more satellites in the fleet fly to orbit. SpaceX has about
1,700 working satellites today, the team stated, but the company hopes
to launch more than 40,000 into orbit. (Recent launches have been delayed due to a liquid oxygen shortage induced by higher medical needs during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The
researchers suggested this method of using Starlink navigation could
supplement traditional GPS navigation, the latter of which has
vulnerabilities. Since GPS has been around for a generation (more than
30 years) and has a well-known signal, it is easy to use on smartphones
or vehicles — but also more "vulnerable to attacks", the team stated.
I'm just thinking out loud here, so don't shoot me anyone who has studied economics and thinks I don't know what I'm talking about: it seems to me a serious problem for the field of economic theory if economists cannot agree on the effects of something as big as the Trillion Dollar Coin gambit if it were actually used in the USA.
Experts are not entirely sure, mostly because the idea is entirely theoretical.
A
major concern for economists is hyperinflation. Minting the $1 trillion
coin would be like creating money out of thin air. When all that new
money poofs into existence, the other currency in circulation becomes
less valuable. That could hurt consumers, who are already dealing with price inflation.
Then
there’s the question of what a $1 trillion coin would mean for U.S.
monetary and fiscal policy. Monetary policy means making decisions about
the money in the economy. That’s mostly left up to the Federal Reserve,
which is somewhat insulated from political tinkering. Fiscal policy
means making decisions about what the government spends money on. That’s
an entirely political process left up to Congress and the president.
The $1 trillion coin would completely mix the two. It would have the
president use monetary policy (creating new money) to solve a fiscal
problem (the government is running out of borrowing capacity). Treasury
Secretary Janet L. Yellen said Tuesday that such a move “compromises the independence of the Fed.”....
“This is equivalent — the platinum coin is equivalent to asking the
Federal Reserve to print money to cover deficits that Congress is
unwilling to cover by issuing debt. It compromises the independence of
the Fed, conflating monetary and fiscal policy,” she said. “And instead
of showing that Congress and the administration can be trusted to pay
the country’s bills, it really does the opposite.”
On the inflation side, we get these competing views:
And this end one might have a point:
Is that at the heart of this, really? That economics still has no good theory of what creates money and how it "works"? I had a post about an article that argued this in 2019 - but I think Noah Smith, whose opinion seems pretty well informed, was not impressed.
So how's the Murdoch greenwashing announcement going?:
I do have to say, though, regarding the European and Chinese energy shortages: I have never really understood how cold climate countries can show that they are really serious about zero carbon emissions (without nuclear) until they come up with the plan for dealing with their freezing winters with renewable energy. I mean, years ago, I was saying that it seemed odd for a cloudy winter country like Germany to be putting too much reliance on home solar. Sure, it might work well enough for half the year, but be of pretty limited utility for the part of the year where energy is really needed just to keep warm.
As I too am still not keen on nuclear, I suspect that, apart from extra wind power (which does not always work in winters), the only path forward for these countries to be a combination of long distance transmission of solar power (turn a few arid countries in North Africa into giant solar farms with cables running into Europe - it's not like they're doing anything very useful with the land anyway), plus utility scale storage. I think - just a hunch - that flow batteries may be the way to go there - maybe some in the African countries itself, and some in Europe.
As for Australia - we can do the same, but on smaller scale, since not that much of the country gets that cold. Still, we have the natural advantage of a northern part of the country enjoying dry, sunny winters, which could supply winter power to the colder, cloudy winter parts of the country. And, to a degree, vice versa in summer.
I think there is also much greater scope in Australia for domestic scale batteries - really, I don't see why the government just doesn't mandate home scale storage in all new house builds. Economy of scale, you know.
Nurses - (mostly) lovely people, doing a job that we all deeply appreciate when we need their services, and in many cases working under trying conditions: but gee it's disturbing how many of them are nonetheless capable of holding deeply unscientific views even on matters of medicine.
I think this has always been the case - certainly I remember from my 20's (when for a time I used to socialise with nurses who I met through work and our communal living arrangements) that they could come out with some wacky stuff at times. I have seen more than one doctor with a somewhat strained relationship with nurses too, for pretty much the same reason.
So I know that we can usually get by with ignoring some dubious beliefs they may express (and God knows we also need to ignore males in certain professions [*cough* engineers] when they get particularly prone to idiosyncratic and unwarranted certainty about matters outside of their expertise), but my toleration level for nurses who are against COVID vaccine mandates is non-existant.
A set of “fake unions” with links to current and former Liberal and
National party figures are capitalising on anti-vaccination fears to
recruit doctors, teachers and nurses and exploit dissent within the
labour movement about mandatory vaccinations.
Queensland-based Red
Union claims nurses from Victoria and NSW are flocking to join its
associations, which it says are adding more than 200 members a day amid
fears of vaccination orders. In NSW, Liberal Party member John Larter is
setting up three workers’ associations to compete with established
unions for allied health, policing and paramedics.
