Week 13

Wiki: "The Guatemalan Revolution began in 1944, after a popular uprising toppled the military dictatorship of Jorge Ubico. Juan José Arévalo was elected president in Guatemala's first democratic election. He introduced a minimum wage and near-universal suffrage. Arévalo was succeeded in 1951 by Árbenz, who instituted land reforms which granted property to landless peasants...

The U.S. government feared that Guatemala's example could inspire nationalists wanting social reform throughout Latin America. The United Fruit Company (UFC), whose highly profitable business had been affected by the softening of exploitative labor practices in Guatemala, engaged in an influential lobbying campaign to persuade the U.S. to overthrow the Guatemalan government. U.S. President Harry Truman authorized Operation PBFortune to topple Árbenz in 1952"

Great.

NPR: "Malaysia approves a new search for MH370 wreckage in the Indian Ocean"

"@signalapp@mastodon.world

Signal is an end-to-end encrypted messaging app. Privacy isn’t an optional mode, it’s just the way that Signal works. Every message, every call, every time. Signal is independent and not for profit; a different kind of tech from a different kind of organization"

"@signalapp@mastodon.world

Signal is open source, so our code is regularly scrutinized in addition to regular formal audits. We also constantly monitor security@signal.org for any new reports, and we act on them with quickness while also working to protect the people who rely on us from outside threats like phishing with warnings and safeguards.

This is why Signal remains the gold standard for private, secure communications"

Great line from the movie Slumberland: "My dad said schools are basically prisons. They keep kids locked up physically and mentally, prepare them for jobs that are also basically prisons, until they retire and go to a nursing home. Their final prison"

Power Magazine: "BASF has commissioned that country’s largest proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer. The company said the 54-MW facility will have an annual capacity of as much as 8,000 metric tons of hydrogen. The electrolyzer is located at BASF’s Ludwigshafen site. It is designed to produce zero-carbon hydrogen, using electricity from renewable energy resources, with capacity to supply the main plant at the site with up to one metric ton of chemical feedstock each hour"

Fight Or Flight, they overdid the action near the end. A little copycatting from Bullet Train. But it gets a C+. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, fine too (same lead actor).

The TR opposition likely realized they made a mistake in the earlier prez election. There were a lot of chefs in the kitchen then, settling on a presidential candidate took a while, though many favored Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu the decision wasn't clear cut. So when lawfare was unleashed on him, just like today, the mayor was one of the many candidates, the opposition sort of moved on to other candidates and ultimately chose a lame guy (and lost).

Now oppo realized its mistake, they chose Imamoglu early, likely expecting an undemocratic lawfare attack again, but when it arrived this time they circled the wagons around him, making the fight about EI and indirectly about democracy. If they insist on sticking with the mayor they will be performing a boycott of sorts.

Politico: "Waltz at another point claimed he had never met Goldberg, hours before a reporter unearthed a picture on social media of the two men standing next to each other during a 2021 event at the French Embassy."

Sometimes even potus can direct you to leak.. Party affiliation does not match sure but some stuff might spin better if it comes from a Dem dickbag like Goldberg.

Waltz could have added Goldberg to contact his list preparing to leak to him later. Journos get those tidbits "from an unnamed official in the administration" all the time don't they?. But then Waltz was confused that day while creating the group, invited Goldberg by mistake thinking he was someone else. It is possible.

Good timing for them.. DJT's Canada attacks helped libs there, before econ gets any worse this is the right time for libs to capitalize on the sentiment while it is fresh on the voters' minds. In terms of governance, makes sense, new guy wants a mandate.

