19 March 2024

Headline of the Day

Experts: Negotiating Big Pharma's Prices Won't Stifle Innovation — They Don't Use the Money to Innovate!
Institute for New Economic Thinking

This is true.

Big Pharma's money overwhelmingly goes to advertising, executive compensation, lobbying and stock buybacks.

………

Bottom line: big drug companies rake in enormous profits without prioritizing investments in medication development or innovation. They simply snap up drug rights that the federal government paid for (us, in other words), focus on boosting their stock prices, and overcharge the public. Surely, Americans deserve better.

Using Bayh-Dole march-in rights, which has never happened in the almost 50 years since the law passed, or better yet, repealing Bayh-Dole and having the US government retain the rights to the research which it has funded, would go a long way toward ameliorating the abusive finance driven business strategies in the pharmaceutical sector.

We would probably get more and better drugs too, because we would see fewer researchers being pressured by college administrators to create and sell blockbuster research.

The current system impedes scientific discourse and results in regulatory arbitrage, particularly through the patent and drug exclusivity process, being the primary focus of the drug companies, not research.

18 March 2024

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day


This is a good demonstration of why Sarah Wagenknecht left Die Linke (The Left), and why Die Linke got hammered in recent elections.

If they had any central governing principles it was rolling back the military and leaving NATO, and they sold that out to have a (VERY) junior role in the current coalition government.

17 March 2024

I Hate Insurance Companies

Trying to find a new car insurance, because the old one keeps jacking up rates.

16 March 2024

Headline of the Day

Why is New York Times campaign coverage so bad? Because that’s what the publisher wants.
—Dan Froomkin via his web site Press Watch

He is referring, of course, to AG "Dash" Sulzberger, ,who inherited the role of publisher of the New York Times. (His two predecessors were his dad, AO "Pinch" Sulzberger, Jr., and his grandad, AO "Punch" Sulzberger, Sr.)

It’s an increasingly common critique of the New York Times: The largest, most influential news organization in the nation is not warning sufficiently of the threat to democracy — while at the same time bashing President Joe Biden at every opportunity.

And it’s been a bit of a mystery. Why would a newsroom full of talented and mostly liberal reporters be engaging in such damaging behavior?

Well, mystery solved.

It’s because that’s what the publisher wants.

Publisher A.G. Sulzberger — perhaps unintentionally — showed his hand in a speech on Monday at Oxford University on “Journalistic Independence in a Time of Division.” His ostensible goal was to defend the Times against its critics. But the two biggest takeaways, in my view, were as follows:

………

What does that mean — practically speaking — to the editors and reporters who work for him? In my view, the message is clear:

One: You will earn my displeasure if you warn people too forcefully about the possible end to democracy at the hands of a deranged insurrectionist.

And two: You prove your value to me by trolling our liberal readers.

That explains a lot of the Times’s aberrant behavior, doesn’t it?

I would not describe the behavior as aberrant.  It is just the conventional wisdom, and the conventional wisdom is wrong. 

If you have a problem, the conventional wisdom is ALWAYS wrong.  If the conventional wisdom were right, then the problem would be solved already.

As an aside, it does segue nicely into my earlier comment about the role of nepotism in journalism.

Even if one ignores the fundamental unfairness of nepotism, the problem is that the inbred idiot descendants of the founders of dynasties cannot do the job competently.

15 March 2024

What? Banning Anticompetitive Behavior Increases Competition? Hoocoodanode?

Now that the EU has forced Apple to allow web browsers that aren't just rebadged versions of its intentionally crippled browser, Safari, which means that they can run Web Apps, which do not have to go through the Apple Store.

As a result, installations of competing browsers, and browser engines, have spiked, even with Apple's malicious compliance with EU rules:

Since Apple implemented a browser choice screen for iPhones earlier this month to comply with Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA), Brave Software, Mozilla, and Vivaldi have seen a surge in the number of people installing their web browsers.

It's an early sign the Europe Union's competition rules may actually … get this … enhance competition – an outcome that skeptics deemed unlikely.

The DMA applies to a set of six technology giants that have been designated as "gatekeepers" in order to limit their tendency to boost the usage of their own offerings – such as their own browsers, webmail, and marketplaces – to the detriment of rivals, which are pushed out of the way.

………

Three years on, efforts to create a level playing field for platform gatekeepers and smaller rivals continue – possibly with some progress.

Brave's figures suggest the number of daily browser installs jumped from around 8,000 on March 6, 2024 to around 11,000 a week later. And in a social media post, the developer cited those results as evidence that Apple and Google have made it hard to switch default browsers specifically to block competition.

………

Mozilla also has seen increased interest in Firefox as a result of the DMA choice screen for iOS devices.

"The monopolistic practices employed by Big Tech have often hindered Firefox's ability to innovate and offer users competitive alternatives," a Moz spokesperson told The Register. "It is no small feat for us to cut through their tricky tactics to keep consumers locked within their own ecosystems.

"Despite less than ideal compliance, the recent implementation of the DMA choice screen is a promising step toward true competition online in the EU, which is why we're not surprised to have seen a more than 50 percent increase in Firefox user growth in Germany and close to 30 percent increase in France just since its implementation. Still, there is a lot of room for improvement, and we'll continue to fight for a web that puts people over profits, prioritizes privacy and is open and accessible to all."

………

"We are still reviewing the technical details but are extremely disappointed with Apple's proposed plan to restrict the newly-announced BrowserEngineKit to EU-specific apps," Mozilla's spokesperson lamented. "The effect of this would be to force an independent browser like Firefox to build and maintain two separate browser implementations – a burden Apple itself will not have to bear.

"Apple's proposals fail to give consumers viable choices by making it as painful as possible for others to provide competitive alternatives to Safari. This is another example of Apple creating barriers to prevent true browser competition on iOS."

I'm sure that Apple CEO Tim Cook goes to Europe on occasion.

Perhaps it might be a good idea to frog march him out of customs in handcuffs the next time it happens.

Certainly it would make malicious compliance by Apple less likely in the future.

Good Riddance

The Minneapolis City Council has overridden the mayor's veto of a minimum wage for Uber and Lyft, with the companies threatening to leave the area in response.

Let's be clear here:  Forming a non-profit or worker cooperative ride sharing is not difficult, one need only look at ATX Coop and the late and lamented RideAustin in Austin, Texas.

The difficult part is creating a cadre of Gypsy cab drivers, and Uber and Lyft have already done the heavy lifting on this, thanks to heavy infusions of venture capital.

Creating the app?  Not difficult at all:

Dismissing Uber and Lyft’s threats to leave the city, the Minneapolis City Council voted 10-3 to override a mayoral veto of minimum pay rates for drivers.

The vote on Thursday sets up a six-week standoff between the progressive City Council and two tech giants, with Uber saying it will end service in the entire Twin Cities metro area when the rates take effect on May 1. Lyft says it will end service in Minneapolis when it takes effect.

Driver activists in the council chambers cheered after the vote was called in celebration of a significant victory after three disappointing vetoes in the past year — one by Gov. Tim Walz and two by Mayor Jacob Frey.

“It has been a rough journey… Thank God to the City Council members and all the elected officials who listened to me,” said Eid Ali, president of the Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association, at a news conference after the vote.

