Linkage

• The evidence is mounting: Humans were responsible for the extinction of large mammals (Phys.org) More confirmation of this theory.
• Apple reaches its first contract agreement with a US retail union | TechCrunch Towson, MD.  I've been to that mall, and walked past that store.  (I don't buy Apple crap) 
• ‘Cocaine sharks’ found in waters off Brazil | Science | AAAS First Florida, and now Brazil.  I am surprised that someone has not made a movie about this yet.
• The Murdoch Family Is Battling Over the Future of the Fox Empire - The New York Times Rupert is trying to change an irrevocable trust to favor one child.  One hopes that this battle results in the whole institution being smashed to bits.
• Opinion | Many hospitals are nonprofit in name only, and get away with it (The Washington Post) As the founder of a non-profit 501(C)3, I  did the paperwork as well.  This is a real problem.  Limits on executive pay for charities would be a good start.
• Twisted carbon nanotubes could achieve significantly better energy storage than advanced lithium-ion batteries We are talking about nanotube versions of the rubber bands on those balsa wood airplanes. 
• Pension Funds Are Hooked on Private Equity, No Matter the Risks (Bloomberg) PE is a toxic mix of dishonesty, influence peddling, and opacity.  It allows pension funds to pretend that they are fully funded.
• The largest campaign finance violation in US history (31 Jul 2024)  (Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow) The rat-f%$#ery of the crypto investors, particularly Andreeson-Horowitz to ensure tht they can continue cheating people.
• A Fossil Named Tina May Rewrite the Story of Human Evolution (Popular Mechanics) A 6 year old Neanderthal with Down's syndrome has been found, which indicates extensive support by the community.

We now know why the Welsh did not take over the world. They were too busy taking care of their cats. This was a wise choice:

F%$# Gavin Newsom

I've noted previously that Gavin Newsom is not progressive in any way, shape, or form.

Now, we are seeing him embrace his inner fascist, not only using state agencies to clear homeless encampments from state land without any other housing being available, but now he threatening to defund municipalities that do not clear homeless encampments as well.

I get that the recent Supreme Court decision (City of Grants Pass v. Johnson) allows for communities to exile homeless people, but the unholy glee that Newsom shown in response is awful:

After personally participating in the forced displacement of homeless people in a Los Angeles encampment, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday threatened to withhold funding from counties that don't sufficiently crack down on the unhoused.

Buoyed by the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court's recent City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson ruling—which was welcomed by Newsom and other Democratic leaders like San Francisco Mayor London Breed who filed amicus briefs in the case—the governor issued an executive order last month directing officials to clear out homeless encampments, which have proliferated amid rampant economic inequality and stratospheric housing prices in the nation's most populous state.

After taking part in a Thursday sweep of an encampment in Mission Hills in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley, Newsom declared: "I want to see results... If we don't see demonstrable results, I'll start to redirect money." 

Newsom praised leaders like Breed and Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for reducing the number of people sleeping on their cities' streets and directed his ire mostly toward county governments.

"This is a sincerely held belief that we need local government to step up," the governor added. "This is a crisis. Act like it." Newsom has made—and followed through on—similar promises in the past. Last month, his office redirected a $10 million grant for San Diego County to buy so-called "tiny homes" for the unhoused because officials there "could not move with the urgency the housing and homelessness crisis demands."

University of California, Los Angeles sociology professor and homelessness expert Chris Herring told The Guardian following Newsom's executive order that the directive is "giving a green light to a harsher approach" to tackling California's unhoused crisis, which critics say criminalizes people for being poor.

The cruelty is the point.

We as a society, and politicians as individuals, should be judged by how they treat the least of us.

Gavin Newsom has failed.

I Like This

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is investigating bank's use of chatbots and voicemail to abuse customers.

In plane English, they are looking at regulating voice mail hell:

The Biden administration is asking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to look at banks’ use of chatbots and to address customer service “doom loops” as part of a wider effort, unveiled Monday, to prioritize customers’ time.

“Companies often deliberately design their business processes to be time-consuming or otherwise burdensome for consumers, in order to deter them from getting a rebate or refund they are due or canceling a subscription or membership they no longer want — all with the goal of maximizing profits,” the White House wrote in introducing what it dubbed the “Time Is Money” initiative. “Americans are tired of being played for suckers.”

Among the pillars of the initiative, the White House said the CFPB is planning to issue guidance meant “to crack down on ineffective and time-wasting chatbots used by banks and other financial institutions in lieu of customer service.”

………

The CFPB will identify when the use of automated chatbots or artificial intelligence voice recordings is unlawful, including when customers believe they are speaking with a person, the White House said.

“This is not about shaming corporations writ large,” a senior administration official told reporters Friday, according to CNBC. Rather, it’s “a new frontier of consumer protections.”

The initiative comes roughly a year after the Biden administration and the CFPB doubled down on efforts to root out unnecessary “junk fees” charged by banks for basic services.

“When people request basic information about their accounts, big banks cannot charge them massive fees or trap them in endless customer service loops,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra told reporters last October.

………

The CFPB isn’t the only agency being pressed into action. The Department of Health and Human Services is set to urge health plan providers to make it easier for customers to talk to live people, the White House said. The Federal Communications Commission, too, will launch an inquiry into how phone, broadband and cable companies can do the same.

The Time is Money proposals will not require congressional approval, the senior administration official said. Any bill to boost consumer protections — this late in the Biden administration — would have a remote shot at passage because Republicans hold a majority in the House.

Driving a stake through the heart of voice mail hell is a very good thing.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

where can i get a Lina Khan yard sign? https://t.co/bnW9eeCdzB

— Molly White (@molly0xFFF) August 17, 2024

Seriously. I can see no greater endorsement of Lina Khan than her enemies, who are uniformly bankster parasites.

To paraphrase FDR, "They are unanimous in their hate for her — and she should welcome their hatred."

That's It. I'm Done.

I do not know what is up with our current reality, but it needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.

Dear God, how about another flood?

Babe wake up, MAGA is carrying around JD Vance jizz cups. pic.twitter.com/e7lmfJA2EI

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) August 18, 2024

Unfortunately, it's real. https://t.co/o5f07IWs62

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) August 18, 2024

Of course, I am not really asking for another flood, I believe that humanity has an obligation to fix its own problems without an exhortation to the divine, but Cthulhu on a crusty cucumber, carrying around fake JD Vance sperm sample cups is a bridge too far.

Republicans are shooting off at Tim Walz, trying to clown the Democratic VP nominee for using IVF by carrying around cups of fake semen ... yeah, we're serious.

Pictures have hit the internet of people outfitted in MAGA merch -- pictures of Donald Trump, bald eagles and American flags plastered on the chest -- and, in their hands their holding sperm sample cups with J.D. Vance's face stickered on the front.

Next to his face the cups read, "J.D. Vance Full Family Kit" ... basically saying the senator from Ohio has some strong swimmers -- after all, he's already got three children.

As for why these supporters are schlepping around the cups -- complete with a opaque white substance we're trying hard not to think about, just BTW -- many are pointing to Tim Walz's own issues with infertility.

Once again, I find that my already low expectations have been exceeded, and I am left staring, dumbfounded, with an expression on my face that resembles that of a cow that just stepped on its own udder.

I am considering going to live in a cave.

