The Dreher chronicles

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.
 

 

Record dangerous rainfall, again

At Axios:

Northwestern Italy has been hit by record rainfall from a complex of thunderstorms, triggering flooding and mudslides, per AP.

By the numbers: 29.2 inches of rain fell in 12 hours on Monday in Rossiglione, Genoa province, just south of Milan. That's a new, all-time European record, meteorologists noted Tuesday.

 

Backup to GPS

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.

 

Economists, big coins, and the theory of money

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. 

Here's a Washington Post article about it, explaining some points succinctly:

What’s the downside to the $1 trillion coin?

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. 

 

 

Yep, no change

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.

Yes, we need to talk about..nurses

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.

Sack them, sack them, sack them.   

And I find it really outrageous that there are opportunistic Right wing aligned "workers associations", masquerading as "unions", which are trying to make political mileage out of pandering to them:

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:

 

Facebook too big to fail?

Kevin Kruse tweeted:

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:

9 Horrifying Facts From the Facebook Whistleblower's New 60 Minutes Interview

The first one seems pretty big to me:

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:

 

 

 

Transparent oceans?

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.

A very important video about fusion (and it's not good news for energy techno optimists)

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:

While we're in a tearing up contracts mood, maybe just go Japanese?

Seems pretty obvious to me that we are not going to build our own nuclear submarines in Australia:

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?

Hence - it pains me to say it, but Tony Abbott might have had the right instinct on something for once - why not go for the Japanese building us a fleet, but not the Soryu class, their latest design instead?: 

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.

Japan is the only known country to have operational submarines using lithium-ion 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?

And look, they're even politically correct:

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?   

Gee -  how many people does building subs here employ?  Some government paper says:

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?

I have just saved the government $74 billion...

 

Things I didn't know about the potato

In a free to read article from The Economist's 1843 magazine:

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.

 After the famine, most farmers in Europe switched to the “long-day” species native to Chiloé. It is these Chilean varieties that, through decades of micro-evolution and selective breeding, developed into the common spuds we now see in our supermarkets. Most potatoes these days are grown in Europe and Asia: China, India and Russia are the three top producers. The citizens of Belarus, Ukraine and Latvia are the most voracious consumers, eating around 500g of potatoes a day each, or two large spuds. Yet more than 90% of modern potato varieties cultivated across the world today can be traced back to Chiloé.

It explains at the start of the article:

Off the coast of northern Patagonia, some 1,220km south of the capital of Chile, lies an island shaped like a peanut. The patchwork farms and wood-shingled churches of Chiloé lie below moody skies that often unleash horizontal raindrops amid howling winds. Get enough drizzle in your eyes to blur out the volcanoes in the distance, and you’d swear the radiant green hills belonged not in South America, but half a world away in Ireland. And just like Ireland, the staple crop on Chiloé is the potato.

Seems odd that I don't recall reading about this Very Important Island before.   

Here it is:

 

 

 

This is what "threat to democracy" looks like

From a Washington Post piece:

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.

 

Same as it ever was...

But it's still depressingly bad political games.

We're dealing with idiots, Part 2

I think this is Gab, a long time resident at Catallaxy:

Am I being too mean?  Is this idiocy, or just culture war tortured logic that is flabergasting to witness?

I'm sticking with idiocy.   Oh ok:  "Why not both?"

 

Combining solar power and agriculture - actually happening?

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?

Liberal Mormons on the rise?

An article at the Washington Post:  The Rise of the Liberal Latter-Day Saints seems interesting, but I haven't read it word for word yet.

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.

I trust our domestic terrorist experts in Canberra have placed New Catallaxy on watch

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.

The comment got 4 likes, by the way.

China and crypto

A succinct explanation at Axios of China banning crypto and the likely future of the technology.

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.

We're dealing with idiots

Hope it's not faked though.

Some commentary on the Arizona "audit"

I've been looking around for articles debunking the "we haven't proved fraud but this might be fraud" style claims of the Arizona election audit:

Arizona ‘audit’: A multitude of unsubstantiated claims and no proof of fraud

 Five takeaways from Arizona's audit results

Trump pretends Arizona election audit findings didn't completely embarrass him 

And in this one:

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.