Away from politics

Why are rich tech billionaires and their companies so often wrong about "the next big thing", when the average Joe on the street can tell it's not likely to fly?   For example, the Metaverse struck pretty much everyone from the start as a old idea that we had already got tired of (see Second Life), and VR headsets (which are not comfortable to wear for any length of time) were not going to revive it.   And sure enough, it seems pretty much dead.   Apple and its VR headset and software have gone quiet after an initial splurge of interest - and no matter how much cheaper they may make future models, the fundamental comfort and nausea issues with them seem incapable of being solved.    

Next it may be AI assistance - there is already a wave of annoyance at every online service under the sun thinking we want to interact with AI systems we don't trust, and I see some people saying that AI performance already seems to be going down, not up.

These and similar issues is discussed at length at Adam Conover's podcast, which seemed full of good points:

Could the New York Times be making it harder for Biden to withdraw by pushing so hard?

Look at the headlines on the NYT website today:

 That top article is way, way less convincing than the headline would lead you to believe - you can read it all here.

I do want to point out, though, that my talk about the concern that his face and movement is reminding people of Parkinson's is more widespread than I realised:

Kevin C. O’Connor, the White House physician, said as recently as February that despite minor ailments like sleep apnea and peripheral neuropathy in his feet, the president was “fit for duty.” He said tests had turned up “no findings which would be consistent with” Parkinson’s disease. The White House has declined to make Dr. O’Connor available for questions and did not respond to detailed health questions from The New York Times earlier this year.

Responding to questions from The New York Times, Mr. Bates, the White House spokesman, said Tuesday that Dr. O’Connor had found no reason to re-evaluate Mr. Biden for Parkinson’s disease and that he showed no signs of Parkinson’s and had never taken Levodopa or other drugs for that condition.

I also hasten to repeat:  even if he had early signs of Parkinsons (without tremor) that would not mean that MAGA idiots have been right about him suffering dementia for years.   They are still offensive malevolent idiots for running that Goebbels propaganda.  

Anyway, my post's headline makes, I think, a point I haven't seen anyone else run - if you want to push a leader out who likes the job, you might achieve it better by not shouting at him, but by appearing less emotionally involved.

I'm pretty close to cancelling my NYT sub - I enjoy the writers at the WAPO more anyway.

 

Remarkable stupidity and malevolence

This line from MAGA idiots was pretty common yesterday:

 

It's actually jawdropping how the Christofascist MAGA crowd have self gas-lite themselves into believing it's the Democrat side that wants a violent fascist State, when their own leader is the one calling for the immediate rounding up of millions of people and televised show trials worthy of the Cultural Revolution:

Former President Donald J. Trump over the weekend escalated his vows to prosecute his political opponents, circulating posts on his social media website invoking “televised military tribunals” and calling for the jailing of President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and former Vice President Mike Pence, among other high-profile politicians.

Mr. Trump, using his account on Truth Social on Sunday, promoted two posts from other users of the site that called for the jailing of his perceived political enemies.

One post that he circulated on Sunday singled out Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman who is a Republican critic of Mr. Trump’s, and called for her to be prosecuted by a type of military court reserved for enemy combatants and war criminals.

“Elizabeth Lynne Cheney is guilty of treason,” the post said. “Retruth if you want televised military tribunals.”

Anyway, back to the point of "assassinating his political opponents - don't be ridiculous".   Yet as Philip Bump explains in a good article in the Washington Post entitled The perfectly valid hypothetical Presidential murder scenario:

“When [the president] uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.”

Sotomayor didn’t invent this particular scenario, mind you. During oral arguments in the case, she asked an attorney representing the former president if a chief executive “decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him,” whether that was an official act that deserved immunity. The attorney said that it “could well be an official act.” It was Justice Samuel Alito who, a bit later in the conversation, introduced the idea that the theoretical assassins would be members of Seal Team 6.

So, that it could be an "official act" of a President, and attract immunity, was a concession made by Trump's own lawyer - but let's ignore that, hey MAGA??

