Week 11

CNBC: "Chinese battery giant CATL posts annual revenue drop ahead of Hong Kong listing"

JCB: "Leading contractor BAM Construction.. has been trialling the first JCB 540-180H Loadall on the Tea Factory regeneration project in Digbeth, Birmingham. Powered by a hydrogen combustion engine developed by JCB at its plant in Derbyshire, the machine offers a zero-carbon emission driveline, that offers the same power and torque characteristics as the conventional diesel-powered model.

'We’ve noticed no difference in the way the machine operates. We have to refuel the machine in a different way, but it’s a simple and straightforward process.'

JCB has been delivering hydrogen to the site in a refuelling trailer, that simply connects to the Loadall and refuels at the touch of a button"

Letting stray dogs roam about likely was a toxic mix of pre-modern feudal customs seeping into modern daily life. Dogs were first attracted into agrarian human habitats (the oldest ones being in and around Anatolia) bcz of its trash, some stayed around and made themselves useful, became domesticated. They were useful to have around the farm. But out on the street, amidst the hubbub of modern life they are out of place. Almost all modern cities ban stray dogs, "Turkey" was the rare holdout.

TR culls stray dogs after toddler dies in attack? There was a major stray animal problem, for sure. TR libs were extremely protective of "stray dogs rights", but you can't argue w/ the mother of a dead child.

Politico: "Senate passes spending bill to avoid a government shutdown..While Republicans control the Senate, they do not hold the 60 seats necessary to break a filibuster. Ultimately, 10 Democrats voted with Republicans to advance the bill to avoid a shutdown...

The vote highlights deep divisions within the Democratic party over how to respond to President Trump in his second term. The decision by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to support the funding bill sparked an intense backlash from House Democrats, who almost unanimously opposed it"

BB formulation says one thing, reality is another. Is there something wrong with the formulation?

Paper: "We report a new study of this line of sight [into the Small Magellanic Cloud] by means of high-resolution spectra obtained with the ESPRESSO spectrograph.. the low metallicity of the cloud leads to an absolute Li abundance of A(7Li) ≈ 2.2, which differs from the expectation from big bang nucleosynthesis"

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Brooke Harrington: "Somebody very aptly described these libertarians as like indoor cats who don't understand what outdoors is, they think they're like these fiercely independent 'Kings of the Jungle', 'change my litter', 'feed me fancy feast', that's what they are like, they are absurd people.. Not too far from where I live like 20 minutes drive from my house is Grafton New Hampshire which is the site of yet another failed libertarian experiment, that famously got run out of town on a rail by bears, because these losers didn't bank on the fact that they were living in the middle of a forest with animals. That's how indoor cats they are...

Their ideas cannot fail, they can only be failed. That's a religion, that's not even politics, and that's why it's so hard point out to these people 'your ideas don't work' because they they don't have a rational orientation to them"

#Ad #Sanders

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"The 'Atlas Shrugged' author [Ayn Rand] called government handouts 'immoral,' but there is evidence that she accepted Social Security benefits in her later years"

Slate: "A new study published on Monday by Opportunity Insights, a Harvard-based group of economists, confirmed what many have long suspected: that there is essentially affirmative action in college admissions for students who are very rich.

Indeed, 1 in 6 Ivy League students have parents in the top 1 percent of the income bracket. Being in a family in the top 1 percent increases your chance of admission by 34 percent. Being in the top 0.1 percent doubles it"

US needs affirmative action for the poor.

NYT: "[2023] Extraordinarily detailed data shows how elite colleges prefer the richest students, even among students with similar test scores"

Decoupling. Great. Means a reduction of MIC's marketshare.

"@alexlunaview@mastodon.social

THIS IS MASSIVE. Portugal has cancelled the order for F-35s from the US and will replace their F-16s with European fighters. 'We have to be able to count on the predictability of our allies, which is no longer the case with the United States.'. More EU states to come"

Judge ruled douche is an agency so it is subject to FOIA.

"@libreoffice

With the world changing around us, many governments and organisations are trying to reduce their dependency on tech giants. Here's an update on how one German federal state is moving 30,000 PCs to LibreOffice (and longer-term, Linux)"

NYT: "Houthi Drones Could Become Stealthier and Fly Farther.. A new report documented efforts to smuggle hydrogen fuel cell components into Yemen that will provide Houthi fighters a technological leap ahead.