Not much more to say about this, as no one is going to convince me I am wrong. But I do note this, from the Onion, as a particularly wry take on it:
and got a lot of pushback in comments that people use it for business, finding homes for animals in urgent need of shelter, and otherwise socially isolated people use for keeping in contact. And lots say "of course I only use it responsibly."
I find this a bit irritating - it sort of suggests that people were highly unconnected socially before the internet. Maybe some were - but of course, it is very likely that there was more personal contact back in the day, too.
I think people really need to have less of a "too big to fail" [or, more accurately, "too big to be forced to change the way it operates] attitude towards Facebook - there are ways of alternative online networking that maybe have a modest degree of greater inconvenience, but we're not talking re-inventing the wheel totally here.
All of this is on back of the 60 Minutes whistleblower story about Facebook. This Gizmodo summary is good:
Haugen explained to 60 Minutes how Facebook’s algorithm chooses
content that’s likely to make users angry because that causes the most
engagement. And user engagement is what Facebook turns into ad dollars.
“Its own research is showing that content
that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing, it’s easier to
inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions,” Haugen told 60 Minutes.
“Facebook
has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will
spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make
less money,” Haugen continued.
Now, of course, years and years of reading Catallaxy and its later spawn has shown me that any online community can spend most of its time on re-posting to each other stuff that is designed to re-enforce anger, so its not as if Facebook stopping that aspect is going to kill all problems with the net.
But gee, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
As for the site being down suddenly earlier today, I laughed at this suggestion:
This had crossed my mind recently when thinking about Australia and nuclear submarines: it's a little surprising that they haven't worked out ways to see further into the oceans yet, at least deep enough to detect submarines. I mean, they do all this sophisticated stuff to look inside buildings with cosmic muons now. Is there any chance of that being usefully used in the oceans?
Anyway, a report in the Guardian says that, yeah, to a large extent (although it is very short on details) the oceans may be "transparent" to submarines by mid century.
The Australian National University’s National Security College report Transparent Oceans?
found that transparency is “likely or “very likely” by the 2050s, a
decade after Australia’s new fleet of nuclear-powered subs is due to
enter service.
A multidisciplinary team looked
at new sensor technology, underwater communications and the possibility
of tripwires at choke points. They also examined new ways to detect
chemical, biological, acoustic and infra-red signatures, finding that
even with improvements in stealth submarines will become visible.
I haven't got time to look at that link yet, but maybe later.
It's pretty amazing that we all had to wait for this very clear explanation of how the fusion research community loves to have the public confused (or actually misled) about where they hope to get to with the fantastically expensive ITER project.
Watch it all - I think that it's actually a Right wing politician in America could legitimately call a scientific scandal, were it not for the time they spend on imaginary scandals:
Australia's switch to nuclear-powered submarines is prompting a
government push for the fleet to be built faster, possibly at the
expense of local industry content, to make up for time lost under the
now-scrapped French deal.
I mean, why bother if you are never going to build your own reactors - and I am pretty sure we are not going to go to the trouble of doing that.
The whole complexity of the Australian submarine deal was trying to do it in a way to keep shipbuilding jobs here. But submarine building is surely such a specialised thing, why bother trying to keep expertise here when you only need it for a small fleet?
I am therefore dubious about the whole US/UK nuclear sub deal.
Why not work with another country, closer to us, sharing our own regional interests, and just let them build us some convention subs that are quieter than nuclear anyway?
Like the last two boats of the Soryu class, the Taigei will be equipped with lithium-ion batteries
as a power source. Japan has conducted extensive research into the use
of lithium-ion batteries onboard submarines since the early 2000s, and
says they require less maintenance and are capable of longer endurance
at high speeds while submerged, compared to lead-acid batteries.
I like the idea of something as ubiquitous as lithium ion batteries powering a submarine; although I trust they have figured out the issue with them occasionally bursting into flame. But it is pretty rare in mobile phones, isn't it?
The Taigei subs also have another important new
feature: all-gender bathrooms. Japan is following the U.S. Navy’s lead
in integrating women into the submarine force, and Taigei will
have bathrooms for both men and women. The issue isn’t just gender
equality, but also the country’s declining population, which is creating
a smaller pool of potential recruits. Opening subs to women effectively
doubles the number of people that could serve in the Maritime Self
Defense Force.
It's pretty incredible, really: countries may want plenty of submarines, but have trouble finding people willing to work in them.
And what about the cost?
Japan has plans for two more Taigei-class submarines, and has asked for
$654.1 million for one more boat in the Defense Ministry’s latest budget request.
Assuming that is US dollars, sounds like the cost of one is roughly $1 billion AUD?
But we were planning on spending $90 billion on French submarines?
The naval shipbuilding plan indicated that construction of the Future Submarine
Program (FSP) is expected to sustain around 1,100 Australian jobs in direct
build and around 1,700 Australian jobs through the supply chain.
So, tops, 3,000 or so people?
You could pay them a tax free income of $100,000 per year for $300 million per annum. Times a 20 year project - $6 billion.
Plus, say, 10 Japanese subs at about $1 billion each - grand total of $16 billion?
Scientists reckon that potatoes originated
in the Peruvian Andes. It was probably from here that the first ones
were ferried back to Europe in the 16th century by Spanish
conquistadores.