This is a Wonderful Takedown

User interface designer Scott Jensen had his first exposure to Tesla's automotive interface, and he is not impressed.

Gee, you have a whole car designed by a ketamine addled idiot, with the automotive chops of Homer Jay Simpson and you are surprised that the user interface is f%$#ed?

Still, it's a wonderful take-down of what the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ has created:

I borrowed a friend’s Tesla 3 yesterday. About 5 minutes into the ride, the windshield started fogging up. I couldn’t find the defroster on the large control screen Teslas are so famous for. In desperation, I tapped the CAR icon but that took me to the settings screen which ended up being a dead end. Frustrated, I opened the side windows to clear the windshield. While pushing every button on the steering wheel, I accidentally discovered the voice control and was finally able to get the defroster working. It was such an odd experience I tweeted about how frustrating it was:

Little did I know that Tesla had updated to a new UI just a few days earlier. It’s been more than a bit controversial: A UX designer had just walked into a Tesla bar with a hornets nest on the floor.

The rather severe name calling and ad homimum [sic] attacks I got in response to this tweet are unfortunate but it is really just a day in the life of Twitter. However, I was surprised by the sheer arrogance and Dunning-Kruger on display. These people know literally nothing about human perception or performance. Someone was wrong on the internet! I have no illusions this post will convince the TeslaBros of anything but this is an interesting UX design example for those that want to explore. It’s worth going through the problem in a bit more detail.

He makes it clear, that his issue is with the latest upgrade later in the article, and that the earlier versions were not as much suckage.

Of course, the same could be same could be said for Google, Facebook, and my Bank's website.

I rarely see an improvement in user interface when tech types update the interface.

It's not a big deal in many cases, but as Mr. Jensen notes, it is for cars, "Automotive design is hard. The “move fast and break things” of Tesla is  perfectly fine for Swipe-Right phone apps but in a car with lives at stake, they can’t be so cavalier."

Actually, they can be so cavalier.  In fact, they have been so cavalier, about many things, such as inadequate braking, which they knowingly shipped and figuring to patch later, promoting Easter Eggs in the car user interface, a plethora of claims about their self-driving capabilities, etc.

They don't care, they don't have to.

About F%$#ing Time

The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), has revoked their certifications of two doctors who have continued to push Ivermectin as a Covid treatment.

It has been known for about 4 years that this was bullsh%$, and that continuing to use the medication was dangerous, though not quite as dangerous as drinking bleach, and it is only in the past 10 days that these guys got their tickets pulled:

The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) has revoked the board certification of two physicians involved in the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC).

An ABIM spokesperson confirmed to MedPage Today that Paul Marik, MD, and Pierre Kory, MD, had their certifications revoked as of August 8.

Marik and Kory previously had certifications in internal medicine and critical care medicine, and Kory additionally held a certification in pulmonary disease.

The ABIM spokesperson said the organization "does not comment publicly on the reasons for the revocation of certification," but the FLCCC had previously statedopens in a new tab or window that the action was taken because of the doctors' "public endorsements of early treatment methods for COVID-19, their discussions on repurposed medications, and their critique of vaccine risks and harms."

Initial notification to Marik and Kory about losing ABIM certification came about 2 years ago, in May 2022, according to the FLCCC. Last year, ABIM's Credentials and Certification Committee reportedly recommendedopens in a new tab or window -- after a "year-long back-and-forth" -- that Marik and Kory have their certifications revoked for spreading "false or inaccurate medical information."

Now, how about going after Joseph Mercola, who not only has been stridently antivax, but has caused thousands of deaths with his Jihad against Soy,  resulting in an increased incidence of breast cancer among women with BRCA mutations.

Actually, good luck with that one, he's an osteopath, and their professional standards regarding cranks are somewhat lax.

Unfortunately, there is no such certification for economists, so Emily Oster will continue to spread dangerous misinformation regarding the effects of Covid in schools without any repercussions. (She actually wrote an article in The Atlantic calling for. "Covid Amnesty," for folks who screwed the pooch like her.)

Hoocoodanode?

With all of the studies showing that large language model artificial intelligence programs (LLMs) are doing little more than bullsh%$ting, and not bullsh%$ting particularly well, a study from the University of Bath indicates that LLMs cannot learn, and do not pose an existential threat to society.

I am not sure about that whole, "No existential threat," bit.  LLMs are being applied to things like customer service, and while this might not destroy the world, it will serve to render any sort of responsibility by consumer facing organizations a myth, and that destroys quite a lot: 

AI Lacks Independent Learning, Poses No Existential Threat

Summary: New research reveals that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT cannot learn independently or acquire new skills without explicit instructions, making them predictable and controllable. The study dispels fears of these models developing complex reasoning abilities, emphasizing that while LLMs can generate sophisticated language, they are unlikely to pose existential threats. However, the potential misuse of AI, such as generating fake news, still requires attention

Key facts:

• LLMs are unable to master new skills without explicit instruction.
• The study finds no evidence of emergent complex reasoning in LLMs.
• Concerns should focus on AI misuse rather than existential threats.

Translated into English, it basically means that it's all a humbug, being pushed by snollygosters, much like cryptocurrency and the Dotcom boom at the turn of the century.

The study, published today as part of the proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2024) – the premier international conference in natural language processing – reveals that LLMs have a superficial ability to follow instructions and excel at proficiency in language, however, they have no potential to master new skills without explicit instruction. This means they remain inherently controllable, predictable and safe.

………

With growth, these models are likely to generate more sophisticated language and become better at following explicit and detailed prompts, but they are highly unlikely to gain complex reasoning skills.

………

As an illustration, LLMs can answer questions about social situations without ever having been explicitly trained or programmed to do so. While previous research suggested this was a product of models ‘knowing’ about social situations, the researchers showed that it was in fact the result of models using a well-known ability of LLMs to complete tasks based on a few examples presented to them, known as `in-context learning’ (ICL).

Through thousands of experiments, the team demonstrated that a combination of LLMs ability to follow instructions (ICL), memory and linguistic proficiency can account for both the capabilities and limitations exhibited by LLMs.

You know, an aggressive program of pursuing these mooks for fraud, in the same way that they pursued the bunco artists at Theranos, seems to me to be an increasingly good option.

Also, making sure that the creators of AI are civilly and criminally responsible for their harms, consider the use of an LLM at a 911 response center, for example, would go a long way to taking some air out of this bubble.

I Need to Check This Out

What with Firefox and the Mozilla foundation likely going away, what with the overpaid senior management and the likely loss of Google funding because of the antitrust lawsuit against them, I need to look into an alternative browser. 

Unfortunately, most of the alternatives are either based on Google's Chrome or Apple's Safari/WebKi, and I don't want to patronize those businesses.

Well I just heard of the Ladybird browser, which is made from completely new code.

 It's in alpha, and you have to build (compile) it yourself, but I'm keeping my eye on them.

The Spirit of Openness

US District Rudolph Contreras has ruled that the CDC policy of deleting emails when staff leave is likely unlawful.

Yeah, pretty much.

Trying to bury the bodies?  (Literally)

The CDC has likely been violating federal law for years by systematically deleting lower-level employees’ emails, a federal judge ruled Friday.

Gee, ya think?

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras came in a lawsuit brought by a legal group allied with former President Donald Trump and was accompanied by an order forcing the public health agency to immediately halt the erasures.

