Rich and thick (Part 2)

When I search back over some of my past posts on Peter Thiel, I see that my opinion of him has steadily grown worse.  

Now, Jason Soon has linked to a "fascinating" interview with him from German publication (the date is not clear.)   I'll say it's fascinating - for once again showing that being rich involves no necessary alignment with wisdom and good judgement.   It provides plenty of ammunition for further downgrading my  opinion of him.  Take this:

My support for Donald Trump was, on some level, the least contrarian thing I have ever done. If it is half the country, it cannot be that contrarian. And yet, in the Silicon Valley context it has felt extraordinarily contrarian.

What it is contrary to is good common sense.   But look, he seems to have been caught up in the whole "we're on a path to national dis-ast-er!" utter bullshit wingnut assessment of the state of the US under Obama:

At some point, you described that the last presidential election felt like an apocalyptic battle. What exactly did you feel was at stake?
There are these essays by a person called Michael Anton. They are all written pseudonymously because he felt it was too dangerous to write names. One of them was titled “The Flight 93 Election”. Flight 93 was one of the four flights that was hijacked after 9/11 but it was the one where the passengers took over, they charged the cockpit – plane still crashed. And it was like that it felt that the country had been taken over and it was on a catastrophic trajectory, that people were going to try to charge the cockpit. It didn’t mean that they would be able to ride the plane or the ship or whatever the metaphor is, but “we’re gonna try”. So I do think that “The Flight 93 Election” is a powerful metaphor and, emotionally, that certainly resonated with me.

Well, that's nice.  Sees himself as one of the plucky, concerned public who felt compelled to seize control of a government of malevolent forces determined to take everyone down with them?   (And failed anyway.)   Look, this is genuinely moronic fantasy land stuff. 

He expands upon it further (my bold):

What is the explanatory power of this metaphor?
It is this very deep sense that the United States – the western world as a whole – are not progressing in the direction they should. We have a center-left establishment in both Western Europe and the US that mainly glosses over all the short- and long-term problems in our societies. And if something is not done, at some point it becomes too late to fix things. And the hour was very late.

 This is freaking ludicrous in light of Trump and the Wingnut Right absolutely denying the more world threatening and disruptive global issue of the 21st century - climate change!

I have noted in an earlier post that Thiel seems not overly perturbed about it as an issue (he said he didn't think he was an extreme skeptic, but left open the extend of his skepticism) - even though he apparently is spending some of his fortune on some clean energy research.  He may have grounds for arguing that the Left gives the issue more lip service than effective policy - but you cannot in any way conceive that the Trump led wingnut Right is addressing the issue at all.   They are denying it against science and the evidence in front of their noses.

As for what he thinks is good about Trump:

You were on Donald Trump’s transition team. In which respect is he different than everybody else you’ve met before?
I think it is his extraordinary ability to understand people.

Oh please.   Trump's narcissism means he "understands" and praises everyone who praises him.  Otherwise, it's all ridiculing former POWs for not being brave, mocking a journalist with a disability, making up childish nicknames for opponents, and vilifying immigrants.   And Thiel is in Trump's good books for being a rich tech person who doesn't find him creepy and dumb.    Of course Thiel will think he'd great at "understanding people".

As for his views on tariffs and Trump, I'm not sure that this bit really makes sense:

Another issue that is debated very controversially is Trump’s trade policy. People are shocked by his imposition of tariffs.
At the center of this is the question with China. The US exports something like 100 bn a year to China, we import 475 bn. What’s extraordinary, is that if we had a globalizing world, we would actually expect the reverse to hold: you would expect the US to have trade surpluses with China and current account surpluses because we would expect that there is a higher return in China because it is a faster growing country than the US. This is what it looked, let’s say, in 1900, when Great Britain had a trade surplus of 2 percent and a current account surplus of 4 percent of GDP. And the extra capital was invested in Argentinean railroads or Russian bonds.

He then goes to make other great observations, such as:

If you didn’t have a welfare state and someone wants to stay at home and play video games all day, maybe we should not make judgements about that. But if you have a big welfare state and people do that, maybe you have to do something to correct that. We live in a world where there is too much welfare and where work is undervalued. 

 Gotta treat people mean to keep them keen, hey billionaire Pete?   This is just a tabloid wingnut vision of welfare. 