The Bump article spends time talking about some of Obama's decisions, and the care taken to think about the legality.  As Bump says, Obama would probably have a lot less to be concerned about under this new rule:

Barr’s argument is that a president can’t simply deploy a SEAL team to go kill someone. But, of course, a president can do that. Barack Obama sent a SEAL team to kill Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Before doing so, a team of government attorneys got together to assess the legality of the move and to establish legal arguments that could be presented after the fact, should the action be questioned. The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday would have obviated some of that, because there would have been fewer possible legal questions stemming from the decision. After the successful operation, though, few such questions arose. 

Anwar al-Awlaki, had worked with al-Qaeda meant that he was a viable target under the terms of the authorization of force passed after the Sept. 11 attack, according to a government memo prepared before the strike. The killing kicked off a furious debate about the boundaries of presidential power.

The method of each killing was beside the point. It was the determination that the person could be killed that mattered. If a president made a national security argument for the removal of an opponent, the method theoretically wouldn’t matter for immunity purposes any more than the means of getting a problematic attorney general out of the way would. Barr scoffs at the hypothetical since using a SEAL team “doesn’t make it a carrying out of his authority.” But the issue is that the killing could theoretically be brought into the scope of authority, rendering the method, again, beside the point.

 I also noted a clip of some expert on CNN talking about how in the 1970's, following the revelations of Nixon and Vietnam and internal wiretapping etc, there was a real push back against the "Imperial Presidency".   It turns out (well, I guess not a surprise) that it is conservative judges who think it's all fine and dandy to re-instate it.    

But because MAGA support a dumb fascist and are outraged his is being legitimately prosecuted for one attempted overthrow of an election, it's the Democrats who are the "real" fascists.

It's a sickness and inversion caused by the poisonous well of Right wing media and social media - it's an utter disgrace that the Murdoch family participates in it.

 

Some tweets on the current depressing state of the State

The nuttiest thing about the Supreme Court and presidential immunity?

I haven't had much time to read too much about the judgement yet, but I have a couple of initial gut reactions:

 a.   In one respect, it feels a bit like what was a de facto immunity is now a legal immunity.   I mean, haven't we all felt that some things done in the international arena by Presidents past would be criminal if done by anyone else?   Assassinate a foreign leader - or attempt to do so?  

b.   The difference is, though, while we have become used to the idea that there is a very broad scope of what can be "actions in the interest of national self defence", we have never thought the same about internal actions against perceived internal enemies.  It's the difference between, say, how Putin deals with critics and rivals, and how American Presidents respond.

c.    OK, so we put it down to a rubbery concept of "official actions" of a President:

d.  And here is the craziest part of the decision:  

So:

Future Deranged President:    "Attorney General, can't I just get the CIA or FBI, or that sheriff's group who love me, to take out a few of those key politicians who clearly don't have the interest of America at heart, like I do?    I mean, if you're not loyal to me, you're obviously a danger to this great country."   

Attorney General:   "No, Mr President, we're sure no court is going to read 'official act' that broadly".

Future Deranged President:   "What would you know, I'm getting on the phone to FBI Director Bannon".

Later in court:

        Judge:  "No, you can't introduce evidence of the advice the President got - seeking                                             advice is an 'official act'"

A semi-plausibe Biden theory that I doubt is true

As I mentioned in comments on my post on Saturday, even before last week's debate recent examples of Biden's facial expressions, and possibly his gait, have put me in mind of people I have met with Parkinson's Disease.   (Sadly, I also have an older sister who has it, diagnosed a few years ago now, although it is currently so well controlled that it would not be immediately noticeable to people who have just met her.)   

When I Googled it, I saw that some professor in England had turned up in the Daily Mail after the debate speculating about Parkinson's too.   And Googling today, there is brief mention of it in a piece in the New Yorker talking about the facial expressions.  [Update:  I just noticed a Washington Post article on anxiety and later Parkinson's - and a couple of people in comments question whether Biden's debate performance looked like early signs of the disease.]

