Week 20

"@DarthAstrius@mastodon.social

@Robo105 We should do what the Black Panther Party was trying to do."

"@Robo105@mastodon.social

@breadandcircuses Let get rid of exploitive political and exploitive economic systems. I vote for Nordic socialism which is not perfect but a hell of a lot better"

"@DavidM_yeg@mstdn.ca

@dusk @breadandcircuses

They’ve done the same thing they did with Jesus… make a ‘safe’ official version co-opted so they can hold him up a vague aspirational figurehead, while the double down on the very things he preached against… knowing that safe white folk will never dig deep enough to see the contradiction"

"@dusk@todon.eu

They don't teach that facet of MLK in US schools 🤔"

via @breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social

Murderbot, good show

See they are so good at that connection they could offer its service to others... Mom and pop is still screwed but some others may get these crumbs

Supply Chain Dive: "2024 Walmart opens ocean shipping network to marketplace sellers"

American consumers have way too many choices.

Walmart could offer ultra cheap prices bcz of its China connection, and they could do that bcz they had the proper size to manage and benefit from that relationship... This is how they kill mom and pop shops. Then if Walmart loses its China advantage their power wld subside, providing opportunities for other vendors.

"Walmart will raise prices if China tariffs were raised"

CNN: "[05/10] Zero ships from China are bound for California's top ports. Officials haven't seen that since the pandemic"

Voyager 1 is using this approach to generate electricity, it's still going

Wiki: "A thermocouple is a thermoelectric device that can convert thermal energy directly into electrical energy using the Seebeck effect. It is made of two kinds of metal or semiconductor material. If they are connected to each other in a closed loop and the two junctions are at different temperatures, an electric current will flow in the loop"

Neocon "ideology", a half-baked concoction that it is, was a cover for more military business. So was "Israel's right to defend itself", namely the unconditional support for a tiny country over 6K miles away. Israel's history proved most useful, full of pain of a wronged people, the remains of Jewry who escaped the Holocaust, so this new country automatically garnered symphaty and moral protection, during which the complex could rake it in (not after the end of the Cold War though, before the Soviet threat was enough for generating profits). Think about it, there is massive pain on one side, massive guilt on the other; haves and have nots... This was a golden opportunity for arbitrage. Who is great at arbitrage? American businessmen. They made bank on the back of that pain, suffered by the European Jews. They still are.

The Ukranian conflict, which was provoked by US, was entirely about weapon sales. Ukraine is not strategically important for US (strategy as in George Kennan would have defined), Ukraine was and is only important to trigger another wave of demand for MIC's products, services. Just look at what happened thanks to Ukraine, and not just in Ukraine. Two new countries, Finland and Sweden joined NATO, meaning manufacturers who sell weapons according NATO specs have an advantage in those markets. Do you hear the sound? It goes Ka-Ching!

The surface state has complex ways of managing the upper echelons of politics, esp. at congressional level. I am not talking about knocking people out when they step out of line... It is actually much worse. They only further the career of people they can control from day one. So it's not a matter of being oppo-attacked if you against the grain, it is more like you will not gain office unless MIC has something on you first. That means almost everyone we see in office now are captured, held hostage by definition. They would not be there if they could not be eliminated within moments of notice.

Interventionism was highly profitable for the military-industrial complex. It was never meant to work from their POV, in almost all cases when it didn't, the repercussions were fine for them too as they still made money from the chaos. Officials at the top of the political hierarchy might think they were helping these countries, and formulate speeches that way thinking they "acted strategically", or even benevolently, but they were maneuvered into those positions in the first place because of those stupid thoughts, someone knowing that their unworkable ideas would inescapable feed a subsequent chaos that would create more profits.

The American Conservative: "Trump sounded ready to make a clean break with his party’s most reflexive hawks in the first big speech he has delivered overseas during his second term. 'The so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,' he said in Riyadh on Tuesday.

Trump’s actions may be lining up with his words. He has recently announced a halt to the bombing of the Houthis in Yemen, the end of sanctions on Syria, the removal of a national security advisor seen as less than fully on board with his talks with Iran, and is otherwise trying to prevent another regional war in the Middle East"

"Trump Issues Executive Order Aimed at Lowering Drug Prices"

Hughes, Marketcrafters: "[T]echnically speaking, markets allocate scarce resources dependent on consumer preferences, investor decisions, and social policy, but that doesn’t capture what can feel like their ineffable magic... Yet.. [a]bundant prosperity—the kind that provides the basic needs of food, shelter, and sanitation—has only occurred in the past century, and only then for certain people in developed economies. It was only when we figured out how to think about our economic activity like gardeners that we began to build real collective prosperity that could extend human life-spans and provide enough food and even some leisure time to the working class. A gardener does not 'intervene' in a garden; she cultivates it. Without her ongoing attention, it would turn fallow and quickly be overrun. Without qualified people in government managing our markets, we have no assurance their growth will satisfy our social priorities"