I see that he's spoken about Asperger's not being a bad thing in business, but has he said he thinks he's on the scale himself?   Because I seriously doubt his emotional (and rational) judgement.

So that's what social modernisation looks like in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia Rejects Human-Rights Criticism, Then Crucifies Someone

(It's not exactly the same as Biblical crucifixion, but possibly more gruesome for the onlooker.) 

What is going on in Rupert's decrepit head?

While people who have worked with him say that Rupert Murdoch isn't so blatant as to ring up his media underlings and tell them outright what editorial line he wants them to run, it also seems clear that  in more subtle ways he gives the nod to certain positions being taken.  Otherwise, we wouldn't have the spectacle of Fox, Sky News and the Australian print media all suddenly running with "immigration and multiculturalism will be the death of us!" as per Pauline Hanson, 1996.

The latest example from Fox is being much tweeted about:

“In some parts of the country it does seem like the America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people. And they’re changes that none of us ever voted for and most of us don’t like,” Laura Ingraham said Wednesday night on her Fox News show. “From Virginia to California, we see stark examples of how radically, in some ways, the country has changed. In some ways, much of this is related to illegal, and in some cases, legal immigration that progressives love.”

I had the impression that Murdoch was generally supposed to be "classic liberal" and tend towards a libertarian approach to matters such as immigration.    As such, I've complained for years that it must massive, money making cynicism which justified his backing of obnoxious Trumpism on Fox News - he's not a redneck but he's happy to pander to their prejudices and gullibility and take their money.

And he's decided that this can extend to a fake immigration and culture panic?  I can only presume so.

How long is his influence going to go on?   I mean, we were recently greeted in the press with this photo, indicating that the body (not to mention the mind) is not doing so great:

Which, I have to say, reminded me of this:

But seriously, where's the humanity in his judgement in what he's letting go on in his media?

I predict that watching his empire mourn his passing, as well as the IPA circle who worship money above all else, will be very nauseating. 

The Entertainer, part whatever

This is the sort of paranoia that Andrew Bolt and the Murdoch media has recently decided, for whatever reason, to play up to.  Oh, and congratulations to Sinclair Davidson too for hosting a blog where Hansonite levels of racial and cultural insult are always welcome:

A lucky escape

I see that there was flash flooding in Toronto yesterday.   Not sure if it was a storm with rainfall of record intensity.  (I see that reports say 72mm fell in two hours, but the record daily rainfall is more like 97mm;  so it depends on how quickly the 97mm fell, I suppose.)

Anyway, two guys in the city had a very lucky escape from a situation you wouldn't think should happen in a modern building:

The Black Creek had certainly risen before, and the basement parking lot at 501 Alliance Ave., which backs onto the winding waterway, could flood.

Late Tuesday night, as Toronto saw a massive, rapid dump of rain, those left working at the eco-friendly commercial building were warned to check on their parked vehicles....

Freire, 34, and Gabriel Otrin, 27, an industrial designer working with Freire, decided to check on the Honda. They hopped into one of two elevators and rode down the top of the four-floor, loft-style building to the underground lot.

The elevator did not come to its usual stop. Rather, it splash landed, with a “whoosh.” And then began to fill with murky water....

There was a ceiling escape hatch that was apparently sealed shut. One mobile phone, with next to no service. An emergency alarm and intercom that proved useless, particularly once the water rose to that level. And two Toronto police officers, first to arrive, who plunged into water and managed to pry open the elevator doors, while the two trapped men stood on handrails and sucked air from about 30 centimetres of air between the elevator ceiling and their necks.

 

More greatest hits from Sinclair Davidson

The child abuse enquiry:

 The banking royal commission:

But an enquiry into Union governance, well that's all quite exciting isn't it, and here, everyone should watch:

Need I state the obvious:  the first two royal commissions have produced remarkable evidence of wrongdoing of great public interest and policy importance.  It would be hard to find any commentator in the land who thinks they have been a waste of time.   The last one - produced a string of failed prosecutions and is widely considered a dud.

He knows how to pick them.  [Sarcasm, of course.]

More reason to be highly dubious of climate change geoengineering

It's taken a long time for someone to think of this issue:  what effect would long term spraying of sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere as a climate moderating geoengineering attempt have on crops?