Politico: "Trump vs. Canada: Prime Minister Carney calls snap election to take on president"

Foreign Policy: "On Tuesday, March 18, the German parliament ended the country’s economic Sonderweg, or 'unique path.' On that day, two-thirds of members voted for a far-reaching change of the fiscal constitution. Technically, the debt brake—Germany’s constitutionally codified fiscal rule—is still in place. But from now on, defense expenditures exceeding 1 percent of GDP will be exempted from the deficit ceiling; infrastructure and climate related expenditures can be financed from a special fund, which is also exempted from the debt brake; and states also get additional fiscal space"

TASS: "Western companies' return to Russia may be difficult if they armed Ukraine"

Businessline: "India’s first hydrogen fuel cell train set likely to be rolled out from ICF in April-May.. A pilot project on the Jind–Sonipat section of Northern Railway will convert a 1200 KW DEMU into a hydrogen fuel-cell-based Distributed Power Rolling Stock, thus producing zero emissions"

IEEE Spectrum: "[2024/12] After a half-century hiatus, thorium has returned to the front lines of nuclear power research as a source of fuel. In 2025, China plans to start building a demonstration thorium-based molten-salt reactor in the Gobi Desert. The 10-megawatt reactor project, managed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP), is scheduled to be operational by 2030, according to an environmental-impact report released by the Academy in October. The project follows a 2-MW experimental version completed in 2021 and operated since then"

The more the merrier..

"US Navy to deploy second carrier group to Middle East to counter Houthi rebels"

Zee Ping Ping could not have been fine with any of that.. Li Ka-shing is from Hong Kong, but clearly CH could not cajole him. US must have had too much leverage.

There was surely lots of US arm twisting for that sale.

Think China: "Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong's wealthiest man, has again found himself embroiled in a political maelstrom after announcing that his company, CK Hutchison, will sell 43 ports - including two along the Panama Canal - to US investment company BlackRock. Chinese public opinion thinks that Li's decision to sell sensitive port assets to a US firm is not a simple business transaction, and is concerned that BlackRock could potentially use this deal to support US government efforts to suppress China's trade"

#Frontline #Ukraine 03/16 - 03/24

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#Frontlines #Syria 03/09 - 03/24

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Looking at the status of Gaza ceasefire, why would Russia be hopeful from a 30 day ceasefire in Ukraine?

I bet tigga will be axed to take some refugs too. Oh boi

Really? 500k here 500k there soon u r talking total ethnic cleansing..

The Times of Israel: "Egypt willing to temporarily relocate half a million Gazans to Sinai"

"Why Can't AI Make Its Own Discoveries? — With Yann LeCun"

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IE: "World’s first portable hydrogen cracker can produce 1,100 pounds fuel per day.. Hy-5’s flexibility using ammonia, which is already transported in bulk, is one of its biggest benefits"

CDOs are financial instruments that pooled multiple debt obligations (cash streams) whereby an investor (the rich) could offer loan money by simply purchasing the CDO and collect interest on that loan... But due to inequality massive amount of wealthy people's money rushed into these instruments, raising the price of the underlying asset, housing in this case, for regular people. Regulating the markets are a good fix of course (regulation is always good), but the better fix is reducing the wealth of the ultra-rich so their excessive money does not cause price bubbles in products the middle class needs.

Paper: "Explaining the U.S. Housing Bubble: are CDOs to Blame?..I argue that a credit supply [increase].. originating in the CDO market in 2004, was a significant causal factor in the unsustainability of the credit driven housing boom of the early 2000’s. This paper sheds light on when credit booms become bubbles and why... My results suggest that the credit fueled housing price growth prior to 2004 may have been the result of sustainable innovations in meeting the needs of credit constrained borrowers. I argue that the CDO market was the critical link along the credit chain both in terms of its unsustainability as well as the causal role it played in effecting home price appreciation"

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North Shore News: "Federal government gives $49M for North Vancouver hydrogen facility.. The new hydrogen industry will create good jobs and environmental sustainability, says Minister of Natural Resources.. The federal government is pitching a wad of cash to help build a new hydrogen facility on the North Shore waterfront, with the eventual goal of filling fleets of heavy duty trucks with the alternative fuel... The project to build B.C.’s largest clean hydrogen production facility is already underway, and will involve capturing the waste product of a neighbouring sodium chlorate plant that HTEC bought in 2022"

Interesting Engineering: "France hits hydrogen jackpot: World’s largest reserve valued $92 billion found... This discovery positions France to lead the charge in hydrogen production, boosting local economies"

Space.com: "[2023] Expansion of universe could be a mirage, new study suggests"

TR commentariat is busy theorizing.. Apparently there was a Trump call a few days earlier, now he is blamed for giving the greenlight.