The veto override sends the pitched political conflict back to the state Capitol, where legislators began hearings on a bill this week that would set statewide rates, after Walz vetoed a bill last year.

Both Frey and Walz said they support raising wages for drivers but have been more sensitive to the companies’ warnings that pushing rates too high could backfire and cause demand to sink and the companies to pull up stakes.

The technical term for the arguments that Frey and Walz are making is, "Bullsh%$."

If the companies leave, someone will fill in the void, and chances are that they will be less psychopathic than either of the two largest ride sharing giants.

Let them go.

14 March 2024

Still Cannot Make Planes


Boeing whistleblower John Barnett was found dead in his car of a, "Self inflicted gun show wound," on the morning that he was to testify.
How convenient.

Do you know what's not a good look for Boeing?

Failing almost 40% of the audits into the 737 MAX production line in the most recent FAA examination.

The FAA is understaffed, underfunded, and ridiculously deferential to Boeing, so it comes close to what is called a statement against interest, which gives the poor results even more credibility"

A six-week audit by the Federal Aviation Administration of Boeing’s production of the 737 Max jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times.

The air-safety regulator initiated the examination after a door panel blew off a 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Last week, the agency announced that the audit had found “multiple instances” in which Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, failed to comply with quality-control requirements, though it did not provide specifics about the findings.

The presentation reviewed by The Times, though highly technical, offers a more detailed picture of what the audit turned up. Since the Alaska Airlines episode, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its quality-control practices, and the findings add to the body of evidence about manufacturing lapses at the company.

For the portion of the examination focused on Boeing, the F.A.A. conducted 89 product audits, a type of review that looks at aspects of the production process. The plane maker passed 56 of the audits and failed 33 of them, with a total of 97 instances of alleged noncompliance, according to the presentation.

It was even worse for Spirit AeroSystems, formerly, and soon to be again, Boeing Wichita, which failed over half of the audits.

Things that they found included using dish soap as a lubricant and using a hotel key card to check a seal.

Boeing is no longer a manufacturer of aircraft, it is a spin off of the Red Green Show.

In related news, 50 people on a 787 were injured due to a "Blue Screen of Death" incident:

Brian Jokat was asleep, buckled into a window seat on a three-hour Latam Airlines flight to New Zealand when the plane suddenly dropped, jolting him awake. He looked up and saw a man to his right pinned to the roof, and several other people seemingly flying around.

“You know in ‘The Exorcist,’ when the girl flies from the bed and hits the ceiling? It’s exactly that scene,” he said. “I was like, what the heck is this?”

What caused the midair incident that led to around 50 people on board the flight from Sydney to Auckland requiring medical treatment is now the focus of an investigation involving air-accident teams from Chile and New Zealand.

Chile-based Latam said the plane, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, suffered a “technical event during the flight which caused strong movement.” It didn’t give specifics.

Jokat, a 61-year-old Canadian, said there was no rumbling like he would have expected with turbulence. After the incident, he said, one of the pilots came to the cabin and said his instrument panel had gone black for a second or two, before lighting back up again. “He said, ‘For that split second, there was nothing I could do,’” according to Jokat.

In a statement, Boeing said it was thinking of the passengers and the crew onboard the flight.

“We commend everyone involved in the response effort,” Boeing said. “We are in contact with our customer, and Boeing stands ready to support investigation-related activities as requested.”

(Emphasis mine)

Yeah, this is what happens when you outsource your software development to the citizens of Chelm, because they work cheap.

Now we know why they work cheap.

Your Thursday


Clearly a cause for panic

The lede here is not the weekly unemployment report today, it's the February inflation report from Tuesday, where inflation was 3.2%, rather than the 3.1% forecast, (merciful heavens, I believe that I have the vapors over this!) so everyone is thinking that the sado-monetarists at the Fed will hold off on cutting rates, because they want to see more people out of work.

U.S. inflation was slightly stronger than expected last month but did little to change expectations that the Federal Reserve will begin cutting rates later this year.

Consumer prices rose 3.2% in February from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Tuesday, up slightly from economists’ expectations of 3.1%.

The second straight month of firmer-than-expected inflation is likely to reinforce the central bank’s wait-and-see posture toward rate reductions when officials meet next week. Still, officials are focused on when to cut rates—rather than whether to raise them again. Inflation has declined notably from 40-year highs following the most rapid rate increases in four decades.

………

Still, the report didn’t make the Fed’s coming deliberations easier. Core prices, which exclude food and energy items in an effort to better track inflation’s underlying trend, rose more than expected, both when measured from a year ago and a month ago.

Tuesday’s report “is likely to instill less confidence at the Fed that inflation is fast approaching its 2% target,” said Barclays U.S. economist Pooja Sriram.

When Fed officials meet next week, a key focus will be whether most officials will continue to expect three cuts this year or whether more officials will pencil in just two cuts. The Fed has held its benchmark short-term interest rate around 5.3%, a 23-year high, since last July.

Call me a cynic, but I think that the Fed is looking for an excuse not to cut rates, because it makes them feel powerful.

Meanwhile, initial unemployment claims fell by 1,000 to 209,000, basically flat and under the forecast of 218,000, while continuing claims rose by 17,000 to 1.81 million.

The numbers: The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits last week slipped by 1,000 to 209,000 and continued to signal a strong labor market and low level of layoffs.

Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal had forecast new claims to total 218,000 in the seven days ending March 9, based on seasonally adjusted figures.

New jobless claims have ranged from 194,000 to 225,000 a week in the first three months of 2024, an extremely low level from a historical perspective.

Key details: New jobless claims rose slightly in 28 of the 53 states and territories that report these figures to the federal government. But a big drop in claims in New York tied to spring break dragged the headline number down.

The number of people collecting unemployment benefits in the U.S., meanwhile, rose by 17,000 to 1.81 million, the government said.

These so-called continuing claims have risen slowly if steadily since last year in a sign that it’s taking longer for people to find new jobs.

At the same time, though, the government’s annual revisions also show continuing claims to be about 100,000 lower than previously estimated.

I still think that things are far less rosy than the unemployment numbers, because deaths and disability, largely related to Covid have kept people out of the labor force.

What happens next?  Not a bloody clue.

Thank You Captain Obvious


Phoenix, Arizona


Tucson
In news that should surprise no one, RealPage, whose software is intended to allow landlords to collude on rental pricing, results in increased rents.

RealPage claims that their software is to allow landlords to get a sense of the market rates, but it doesn't.

It allows landlords use RealPage as an intermediary to discuss rents so that they do not have to compete with one another:

Last week, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a lawsuit against RealPage, which leases price-setting software to landlords and property managers, and nine residential landlords in Phoenix and Tucson, alleging that they are colluding to fix the price of rental housing and ultimately raise rents across those markets. This marks the second attorney general case against RealPage, after District of Columbia AG Brian Schwalb filed one late last year.

Two days later, the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice released a joint legal brief in a case involving Yardi Systems, a similar corporation in the rental housing market. The FTC also put out a set of general guidance around algorithmic price setting entitled “Price fixing by algorithm is still price fixing.”

And there’s more. This week, the Colorado House of Representatives passed a bill that would outlaw RealPage’s business model, and the North Carolina attorney general announced his office is also investigating RealPage.