So - while I am cautious about reading too much into mere facial expressions caught on video, especially on someone just tired or not feeling well - it's not just me.   

The list of other Parkinson's symptoms include some others which you could easily think are showing up in Biden:

    Muscle stiffness, where muscle remains contracted for a long time
    Slowness of movement
    Impaired balance and coordination, sometimes leading to falls

    Depression and other emotional changes
    Difficulty swallowing, chewing, and speaking
    Urinary problems or constipation
    Skin problems

There are quite a few reasons for doubting this is likely, though:

a.  most cases of Parkinsons will involve a tremor as an early sign.  But Googling today, I see that around 30% of sufferers may never get a tremor at all.   Of course, if Biden had a tremor, it would be impossible to hide from everyone, including the public.   

b. As I mentioned in comments, there seems to be no reason to question the bona fides of Biden's doctor's reports (unlike the very disreputable and extremely partisan Ronny Jackson chosen by Trump), and the recent reports on Biden make it clear that they have checked out his stiff gait, and put it down to arthritis in his spine.   Also, given that there are medications that can help, it would be very surprising for a doctor not to notice symptoms of Parkinson's and not recommend medications.

c.  Biden's continued bicycle riding can, I assume, be taken as a sign that he maintains good balance.  On the other hand, I see now that cycling is seen as a good exercise for someone with early Parkinson's.

d.  If it was clear to Biden, his family, and doctors that he had early Parkinsons, but it was being kept a secret, it would count as a pretty major scandal, and I very much doubt that his much vilified (by MAGA nuts) wife Jill could be so addicted to being adjacent to power that she would encourage the family to keep it secret.    As to why it would be a scandal - it wouldn't mean that he must have any significant cognitive impairment yet (and some people get by for years functioning well - see Michael J Fox); but it would still be a concern to hide in a candidate a condition that can bring on depression and other issues.   (Going back to my sister's example, it now seems that an early sign was the occasional feelings of dread that would come out of no where.   Not a good thing for someone with the nuclear codes to have.)

Anyway, given that Biden has been the subject of a thoroughly disreputable and dishonest propaganda campaign for years about his mental state, run with the power of deceptive editing of videos and promulgated by RW media figures with the ethics of Goebbels, I feel bad about pointing out anything that could be read as a concession that maybe there is a problem.   

For the reasons outlined above, I strongly doubt that this is a case of early Parkinson's, but would suggest that it would help him if his doctors could make a statement that they have checked him for it and ruled it out too. 

It's also useful to recall that the Right Wing has propagandised itself into ridiculous overblown health claims before for political reasons - they had Hillary Clinton on her deathbed for fainting once, yet she's still here, as vigorous as ever.

Some letters to the New York Times

To paraphrase the great Mark Twain, your report of President Biden’s cognitive demise is greatly exaggerated. Not to mention premature.

The president is probably one of the worst extemporaneous public speakers to hold his office. Age has made his lack of skill in this area worse, but that does not mean it has impaired his intellectual capacity.

To the extent that your rationale for urging him to step aside is that Donald Trump must be beaten, your call seems still more unwarranted. There is no alternative Democratic candidate whom polls show convincingly beating the presumptive Republican nominee.

If President Biden remains the candidate and loses, The Times can say I told you so. But others will say that the most viable Democratic alternative to Mr. Trump was materially hobbled by an ill-considered rush to judgment.

 And:

So let me get this straight. A presidential candidate who is a convicted felon gives a debate performance that is often incoherent, consists primarily of obvious lies, and includes a refusal to unconditionally commit to accepting the results of the presidential election, and your editorial is filled with histrionic calls to remove the other guy who’s run the country ably and ethically for almost four years because he had an off night on the stage?

You really should have consulted with your theater critics, who can school you in the many ways the run of the show ultimately matters more than the blips in previews. Your failure to focus your outrage on Donald Trump’s truly bizarre and bewildering statements in favor of such an overwrought and shortsighted response to Mr. Biden lets the real danger to our democracy off the hook.