Houthi drones powered by traditional methods like gas-burning engines or lithium batteries can fly about 750 miles. But hydrogen fuel cells would enable them to fly three times that distance and make it far more difficult for acoustic and infrared sensors to detect them"

Link

That is wrong advice. Both countries should produce both products because that increases their econ diversity increasing internal know-how which can benefit the design of a third product.

"While Adam Smith is regarded as the father of classical economics, the science of economics would not have developed as it did without the contributions of David Ricardo..

Famously, Ricardo illustrated comparative advantage and the benefits of free trade in Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817) using trade between England and Portugal as an example. He presented a case where Portugal can produce both cloth and wine at lower costs than England, thus giving Portugal what is referred to as the 'absolute advantage', However, in Portugal, the opportunity cost, that is, the potential gains that are given up by selecting one alternative over others, is less for the production of wine than cloth, while the inverse is true in England. This means that Portugal has a comparative advantage in the production of wine, while England has a comparative advantage in the production of cloth. Ricardo reasoned that, if Portugal were to specialize in the production of wine, while England were to specialize in the production of cloth, both countries would benefit"

"@osi@opensource.org

Open Source underpins almost 90% of the software used around the world today, but very little of the money used for public procurement reaches Open Source developers"

"[Philippe Migault, director of the European Centre for Strategic Analysis (CEAS) said] 'The Poles and Italians do not want to deploy troops to Ukraine [for a peacekeeping force], nor do the Hungarians or Slovaks. As for the French army, it could only mobilise a few thousand soldiers, much like the British.'..

The United States, meanwhile, has long made it clear that it has no intention of sending troops to Ukraine, as stated by Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. President Donald Trump has also remained vague about whether Washington would underwrite a Europe-led troop deployment, which is likely to be stretched thin.

'It is difficult to envisage a force larger than 40,000 troops,' said Elie Tenenbaum, director of the Security Studies Centre at the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri)"

Arab News: "In the past five days, Moscow has broken through Kyiv’s defensive lines, reclaiming dozens of square kilometers of territory.. The result is that Kyiv may have lost one of its only bargaining chips on swapping land with Russia"

CMC: "During a US-ROK joint military exercise, two ROK [South Korea] Air Force fighter jets mistakenly dropped eight MK-82 bombs — each weighing 227 kilograms — onto civilian homes. The bombing left at least 29 people injured and destroyed several buildings. If such bombs were to strike a densely populated area, the consequences would be unimaginable. This botched "erroneous bombing" not only shocked people at home and abroad but also compels reflection: Whose security do these US-ROK joint military exercises actually protect?

Despite being labeled as 'defensive,' these military exercises have long served as a catalyst for bloc confrontation and escalated regional tensions. Under the guise of "safeguarding peace", these exercises claim to counter the so-called "DPRK threat." Yet, far from easing tensions on the peninsula, such muscle-flexing have only exacerbated conflicts"

Lo and behold #Velocity #Fred

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Inequality would screw up velocity. All sorts of moneys would flow, one-directionally to the rich, and stay there, simply invested in assets, not good for velocity (nor the economy).

A simple way of computing velocity for US is dividing GDP by the money stock, eg M2.

#Velocity #Money

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The Jerusalem Post: "Armed Israeli settlers stole hundreds of sheep from a Bedouin community in the Jordan Valley, local residents say"

PKK (seperatist TR Kurds) declaring unilateral cease fire is a sweetner for the goobble gobble Anatolians so internally their pol looks ok when they essentially accept the same Kurdish elements having a state in NE Syria. A Syrian journo claims HTS leader Shara was forced into the deal by the West. For PKK it made sense too, as stated before, they now have a 100k strong army in NE Syria, they do not need bunch of rugged guerillas running around on the mountains.

The Irish Times: "Hope for Syria as government and Kurds sign deal to merge forces.. Kurdish community to get citizenship and language rights denied under Assad regime"

The rumor is PKK leader Ocalan wants to be a spiritual leader of sorts to NE Syria (Rojova), perhaps he is afraid "foreign elements" encroaching on that territory and he wants to help them in some way. The Israel proposed land bridge would connect into the area, remember, he might also want to placate the Anatolians so they don't feel the need to attack.

PKK was helped by Syria a lot in its early history. They were a barganing chip of sorts against the TR's dam building. Obviously the opression of Kurds by the state played a role too.