This set of legal filings, legislation, and investigations adds important data and context to the growing recognition that corporations are fixing prices across markets using centralized algorithms. And RealPage is taking center stage for a very good reason, as I’m going to show here.

I broke down this issue in a past edition of the newsletter, but as a quick refresher: RealPage (and other corporations like it) contract with landlords and property managers, who agree to share their data regarding rents, apartment sizes, and vacancies, etc. RealPage collates that data across the market and uses an algorithm to spit out suggested rents to all of the landlords who employ its services, setting common prices across the market.

As the Arizona AG put it in her complaint, “competitors have stopped using independent judgment to set prices and started working together.”

………

The D.C. case against RealPage broke important new ground by showing that the “suggested” rents weren’t really suggestions at all, but enforced by RealPage itself. The Arizona complaint furthers the case with a couple of important items.

The first is the charts below, calculating RealPage’s effect on prices. There’s been plenty of anecdotal evidence from RealPage executives themselves, as well as some vibes-based conclusions, that RealPage’s coordination across the market must be raising prices — because otherwise what’s the point? — but these are the first bits of data really laying it out.

Again: There’s no point in using data-sharing software like this but for pushing rents higher than they would otherwise be, or at the very least coordinating to prevent some competitors undercutting the market independently or arresting drops in rent when the market falls, putting a parachute on falling rents, if you will. And with RealPage clients consolidating such large swathes of the market, the opportunity to simply rent from a non-RealPage client is small and shrinking, making it harder to for a renter to find an apartment that’s covered by one of the orange bars above.

………

RealPage and the other corporations like it have tried to argue that because there is no explicit agreement between clients to fix prices at a set point, what they’re doing isn’t price fixing. But as the FTC put it, “Competitors using a shared human agent to fix prices? Illegal. Doing the same thing but with an agreed upon, shared algorithm? Still illegal.”

Here is a suggestion:  Criminal prosecutions and civil forfeiture against companies that provide algorithmically driven illegal cartels.

Frog marching senior executives out of their offices in handcuffs, along with the VCs who fund them knowing full what what they are doing should have a deterrent effect.

13 March 2024

I Hate Half-Assed Remakes

It looks like we will see a reboot of the 2008 financial panic, aka, "The Great Recession," only this time, it will be commercial real estate, (CRE) and not residential real estate that's going to cause a crash.

The WSJ is talking about a collapse in CRE in Miami, and one specific project, but it's really a canary in a coal mind:

The challenges swirling around a skyscraper known as One Brickell City Centre, which at around 1,000-feet high would be Miami’s tallest corporate tower, show how the city’s once-sizzling office market is starting to cool.

New York developer Related Cos. and Swire Properties, an international development firm founded by the British Swire family, are struggling to find an anchor tenant roughly a year after the groundbreaking. Related is restructuring its agreement with Swire, which owns the land, according to people familiar with the matter.

Swire even has considered selling the 1.55-acre site in Miami’s downtown, according to a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Swire said it “continuously evaluates different options for its development sites” and that the one for One Brickell City Centre “is currently not for sale.” Related said it was continuing to work with Swire.

Rising interest rates and hybrid work have punished the U.S. office market. Miami for years weathered such headwinds better than most cities, thanks in part to a steady stream of corporate relocations and limited supply of office buildings.

………

But Miami is also suffering its most acute case of growing pains since the pandemic accelerated the business boom. Single-family home and rental prices have risen in Miami more than most anywhere else, and property insurance costs are soaring. Those trends make it harder for employees to move to the city. Executives who do relocate to Miami find that the top private schools are at capacity.

Yeah, the situation in Florida with property insurance verges on a Mad Max level apocalypse.

Related chairman Stephen Ross is among those whose interest in new South Florida projects has intensified. One Brickell City Centre, the 1.5 million-square-foot tower with 68 floors, is one of his more ambitious efforts. At the groundbreaking, Ross called it “the most important project in Miami,” while Swire president Henry Bott said the building would be “a beacon” for the city, with outdoor terraces on almost every floor.

Ross had pledged to bring in big-name tenants to the tower, which is scheduled for completion in 2028. He spoke with Ken Griffin about moving his hedge-fund firm Citadel to the site, according to people familiar with the matter.

………

Now the Citadel chief executive is no longer in discussions for a Dolphins stake. His company also passed on becoming the anchor tenant at One Brickell City Centre in favor of developing the waterfront site Griffin bought in 2022, where his plans include a luxury hotel for the top of the office tower.

Because Mr. Griffin no longer needs the office space, because people are working from home 3 days a week.

It's just one building, but it's points to a more general problem, and it looks like the lessons of the Great Recession have been unlearned in less than 2 decades.

Yet Another Reason Not to Give at Pledge Time


A good Ecch (Twitter) discussion of the issue in the context of a relationship.
H/t naked capitalism.
Not just because because of their decades long Jihad against low power non commercial radio, (I have mentioned this a few times) but because it appears that they have a penchant for hiring oh so pleasant narcissistic psychopaths in senior positions.

If you read this article and are not completely appalled, you lack either a brain or a soul.

The author, Malaka Gharib, is oh so embarrassed at the fact that her immune compromised and chronically ill husband continues to insist on taking Covid precautions.

It's so inconvenient to have to wear a mask in a movie theater, or make sure that the air is clean, don't you know:

In 2022, while I was 7 months pregnant, my husband and I got COVID. While it was a mild case for me, he had scary, lingering symptoms. He said it felt like there was "an engine humming in his chest." He experienced frightening fits of insomnia. And his personality changed — my normally upbeat husband became uncharacteristically depressed.
Yeah, Covid f%$s with your health, and it affects the brain, so it is no surprise that he was depressed and unable to sleep.

Do you know what else Covid does?  It f%$#s with the development of unborn children.

But your case was mild, so there's nothing to worry about, right?

After a few months, his symptoms went away, but his fears of getting COVID didn't. He is immunocompromised and his doctors warned him that if he got sick again, it may complicate his autoimmune disease. Plus, he didn't want to repeat his traumatic ordeal, especially with a baby on the way.
So, he went through months of hell, is in a high risk category, and does not want to repeat the experience?  How bourgeois!

………

So while the rest of the world seems to have moved on from the pandemic, in our house, it is still 2020. We wear masks when we go into public indoor spaces. We don't eat inside restaurants. We don't go to movies. We have people take COVID tests before they enter our house. All this leaves me feeling torn between two emotions. I want to keep my husband safe and healthy. But I also want our old life back.

Yeah, what is Covid going to do?  Cripple or kill your husband?  

Actually, yes.

It feels selfish and trivial to say that amid my husband's plight. He is terrified that if he gets COVID again, it will be as harrowing as the first time. And it could trigger a flare up of his chronic illness.

But my feelings as his spouse are valid too, says James C. Jackson, a neuropsychologist at Vanderbilt University and author of Clearing the Fog: From Surviving to Thriving with Long COVID, A Practical Guide.

Yes, your feelings matter, not his health.

I'm even in my 7th decade, pretty healthy.

Neither my wife nor my eldest are, so I wear a mask in the store, and at work, etc., because while I might find the masking inconvenient, it won't kill me.  The lack of masking could kill them.