Europeans at first
treated potatoes as a botanical curiosity, and mostly used them to feed
livestock. Over time, however, they became a staple in many countries.
But the Peruvian strains of potatoes were used to a consistent 12 hours
of equatorial sunlight – they’re now known as “short-day potatoes” – and
fared poorly in the longer but weaker summer sun of higher latitudes in
Europe. Nevertheless, Europeans became so hooked on spuds that when an
epidemic of potato blight hit crops in the mid-19th century, it caused
the “great famine” in Ireland and beyond.
We know
from the Bob Woodward and Robert Costa book “Peril” that the country
came closer to a stolen presidential election than was previously
reported. President Donald Trump’s lawyer John Eastman advised Vice
President Mike Pence that he would be justified in single-handedly
accepting some fake
alternative slates of electors for states that Joe Biden won — on the
grounds of supposed fraud in various states — and simply declare Trump
the winner of the election. Pence would have done so on Jan. 6, when he
sat in his ceremonial role as president of the Senate. Pence supposedly
seriously considered the possibility, only to reject it upon getting
sounder legal advice.
These machinations involving Pence came on top of at least 30
direct Trump contacts with election officials, elected officials and
others to cajole Republican state legislatures to send in those
alternative slates of electors. (None did, but Eastman’s plan pretended that they had.)
We dodged a bullet last time, and things are much worse now. Election officials have been leaving their jobs as they face threats
of violence and harassment, and some of the people who will replace
them have bought into the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen.
Those are the people who will be in charge of counting the votes in some places next election. Simply put, we face a serious risk that election results will not reflect the will of the people in 2024 or some other future American presidential election.
The article goes on to argue for steps which should be taken to protect future elections from such risk, but you can go read that at the paper.
Back in 2015 I noted that I had been wondering for some time why you couldn't combine massive solar farms and grazing and agriculture - just by setting up the panels on higher steel framework. Some crops might even do better in the middle of summer with a bit of shade - who knows? A lot of cows and sheep would appreciate it, too.
It would seem from this video (a few months old now) that the idea is still being researched:
Seems kind of obvious to me that it's a good idea in those parts of Australia which you want to retain good quality land for agricultural purposes.
Now I wonder when anyone will listen to my oft repeated suggestion that Wivenhoe Dam near Brisbane should be at least a third covered in floating solar panels?
I sometimes wonder why I have a generally sympathetic attitude towards this invented religion. I think it's because I also find appeal in the Asiatic reverence for ancestors, and the idea that their care and interest in their living descendants extends indefinitely. Mormonism is like a syncretic combination of that with Christianity, I guess.
Sure, in mainstream Christianity, perhaps especially in Catholicism, you can also have the belief that the souls of parents or relatives are watching over you; but it's not as intense as it could be.
Last night, two or three of the blokey blokes who comment at Dover Beach's (appalling "conservative" Catholic) reincarnation of Catallaxy were talking about having big arguments with their wives because they (the wives) had decided to get COVID vaccinated after all. How tragic for them [/sarc]. Of course, they don't recognise that what their spouses doing so is only likely to aid their own health future. As I say, we're dealing with idiots.
Then this morning, local Queensland nutjob, truck driver and pub musician has come over all sympathetic to "whatever it takes", including assassination, presumably:
He's been expecting the end of the West for years now, even before COVID, but it having come from China has given him all the push he needed into mulling and promoting political violence.
I agree with the sentiment at the end - there is no way China, or other nations, are going to let private currencies make too much of an inroad. Nor should they.
The goal was to substantiate a new consensus Republican belief
that Democrats cannot win elections legitimately, and that any victory
they notch must be somehow tainted. It is not a coincidence that the
places where audits have focused are those, like Maricopa County, or
Harris County, Texas, or Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, with high levels
of minority voters, who can be disparaged—mostly implicitly, but
occasionally more directly—as illegitimate participants in the polity.
Trump has been the foremost proponent of the theory, but he’s been
joined by eager sycophants, demagogues, and conspiracists.
We had 500 g of very nice looking beef mince, and I wanted to do something different. Not sure why, but I don't think I have ever made my own Italian style (or more accurately, American Italian, I think) meatballs and spaghetti before.
I followed roughly this recipe, except I used milk to soak the bread, and then following an idea from another online recipe, added about 100g of frozen (de-thawed and squeezed dry) spinach to add something other than protein to them. (Also lots of parsley.)
And for the sauce - used a 700ml bottle of Coles branded passata with basil in it. It was surprisingly nice all by itself (and at $1.95 a bottle, made me wonder why we don't just use it all the time for pasta sauce.) Fried an onion and some garlic and then put the passata in, and half a cup of water. And the browned meatballs. And chilli flakes, as per the recipe. But didn't worry about other herbs - it was flavourful enough. All worked out well indeed.
Given their soft texture (which is what you really want), it does mean that imitation meat meatballs should do a good job too. I have had some vegan type meatballs at Ikea, actually, and they weren't bad. I should look up some recipes for vegetarian meatballs.