 And:

Those who live in a retirement complex with dozens of retired scholars, administrators and researchers in their late 80s and 90s as I do are not panicked about President Biden’s “performance” on Thursday night. Stuttering and losing one’s train of thought are hardly signs of incompetence. They are signs of loss of verbal dexterity. Period.

Younger people who are brash and opinionated and bloviate find slow word-finding horrifying. However, there is nothing more horrifying to me than impulsively judging a statesman after one bad performance.

This is the most competent and experienced leader our country has had in decades. Look at this in perspective and stop fear-mongering.

Here's the link to the whole letters column, which is pretty short, really, given how many letters they must have got on this issue.

The micro world, and wind

There were two videos on Youtube that impressed me on the weekend.

The first has a clickbait-y title - it's not a debunking of wind power, but rather an explanation of how they work (something I never fully understood - and there are two different ways they get the slow moving blades to generate useful electricity), and a discussion of the grid stability issue.   But it is, basically, an optimist take that the problems can be solved:

 

The other video is the first I have seen by a guy who just likes science, and decided to teach himself video graphics well enough to make entertaining but educational content.  This one, on the scale of the micro world, contains a very surprising detail towards the end that makes it all worth watching:

 

What, me worry?

Re the Presidential debate that has sparked a wave of panic or back slapping, depending on the side of the political fence you are on:

*  If you watch from the start, it is clear that Biden had a frog in his throat from the very beginning, and was rushing his answers.  It did sound plausible to me that he had a cold.   If he didn't, his voice still sounded affected by something.  Perhaps an ice cream before walking on stage? 😀 

* Yes, he sometimes became flustered and lost his train of thought when trying to respond to the cavalcade of lies and boasting that this format let go unchallenged by moderators.  But it is not as if where he was trying to go in his answers was not clear, in (I think) all cases.

*  He was completely unprepared for a camera concentrating on his facial expressions while listening to Trump.  I would be very surprised if that is a problem not fixed by the next debate.

* All of that said,  it remains as ludicrous as ever for anyone to claim he is suffering from dementia.   It is a delusion derived from selective editting and a barrage of propaganda.  Yes, he looks old.  He clearly understands complicated issues and remembers stuff.

* Of course it was not as energetic a performance as a younger person may give.  But the contrast of a sincere man doing his best in contrast to a narcissistic idiot who is trying to ride back in on immigration scaremongering (it was continually brought up by Trump) was clear.

* My theory that Biden looked far better if you didn't rely on a gaffe highlight reel is backed up by some of the immediate polling which indicated people agreed Biden had a bad debate, but it's not changing voting intention much:

Of course, turning in the best performance in a debate only matters if it translates into votes — so we also asked poll respondents (both those who watched the debate and those who didn’t) which candidates they were considering voting for after the debate. And if there was any silver lining from the debate for Biden, this was it: The face-off doesn’t seem to have caused many people to reconsider their vote. That said, Biden did lose a small share of potential voters: Post-debate, 46.7 percent of likely voters said they were considering voting for him, which was 1.6 percentage points lower than before the debate. (Note that this was not a straight horse-race poll; respondents could say they were considering voting for multiple candidates.)

So nope, I'm still not thinking Trump will win.  

A final point: I usually think Chaz on Planet America is too much into shallow horse racing style analysis.  But last night John Barron was insanely negative about how dire the debate had been for Biden and Chaz was trying to pull him back.   I don't doubt Biden will see worse polling as a result, but if he has a better performance in future, I am not convinced it is irrecoverable.

Longest childhood ever...

From an article in the New York Times about the warming, changing oceans:

The world’s longest-living vertebrate is not the friendly giant tortoise, the breathtaking blue whale or the saltwater crocodile, which can terrorize the imagination of toddlers and centenarians alike. It’s the shuddersome, floppy Greenland shark, which can live to 300, perhaps even longer, its life span slowed and distended by the deep cold of the northern oceans. Greenland sharks do not even reach sexual maturity until about age 150, which means that today there are, swimming slowly through the waters of the far North Atlantic, the equivalent of preteenagers born not long after the 19th-century heyday of New England whaling, as the Industrial Revolution was just metastasizing beyond the Anglosphere. Since then, measured by weight, 90 percent of the largest creatures sharing the oceans with them have disappeared.