If you find that inconvenient, I would suggest that perhaps you need to your life and your relationship, perhaps with some professional help.

12 March 2024

I F$#@ing Hate Windows F%$#ing Update

That is all.


Posted via mobile

11 March 2024

The Most Elon Thing Ever

When Elon Musk announced the Tesla Cybertruck, he announced a number of accessories, including a tent that could fit on the back of the truck.

It was called, "Basecamp,"and it could be yours for the low, low, low price of $3,000.00.

It is now shipping, and it looks like it wasn't such a great deal:

Tesla has started shipping its ‘Basecamp’, a $3,000 tent designed for the back of the Cybertruck. It’s a bit of a disappointment as it looks nothing like what was originally unveiled.

......

One of them is Basecamp, a tent that fits in the back of the electric pickup truck. It was first announced with the original unveiling of the Cybertruck in 2019.

This looked like an interesting design with seemingly a rigid bottom half that matched the design of the truck.

The product became ‘Basecamp’ and was released for sale shortly after Tesla revealed the production version of the truck last year. It already seemed to be a lot less attractive design at that point.

This reminds me a lot of the diesel powered Supercharger stations, or the phony solar shingles, or the purchase of Solar City.

In less enlightened times, people like Musk, or Zuckerberg, or Andreeson, or Neumann, or Kalanick, or Masayoshi Son, etc. would be in the dock for fraud and other law breaking.

It makes me nostalgic.

10 March 2024

No Blogging Tonight

Between the f#@$ing time change and being as busy as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest, you will have to wait until tomorrow for more of my lifeless prose.

09 March 2024

I F%$#ing Hate F%$#ing Daylight F%$#ing Savings F%$#ing Time

I will unhappy tomorrow, and probably the rest of the f%$#ing week.

That is all.


How Dare You Listen to Our Lies and Take Our Lobbying Money

Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods is taking some flak for suggesting that anthropogenic climate change is not his company's fault, but instead it was ordinary folk and politicians who fell down on the job.

You mean the people that you lied to and the people that you bribed?

How white of you:

The world is off track to meet its climate goals and the public is to blame, Darren Woods, chief executive of oil giant ExxonMobil, has claimed – prompting a backlash from climate experts.

As the world’s largest investor-owned oil company, Exxon is among the top contributors to global planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions. But in an interview, published on Tuesday, Woods argued that big oil is not primarily responsible for the climate crisis.

The real issue, Woods said, is that the clean-energy transition may prove too expensive for consumers’ liking.

“The dirty secret nobody talks about is how much all this is going to cost and who’s willing to pay for it,” he told Fortune last week. “The people who are generating those emissions need to be aware of and pay the price for generating those emissions. That is ultimately how you solve the problem.”

 I'll put this as politely as I can.

Sir, would you please dine on excrement, and then expire.

08 March 2024

Your Week in

Last week's initial unemployment claims was unchanged at a relatively low 217,000, and continuing claims remained basically flat at 1.9 million, the real action was in the monthly jobs report, where the unemployment rate rose by 0.2% to 3.9%, largely on the basis of increasing entrants into the labor force.

Discouraged, and possibly disabled, workers have reentered the work force:

The US employment rate climbed to a two-year high in February. It’s a setback for those who lost their jobs, but it hardly signaled doom and gloom in the labor market.

To be considered unemployed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a person has to be actively trying to find work — otherwise they’re not part of the labor force at all. Last month, there was a big jump in people coming off the sideline to join the workforce — both for the first time and those trying again — helping boost the jobless rate to 3.9%, the highest since January 2022.

Combined with still-healthy job creation and moderating wage gains, the figures illustrate the type of softening in the job market that the Federal Reserve wants to see. More people looking for work should help alleviate labor shortages and therefore inflation, even though it’s taking a bit longer for them to become employed.

The jobs report is composed of two surveys — one of businesses, which produces the payrolls and wage data, plus a smaller poll of households that determines the unemployment figures. While the headline payrolls figure rose by 275,000 in data published Friday, the household survey showed a third-straight drop in employment, which was almost entirely concentrated among younger Americans.
I have no clue what this all means.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

Certainly, she is right, particularly at the top journalistic institutions.

To end up at places like the New York Times, and The New Republic, old school ties, and the ability to do extensive unpaid intern work while paying for school are crucial to get your foot in the door.

07 March 2024

Getting Your Historical Freak On


Arabic and Hebrew lettters


Front and back, assembled


Another close up view


This is meticulous and beautiful work


Verifying its authenticity
There are two areas that I find most interesting, linguistic development, because it provides insights in how societies and peoples moved in ways that are far more accurate than the written record, and ancient tools. 

I loves me some ancient tools, and the more precise and more extreme, the better.

Astrolabes fit the bill, and they are also beautiful, even if you don't know how they work.

Cambridge University historian Federica Gigante just verified that an 11th-century astrolabe at the Fondazione Museo Miniscalchi-Erizzo is real.

Kewl:

Cambridge University historian Federica Gigante is an expert on Islamic astrolabes. So naturally she was intrigued when the Fondazione Museo Miniscalchi-Erizzo in Verona, Italy, uploaded an image of just such an astrolabe to its website. The museum thought it might be a fake, but when Gigante visited to see the astrolabe firsthand, she realized it was not only an authentic 11th-century instrument—one of the oldest yet discovered—it had engravings in both Arabic and Hebrew.

“This isn’t just an incredibly rare object. It’s a powerful record of scientific exchange between Arabs, Jews, and Christians over hundreds of years,” Gigante said. “The Verona astrolabe underwent many modifications, additions, and adaptations as it changed hands. At least three separate users felt the need to add translations and corrections to this object, two using Hebrew and one using a Western language.” She described her findings in a new paper published in the journal Nuncius.

As previously reported, astrolabes are actually very ancient instruments—possibly dating as far back as the second century BCE—for determining the time and position of the stars in the sky by measuring a celestial body's altitude above the horizon. Before the emergence of the sextant, astrolabes were mostly used for astronomical and astrological studies, although they also proved useful for navigation on land, as well as for tracking the seasons, tide tables, and time of day. The latter was especially useful for religious functions, such as tracking daily Islamic prayer times, the direction of Mecca, or the feast of Ramadan, among others.

………

The Verona astrolabe is meant for astronomical use, and while it has a mater, a rete, and two plates (one of which is a later replacement), it is missing the alidade. It's also undated, according to Gigante, but she was able to estimate a likely date based on the instrument's design, construction, and calligraphy. She concluded it was Andalusian, dating back to the 11th century when the region was a Muslim-ruled area of Spain.

For instance, one side of the original plate bears an Arabic inscription "for the latitude of Cordoba, 38° 30'," and another Arabic inscription on the other side reads "for the latitude of Toledo, 40°." The second plate (added at some later date) was for North African latitudes, so at some point, the astrolabe might have found its way to Morocco or Egypt. There are engraved lines from Muslim prayers, indicating it was probably originally used for daily prayers.