H2 Central: "No batteries, no gasoline – BYD new hydrogen-powered bus is revolutionizing transportation in the US"

Iselin: "If you think Tesla’s Q1 earnings were bad, and its deliveries awful, wait until you hear about the odometer scandal. What could end up as Tesla’s Dieselgate (the VW emissions scandal) is a direct assault on the one thing Tesla can’t afford to lose: trust. The numbers are grim, the leadership is distracted, and now the company stands accused of manipulating odometers (by up to 117%!) to dodge warranty repairs"

Prime Mover: "Three of the world’s leading automotive brands – BMW, Hyundai, and Toyota – have joined forces to establish the Hydrogen Transport Forum (HTF), a new industry coalition dedicated to accelerating the deployment of hydrogen mobility solutions in Australia"

LiveScience: "Scientists think a hidden source of clean energy could power Earth for 170,000 years — and they've figured out the 'recipe' to find it.. Researchers have compiled a list of 'ingredients' that could help resource exploration companies locate huge reservoirs of clean hydrogen, a critical element in the transition away from fossil fuels.. Recent breakthroughs suggest that hydrogen reservoirs are buried in countless regions of the world, including at least 30 U.S. states"

CNBC: "While the elevated tariffs [w/ China] didn’t last long, the trauma is real. Businesses now know they need to mitigate tariff uncertainty. 'The post-WWII trade framework that once underpinned stable expectations is gone; even further tariff rollbacks won’t restore it,' Jianwei Xu, senior economist at Natixis"

Firstpost: "Trump tells Apple to not build manufacturing plants in India"

Good news overall..

NYT: "Trump Meets Syria’s President a Day After Promise to Lift U.S. Sanctions"

The Times of Israel: "Trump slams ‘neocons’ and ‘interventionists’ during Riyadh speech.. 'It’s crucial for the wider world to know this great transformation [in the Middle East] has not come from Western interventionists, or flying people in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs,' Trump says. 'In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,' he continues"

NYT: "In Private, Some Israeli Officers Admit That Gaza Is on the Brink of Starvation"

These LLMs are somewhat anal, they can be pedantic, unimaginative. They remind me of shitlibs, you know the type, office-dwelling blue-no-matter-who, faux-left, redundant, coastal Democrats. They take their knowledge purely textually, they ingest, blurt it out somewhat creatively but don't truly understand. LLMs epitomize what these people consider as a smart person.

I don't think oobats is an Italian word

He is at least of Italian descent, part paisan.. of course, you have to know your prujoot, gabagool, must be a precondition for the job.

L'Americano.. It would be funny if he had a really high-pitched accent, like Ned Flanders, or Ross Perot.

Nice

"'Yes, America, we have a pope named Bob'"

Patriotic Millionaires: "Think of someone who starts a small business — with a modest investment of, say $100,000 — that over three decades grows into a not-so-small business worth 25 million. Our culture celebrates small-business success stories like that, and political leaders in both parties seek to protect the owners of these businesses at tax time. Why punish, these lawmakers ask, small business people who started from humble beginnings and sacrificed weekends and vacations to build up their enterprises?

But do we get sound policy when we base our tax rates on high incomes on the assumption that certain high-earners have sacrificed nobly for their earnings? Think of a highly specialized surgeon who made huge personal sacrifices to develop the skills she now uses to save the lives of her patients. Should the annual income tax rate she pays on her wages be ten times the effective annual income tax rate on the gain that the founder of a telephone solicitation call center realizes when he sells the business after 30 years?

Just as magicians get their audiences to focus on the left hand and pay no attention to the right, defenders of the lax tax treatment of investment gains heartily hail the hard work of farmers and small business owners, a neat move that diverts our attention from what simply can be windfall investment gains.

Those.. business owners, you see, provide political cover for America’s billionaires, by far the biggest beneficiaries of the regressive taxation of capital gains"

Patriotic Millionaires: "[W]e tax the ultra-rich on their investment gains less, not more. The rates we see on paper only apply to gains taxpayers register in the year they sell their investments. But we get a totally different story when we calculate the effective annual tax rate for long-held investments...

For members of America’s top echelon — the wealthiest 2 percent or so of American households — the effective annual tax rate on capital gains income, the rate that really matters in measuring the impact a tax has on wealth accumulation, actually rates as sharply regressive...

Consider Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. His original investment in Amazon over 30 years ago, in the neighborhood of $250,000, has now grown close to 200 billion dollars. And that’s after he’s sold off billions of dollars worth of shares. Or how about Warren Buffett, whose original investment in Berkshire Hathaway, the source of virtually all his wealth, dates back to 1962?