An answer to my complaint? Sort of...

I see after complaining about a lack of detail in how renewables are going to replace coal, the AMEO has recently put out a "blueprint" about how it will be done by 2050.

Seems my hunch that an awful lot can be achieved by a combination of more solar power (but with home battery storage) was right:

About 6GW of renewable energy needs to be plugged into the grid each year to avoid a short-fall but currently only about 3GW is being added annually.

Perhaps acknowledging these problems, AEMO appears to have placed a greater emphasis on households, noting the take-up of rooftop solar, electric vehicles and hot water pumps "has the potential to reduce the need for utility-scale solutions".

Australians are taking matters into their own hands: about one in three of households has rooftop solar, with a capacity of 20 GW, and that's expected to grow to four in five households by 2050, generating 72 GW of power.

Rooftop solar contributed more electricity to the grid in the first three quarters of this year than large-scale solar, wind, hydro or gas.

Without better coordination of household batteries to store all of that power, an extra $4 billion will need to be spent on large-scale storage: "increasing the costs that are reflected in consumer bills".

The Smart Energy Council – which is represents large-scale renewables companies – has called for a "national battery booster program" to increase uptake.

 

 

 

Byron Bay in the news

First story:

At least five people have been hospitalised with symptoms including “disturbing” hallucinations, dizziness and involuntary twitching after ingesting mushroom gummies made by a Byron Bay business.

New South Wales Health issued a warning on Wednesday night for people not to consume Uncle Frog’s Mushroom Gummies.

Since April at least five people have been hospitalised across the state after experiencing “unexpected toxicity” when consuming the “cordyceps” and “lion’s mane” flavours. Other people have been hospitalised interstate.

It would seem, from my "vegan curious" views on Youtube (no, no - I will never actually go vegan - I'm just curious as to how they can make food taste good with no butter, cheese or eggs) that lion's mane mushroom is all the rage in vegan circles for making imitation steaks.   But it alone has no mind altering effects.

That the gummies are about zonking out on 'shrooms is obvious from the packaging, though:

The gummies’ packaging encourages customers to “experience the multiverse”, claiming they are “infused with earth’s finest hemp” at “1000mg per serve” – equal to one gram.

The lion’s mane flavour purports to support “memory and focus”, while the cordyceps boasts it provides “natural energy and power”.

As of Thursday morning the company’s website had been taken down, and its Facebook and TikTok accounts wiped. An archived version of Uncle Frog’s website said it was a Byron Bay-based business offering products including “a unique, trademarked blend of natural ingredients designed to provide an elevated experience”.

“They are free from CBD, CBN, and THC, and are 100% legal in Australia,” the archived website read.

It pays not to trust such businesses, obviously. 

Second story:

Beachgoers on the NSW far north coast who fancy a dip in their birthday suits have been stripped of a place to swim after it was announced a popular nudist beach will soon close.

The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) will shut down the clothing-optional area at Tyagarah Nature Reserve, near Byron Bay, by August 30.

Byron Shire Council approved the area in 1998, but a recent NPWS land survey revealed that the site came under its jurisdiction.

NPWS met representatives from NSW Police, businesses, community groups and naturists in March to discuss alternative locations for a nude beach.

In a statement, it said no viable alternatives were found.

As I have said before, I find it somewhat counterintuitive that during my lifetime, the sexual revolution evolved into a sympathetic approach to public nudity such that nudist beaches were legalised in most states; but  then, when the internet made access to sexualised nudity on a screen - including the private sharing of nude selfies - a bigger thing than ever, the popularity and legalisation of actual nudist spaces has gone strongly into retreat.   (Although, I guess other novelty public nude events - such as the bike rides or mid-winter swims - are treated with a shrug of the shoulders now, but would have scandalous in the 1960's.)