There are protests in Anatolia against Istanbul mayor's arrest. Everyone rightly speculates he is arrested to stop him from running for prez three years later. According to polls the incumbent would likely lose.

Fools think by elevating meritocracy to new heights, they are helping general populace. But talent on specific topics, at the level that can earn serious money appears only in a few, so if we tie wealth accumulation to that, we are not broadening its reach. We might as well ask people to dig for gold, or give only red haired, or left-handed people a lot of money.

The Guardian: "The mainstream of the Democratic party has long accused progressives.. of a kind of moral vanity, a willingness to sacrifice effective governance or policy gains for the sake of personal purity. The shoe is now on the other foot: it is the mainstream Democratic leadership – Schumer and his allies – who now favor decorum over the public interest, personal dignity over principle, a vain hope for a return to the politics of the past over their responsibility to engage with the realities of the present. It is the centrist Democrats, not the progressives, who are living in a delusion, and who are selling out the country in order to maintain it"

Politico: "We Dug Into the Polls. Democrats in Congress Should Be Very Afraid... The Democratic base’s disillusionment runs so deep that it’s eerily reminiscent of Republican grassroots sentiment in the period leading up to Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party.. The numbers are clear: No longer satisfied with the status quo in their party, Democrats are on the verge of a Tea Party-style, intra-party revolt"

RSF is getting its ass kicked... Entire swaths of the east are gone.

#SAF #RSF #Sudan #Frontline 01/31 - 03/22

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DW: "Sudan's military take control of presidential palace"

AP: "NYC will eventually have to abandon part of its water supply if it keeps getting saltier"

Rubber: meet road.

TDB: "Republicans Mount Big Pushback Against Trump Over Changes to NATO Command.. Top Republican lawmakers issued their strongest warning yet to the Trump administration over reports that the Pentagon is considering massive changes to a NATO command in a bid to cut costs."

Firstpost: "Canada in advanced talks to join EU’s military industry plan as Trump tests Nato allies.. Canada's move to align with the EU's defence initiative marks a significant recalibration of its military strategy amid growing uncertainties in US relations"

Hewlett Packard is on there.. HP had two people killed recently for being a nuisance for them, and they did that on the same day. Snap, just like that. See the cases of Mike Lynch and Stephen Chamberlain.

Companies of the Military-Industrial Complex. That is a lot of companies.

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Neither of the two most likely suspects, Cuba and LBJ had anything to do with the depths of the state. In LBJ's case he was part of the surface state, Texas oilman in conjunction with Johnson (who was the VP at the time) orchestrated the assasination via their personal, commercial connections outside of government.

Al-Jazeera: "New files released on Tuesday don’t shed new light on Kennedy’s assassination. But they reveal details about CIA plots... Tuesday’s document dump did not support the validity of any conclusion other than the [Warren] commission’s findings, according to experts who spoke to Al Jazeera"

It probably doesn't take much to set them on fire, lithium ion batteries are highly flammable, they even spontaneously combust by themselves.

Teslas on fire, due to arson as a protest against douche.

PDF shows in browser, does not show on standalone viewer. Ghostscript -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -sDEVICE=pdfwrite to the rescue. Having to fix a lot of PDF lately.. Whassup?

Electrive: "Farizon mass-produces first units of its H2 truck in China.. The first 100 units of Farizon's Xinghan G 200kW hydrogen fuel cell heavy-duty truck have rolled off the production line in China. It is thus the first series-produced H2 truck in the country"

F24: "Riots break out.. after Erdogan rival detained.. Riots broke out at the campus of Ankara's Middle East Technical University as students protested against the detention of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu"

Politico: "It’s not the first time California’s governor has sought to forge inroads in redder parts of the country... David Kochel, the longtime Iowa Republican strategist, said 'the operative class is definitely watching him because he’s doing something very different.' When asked if Newsom could give Republicans problems, Steve Bannon, the MAGA flamethrower who appeared recently on Newsom’s show, said simply, 'Hell, yes.'"