There is also a signature on the back in Arabic script: "for Isḥāq [...]/the work of Yūnus.” Gigante believes this was added by a later owner. Since the two names translate to Isaac and Jonah, respectively, in English, it's possible that a later owner was an Arab-speaking member of a Sephardi Jewish community. In addition to the Arabic script, Gigante noticed later Hebrew inscriptions translating the Arabic names for certain astrological signs, in keeping with the earliest surviving treatise in Hebrew on astrolabes, written by Abraham Ibn Ezra in Verona in 1146.

“These Hebrew additions and translations suggest that at a certain point the object left Spain or North Africa and circulated amongst the Jewish diaspora community in Italy, where Arabic was not understood, and Hebrew was used instead,” said Gigante. “This object is Islamic, Jewish, and European, they can’t be separated."

They don't make tools like this any more.

Go Dartmouth!

I am not a fan of college hoops, but the Dartmouth Men’s Basketball just voted to unionize, and that is a good thing, both for unions and for the corrupt racket that is college sports:

At 13-2 in favor, it was not even close.

I am sure that there are some people who wringing their hands over the end of, "Student Athletes," but big time college athletics was really little more than slave labor, and has been so for decades:

Dartmouth College’s men’s basketball team voted 13 to 2 Tuesday to unionize, a potentially significant step in undermining the long-standing amateur model of college athletics. The National Labor Relations Board said in a statement that college officials must now “bargain in good faith” with the union, but Dartmouth officials signaled they were far from ready to concede the matter.

The director of the NLRB’s Northeast regional office, Laura A. Sacks, ruled last month that Dartmouth’s players were employees because “Dartmouth has the right to control the work performed by the men’s varsity basketball team, and because the players perform that work in exchange for compensation.” It made that declaration even though athletes in the Ivy League do not receive athletic scholarships, unlike most other athletes who play in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division I.

The big time college coaches are getting 7 and 8 figures a year to manage players who work for free.

This is a step in the right direction.

Linkage

If Putin’s Translator Was An Aussie. Funny, but lots of swearing:

06 March 2024

Headline of the Day

Copilot pane as annoying as Clippy may pop up in Windows 11
The Register

I love the subhed, "It's in the Beta Channel build for now... but oh my, you're not going to love this."

Microsoft's operating system increasingly seems to resemble malware that spies on you while serving advertisements.

Bullsh%$ Bingo

Sam Altman, the current maven of, "Artificial Intelligence," and likely future criminal defendant for fraud, has a side gig, hawking the Worldcoin cryptocurrency, which juxtaposes the worst characteristics of crypto and biometrics.

Short version, he is offering Worldcoin to people if they scan their retinas so that it is more difficult for AI to masquerade as them.

I'm not quite sure how this works, any verification system will see an image of a retina as the same as an actual retinal scan, but there is a bezzle to be made.

It turns out that Spain is having none of this, they have ordered that Worldcoin and its Orb cease operating there, and that they stop working with the data collected:

Spain has moved to block Sam Altman’s cryptocurrency project Worldcoin, the latest blow to a venture that has raised controversy in multiple countries by collecting customers’ personal data using an eyeball-scanning “orb.”

The AEPD, Spain’s data protection regulator, has demanded that Worldcoin immediately ceases collecting personal information in the country via the scans and that it stops using data it has already gathered.

The regulator announced on Wednesday that it had taken the “precautionary measure” at the start of the week and had given Worldcoin 72 hours to demonstrate its compliance with the order.

Mar España Martí, AEPD director, said Spain was the first European country to move against Worldcoin and that it was impelled by special concern that the company was collecting information about minors.

“What we have done is raise the alarm in Europe. But this is an issue that affects... citizens in all the countries of the European Union,” she said. “That means there has to be coordinated action.”

Worldcoin, co-founded by Altman in 2019, has been offering tokens of its own cryptocurrency to people around the world, in return for their consent to have their eyes scanned by an orb.

The scans are used as a form of identification as it seeks to create a reliable mechanism to distinguish between humans and machines as artificial intelligence becomes more advanced.

Sam Altman claims that such a system is essential to preventing advanced AI systems from masquerading as humans.

Of course, what Sam Altman calls, "Advanced AI systems," I call, "An overgrown Eliza program with a lot of hype," buy YMMV.

Needless to say for both crypto and AI advocates, the real purpose is to create buzz for AI and an opportunity to make money from a pump and dump scheme, but they don't say this out loud.

If It's Boeing, I Ain't Going

Ed Pierson, executive director for the nonprofit Foundation for Aviation Safety, was flying to New York from Seattle, and scheduled his flight so as not to fly on a 737 MAX.

When he arrived at his seat, he looked at the card, and he realized that his plane had been swapped out for a MAX, so as the stewardess moved to close the door, he got up and asked to leave the plane.

The kicker to all of this, Ed Pierson is the former senior manager for the 737 program at Boeing.

This does not inspire confidence in their ability to build aircraft:

In 2018, Ed Pierson decided that he could no longer work as a senior manager for Boeing’s 737 MAX program.

At the company’s production facility in Renton, Washington, he had watched as employee morale plummeted and oversight and assembly procedures faltered. He told his superiors but retired soon after. But then fatal MAX 8 crashes occurred in 2018 and 2019. He decided to speak up publicly and was then called to testify before Congress on the problems he says he saw up close.

………

Last week, in a further bid for a fresh start, Boeing replaced the head of its 737 Max program.

Pierson, meanwhile, still refuses to fly in a MAX.

………

Last year, I was flying from Seattle to New York, and I purposely scheduled myself on a non-MAX airplane. I went to the gate. I walked in, sat down and looked straight ahead, and lo and behold, there was a 737-8/737-9 safety card. So I got up and I walked off. The flight attendant didn’t want me to get off the plane. And I’m not trying to cause a scene. I just want to get off this plane, and I just don’t think it’s safe. I said I purposely scheduled myself not to fly [on a MAX]. 
I have to believe that a lot of airlines airline are likely reconsidering future orders, and Boeing is likely not to be happy with those choices.

Bye Felicia

Nikki Haley has ended her Presidential run.

It's a pity, because in addition to not being Donald John Trump, she also offered ……… she also offered ……… she also offered ………

OK, I'll get back to you on that.

05 March 2024

It's Super Tuesday

And it looks like Biden and Trump will win pretty much everywhere, (Haley won Vermont) so I'll take a look at down-ballot primaries instead.

In California, the land of jungle primaries, former Baseball player Steve Garvey and Adam Schiff will face each other in the general election for US Senate, where Schiff is heavily favored.

In Texas (can we give them back to Mexico?) Colin Allred notched a convincing win in the primary contest to unseat Ted '"Mr. Congeniality" Cruze, but he will almost certainly lose in the general.  Texas is still very red, and Allred has been spending his time in DC raising lots of money instead of campaigning so far, so I am not optimistic.

As to what it all means?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Way to go Baltimore County School Board!

My wife shared me an image of this slide from the latest Baltimore County School Board meeting: (Click for the full-size image)


So they had this slide, and.....


Umm………


It seems a bit ……… Problematic ………
I did Nazi that coming


The detail is a bit less alarming, so it could be an honest mistake, but when his happens, all too frequently it's not a well meaning idiot, it's a Nazi idiot who claims an honest error.


Maryland Nazis, I hate Maryland Nazis.

Mazel Tov!