I guess the explanation is that the internet's open access to pornography of all kinds encourages male sexual exhibitionists to think their behaviour is normalised, which leads to worrying behaviour around nudist beaches, and a general perception that public nudity spaces are for weirdos.   I might - I guess - also be downplaying the role of skin cancer awareness in discouraging social nudity in this country!   

Anyway, social attitudes don't always progress in the way you might guess.    

PS:   I meant to add, the Byron Bay area with its reputation for hippy-ish, New Age, counter-cultural vibes is about the last area in Australia in which you would expect a backlash against a legal nudist beach.   Just how many masturbating men harassing women (or men?) have there been, I wonder? 

 

Neom's going well...

From the Dezeen website:

Architecture studios working on Saudi giga-project Neom are maintaining their silence over human rights concerns despite mounting pressure from campaigners. Dezeen editor Tom Ravenscroft reports.

Following recent reporting by the BBC alleging that Saudi forces permitted the use of lethal force to clear land for the project, human rights organisations told Dezeen that architecture studios "can't ignore" abuses connected to Neom anymore, and must "urgently reflect" on their involvement in the project.

"Architecture firms working on Neom cannot pretend anymore"

Human rights organisation ALQST drew attention to reports that three men forcibly evicted from the Neom site have been sentenced to death.

"Architecture firms working on Neom cannot pretend anymore not to know that they are working on land on which the local inhabitants have been either killed, arrested, sentenced to death or forcibly displaced," ALQST head of monitoring and advocacy Lina Alhathloul told Dezeen.

Given climate change, I would think the Saudi government might be better off spending billions on how they are going to survive future summers with many more days of 50 degrees plus.   Visiting luxury resorts in those areas is never likely to be popular.

 

That 80's look

I've commented here before (back in 2009 the first time!) about how I liked the very look of a lot of 1980's movies (particularly in the case of the cinematography of the films of Steven Spielberg, but in other director's films too.)  I described it as a warm, slightly glowing, look.   

According to this Youtube video I recently watched, a lot of what was appealing to me likely comes down to a particular film stock that was used widely at the time.   (It was good to note that I wasn't imagining the "look" as being distinctive compared to more modern movies.) 

Here's the video:    

Poor David (but also - some heartwarming videos)

I'm not entirely sure how this happened, but I think it was in the context of David Byrne going to Congress to make some argument about music artists' royalities.  He ended up looking very unhappy in this selfie:

(I knew when I first saw this pic a couple of days ago that someone would tweet it with the caption "how did I get here?")

Anyway, I'm guessing that even Jon Stewart had to talk to Republicans when he was involved in pushing for some legislation for first responders.   Sometimes you gotta deal with them if you want support for a good cause.

The other David Byrne thing that I've been meaning to post about for months now is the lovely fact that he and the rest of Talking Heads buried some long standing hatchets and made several media appearances together to celebrate the 40 year re-release of Stop Making Sense.

 Gosh, it was 8 months ago that they were on Colbert's show?    But only last week they were on Jimmy Fallon's show too, and still all in good humour.

It's nice to see people who have fought in the past making up. 

And yes, I'm in the cohort of people who saw the concert movie in the cinema when it was first released.  I was only vaguely aware of the band before that, but then bought most of their albums over the next few years.  

  

Leakers of government secrets tend to be, well, weirdos

*   I have no sympathy for Julian Assange - a deeply eccentric and narcissistic man who played politics* as he thought they should be played with gathering and releasing hacked secrets and information.   As I recall, he had massive fallings out with those who were initially on side in his organisation, and was, at the very least, recklessly careless of the ruin or danger his releases could cause to the lives of those who had tried to help Western governments.   I guess his life has been ruined enough by the steps he took to avoid going to prison in the US.   But I'm never going to think he was really hard done by.   Hack and leak State and other secrets knowing it's wildly illegal, and take the punishment like a man (or woman - see below), is my view.