Bezos and Buffett, when they sell shares of their stock, face effective annual rates of tax similar to those in that far right bar of the graphic above, under 4 percent"

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MIT course.. did not motivate why Runge-Kutta method is used, did not mention its derivation (fourth order is messy but a lecture must include second order). Terrible.. just terrible..

ProPublica: "For decades, I’ve reported on outrageous health care costs in the U.S. and the burden they place on patients. I’ve revealed the tactics used by drug companies to drive sales and keep the price of their products high. Even with my experience, the cost of Revlimid stood out. When I started taking the drug, I’d look at the smooth, cylindrical capsule in my hand and consider the fact I was about to swallow something that costs about the same as a new iPhone...

I wanted to know how this drug came to cost so much — and why the price keeps going up. The price of Revlimid has been hiked 26 times since it launched. Some of what happened was reported at the time. But no one has pieced together the full account of what the drugmaker Celgene did, how federal regulators failed to rein it in and what the story reveals about unrestrained drug pricing in America.

What I discovered astonished even me...

When Celgene launched Revlimid in December of 2005, it set the initial price at $55,000 a year, or 218 a pill, which was about double what analysts expected.. Seven months later, when the FDA approved the drug for multiple myeloma, the price jumped to 70,560 dollar a year, or 280 a pill...

Celgene worked to mute any criticism of Revlimid.

In 2005, Celgene received reports that Los Angeles oncologist Dr. James Berenson was “bashing” Revlimid in presentations sponsored by patient groups. In one email, a senior company official said, 'it is time for us to take Jimbo to the wood shed.' The company discussed a range of options for dealing with the doctor, from taking legal action to arranging a sit-down with Celgene’s chief executive.

Ultimately, the company appears to have decided on a friendlier course of action. Berenson became a frequent paid speaker and consultant for the company, with payments totaling at least 333,000, according to Celgene disclosures. Berenson declined to comment. He wasn’t the only doctor the company befriended. Payment records show that between 2013 and 2018, Celgene paid doctors $11 million for speaking engagements and consulting work related to Revlimid...

Celgene went on to spread its largesse across the multiple myeloma world. It funded patient groups, sponsored medical meetings and contracted with prestigious academic medical centers. 'They remind me of an octopus with many, many tentacles, and at the end of each tentacle is a wad of cash,' said David Mitchell, a former Washington, D.C., communications executive who launched a nonprofit organization to fight for lower prices after he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma. 'Everybody relies on the money'"

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Iraqi Kurds had Kirkuk but Iraq took it from them.. The ultimate test of statehood in ME is the ability to beat on the Kurds. Hopefully there will be no need for that kind of beating anymore.

It looks like they do connect together, a contiguous piece of land. Will they declare statehood at some point?

All Kurdish regions..

import json
dk = json.loads(open("kurds.json").read())
u.map_coords({"Raqqa": [35.9588353, 39.0070503]},lines=dk,zoom=6,outfile='map08.html')

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There was a cross-nation Kurdish pow-wow recently.

You can "mount" the image of a disc as if it is an hardware disc into your filesystem. Can Windoze do that? I mean out-the-box, not after installing some shit .exe full of spyware, bloatware and backdoors into your machine.

Mfka... sudo mount -o loop disc_img.iso /mnt/iso.. yeaaah now I got the disc contents.. Still what a pain in the ass.

Then shares the disc image iso file on a Web site...

Dude says his book source code is available via CDROM

Pakis chose well.. Their military supplier China is a relatively new player in the game, they could not have been sure, but bet on an entire suite of solutions, an integrated air force system, from early-warning down to missiles shot by their jet fighters. They were right.

Clearly the shit does not self-control, self-police, or work for the betterment of humanity left unchecked.

Corollary, if we intervene in the markets to correct monopoly, why not intervene for other things, other sectors as well? Healthcare, transit, energy? I mean the entire ideology, "way of life", economic-ing collapsed already.. What's left?

If unfettered markets were optimal, why do we need fucking anti-trust?

#Google #UnfetteredMarkets

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Nigel Farage: "Just days after Reform’s catastrophic defeat of Labour in its heartlands such as Durham and Doncaster, the Prime Minister has made his latest fatal error... His new trade deal with India has sold out British workers to the highest degree. Indians who are transferred to work in Britain by their employers will receive an exemption to National Insurance for at least three years"

"Why the UK-US Trade Deal was Pretty Underwhelming"

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TR fighter jet Kaan is not 5th gen. You could call it 4.5 with some stealth capabilities. Reports on its radar range vary. How is its AWACS integration?

That makes sense...

u.beckley("Turkey","Greece")

3.41

If China opens the floodgates though and turn the conflict into a proyx war and a major testing ground for their military tech, could that change the dynamic?

In an all-out war IN wld do better..

u.beckley("India","Pakistan")

18.14

#Ukraine 05/03 - 05/11

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