“The Court concludes that CDC’s policy and practice of disposing of former employees’ emails ninety days after the end of their employment is likely unlawful,” Contreras wrote in a 36-page opinion.

Contreras, an Obama appointee, found that the agency had been employing a records-retention policy that had not been approved by the National Archives. That policy led the agency to delete lower-level employees’ emails 90 days after their departure from the agency, rather than the three-to-seven-year retention required by standard National Archives procedures.

The group that filed the lawsuit, the, "America First Legal Foundation," (AFL) is a virulently bigoted  and highly partisan group, it was founded by Stephen Miller (יִמַּח שְׁמו), but on this issue they are correct.

Even for lower level employees, the swift deletion of these records runs counter to the spirit, and likely the letter of, of the federal Freedom of information act, and NARA policies in particular.

It doesn't matter if this is a journalist, or in the case of the, "America First Legal Foundation," an attempt to harass CDC into suppressing facts based research and instruction regarding the LGBTQ community.

Specifically, they were requesting the emails of the authors of a paper titled, "LGBTQ Inclusivity in Schools: A Self-Assessment Tool." The obvious goal here is to use this to intimidate the authors as well as any school that has received the documents.

I am concerned about this, but I am more concerned that the CDC will cover up its role in the mismanagement of the Covid epidemic, and if that happens, then we will be equally unable to address something like Bird Flu or Monkey Pox.

Oil Executives in ……… Spaaaaace!!!!!

NASA is looking to BP to help Nasa establish base on the Moon possible linkage

BP is to use its expertise gained drilling for oil to help Nasa in its quest to establish a base on the Moon, and eventually explore more of the solar system.

The energy giant has signed a deal with the US space agency that will see it share technology currently used “in harsh environments” on Earth and apply it to space.

The oil giant says the deal could ultimately lead to collaboration between BP and Nasa on a range of technology, including hydrogen power, high-capacity batteries and small nuclear fission systems.

Nasa is currently working on the first lunar space station, to be put into orbit next year at the earliest, as part of efforts to establish a permanent base on the Moon.

It plans to subsequently develop living accommodation on the surface, along with energy systems. BP’s expertise in developing machinery that works beneath the ocean’s surface could help Nasa to model and understand the problems faced with establishing a base on the Moon.

………

The initial phase of the agreement between BP and Nasa will focus on developing standards that “allow engineers and scientists to visualise equipment in remote locations more than 7,000 feet underwater or millions of miles away on another planet”, according to the oil company.

Giovanni Cristofoli, a senior executive at BP, said: “Both BP and Nasa are custodians of deep technical expertise, working in extreme environments – whether that’s at the bottom of the ocean or on the Moon.”

I'm beginning that I need to smoke more dope.

Support Your Local Police

Child rapist former Rochester police officer Shawn Jordan cut a plea deal, and his sentence was  ……… Wait for it ……… spending the weekend in jail for 10 weeks, that's 20 days in jail.

The DA claims that it was a hard case, but if I had a mind reading device, I'd bet heavy odds that the prosecutors were worried of repercussions from the police and the police unions.

In any case, this is an outrage:

It “is the epitome of injustice” as well as “dangerous” for a judge to have given a sentence of 10 weekends in jail to a former upstate New York police officer who pleaded guilty to raping a 13-year-old girl before his forced resignation, according to a prominent advocate for child sexual abuse survivors.

“This sentence is the epitome of injustice and a dangerous nod to child sexual predators letting them know, ‘No worries, we won’t go too hard on you,’” Kathryn Robb, the national director of the Children’s Justice Campaign at the Enough Abuse organization, said on Thursday. “This little girl will be imprisoned by her memories for life, while [the rapist] loses a mere 20 days of his liberty.”

………

Jordan, 40, pleaded guilty to second-degree rape and forcible touching in March in connection with allegations that he had molested a girl who was age 13 in 2022 in South Bristol, a community in Ontario county, New York.

It was one of two separate criminal cases filed against Jordan that involved an underage victim. In the other matter, which remained unresolved as of Thursday, authorities in Monroe county, New York, charged him in the spring of 2023 with exposing himself to a 16-year-old girl over a video call.

Under a plea agreement struck in the Ontario county case, state judge Kristina Karle sentenced him on Wednesday to spend 10 weekends in jail as well as 10 years on probation. Karle also ordered Jordan to register as a sex offender and pay fines.

If this weren't a former cop, this guy would not have gotten bail, and he would have gotten years in jail.

Speaking of Privacy Rignts

The most right wing, and most batsh%$ insane circuit of the federal courts, the 5th Circuit, just got one right, ruling that geofencing warrants are unconstitutional.

These warrants use our digital devices to allow authorities to track everyone in a specific area without specific suspicion of any crimes.

It appears that a stopped clock and the 5th Circuit, can be right twice a day:

A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that geofence warrants, which are used to identify all users or devices in a geographic area, are prohibited by the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches.

The ruling was issued by the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which is generally regarded as the most conservative appeals court. The 5th Circuit holding creates a circuit split with the 4th Circuit, which last month rejected a different Fourth Amendment challenge to geofence warrants.

"This court 'cannot forgive the requirements of the Fourth Amendment in the name of law enforcement.' Accordingly, we hold that geofence warrants are general warrants categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment," the August 9 ruling from the 5th Circuit said.

The case, United States v. Smith, involves three Mississippi men convicted of a 2018 armed robbery of a mail truck. Despite ruling geofence warrants to be unconstitutional, the 5th Circuit denied the convicts' motion to suppress evidence because "law enforcement acted in good faith in relying on this type of warrant."

"We hold that geofence warrants are modern-day general warrants and are unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. However, considering law enforcement's reasonable conduct in this case in light of the novelty of this type of warrant, we uphold the district court's determination that suppression was unwarranted under the good-faith exception," the court said.

The term "General warrants," is a term that hearkens back to the revolutionary war, when customs agents of the British Crown were issued, "General writs of assistance," which allowed them to search anywhere at any time without evidence of crimes.

General warrants are specifically forbidden under the language of the 4th Amendment, specifically the phrase, "No Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause."

It can be further determined from the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which preceeded and informed the writing of the 4th Amendment, which specifically says, "That general warrants, whereby any officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offense is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive and ought not to be granted."

Unfortunately, the court ruled against excluding the evidence, because the officers in question used, "Good faith," but it does mean that any future evidence acquired through geofence warrants in the future would be excluded, because any future searches would not be in good faith by definition.

I don't think that this will survive Supreme Court review, which I think is inevitable, since different circuits now have different precedents on the matter.

Even the so-called liberals on the court tend to be overly solicitous to the surveillance-industrial complex.

Call Your Congresscritter and Support This

I am talking about the  Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act (H.R.4639) which bans government agencies from purchasing personally identifiable information (PII) that would otherwise require a warrant or a subpoena.

Ending the loophole that allows for some of the most egregious abuses of civil rights and the right to privacy by the state is a good thing.

The cherry on top is that it would put a stake through the heart of literal vampire. Peter Thiel's Palantir commercial spying technology group.

Anything that is bad for Peter Thiel is good for the rest of us:

Despite opposition from the White House and law enforcement agencies across the United States, a bipartisan bill that recently was passed by the House that would ban the government from buying Americans’ personally identifiable information (PII) from data brokers and aggregators, the bill suddenly is getting renewed attention in the Senate in the wake of a massive security breach that has put gigabytes of information on possibly millions of individuals at risk.