*  Similarly, I was amazed at the eccentricity and strangeness of Australia whistleblower David McBride as shown on the recent-ish Four Corners show about him.   The allegation, the truth of which I am uncertain, is that his initial reaction to events in Afghanistan was to complain about SAS being treated too harshly for their dubious tactics in the field.   Only later, it seems, did his leaks feed into the investigations that - for reasons no one seems to be able to explain - have led to the huge cloud over the SAS members for having likely committed serious war crimes, yet still not being prosecuted for it.   

I have no doubt that the Australian Army and its legal service has been making bad management decisions for many decades - I have some peripheral knowledge of them.  And seeing McBride just confirmed all my prejudices about this.   

* Let's not forget Chelsea Manning, who (I see from Wikipedia) came from a very, very troubled family background (as did Assange - you pretty much couldn't have a more unsettled upbringing if you tried), should never have joined the military, and ended up transexual.   Not all transexuals are crazy, I guess, but it's not a great sign of mental stability.   Anyway, I'm not sure why Obama commuted the sentence.

 

* He helped feed MAGA conspiracy mongering and was clearly a Putin apologist and effectively a Trump supporter.   As someone said, he more like a self-involved political anarchist than someone with well thought out principles.   There are those saying "yeah, he's a jerk, but I still think he was hounded too far."   I have trouble accepting that, or having sympathy, since a lot of his self imposed confinement was far from the same conditions as a prison sentence.     

Update:  

I know, I know:  complete idiots can sometimes be right on some issues, but geez, if you find yourself on side with MTG on any issue:

as well the Australian Greens, surely you've got to have some doubts.   (I'm thinking Bernard Keane, and the [long absent from the internet] Jason Soon.)

    

Will he or won't he?

There is a fair bit of speculation on Twitter along these lines:

 

I agree with those who say that Trump and his Right wing media supporters seem to be laying the groundwork for it.

And I can well imagine that his rich business supporters may be watching his recent rally performances and making some phone calls...

Why nuclear power dreams cling on

Gee, doing some searches of this blog for posts on renewable energy, I see that I used to put a fair bit of effort into understanding the change to renewable energy and its challenges.  Some old posts are full of details. 

I guess I gradually lost interest in the finer details of energy generation economics because it became wildly complicated, in large part (I think!) because of the interplay of privatisation of energy generation,  government policy, market forces, spot pricing, transmission line complications, interstate sharing of power, and God knows what else.   (See John Quiggin's 2018 article for some details.)

I'm still interested in the technological challenges of going to completely carbon free energy - it's the economics of the best way to get there is so daunting.  

Anyway, I also get the impression in casting my eyes over early posts that renewable growth has been much better than initially predicted.

But, with the revival of the nuclear dream, almost certainly for cynical political/culture war reasons rather than well considered ones, I just wanted to comment that I think the reason nuclear in Australia can take on a sheen of plausibility with the voters is because of what I noted in this post in 2021:  governments are unable to explain the details of how the transition to fully renewable energy will work.  

I suspect there are two reasons for this - the role of the private sector in building electricity generation, and the always evolving technology of renewables.  On that latter point, we've seen lots of ideas for clean energy come and go in the 20 odd years of this blog.   For example, I used to like the potential of solar farms using multiple small scale stirling engine generators.  (They just look cool, if you ask me!)  But all the start ups that were hoping to go somewhere with that have vanished.  Similarly for pebble bed nuclear reactors - South Africa was going to try it, and now I think there is only one or two in China.   It seems they can have issues that can be difficult to overcome (probably in the difficulty of making sure the pebbles never crack open, I suspect), despite early promise of a an inherently safe form of nuclear power. 

I saw from a headline that old private sector loving economist Judith Sloan endorsed in the Australian the Coalition's policy that government will build and own the nuclear reactors.   Quite a turn around for Judith, but should I be too harsh, given that I reckon it would help a lot with the public's impression of non-nuclear renewables transition if government were completely in control of that.