The European safety study group Euro NCAP will be deducting points from the safety scores from cars that lack physical buttons for their controls.

It's been clear that the whole, "Wake your eye off the road and search for an obscure menu option to turn on the heat," thing has been a human factors and safety disaster:

Some progress in the automotive industry is laudable. Cars are safer than ever and more efficient, too. But there are other changes we'd happily leave by the side of the road. That glossy "piano black" trim that's been overused the last few years, for starters. And the industry's overreliance on touchscreens for functions that used to be discrete controls. Well, the automotive safety organization European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) feels the same way about that last one, and it says the controls ought to change in 2026.

"The overuse of touchscreens is an industry-wide problem, with almost every vehicle-maker moving key controls onto central touchscreens, obliging drivers to take their eyes off the road and raising the risk of distraction crashes," said Matthew Avery, Euro NCAP's director of strategic development.

"New Euro NCAP tests due in 2026 will encourage manufacturers to use separate, physical controls for basic functions in an intuitive manner, limiting eyes-off-road time and therefore promoting safer driving," he said.

Now, Euro NCAP is not insisting on everything being its own button or switch. But the organization wants to see physical controls for turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, the horn, and any SOS features, like the European Union's eCall feature.

Euro NCAP is analogous to the US IIHS, so the change in the ratings sstem it will likely have an impact on sales.

I do think that there should be government regulation of human factors in cars.

Driving a car is literally one of the hardest things that people do, and poor human factors in 3500 pound death machines makes it harder, and more dangerous.

Bye Felicia

Conceding to the inevitable, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema has announced that she will not stand for reelection this year.

Good riddance. 

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) announced that she will not seek reelection this year, avoiding an unpredictable three-way race in the swing state that had many national Democrats worried about holding onto the seat. 

The race was in no way unpredictable.  Incumbent Sinema was firmly in 3rd place in the polls, at less than half that of Gallego, and about ⅓ less than moon bat Kari Lake in a 3 way race.

She lacked the support to even be a spoiler in the general election.

“I believe in my approach, but it’s not what America wants right now,” Sinema said in a video announcing her plans that painted a bleak picture of a dysfunctional political system she no longer sees a place in.
Her approach is to engage in toxic narcissistic behavior.

When you look at her record in the House and the Senate, it becomes clear that there are no political positions driving her, she just wants to be the center of attention.

Not only did this explain her behavior, it allows one to predict her behavior.

She'll do fine though.  I expect her to find remunerative employment as a lobbyist for the firearms industry, slave labor, private prison companies, and cable companies.


04 March 2024

Be Like Hoboken

That is 8 on the list of things that I never expected to say.

But I am saying this, and I mean it, because the densely populated town near the New Jersey terminus of the Holland Tunnel has had no traffic fatalities for the past 7 years.

This appears to be a direct consequence of consciously reducing the available parking in the city. (Obviously correlation is not causation, yadda, yadda, yadda)
Street parking was already scarce in Hoboken, New Jersey, when the death of an elderly pedestrian spurred city leaders to remove even more spaces in a bid to end traffic fatalities.

For seven years now, the city of nearly 60,000 people has reported resounding success: Not a single automobile occupant, bicyclist or pedestrian has died in a traffic crash since January 2017, elevating Hoboken as a national model for roadway safety.


………

Bhalla became mayor in 2018 and the city fully committed to Vision Zero: a set of guidelines adopted by numerous cities, states and nations seeking to eliminate traffic deaths. Proponents believe no accident is truly unavoidable and even want to do away with the word “accident” altogether when describing roadway fatalities.


Sweden originated the concept more than a quarter-century ago, and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg touted Hoboken in 2022 when announcing his department would follow Vision Zero guidelines. Major U.S. cities including New York, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Baltimore and Portland, Oregon, have integrated aspects of the program into their safety plans, including at least some form of daylighting, the term for the removal of parking spaces near intersections to improve visibility.

………


While Hoboken’s plan has numerous components, including lower speed limits and staggered traffic lights, daylighting is often credited as one of the biggest reasons its fatalities have dropped to zero.

Ryan Sharp, the city’s transportation director, said when roads need to be repaved, Hoboken takes the additional step of cordoning off the street corners to widen curbs and shorten crosswalks. It’s already illegal to park at an intersection in Hoboken, but drivers often do anyway if there aren’t physical barriers.

………

Although a bit larger than its Mile Square City nickname would imply, Hoboken ranks fourth nationwide in population density, trailing three other New Jersey cities and two spots ahead of New York, according to 2022 census data.

This works.

Also,get rid of right turn slip lanes. (Pictured) 

They kill pedestrians.

A Deal with a Vampire

The Ukraine has cut a deal with literal vampire* Peter Thiel to use artificial intelligence to clear mines.

When someone says that they have an application for AI in a safety critical application, I am dubious.

When Thiel is involved, all doubt is removed.  This will be bad:

Ukraine has turned to a company founded by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel to clear thousands of square miles of mines and explosives.

The deal will see Palantir supply Ukraine with its artificial intelligence (AI) tools to organise and accelerate its demining efforts.

Ukraine is hoping to decontaminate 80pc of its potentially mined land within 10 years and bring it back into economic use, freeing up millions of acres of farmland. Roughly a third of the country’s landmass is thought to be hazardous owing to mines or unexploded ordnance.

I'm having a flash of prophecy.  I'm seeing, a booming market for artificial limbs in the Ukraine.

*I really mean that literally. Thiel is trying to extend his life span, and one of the schemes that he invested in is a startup proposing the use of the blood of young people.

Well, It's a Start

A Texas district attorney charged a woman with murder for a self-managed abortion and then lied to authorities, including the state bar about it.

The state bar was unamused:

A Texas prosecutor has been disciplined for allowing a murder charge to be filed against a woman who self-induced an abortion in 2022.

Starr County District Attorney Gocha Ramirez reached a settlement with the State Bar of Texas following an investigation. Ramirez agreed to pay a $1,250 fine, and his license will be held in a probated suspension for one year, ending on March 31, 2025. News of the January settlement was first reported by multiple outlets on Thursday.

The State Bar of Texas confirmed the settlement to The Texas Tribune on Friday and that it involved the case of a 26-year-old Texas woman who was arrested nearly two years ago and charged with murder in “the death of an individual by self-induced abortion.”

Ramirez could not be immediately reached for comment on Friday. He told the Associated Press Thursday that he “made a mistake in that case,” and had agreed to the settlement because it allows his office’s operations to continue, interruption-free. If the district attorney complies with the settlement’s terms, he will be allowed to continue practicing law.

In 2022, the woman was arrested and booked into the Starr County Detention Center on a $500,000 bond, where she spent two nights before Ramirez announced that charges against her would be dropped.

The case sparked national outrageTexas law exempts a pregnant person from being charged with murder or any homicide charge for an abortion. Abortion rights activists throughout the state’s border region banded together to fight the charges, including the Frontera Fund, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice and ACLU of Texas.

The State Bar of Texas’ investigation found that prosecutors working under Ramirez pursued criminal homicide charges for acts that were “clearly not criminal.” The investigation also revealed that Ramirez allowed an assistant to take the case to a grand jury — and that the district attorney “knowingly made a false statement” when he later told State Bar officials that he was not briefed on the facts of the case before it was presented.