With the support of top Democrats who usually are in lockstep with the Democrat administration of President Joe Biden, the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act, which was passed in the House by a 219-199 vote, takes aim at closing the data-broker loophole in the law that allow governments to buy data they would otherwise need a warrant to obtain.

Data brokers are companies that buy, aggregate, disclose, and sell billions of data elements on Americans with virtually no oversight and little financial incentive to protect the data they collect.

First introduced in the Senate in April 2021, a nearly identical bill is now being reconsidered in the Senate after its companion bill was passed in the House. And it’s getting much closer attention now in the Senate since disclosure last week of the hack of the computer systems of Florida-based data broker National Public Data that compromised more than 200 gigabytes of nearly 3 billion records containing the PII of an unknown number of “U.S., Canadian, and British citizens.” It’s being described as the biggest breach of PII on record.

The information that government entities have long been able to buy from companies like National Public Data is data that’s been acquired by data brokers and aggregators from common applications, the “scrapping” of publicly accessible websites, and public and commercial databases, all without users realizing it. The data is then used by governments, law enforcement and tax agencies, prisons, even bounty hunters, to do things like track a person’s location without a warrant or probable cause — or even suspicion that anyone in the dataset had done anything wrong.

Of course, law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and the executive branch would say that there is nothing to worry about, because they would never abuse this power.

Mitigating against this argument is history, which shows that law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and the executive branch will ALWAYS abuse such a power.

Much of the business in this space, with Palantir being the apotheosis of this, make their business serving government agencies that want to evade the law and the constitution.

Shut them down.

History Rhyming

Gee, we are looking at collapsing real estate, particularly in commercial real estate, mortgage backed securities beginning to look more like a millstone than an investment, and this has been compounded by negligent and corrupt ratings agencies.

This sounds very familiar about a lot of people:

Troubles in the commercial real estate (CRE) markets, which have been predicted for years, appear to be growing. Delinquency rates above 30 days on office building loans ticked up in June, representing close to $2 billion in losses, according to a report from Moody’s. Office vacancies are at a record high of slightly over 20 percent, and this has translated into loan defaults, stretching from the Illinois Center tower in Chicago to a suite of office buildings in Mountain View, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley.

A couple billion in defaults in a market valued around $20 trillion isn’t worth worrying about. But a significant chunk of CRE loans are starting to come due for the first time since the pandemic greatly increased working from home. Prices on commercial properties began dropping last spring for the first time since 2011, and regional and local banks, which are more exposed to these loans, are in a particularly precarious position. Regulators are even starting to talk about fraud and questionable valuations in these markets.

Experts have described CRE as “a train wreck waiting to happen.” But Moody’s is a company that’s supposed to have seen the train wreck coming. It is a credit rating agency, which assesses risks in bonds and securities and assigns a rating that reflects those risks. If losses in bonds backed by CRE were inevitable, the credit rating agencies should have built that into their models rather than assigning them super-safe ratings.

Yeah, this sounds a lot like 2008.

It took over 70 years to unlearn the lessons of the Great Depression, but only 16 years to unlearn the lessons of the Great Recession.

Why is that.

Well, I guess the lack of prosecutions and the massive government bailouts of the malefactors of finance led to people not taking that catastrophe seriously.

Arrest the banksters, arrest the senior management of the ratings agencies, and arrest the underwriters.

Just arrest them all, and get them fired ……… Out of a cannon ……… Into the sun.

It's Thursday ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, it's tThursday, and so time for the weekly unemployment report.

It's better than forecast with initial claims falling by 7,000 to 227,000, beating forecasts of 235,000, and continuing claims fell by 7,000 to 1.864 million.

Additionally, retail sales for July were stronger than forecast.

Initial applications for US unemployment benefits fell for a second week to the lowest level since early July, despite a recent pullback in hiring.

Initial claims decreased by 7,000 to 227,000 in the week ended Aug. 10, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 235,000 applications.

………

Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving unemployment benefits, also declined, to 1.86 million, in the week ended Aug. 3.


A separate report from the Commerce Department Thursday showed that US retail sales accelerated in July by the most since early 2023 in a broad advance. Sales were boosted by a sharp snapback in car sales after a cyberattack on auto dealerships earlier this year, but electronics and appliances also posted gains, pointing to a consumer that’s holding up despite higher borrowing costs.

I think that we can be reasonably certain that we won't be in an indisputable recession in the next few months.

As to what this all means, it means whatever the Federal Reserve Board of Governor thinks that it means.

So basically, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

 

Oh, Please, Please, Please

We now have reports that the Department of Justice is considering breaking up Google as a remedy for its monopolistic behavior.

I want this so much: 

A bid to break up Alphabet Inc.’s Google is one of the options being considered by the Justice Department after a landmark court ruling found that the company monopolized the online search market, according to people with knowledge of the deliberations.

The move would be Washington’s first push to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft Corp. two decades ago. Less severe options include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations.

………

Regardless, the government will likely seek a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of its case against Google. If the Justice Department pushes ahead with a breakup plan, the most likely units for divestment are the Android operating system and Google’s web browser Chrome, said the people. Officials are also looking at trying to force a possible sale of AdWords, the platform the company uses to sell text advertising, one of the people said.

The Justice Department discussions have intensified in the wake of Judge Amit Mehta’s Aug. 5 ruling that Google illegally monopolized the markets of online search and search text ads. Google has said it will appeal that decision, but Mehta has ordered both sides to begin plans for the second phase of the case, which will involve the government’s proposals for restoring competition, including a possible breakup request.

Break it up into a million pieces.

Fabulous!

Korea's high court has ruled that discrimination against gay couples by insurance is illegal:

For most of 2020, Kim Yong-min and So Sung-uk enjoyed joint family coverage with the nation’s public health insurer. Then an abrupt call severed their government benefits. A mistake had been made, an insurance representative explained to Kim.

“We didn’t realize your partner was also a man,” the caller told Kim.

Nullifying the same-sex couple’s health insurance set off a multiyear legal saga that produced a landmark victory last month for Kim and So—and South Korea’s LGBTQ community, which won its first-ever legal recognition by the government. The high court’s chief justice called the rescinding of health benefits an act of discrimination that “violates human dignity and value.”

South Korea has artificial intelligence pop singers, robot baristas and drone deliveries. Despite those modern flourishes, the country lags far behind other wealthy democracies on LGBTQ rights. Same-sex couples can’t legally marry; civil unions are nonexistent. Just one in eight South Koreans say they even know someone who is gay or lesbian, recent polling shows.

………

Now, many supporters of the LGBTQ community hope the ruling could open the way to more rights—even same-sex marriage. Courtroom victories elsewhere in the past have served as steppingstones to marriage equality, including the U.S.

Nice to see Korea entering the 20th century.

Inflation Numbers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We got the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report today, and year over year inflation fell to 2.9%, less than the 3.0% forecast, and the Producer Price Index (PPI) which gives the prices that manufacturers pay for their raw materials, fell as well

The consensus is that the Fed will have to cut rates now, but I'm not so sure:

Inflation dropped in July to its lowest level in three years on an annual basis, setting up the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates soon to take pressure off the economy.