On a related event, TR Kurdish seperatist group PKK declared ceasefire after ~50 years of fighting TR, they were being prodded to it by the founder.

Their headquarters were in Northern Iraq.

One commentator said 'no big deal' from their persp in terms of Kurdish resistance, 10k lay down arms, but there is now a 100k strong army in NE Syria. PKK had made a play for that region after the civil war started and managed to hold on. See timeline.

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Al-monitor: "Syria’s Kurds win big as Sharaa [Jolani] shakes hands with Kobane to save his own skin.. The surprise deal between Syria’s interim president and the Kurdish leader marks a pivotal moment for the country’s Kurdish minority and shifts the balance of power amid escalating violence"

Reduced immigration, onshoring can help local wages, but even if they doubled, it's not enough. Your puny salary can go from 30k to 60k, but median house since mid-2000s went from 200k to 400k. Massive wealth concentration caused that. That skewed distribution has to be corrected.

Percentage of gov discretionary spending

DOE 8%

DOD 45%

"You Are Witnessing the Death of American Capitalism" #Jordan

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The problem with economics today is not "too much math", it is the wrong type of math. Variables used, formulations are insufficient. The answer isn't less math, it is the right kind.

Until inequality is addressed every president is a one-term president. Trump certainly was 2016-2020. This is his second first-term. JD 2028 will likely be in trouble.

Switching to RealClearPolitics polling averages.

538 site is kaput.

"@jmeyer@infosec.exchange

About this X DDoS campaign: I've seen reports of attribution to Ukraine, and at least based on attack data at network level — I just don't see it. (And I should note: attribution is hard, so I am generally skeptical.)

Top contributors are 🇺🇸🇲🇽🇪🇸🇮🇹🇧🇷, and as with most botnets: very geographically distributed.

Most of the source IPs intersect with #Eleven11bot as we started seeing them on 26 February"

Dollar price against a basket. Price is coming down from a high to an average. Nothing too crazy yet.

u.get_yahoo_tickers(2020, ["DX-Y.NYB"]).plot(title='Dollar')

With dollar usually it is meant against basket of currencies.

"The dollar" is a currency, it is crashing against what? We talk about a currency always against another (or a few).

The dollar is "crashing"? The end is near?

Bloomberg: "Trump Team Is Pivoting to No Pain, No Gain as Economic Message"

GDP prediction not looking good

u.get_fred(2023,'GDPNOW').plot(grid=True)

CNN: "Ontario premier threatens to ‘shut off electricity completely’ for US if trade war escalates"

Clintoncare = Obamacare

Action Network: "Big Medicine has driven us to a breaking point. Doctors are pulled away from patient care –– sometimes from the literal operating table –– by UnitedHealth Group and other insurance conglomerates seeking new reasons to deny coverage. Patients with asthma and other chronic illnesses routinely leave the pharmacy counter empty-handed because middlemen play games with which prescription drugs they will cover and at what cost -– with sometimes fatal consequences. More than one third of Americans live in healthcare deserts, largely because insatiable insurer greed has driven independent medical practices and pharmacies out of business. Employers and unions are being crushed by ever-increasing premium costs, which further cut into workers’ wages. And all of us live in fear that one illness could destroy our physical and financial health...

[T]he U.S. healthcare system today is at the mercy of corporate hospital systems, private equity investors, and vertically-integrated monopolies and middlemen, who wield their market power to gouge patients, workers, taxpayers, employers, independent pharmacists, and unions..

We need a Glass-Steagall-style reform for health care, to eliminate the structural conflicts of interest that drive up costs and lower quality of care!

Sign on to our demand to Break Up Big Medicine!"

BFC = Bill Fucking Clinton

GFC was a missed opportunity, and the beginning of increased misery for many in US. An FDR-like figure was needed, but you ended up with BHO in line with a BFC ideology.

#Marche #2008

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I am sure they were excellent speeches.. But are they worth a quarter million dollars?

There were times the system could exploit the exubarence to trim off the excess, eg 2008, but corrupt, bought-out US government did not allow that excess money to disappear, the "system" (read: the rich) were bailed out. The bubble continued. GFC was the perfect time where the wealthy screwed themselves, gov could entrench that position, do a much needed redistribution. But thankfully the wealthy and the corps had their man inside, who bailed them out, now gets paid in kind via "speeches".