Anyway, I feel like renewing my call, or wish, that governments be more specific about the nuts and bolts of how rapid increase in renewables without nuclear will happen.   I had lots of suggestions for practical ideas that seemed sensible to me in 2021, but I don't think any of them have been taken up by government...

 

   

   

Death by pilgrimage

The New York Times says that most of the heat exhaustion deaths in Mecca this year were unregistered pilgrims.  The report is quite interesting (gift linked for you):

The deaths of more than a thousand pilgrims in Saudi Arabia for the hajj have put a spotlight on an underworld of illicit tour operators, smugglers and swindlers who profit off Muslims desperate to meet their religious duty to travel to Mecca.

While registered pilgrims are transported around the shrines in air-conditioned buses and rest in air-conditioned tents, undocumented ones are often exposed to the elements, making them more vulnerable to extreme heat. Some pilgrims this year described watching people faint and passing bodies in the street as temperatures hit 120 degrees or higher.

On Sunday, in an interview on state television, the Saudi health minister, Fahd al-Jalajel, said that 83 percent of the more than 1,300 deaths occurred among pilgrims who had not had official permits.

“The rise in temperatures during the hajj season represented a big challenge this year,” he said. “Unfortunately — and this is painful for all of us — those who didn’t have hajj permits walked long distances under the sun.”

I didn't realise so many had died in other recent years:

With nearly two million pilgrims participating each year, many of them elderly or ailing, it is not unusual for people to die from heat stress, illness or chronic disease, and Saudi Arabia does not regularly report those statistics. So it is unclear if the number of deaths this year was unusual. Last year, 774 pilgrims died from Indonesia alone, and in 1985, more than 1,700 people died around the holy sites, most of them from heat stress, a study at the time found.

But because so many of the pilgrims who died this year were performing the pilgrimage without official documentation, their deaths exposed the underworld of unlicensed tour operators, smugglers and swindlers who take advantage of pilgrims desperate to perform the hajj, helping them evade the regulations.

Further down:

In interviews with The New York Times, hajj tour operators, pilgrims and relatives of the dead said the number of undocumented pilgrims appeared to have been driven up by rising economic desperation in countries like Egypt and Jordan. An official hajj package can cost more than $5,000 or $10,000, depending on a pilgrim’s country of origin — far beyond the means of many hoping to make the trip.

But they also described easily exploited loopholes in Saudi Arabia’s regulations that allowed undocumented pilgrims to travel to the kingdom with a tourist or visitor visa several weeks ahead of hajj. Once they arrive, they find a network of illegal brokers and smugglers who offer their services, take their money and sometimes abandon them to fend for themselves, they said.

I would be very worried if I had an elderly parent attending.  Or any relative, actually.  On news reports, I've seen people say that it wasn't just the old dying on the street (and then their body being left there for some time.)

 

A hunch about the state of the Presidential campaign

It's been in the news that there has been a sudden surge in Trump campaign donations.  

It's also clear that Trump's performances at his MAGA rallies lately are more rambling than ever, with much smaller crowds, many of which seem to leave even before he finishes.   He also goes over his weird obsessions (water strength in showers, and not having enough water to use a dishwasher) again and again; so much so that it impossible to believe that his crowd isn't thinking "I've heard this before and I wish he would stop talking about it."

There's also the ridiculous attempt by him and his media team at Fox News and elsewhere to pre-empt a decent performance by Biden at this week's debate by claiming it will only be because he will be drugged up beforehand. ("A shot in the ass" being the additional detail he has now added.)

The other big news has been an increase in Biden's polling (which I always expected).

I suspect that there is a direct relationship between Trump's repetitive and poor public performances at his recent rallies and a surge in money from certain billionaires to try to prop up his campaign.

They're very worried, I think.

As for Elon Musk and his continual support of MAGA conspiracies - I find it hard to believe that he is supporting Trump and his minions when that group is completely against electric vehicles.   Surely he is arguing against his company's interest.