The snapshot was the clearest indication yet that inflation is heading back to normal levels from 40-year highs — without a recession. Central bankers won’t be caught celebrating, scarred by years of unexpected twists that repeatedly upended the Fed’s inflation fight. But officials will close out the summer with the surest sense yet that it’s time to loosen up on the economic brakes, possibly starting next month.

………

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed July’s annual inflation rate hit 2.9 percent, dipping below 3 percent for the first time since March 2021, when price increases took off on the heels of the pandemic. A core measure that strips out volatile categories such as food and energy also saw the smallest 12-month increase since April 2021.

………

For months, Fed officials have said they won’t trim borrowing costs until they’re confident inflation is easing to normal levels. Now that they’ve come about as close as possible, officials are increasingly acknowledging the risks of keeping rates too high for too long. Already, hiring has slowed down, and global markets are jittery over whether the Fed might have put too much pressure on the economy overall.

Housing continued to dominate the inflation snapshot, with shelter costs accounting for nearly 90 percent of the monthly increase. Rent costs have been cooling for some time now, but economists are still puzzled about why that shift didn’t show up in official statistics until this summer. July saw a slight backpedal, with a key rent gauge rising a smidgen more than in previous months. (The widespread expectation is inflation won’t come down all the way to normal until there’s major headway on the housing component.)

Maybe if we started regulating speculation in real estate, or even just the people who are using real estate to launder money, that would that would be great. 

As to the PPI:

U.S. producer prices increased less than expected in July as the cost of services fell by the most in nearly 1-1/2 years amid signs of diminishing pricing power for businesses, evidence of waning inflation pressures that reinforced hopes of an interest rate cut next month.

The report from the Labor Department on Tuesday also showed favorable readings for most of the components that go into the calculation of the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price indexes, the inflation measures tracked by the Federal Reserve for monetary policy. Moderating inflation should allow the U.S. central bank to focus more on the labor market.

………

The producer price index for final demand edged up 0.1% last month after rising by an unrevised 0.2% in June, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the PPI gaining 0.2%.

In the 12 months through July, the PPI increased 2.2% after climbing 2.7% in June.

Obviously, inflation is receding. 

The question is whether or not the sado-monetarists at the Fed will deign to lower interest rates.

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

Hard to top this https://t.co/X7oWeydnfj

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) August 14, 2024

I have on occasion noted that satirists have the toughest job in the world these days.

Reality has made the New York Times Pitchbot its bitch.

I do not know how they, or the staff or The Onion find the energy to get out of bed in the morning.

In Related News, Water is Wet

So, people are now suggesting that Sam Altman has been less than forthright in his support for safety initiatives at OpenAI?

Well knock me over with a BLU-82, I could never imagine Altman, who has been removed from prominent positions for self-dealing, could be doing this:

OpenAI is facing increasing pressure to prove it's not hiding AI risks after whistleblowers alleged to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the AI company's non-disclosure agreements had illegally silenced employees from disclosing major safety concerns to lawmakers.

In a letter to OpenAI yesterday, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) demanded evidence that OpenAI is no longer requiring agreements that could be "stifling" its "employees from making protected disclosures to government regulators."

Specifically, Grassley asked OpenAI to produce current employment, severance, non-disparagement, and non-disclosure agreements to reassure Congress that contracts don't discourage disclosures. That's critical, Grassley said, so that it will be possible to rely on whistleblowers exposing emerging threats to help shape effective AI policies safeguarding against existential AI risks as technologies advance.

Grassley has apparently twice requested these records without a response from OpenAI, his letter said. And so far, OpenAI has not responded to the most recent request to send documents, Grassley's spokesperson, Clare Slattery, told The Washington Post.

………

In July, whistleblowers told the SEC that OpenAI should be required to produce not just current employee contracts, but all contracts that contained a non-disclosure agreement to ensure that OpenAI hasn't been obscuring a history or current practice of obscuring AI safety risks. They want all current and former employees to be notified of any contract that included an illegal NDA and for OpenAI to be fined for every illegal contract.

The current LLM artificial "Intelligence" machines have a lot of similarity with cryptocurrency.

They don't work for the purposes that they are sold for, they are more expensive and clunkier than promised, and their only potential market seems to be criminal and near-criminal activity.

What could go wrong?

Smart Move

Officials in Tehran have announced that they may forgo retaliation against Israel for their assassination of  Ismail Haniyeh if a ceasefire is negotiated in Gaza.

Say what you will about the Iranian government, but even if they have no intent to deliver on their promise, but this is a pretty savvy move.

It makes them, you know, the folks who announced a death sentence for a pretentious writer for alleged heresy, seem like the sensible people in the room.

They aren't the sensible people of course, except perhaps by the standards of the Middle East:

An Iranian attack on Israel could be delayed amid hoped-for negotiations later this week for a hostage release and ceasefire deal in Gaza, three Iranian officials said on Tuesday, indicating that a successful deal could hold Iran back from direct retaliation against Israel for alleged assassinating Hamas terror chief Ismail Haniyeh on its soil.

Iran has vowed to retaliate harshly for Haniyeh’s killing, which took place as he visited Tehran late last month and which it blamed on Israel. Israel has neither confirmed or denied its involvement.

Yeah, right, Israel did not assassinate Hayinyeh, Trump Didn't sexually assault E. Jean Carrol, JD Vance isn't even skeevier than Mitch McConnell, Elon Musk is Sane, and Randall "Duke" Cunningham never took bribes..

Headline of the Day

Down into the Ocean’s ‘Twilight Zone’ with Boaty McBoatface

—BBC

Yeah, I know, "Boaty McBoatface," is so last decade, and I still think that they should have named the boat that, and not just the remotely piloted submersible.

Still, it's nice that Boaty is doing science:

Battling choppy waves and high winds, three engineers pulled ashore a yellow submarine in Scotland this week.

With sheets of water pouring from its body, the UK’s most famous robot - Boaty McBoatface - was winched up after 55 days at sea.

“It’s a bit slimy, and ocean smells have seeped in. There’s a few things growing on it,” says Rob Templeton, now dismantling the 3.6m robot in Leverburgh, on the Isle of Harris.

Boaty has completed a more-than-2,000km scientific odyssey from Iceland that could change what we know about the pace of climate change.

It was hunting for marine snow - “poo, basically” in the words of one researcher. This refers to tiny particles that sink to the ocean floor, storing huge amounts of carbon. 

………

The public originally picked the name Boaty McBoatface for a polar ship in 2016. That didn't happen, but instead the name was quietly given to a fleet of six identical robots at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton.

They said that they would name the next research based on the public vote, and then they ignored the voice of the public, and named the boat RRS Sir David Attenborough.

No offense to Sir Attenborough, but Boaty was robbed.

Quote of the Day

Some people who serially benefit from the Federalist Society affirmative action circle jerk, like Brett Kavanaugh, are never really put in a context were their arrogance and intellectual sub-mediocrity is actually a barrier to their career advancement. So it’s gratifying to see a case where the trap door actually falls out. (And while it’s still possible that he will become vice president, if he does it will be despite his presence on the ticket, not because of it.)

—Lawyers, Guns, and Money on JD Vance

Yeah, a bunch of nepo-babies and toadies who are not that good at their jobs are trying to destroy the United States.