You should have disbarred the motherf%$#er.  Not for the act, though that merited some discipline, but for lying to you.

It violates the Bull Durham rule, "Don't call the umpire a c%$# sucker."

Sh%$ Storm at a Sh%$ty Paper, Part 2

Now that we have gotten the New York Times middle school bull sh%$ out of the way, it's on to the December 28 story reporting widespread rape and alleging the deliberate use of rape as a weapon by Hamas.

The dispute over this story was what was leaked to The Intercept.

What the Intercept story alleges is that reports of sexual violence are false as are the allegations of a deliberate policy of sexual violence by Hamas.

These are two very different issues, sexual violence, and sexual violence as a tactic.

First, it is abundantly clear, and has been since the first days after the attack that there was widespread sexual violence.

Even if we ignore the today's report by the United Nations Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence, it would be inconceivable that there would not have been extensive sexual violence that day. 

The NYT leakers leaked, and The Intercept published before the report was issued.

Sexual violence against civilians is common when military units seize territory and take control of a civilian population with regular military units.

With irregular units, as is the case with Hamas, it is near universal.

The idea that the sexual violence is all a construct of, "Those Perfidious Jews," much like the accusation that the deaths were all from Israeli military actions, requires one to ignore the documentary evidence.

Hamas literally live streamed the attacks, including instances of sexual violence.

To claim otherwise is an antisemitic trope.

To argue that this, heinous though it is, is NOT a justification for the current scope and ferocity of Israeli operations is not necessarily antisemitic.

War is a nasty business, and how it is conducted, and whether it is to be conducted, will ALWAYS be contentious, as it should be.

Additionally disputing that sexual violence was a deliberate policy of the Hamas attack, and was instead merely an (entirely foreseeable) consequence of the attack is not necessarily antisemitic.

I am inclined to believe that sexual violence was anticipated and at least tacitly endorsed by Hamas leadership, but I cannot see into the minds of Hamas leaders.  (Nor would I want to.  When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back)

Sh%$ Storm at a Sh%$ty Paper, Part 1

This portion is about the New York Times and its functioning, and not the underlying story.

The underlying story, was the December 2023 story recounting reports of sexual violence during Hamas' October attacks on communities bordering Gaza.

It appears that there has been a lot of discussion and disputes internal to the paper as to whether the story was sell sourced, whether there was an over-reliance on 2 stringers in Israel, whether, the accounts were properly sourced, and whether the editors ordered a specific outcome to the story.

It should be noted here, and I cannot find a link right now, that the culture at the Times is different from most other major metropolitan papers, and not just because so many of their reporters are Ivy League Trustafarians.

I have read on a number of occasions, unfortunately I cannot find links, that editors at the Gray Lady will frequently dispatch reporters not just with instructions to get the story, but frequently with what should be the narrative if they do not find something unexpected.

This happens at all newspapers, but at the Times, it far more common, and it is not necessarily journalistically unethical if not pushed too far.

As near as I can figure out, someone, almost certainly some of the staff at the NYT podcast, "The Daily," leaked documents, along with poo flinging on internal discussion boards (Discord?) to the online news organization The Intercept

Rather ironically, the New York Times appears to have launched a rather aggressive internal leak investigation, because leaks should go to them, and go from them, and there are allegations that they are targeting employees of Arab ethnicity or Islamic religion.

It is clear that there is a problem at the New York Times, and have been for years.

There is a reason that Atrios refers to it as, "That f%$#ing newspaper."

A lot of this appears to stem from the organization of "The Daily" podcast which functions largely independently of the regular news organization.

I think that the reporting of this on Weekend Edition Sunday with Ayesha Rascoe and David Folkenflik provides the description of the inside baseball sh%$ going on, along with being far more concise: The Intercept focuses more on the underlying story, which in the grand scheme of things is more important, but I'm discussing that in part 2.

Again, if you are looking into a window to the culture of the New York Times, I think that (for once) NPR has a good and concise rundown of what is going on: 

………
Rascoe: Tell us about the story at the root of this conflict.
Folkenflik:

Sure. Conflict being the right word here - kind of mirroring what we've seen outside The Times. The December 28 story was called "Screams Without Words," and it said that New York Times had documented a pattern of sexual assault by Hamas on October 7 as a brutal strategy. It kind of goes without saying, but this all matters because The Times' influence not only affects coverage here in the U.S. but also, I'd say, the political climate in Israel and beyond.

The piece carried the lead byline of Jeffrey Gettleman, as well as two freelancers. Critics argued the anecdotes weren't fully nailed down. In one case, for example, a couple of relatives raised questions about whether or not a sexual assault had happened to the woman who was killed. One of the lead writers was a freelancer, the Israeli documentary-maker Anat Schwartz. She turned out to have liked a bunch of posts on the social media platform X after the attacks, one of which called for Gaza to be leveled by bulldozers.

Rascoe: So how did The New York Times respond to those questions?
Folkenflik: Well, Ayesha, let's take the last one. First, The Times said that those social media likes, those activities by Schwartz, were absolutely unacceptable. But I've got to say - at the moment, not 100% clear whether that disqualifies her from future reporting - The Times saying it's not talking about personnel decisions. The paper did say then - and it is saying now - that it has done additional reporting and that its reports remain solid. That same reporting team did a follow-up late last month acknowledging the criticism, offering what it said was more bolstering details. But I wouldn't say that that's fully satisfied critics at, for example, The Intercept or in other outlets.
Rascoe:So why doesn't it resolve the issue?
Folkenflik:Well, from those reports and from my reporting in the last 48 hours, it looks as though that story was to serve as the heart of an episode at "The Daily," The Times', you know, hit news podcast. Staffers on that show raised a lot of questions about the solidity of the reporting, really pressing reporters - Jeffrey Gettleman, among others. And something of a standoff seems to have emerged. When all of this appeared in The Intercept, editors that - at The New York Times started an inquiry, something they confirmed publicly last night.

 ………

Well, I'd say it's actually - it's extraordinary to know the inner workings of The Times, but the idea that they have a leak investigation - you've got to remember, The Times relies on leaks from people in government, corporate life and other sectors of American society to feed and fuel their own reporting, particularly their investigative reporting. Leaks are things that, you know, major institutions don't want to become public, right?

 ………

But in a memo last night, the top editor of The Times - that's Joe Kahn - and his deputies, Marc Lacey and Carolyn Ryan - said, yes, it's extraordinary because the circumstances are extraordinary. They say internal working documents from "The Daily" were shared with these outside source at The Intercept, not just their disagreements, and that they have sought to work in their time to open up greater lines of communications with staffers and give them more opportunity to lodge questions and concerns. For these to be shared outside the papers inhibits those conversations. Meanwhile, I will say the union denies the material was shared. They claim just the dissent.

………

There's two culture clashes here, I'll end with. One is the audio versus print. They're almost different newsrooms, and audio has felt burned by investigations in the past. They want to be tight. The other is the climate change, I think, since the George Floyd social justice movement. It means people speak up and take issues in ways we haven't seen in decades. And The Times doesn't have a handle on that clash.