Looking at the examples of two volcanos, some scientists say that the decrease in sunlight hurts crop yields significantly, and in fact likely off setting the temperature moderating effects:  

Specifically, the research team examined what happened to maize, soy, rice, and wheat yields in the wake of the Mount Pinatubo and El Chichón eruptions in the years following their eruptions until the volcanic aerosols dissipated. They chose these plants because they are highly sensitive to light and temperature, so eruptions can have a big impact on their yields. The crops are also staples for billions of people — important if you want to estimate the potential societal consequences of geoengineering.

They found that the eruptions reduced the amount of direct sunlight hitting the earth but increased the amount of diffuse light. This led to a decline in edible yields from the crops they studied. Global average maize yields declined by 9.3 percent and the harvests of soy, rice, and wheat fell by 4.8 percent after the Mount Pinatubo eruption. Making a similar estimate of the consequences of the El Chichón eruption proved to be more difficult because the data wasn’t as robust. 

The researchers then simulated what would happen to crops if humanity tried to mimic the sulfur injection into the atmosphere by Mount Pinatubo. They looked at a moderate climate change scenario that projects global emissions will peak around 2040 and then decline.

The results showed that geoengineering using sulfate aerosols to manage sunlight would indeed increase crop yields by mitigating some of the losses due to rising temperatures. However, the changes in sunlight exposure would offset these gains, as less light means the plants produce less food.

The research team did not expect that the gains and losses from geoengineering would almost completely offset each other. And so “we were surprised by our own results in what seems like the simplest of relationships,” said co-author Solomon Hsiang, who leads the Global Policy Laboratory at UC Berkeley.

The overall effect is that solar radiation management would do little to reduce crop losses stemming from climate change.

In summary:

Though geoengineering can sometimes seem like an easy, tempting solution to a complicated problem, the results show that it could introduce its own complexities into the climate system. And creating an intervention that influences the whole planet is still a difficult and expensive proposition. 

Getting the requisite 20 million tons of sulfur compounds into the atmosphere would require a vast logistical network to send dozens of aircraft flights across the sky to spray these aerosols. The researchers estimated that keeping global average temperatures from rising more than 2°C via solar radiation management would require the equivalent of a Mount Pinatubo eruption every year....

The study’s authors say there could still be other benefits from geoengineering — for instance, saving lives from extreme heat — that could outweigh the costs. But that requires further investigation. 

“We want to make it very clear and explicit that we’re not pro- or anti-geoengineering in any way,” Hsiang said. “We think that geoengineering in this case highlighted a potential side effect.”

Inequality discussed

Further to my previous post today about productivity and wage growth in the US, I see that missed this article at The Conversation from last month about the Australian situation:  How rising inequality is stalling economies by crippling demand.

Seems to make quite a lot of sense.  

Poor building decisions

The Washington Post has an article about the increasing cost of hail damage in the US.  

I don't think it argues that hail storms are increasing per se, but puts the blame in the rise in damage to expansion of cities prone to hail storms, larger houses, and (to my surprise) this:

Around the time that homes began to grow in size, vinyl siding was also invented. It has become increasingly popular over the past 50 years because of its lower cost, and it is now the most popular exterior for new homes. Unfortunately, vinyl siding is also notorious for being shredded by hail as small as quarter. This means even lower-level hail from severe storms could leave a home looking something like Swiss cheese.

Am I mistaken, or is vinyl siding virtually unknown as an exterior house finish in Australia?   I thought from TV that house construction in the US looked very similar to ours, but perhaps I am wrong.

[As an aside, the other country where a difference in common house construction methods is evident to the casual visitor is Japan.]

About hothouse Earth

Here's a worthwhile thread on Twitter about the "hothouse Earth" paper that has had a fair amount of media attention.

There's been a lot of back and forth on Twitter between climate interested scientists and journalists about whether it's a good or bad thing to highlight the paper - the downside being the risk that people perceive preventing disastrous climate change as a lost cause.  

But surely the point of the paper is that it encourages serious action to prevent a long term hothouse Earth.   The problem is more likely with some of the reporting rather than the content.