On the down side, they have lots of support from their rich (real and metaphorical) daddies, on the upside, they could not organize a one car funeral.

Looks Like the Literal Vampire Will Be Seeing Some Sunlight

It appears that the selection of JD Vance as Trump's running mate has resulted in increased scrutiny of Peter Thiel.

In this case, the Washington Post does a deep dive into how Vance is a creation of the #2 weirdo PayPal Guy who came from Apartheid South Africa.  (There are actually 4 of them who grew up in Apartheid South Africa)

One rather hopes that Thiel's extreme toxicity eventually makes him unacceptable to the tech bros and venture capitalists, but I would not hold my breath on this:

In the weeks before former president Donald Trump announced his vice-presidential pick, some of tech’s biggest names launched a quiet campaign to push for one of their own: Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

The former president fielded repeated calls from tech entrepreneur David Sacks, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg and billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Vance’s former employer and mentor, imploring him to add the onetime Silicon Valley investor to the ticket, according to three people familiar with the entreaties, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversations.

Vance’s most forceful Silicon Valley advocates are euphoric about the former Never Trumper’s rise in the GOP. They see Vance as their emissary in Washington, spreading a doctrine that government and entrenched corporate giants from Google to Lockheed Martin stifle innovation, while nimble, bold-thinking start-ups — especially their own — can propel the national interest. And while the ascension of Vice President Harris has invigorated many left-leaning tech leaders, some in Thiel’s network would stand to benefit from having Vance in the White House — a new asset for venture capitalists who until recently shunned Washington. 

These VCs have never shunned Washington.  The entire tech infrastructure is predicated on aggressive and extensive government subsidies.

Thiel made him wealthy, setting him up to invest in companies that became popular with the MAGA set. He shepherded Vance’s entry into politics, bankrolling, alongside other Silicon Valley donors, his successful bid for the U.S. Senate in 2022.

“For Peter,” said one of the people familiar with his thinking, “Vance is a generational bet.”

The expansion of IP over the past generation has been a tax on the rest of us to pay them, and Peter Thiel's Palantir is largely dependent on government contracts. (And then there is the whole think where the government allowed PayPal to operate as a bank without having to follow banking regulations, but I digress.)

………

Thiel made him wealthy, setting him up to invest in companies that became popular with the MAGA set. He shepherded Vance’s entry into politics, bankrolling, alongside other Silicon Valley donors, his successful bid for the U.S. Senate in 2022.

“For Peter,” said one of the people familiar with his thinking, “Vance is a generational bet.” 

………

The Biden administration, by contrast, has infuriated tech leaders by hindering the crypto industry, attempting to regulate AI and challenging corporate acquisitions — a key path for start-up founders to cash in. Sacks, Musk, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone and founders of the prominent venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz have all thrown in with Trump and are donating large sums to a pro-Trump PAC.

Oh, the poor dears.  They want to pump and dump their garbage to the general public, and the government is finally looking at what they do.

Now they want their stooge in the White House to make their lives even easier.

F%$# them with Cheney's Dick.

^*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.

 

Today in Student Journalism

Students at the University of Florida Independent Florida Alligator engaged in some magnificent shoe leather journalism, and discovered that Former UF president Ben Sasse spent like a drunken sailor, throwing money at friends and political allies:

In his 17-month stint as UF president, Ben Sasse more than tripled his office’s spending, directing millions in university funds into secretive consulting contracts and high-paying positions for his GOP allies.

Sasse ballooned spending under the president’s office to $17.3 million in his first year in office — up from $5.6 million in former UF President Kent Fuchs’ last year, according to publicly available administrative budget data.

A majority of the spending surge was driven by lucrative contracts with big-name consulting firms and high-salaried, remote positions for Sasse’s former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials.

Sasse’s consulting contracts have been kept largely under wraps, leaving the public in the dark about what the contracted firms did to earn their fees. The university also declined to clarify specific duties carried out by Sasse’s ex-Senate staff, several of whom were salaried as presidential advisers.

The university said Sasse’s budget expansion went through the “appropriate approval process” but did not answer questions about how Sasse bankrolled his splurges, where the funds originated or who authorized the spending. 

………

But the senator-turned-university president quietly broke that promise in his 17-month term at the university’s helm, hiring six ex-Senate staffers and two former Republican officials to high-paying, remote jobs at the university. 

………

Citing his wife’s recent epilepsy diagnosis, Sasse abruptly resigned from his post in July — leaving the future of his UF inner circle unclear. The university did not respond to questions about whether his political appointees were fired, non-renewed or resigned following his departure.

Fuchs, who began as interim president Aug. 1, kept a relatively small staff of less than 10, compared to Sasse who employed more than 30 in his office. 

………

Citing his wife’s recent epilepsy diagnosis, Sasse abruptly resigned from his post in July — leaving the future of his UF inner circle unclear. The university did not respond to questions about whether his political appointees were fired, non-renewed or resigned following his departure.

Fuchs, who began as interim president Aug. 1, kept a relatively small staff of less than 10, compared to Sasse who employed more than 30 in his office.

"Abruptly resigned," usually means got caught with his hand in the till.

And who could have helped him if he were corrupt?  Maybe these guys:

………

During his presidency, Sasse spent $7.2 million in university funds to consultants for advice on his strategic planning and to fill leadership gaps — over 40 times more than Fuchs’ total consulting expenses over his eight-year term.

Sasse paid nearly two-thirds of the $7.2 million to McKinsey & Company, where he once worked as an adviser on an hourly contract. The firm carries prestige as one of the “big three” management consulting giants, but is notoriously secretive about its dealings and shielded its work from public view using records laws protecting trade secrets.

I have come to the conclusion that the hiring of  McKinsey & Company is an indicator that an organization is corrupt, or that people in that organization are incompetent, or both.

This is what McKinsey did with Purdue Pharma, where they advised the world's largest drug pusher on how to better hook their customers, while they were consulting with various US agencies to fight the opioid crisis.

Jail, please?

Tru Dat

Whatever Else Is Claimed about It, Crypto Is Not a Currency

— Funding the Future

I've been saying this for years.

The root of currency is current, and "Cryptocurrencys," have enormous transaction fees and transaction delays.

They are in no way current: 

Cryptocurrencies aren't currencies. That needs explanation, of course.

I'm worried about crypto. I don't believe in it. I should lay my cards straight on the table because the whole of the crypto market seems to me to be devoid of any meaning, content, purpose, or value. But let me explain why these things are most definitely not currencies.

A currency is used as a medium of exchange between willing participants in a marketplace. I suspect the amount of crypto so-called currency that has been used for this purpose in proportion to the total crypto, whatever you call it, that exists is absolutely minute. Cryptocurrencies are not used for trading.

What I can say for certain, though, are two things. One is that they are not created by a government. And the only way that you can be sure that what you offer in exchange for something else has value is if it is offered by a government who has backed it up with a promise to pay, as is true of almost all the world's major currencies.

And secondly, this money cannot be used to pay tax in almost any country in the world, and therefore it lacks that aspect of being a currency as well.

As an FYI, the idea that origins of money come from government requiring taxes, and not a development from a barter economy, is called "Chartalism".

As an additional data point, there is no archeology evidence of any transition from a barter economy, but there is lots of archeological evidence for chartalism.

Crypto is simply gambling.