(emphasis mine)

So, at it's core a lot of this is that the podcast side does not believe in the quality of the reporting from the print side, and the print side does not trust the podcast side.

It's a toxic mix of disdain, self-importance, and score settling.

I have been told that the Washington Post is not all that different from this, though I heard that in 1982, so things might have changed. (But probably not)

I still think that part of the problem is that people who are practicing the trade of journalism have been trained over the past few decades that they are a profession, and as such, they put on airs, engage in ferocious backbiting and conflict over nothing.

03 March 2024

The Democratic Party Establishment (There is no Democratic Party Establishment) Screws the Pooch

With Bob Menendez being measured for a jail cell, his seat will be open in November, so candidates are queuing up to run in the Democratic Party Primary.

The expected front runner is Tammy Murphy, who is the wife of governor Phil Murphy, and she has secured numerous endorsements, and a favorable ballot position, and has lost every single county party convention held so far to date to Andy Kim.

Oops.

It appears that nepo-babies (nepo-spouses?) are not popular this year:

New Jersey's first lady Tammy Murphy has tremendous advantages in her U.S. Senate bid, given her relationship with the state's most powerful person. But she is behind Rep. Andy Kim in the only statewide poll conducted so far, and has lost the first three convention contests where Democratic Party members vote to endorse candidates.

It’s a stunning turn of events for Murphy's candidacy, which appeared nearly invincible just a month ago as top Democratic Party leaders across the state had already secured endorsements from the political organizations they helm as well as preferred ballot placement in many of the counties with the most Democrats who to vote in the June primary. But the votes so far at county conventions — which will continue through March — constitute a rare, if not unprecedented, rebellion against party bosses by rank-and-file Democrats.

“Her appeal isn't really resonating with them. She talks really in a kind of a business manner, very transactional in the sense that ‘I get things done,’” Monmouth University Poll Director Patrick Murray said. “But not an overarching vision. And I think that a lot of, particularly, the progressive activists in the party feel they get more of a sense of that from Andy Kim.” 

One of the things that politicians need to do to win elections is to ask voters for their votes.

I believe that pollster Murray is saying that she is not doing that.

Entitled and self-entitled are not synonyms.

………

The Hunterdon County Democratic Party convention on Sunday was Tammy Murphy's latest setback. County Chair Arlene Quiñones Perez had endorsed the first lady. But unlike many of New Jersey’s county political machines, Hunterdon asked its members to vote before endorsing a candidate and awarding them the coveted “county line,” which groups endorsed candidates into a single row or column and confers them with a perceived legitimacy that researchers say greatly increases their chances of victory.

………

He also previously won the county line for the Senate race in Monmouth and Burlington counties, with votes among party members. But in four of the five counties with the most Democrats, party chairs have already awarded the line to Murphy without any vote among their members. Bergen County, which is home to the second-most Democrats in the state, will hold a vote among its members on Monday. 

Postscript to this somewhat late story, Kim demolished Murphy in Monmouth County as well.

This sh%$ is really politics 101:  Open nepotism does not sell with the voters.

Quote of the Day

I Said My Plan Is to Come to Your House with a Gun and Shoot You and Take Your Motorcycle, that's my plan.
—Kara Swisher on the New Yorker Radio Hour, about how she responded to a Silly Con Valley billionaire, who detailed his climate "Brilliant" climate apocalypse, and asked her what her plan was.

Here's the bit with the leadup: (and some minor editing for clarity)

David Remnick:
(18:20)
Everybody else is stupid that this is psychology as well as an emerging politics. Talk about what that politics is in 2024 and who's got it.
Kara Swisher:

It's literally people who are safe and rich and are unaffected and will be building that little castle in the sky that they're going to fly to when the rest of us are choking down here and they know better.

You're wrong. You've done it wrong. The media's done it wrong, the government's done it wrong. We know better.

When they have lives full of mistakes, they just paper them over.

They have such a cynical view of people and ultimately I don't think they like people.

………
David Remnick:
(27:20)
Arguably the worst problem we face is is climate change.

Is technology going to have a magic wand for that?
Kara Swisher

And my fear is their plan is to [abandon the rest of us].

There's one. I'm not going to say who it is, but one of these guys told me their plan for ecological collapse, like the apocalypse

………

They had a motorcycle at their house, a speedy motorcycle that would get them to their place in Big Sur And and they told me where it was.

You know, like that it's here and it's got a bunker. It goes down. It locks this, I've got this food. I've got this.

………

They had everything. They had a garden. They had the whole water, blah, blah, blah, blah, electricity generator. And they said, "What's your plan?"

And I said my plan is to come to your house with a gun and shoot you and take your motorcycle. That's my plan, and I'll invite all my friends.

………

I could hear the click, click, click in their head, like, how am I going to stop this lesbian with a gun? What am I going to do? Because they're pretty good with guns, those lesbians. And you could hear it.

He was like, "That was a contingency I hadn't thought of."


Here is the whole interview embedded:

02 March 2024

Chaos is Job Won

Since the United States has established a command for Africa and begun engaging in anti-terrorism operations on that continent, actual incidents of terrorism have increased by over 100,000%.

We are all aware of the old saw that, "Correlation is not causation," but it appears to me that someone in the US state security apparatus has indeed been very bad in their job:

Deaths from terrorism in Africa have skyrocketed more than 100,000 percent during the U.S. war on terror according to a new study by Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. These findings contradict claims by U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) that it is thwarting terrorist threats on the continent and promoting security and stability.

Throughout all of Africa, the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2003, resulting in a combined 23 casualties. At that time, the U.S. was just beginning a decades-long effort to provide billions of dollars in security assistance, train many thousands of African military personnel, set up dozens of outposts, dispatch its own commandos on a wide range of missions, create proxy forces, launch drone strikes, and even engage in ground combat with militants in Africa.

Most Americans, including members of Congress, are unaware of the extent of these operations — or how little they have done to protect African lives.

Last year, fatalities from militant Islamist violence in Africa rose by 20 percent — from 19,412 in 2022 to 23,322 — reaching “a record level of lethal violence,” according to the Africa Center. This represents almost a doubling in deaths since 2021 and a 101,300 percent jump since 2002-2003.

This is not much of a surprise. The goal of these operations is to generate combat ribbons for officers looking for career advancement, and to increase the influence of the US in general, and the Pentagon in particular in Africa. (Also lots of military contractors and consultants are making big bucks)

Speaking of Pentagon influence in Africa:

………

At least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror. The list includes officers from Burkina Faso (2014, 2015, and twice in 2022); Chad (2021); Gambia (2014); Guinea (2021); Mali (2012, 2020, and 2021); Mauritania (2008); and Niger (2023). At least five leaders of the Nigerien junta, for example, received American assistance, according to a U.S. official. They, in turn, appointed five U.S.-trained members of the Nigerien security forces to serve as that country’s governors.

Such military coups have undermined American aims of providing stability and security to Africans, yet the United States has been hesitant to cut ties with these rogue regimes. Despite the Nigerien coup, for example, the United States continues to garrison troops at, and conduct missions from, its large drone base there.

If this sounds familiar, one should look at what used to be called the School of the Americas, whose focus appeared to be on training military officers to overthrow their democratically elected governments.

We are just lighting money on fire here.