If the wealth of richest grows faster than the growth of economy, the rest of the money has to go after existing assets, raising their price, which will make them more enticing to invest in, the cycle continues. #Stevenson

Another downside is these "AI" tools require online connection to a service, which may not always be available. Reduce unnecessary connections, interactions. Be ready, code for intermittent connectivity. This is how you survive.

#CoPilot

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Turchin is the creator of this formulation on political unrest.

Unchecked oligarchy causes inequlity, immiseration. But the errant process contains seeds of its own destruction. Elite overproduction will cause internal conflicts within the elite. At some point a good number of elites eliminate themselves, and the cycle goes to a more manageable state.

#Turchin

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u.get_yahoo_tickers(2025,['TSLA']).plot()

Middle East Eye: "Armed Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians in the Masafer Yatta area, south of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, injuring several people, Wafa news agency is reporting"

LA Times: "Syrians recount terror as renewed sectarian violence leaves hundreds dead..The battles represent the deadliest attack on the new government’s forces since Assad’s ouster in December, and a blood-soaked reminder of the sectarian tensions that are the legacy of the country’s 14-year civil war"

See there are "overlaps" between HTS front and Israel. That is because Israel is encroaching on HTS, despite mini-pogroms done Alewites and tough talk on the Kurds so far no action towards the southwestern neighbor.

Color coded frontlines in #Syria belonging to various groups. If there are changes in the future, old front will be dashed, new ones will be solid lines.

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#Frontline #UA #RU 03/04 - 03/10

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Syrian HTS has been provoking a backlash from the coastal Alevite regions for a while.. I wonder if they wanted some kind of pushback to which they could respond with bigger force leading to displacement, expulsion of Alevites (Assad's minority) from their regions. These are prime locations after all.

The expansion of NATO had nothing to do with strategy. If there was any strategic brains behind the expansion the famous strategist George Kennan would not be against it. See the timeline, 1997/02/05.

Anti-Russia sentiment of the "Third-Way" Democratic party is the result of its decades long Republicanization. Thanks to Bill Clinton this party not only adapted right-wing econ issues it also became hawkish, perfectly aligning itself with the military industrial private complex. During the 90s under the guise of "helping" Russia it helped its plunder by its internationally connected oligarchs. They started the expansion of NATO so more weapon sales could be made by that same industry already experienced producing weapons compatible with NATO specs. Dems eventually became NRINOs, Not Republican in Name Only. Their anti-Russia sentiment is completely in line with them being bootlickers of the industry and followers of right-wing ideologies except a few bullshit culture war issues which are just there for cosmetics.

"UA RU war started back in 2014". You could actually take the starting point back to the 90s when US-led liberal order was wreaking havoc in Russia, people were dying of despair and NATO was starting to expand.

Historically the Democratic Party has not been anti-Russia to this degree. What changed?

If light is a wave not particle (See Robert Masse) and there can be no spooky-action-at-a-distance, no entanglement, that means quantum computation is a farce... This is in opposition to Barandes, whose inherently stochastic approach to QM still allows for quantum computation.

We will see who is correct based on whether quantum supremacy is achieved (it still isn't, despite claims to the contrary) then indivisible stochastic process explanation has a leg up. If on the other hand faster-than-deterministic quantum computation is impossible, then Masse's aether model has an advantage.

"Father of AI: AI Needs PHYSICS to EVOLVE". AI Is Still Stupid. #Lecun

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CA movie could do worse than Ant-Man... the last one that sucked.

u.boxofficemojo("Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania")

Out[1]: 
{'Domestic Opening': '$106,109,650',
 'Domestic': '$214,504,909',
 'International': '$261,566,271',
 'Worldwide Total': '$476,071,180',
 'Release Date': 'February 15, 2023'}

u.boxofficemojo("Captain America Brave New World")

Out[1]: 
{'Domestic Opening': '$88,842,603',
 'Domestic': '$168,084,423',
 'International': '$178,401,643',
 'Worldwide Total': '$346,486,066',
 'Release Date': 'February 12, 2025'}

"@Casey@newsie.social

EU supports new ceramic-based catalyst to cut the cost of green hydrogen"

TNE: "A consortium of technology companies, led by Cummins, has successfully developed a 6.7-litre hydrogen internal combustion engine (H2-ICE) for medium-duty trucks and buses"