Better get Piketty onto this

Seems to me that Piketty might have something useful to say about this surprising graph from the US that turned up at Axios.   Because it would seem that productivity increases have become more or less uncoupled from wage increases - and that's not the story economists normally tell us, surely...

As anyone who reads Catallaxy knows...

Angry People Think They’re Smarter Than They Are

Don't tell the alkaline water nutters

Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists say they have found new evidence in lab-grown mouse brain cells, called astrocytes, that one root of Alzheimer's disease may be a simple imbalance in acid-alkaline -- or pH -- chemistry inside endosomes, the nutrient and chemical cargo shuttles in cells.

Astrocytes work to clear so-called amyloid beta proteins from the spaces between neurons, but decades of evidence has shown that if the clearing process goes awry, amyloid proteins pile up around neurons, leading to the characteristic amyloid plaques and nerve cell degeneration that are the hallmarks of memory-destroying Alzheimer's disease.

The new study, described online June 26 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also reports that the scientists gave drugs called histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors to pH-imbalanced mice cells engineered with a common Alzheimer's gene variant. The experiment successfully reversed the pH problem and improved the capacity for amyloid beta clearance.

Link.

This Canada Saudi Arabia thing is very strange

It's hard to fathom the over-reaction of Saudi Arabia's hip new leader in waiting to what Canada did.  As an opinion piece at WAPO explains:

In the past 48 hours, Saudi Arabia seems to have mistaken Canada, a member of the Group of Seven and NATO, and a distinguished ally of many European nations, for the small Middle Eastern nation of Qatar, which Riyadh blockaded last June.

Last week’s arrest of Samar Badawi, the sister of imprisoned blogger Raif Badawi, led Canada’s Foreign Ministry to issue a statement in Arabic on its Twitter account that urged “the Saudi authorities to immediately release” her, along with fellow activist Nassima al-Sadah. It was this tweet that sparked the ire of Saudi authorities and propelled them into taking action. Saudi Arabia responded by recalling its ambassador in Ottawa, freezing trade relations, withdrawing Saudi students from Canadian schools and even canceling flights between Saudi Arabia and Toronto.

When Canada’s embassy in Riyadh tweeted its government’s statement in Arabic, Saudi officials saw it as a challenge to national sovereignty on domestic social media, which has increasingly become the battleground to control national public opinion and promote hyper-nationalism. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known by his initials, MBS, is signaling that any open opposition to Saudi domestic policies, even ones as egregious as the punitive arrests of reform-seeking Saudi women, is intolerable.

The Turnbull disappointment

I've been thinking about all the ways Malcolm, who still strikes me as having a likeable personality, has nonetheless disappointed as a Prime Minister:

1.  Has failed to react to the revival of Hansonite racist panicking over immigration and culture;

2.  Has failed to directly confront climate change skeptics in his Party and the media - the true source of disunity and dysfunction within the Coalition for many years now;

3.  Has failed to show any real interest in reform of important tax matters such as negative gearing;

4.  Has ignored serious behavioural issues within his government, such as Deputy PM being (by his own confession now) a renowned adulterer, including with his own staff;

5.  Has devised a policy on energy that convinces no one, on the Left or Right, that it is worthwhile or meaningful (again, all as a diversion from the fact that he has failed to defeat climate change skeptics in his own party);

6.  Has presided over the appalling administration and treatment of people being punished by permanent confinement on Nauru and Manus Island;

7.  Has given away half a billion dollars to a small conservation foundation in an utterly non-transparent manner which, by rights, should be a bigger scandal than it currently is.  (Why - probably in the hope of walking the impossible tightrope of appearing environmentally friendly while doing nothing positive about renewable energy);

8.  Has used personality based attacks on Shorten in a manner which didn't impress me when Paul Keating did it, and doesn't impress me now.


He became Prime Minister perhaps about 7 years too early, before the climate change skeptics have been fully routed.   This Northern Hemisphere summer seems to be going a long way to achieving that goal.

Malcolm shows that personality isn't everything in successful national leadership (unless, of course, it is at an extreme such as with Trump).   

It is time for him and his party to be replaced in government, and it is a bit concerning to me that the Federal polling is currently so close.  There should, by rights, be at least 5 percent between the parties in TPP, so let's hope it drifts back to that soon.