Best Healthcare in the World

It looks like visiting nurses are being sent to people's homes not to better determine their treatment options, but exclusively to upcode the patients to allow for the health providers to bill Medicare for more money, which means more money than us:

Millions of times each year, insurers send nurses into the homes of Medicare recipients to look them over, run tests and ask dozens of questions. 

The nurses aren’t there to treat anyone. They are gathering new diagnoses that entitle private Medicare Advantage insurers to collect extra money from the federal government.  

A Wall Street Journal investigation of insurer home visits found the companies pushed nurses to run screening tests and add unusual diagnoses, turning the roughly hourlong stops in patients’ homes into an extra $1,818 per visit, on average, from 2019 to 2021. Those payments added up to about $15 billion during that period, according to a Journal analysis of Medicare data.

Nurse practitioner Shelley Manke, who used to work for the HouseCalls unit of UnitedHealth Group, was part of that small army making home visits. She made a half-dozen or so visits a day, she said in a recent interview.

Part of her routine, she said, was to warm up the big toes of her patients and use a portable testing device to measure how well blood was flowing to their extremities. The insurers were checking for cases of peripheral artery disease, a narrowing of blood vessels. Each new case entitled them to collect an extra $2,500 or so a year at that time. 

But Manke didn’t trust the device. She had tried it on herself and had gotten an array of results. When she and other nurses raised concerns with managers, she said, they were told the company believed that data supported the tests and that they needed to keep using the device.

This is a fraud, pure and simple.

………

Last month, the Journal reported that insurers received nearly $50 billion in payments from 2019 to 2021 due to diagnoses they added themselves for conditions that no doctor or hospital treated. Many of the insurer-driven diagnoses were outright wrong or highly questionable, the Journal found. 

The diagnoses added after home visits accounted for about 30% of that total. More than 700,000 peripheral artery disease cases diagnosed only during home visits added $1.8 billion in payments during that period.

In the Medicare Advantage system—conceived as a lower-cost alternative to traditional Medicare—private insurers get paid a lump sum to provide health benefits to about half of the 67 million seniors and disabled people in the federal program. The payments go up when people have certain diseases, giving insurers an incentive to diagnose those conditions.

We need to start jailing these rat-f%$#s.

Not the nurses, but the managers, and the managers' managers, and the CEO, and the boards of directors.

Then use civil forfeiture to take all their money.

To quote Billy Ray Valentine, "You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people."

I Is Confuzzled

And which one sheds more?OK, so you see my two cats, Meatball (also called Mousetrap) on the left, and Destructo on the right.

On their names, I will note that I am a firm believer in the idea that one does not name a cat, one discovers the name of the cat.

Meatball, our lovely girl void, is 7-8 pounds, and Destructo is our handsome 16-17 pounds fluffy male, and he was the runt of the litter. (Some Maine Coon in him, I think)

Despite this, Meatball is the alpha-cat, to the degree that alpha-cats are possible.

Here is the thing, under the square cube law, Destructo has about 25% more surface area, and MUCH longer hair, so he is likely carrying at least twice the weight of fur in him.

Here is what has got me going ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Meatball sheds more than Destructo, a lot more, on the order of 4-5 times the fur left on the bed. (You can tell by the color)

How can happen?

The only thing that can explain this is that Meatball is somehow shedding out of spite, but that seems unlikely.

I Have My Recipes and Documentation Done

 This means that I can return to my prior poorly written, illogical, and generally dubious posts tomorrow.

Kinda Counts as a Declaration Against Interest

+972 Magazine, an Israeli publication describes itself as an, "Independent, online, nonprofit magazine run by a group of Palestinian and Israeli journalists," which frequently uses the term "Apartheid" to describe Israel's policies.

One of its writers, Mahmoud Mushtaha, has an interesting report which appears to indicate that Gazans are increasingly angry at Hamas for the October 7 attacks, not because they felt that they were somehow  unjustified, but because they were completely ineffective in achieving an independent Palestinian state, or even increased autonomy.

As I have noted earlier, Hamas' goal is the destruction of the state of Israel, and prior to the October 7 attacks, they had actually gone so far as to assign draw up plans for administrative districts and ministries after they had conquered Israel.

The Palestinian community is not monolithic, with some wanting an independent state in a close relationship with Israel, some wanting an independent state largely separate from Israel, and the crazies who think that they can overthrow Israel and replace it with an Islamic republic.

In Gaza at least, the first two groups are rather sick and tired of the 3rd group:

For 10 long and grueling months, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been left alone to face a genocide. We Gazans have had to endure the consequences of decisions we had no hand in, bearing severe hardships that the world has grown accustomed to and largely forgotten.

Undoubtedly, the primary source of our misery is Israel — an occupying, apartheid state, whose soldiers kill with brutal indifference, and which has sought to erase Palestinians since 1948. But we must also consider the role that Palestinian factions are playing in our ongoing suffering.

What has become clear over the past 10 months is that the Palestinian leadership — both Fatah and Hamas — has abandoned the people without any forethought or a coherent plan. While Gazans face relentless Israeli bombardment with no safe place to turn to, Hamas evades its responsibility to protect the population and Fatah is nowhere to be found.

As the war has dragged on, displays of public opposition to or criticism of Hamas have grown among Palestinians in Gaza. Many accuse Hamas of failing to anticipate the ferocity of Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks, and hold the group partially accountable for the dire consequences they are now facing. For Palestinian journalist Ahmed Hadi (whose name has been changed for his safety, along with everyone interviewed in this article), October 7 was “a crazy decision for us as Gazans.” The attack, he argued, and particularly “the killing and capturing of Israelis, some of whom were civilians and not soldiers, unfortunately had a counterproductive effect on us. It granted Israel global sympathy and provided it with a justification to launch a brutal war on Gaza.”

This is a paraphrase of the (not) Tallyrand quote, "It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake."

………

Adel Sultan is a 62-year-old from the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City. He spoke to +972 Magazine about his utter desperation for the war to come to an end. “Save those of us who are still alive, end the war, and give us a chance to recover,” he exclaimed. “We no longer recognize ourselves; our faces have changed from this ongoing war consuming us.”

Sultan voiced his frustration with the Palestinian leadership, calling on them to agree to a ceasefire with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government as a matter of urgency. “Those who started it should end it. Where are our leaders? Let them sit with the occupation government and end the war before it ends us, as Netanyahu wants.” 

………

Many Palestinians in Gaza understand the Hamas-led October 7 attack as the outcome of decades of Israeli occupation and prolonged siege of the Strip. They fully comprehend the concept of personal sacrifice for the goal of national liberation. Yet they fault Hamas for its lack of preparation in the aftermath of its attack, and reject having to suffer for no apparent gain.

Here is an interesting data point, though I would say that it is unreliable, not because of the source, but because polling in a war zone is inherently unreliable, something that the pollster acknowledges:

………

These sentiments are reflected in a recent poll by the Institute for Social and Economic Progress, an independent Palestinian research organization. According to the study, less than 5 percent of Palestinians in Gaza want Hamas to rule in a post-war transition government, and a majority expects the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority to take over the Strip. Nearly 85 percent of Gazans oppose Sinwar, and only slightly fewer opposed Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated by Israel last week in Tehran.

It's interesting, and were it translated into action, perhaps a group that wasn't batsh%$ insane like Hamas, and wasn't incompetent and corrupt like Fatah might become a factor in the Palestinian polity, this would be good.

But I am not holding my breath..

Light Posting for a While

I am working on historical recipes for Trial By Fire & Lochmere Arrow (Take 2).

It's, "Take 2," because last year's event was canceled due to a hurricane hitting the area.

Gotta love anthropogenic climate change.

Progress

Assuming that Mayor London Breed does not veto the measure, which is a non-trivial possibility for a politician who is in the pocket of real estate interests, San Francisco will be the first city in the nation to ban algorithmic price collusion through software like RealPage.

Realpage and Yardi have been explicitly marketing their software to landlords and real estate investors as a way for them to raise prices, but argue that it's all legal, because it is the algorithm, and not some guy named Guido.

If it's illegal when Guido does this, it's illegal when RealPage does it:

San Francisco's Board of Supervisors this week approved a ban on software that is allegedly used by landlords to collude on rent prices. Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin recently proposed what his office called "the first local ordinance in the country banning the sale or use of software which enables price collusion among large corporate landlords for the purpose of rent-gouging."

The ordinance was approved on a first reading by a 10-0 vote by the board on Tuesday. It still needs to pass a final vote scheduled for September 3, Bloomberg wrote.

The ban targets software companies RealPage and Yardi. "RealPage has exacerbated our rent crisis and empowered corporate landlords to intentionally keep units vacant. So we're taking action locally to ensure our working renters can afford to live here," Peskin said.

RealPage and Yardi "collect and combine proprietary large landlord data and make pricing and occupancy recommendations," Peskin's office said. "These recommendations then effectively become the lay of the land, with multiple investigations finding they amount to illegal price-fixing. RealPage's own executives have told investors that its software has driven double-digit increases in rents, increased 'turnover' of units, and increased vacancy rates."

………

The San Francisco proposal said the software "programs enable landlords to indirectly coordinate with one another through the sharing of nonpublic competitively sensitive data, in order to artificially inflate rents and vacancy rates for rental housing. Participating landlords provide vast amounts of proprietary data to the programs, which in turn do not just summarize statistical data, but also perform calculations with the data to then set or provide recommendations for rent and occupancy levels."

The ordinance "would prohibit the sale or use of 'algorithmic devices' to set, recommend, or advise on rents or occupancy levels for residential rental units in San Francisco." It defines "algorithmic device" as including revenue management software "that uses algorithms to analyze nonpublic competitor rental data for the purposes of providing a landlord recommendations on whether to leave their unit vacant or on what rent to charge."

"An entity that sold such a device for use on residential rental units in San Francisco, or a San Francisco landlord that used such a device, could face a civil action and be ordered to pay damages, restitution, civil penalties of up to $1,000 per violation, and/or attorneys' fees," the proposal said.

Again, I will note that this sort of anti-competitive collusion is not just unlawful, it is illegal.  In days gone by, people were arrested for sh%$ like this.

Let's make antitrust enforcement great again.

Well, There's a Surprise

It turns out that OpenAI has a tool to detect the content that its various large language machines generate, but they have refused to release it.

This is not a surprise.  If they released this tool, people would no longer be able to use the tool to deceive other people, and without deception, there is no product: 

OpenAI has a method to reliably detect when someone uses ChatGPT to write an essay or research paper. The company hasn’t released it despite widespread concerns about students using artificial intelligence to cheat. 

The project has been mired in internal debate at OpenAI for roughly two years and has been ready to be released for about a year, according to people familiar with the matter and internal documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “It’s just a matter of pressing a button,” one of the people said.

In trying to decide what to do, OpenAI employees have wavered between the startup’s stated commitment to transparency and their desire to attract and retain users. One survey the company conducted of loyal ChatGPT users found nearly a third would be turned off by the anticheating technology.

An OpenAI spokeswoman said the company is concerned the tool could disproportionately affect groups such as non-native English speakers. “The text watermarking method we’re developing is technically promising but has important risks we’re weighing while we research alternatives,” she said. “We believe the deliberate approach we’ve taken is necessary given the complexities involved and its likely impact on the broader ecosystem beyond OpenAI.”

Yeah, they are using DEI as an alibi.

Oh, those poor non-English speakers.

Bullsh%$.  The only value that ChatGPT offers IS cheating.  Of course they won't release the tool.

………

ChatGPT is powered by an AI system that predicts what word or word fragment, known as a token, should come next in a sentence. The anticheating tool under discussion at OpenAI would slightly change how the tokens are selected. Those changes would leave a pattern called a watermark.
The watermarks would be unnoticeable to the human eye but could be found with OpenAI’s detection technology. The detector provides a score of how likely the entire document or a portion of it was written by ChatGPT.

The watermarks are 99.9% effective when enough new text is created by ChatGPT, according to the internal documents.

“It is more likely that the sun evaporates tomorrow than this term paper wasn’t watermarked,” said John Thickstun, a Stanford researcher who is part of a team that has developed a similar watermarking method for AI text.

………

There is broad agreement within the company that determining who can use this detector would be a challenge. If too few people have it, the tool wouldn’t be useful. If too many get access, bad actors might decipher the company’s watermarking technique. 

Again bullsh%$.  Just like the prior tech bro obsession, cryptocurrency, the only application is corruption, because all that LLM AI is good for is bullsh%$ting.

One does hope that this bubble pops sooner rather than later, because the longer it goes the more that the rest of us will have to pay to bail out the Silly-Con Valley bunco artists.

Headline of the Day

KKR Founders Sued for Allegedly Getting Giant Payday for No Work

—Wall Street Journal

I am shocked that such a headline has appeared in the mainstream media.

I am even more shocked that it was in the WSJ, the biggest cheerleader for Wall Street parasites for getting giant paydays for no work in the United States:

When Henry Kravis and George Roberts handed off the day-to-day management of private-equity firm KKR to their successors in 2021, the two billionaires netted shares now worth more than $650 million.

A new lawsuit is accusing the company of paying Kravis and Roberts but getting nothing in return. Their windfalls came from a complicated financial structure that has netted billions of dollars for other company founders and dealmakers in similar transactions.

………

The shareholder suit filed by a Steamfitters union local pension fund is one of a string of legal actions that are steadily gaining momentum in Delaware courts that could force many private-equity executives to hand back the payouts. Already, a healthcare company has agreed to pay $71 million to settle a similar lawsuit and judges have issued decisions in other cases that have largely been favorable to plaintiffs.

The KKR suit takes aim at a payment allegedly tied to a tax receivable agreement, or TRA. TRAs are typically combined with specific corporate structures to create and share potentially valuable tax assets between the company and their early investors.

………

“This case is about two Wall Street titans who wanted to enrich themselves and their fellow private unitholders because their peers had done so,” the complaint, filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery and made public Tuesday, alleges. 

The union pension fund’s suit names Kravis and Roberts as defendants alongside current KKR co-Chief Executives Scott Nuttall and Joseph Bae, other board members and the company itself. The suit is similar to other litigation undertaken against rivals Apollo Global Management and Carlyle Group, as well as website host GoDaddy. 

The cases are at various stages progressing through the Chancery courts, though judges have issued several decisions favoring plaintiffs in other cases. 

………

TRAs are deals between companies and early investors that help companies save on their corporate income taxes. The savings are generated when early, pre-IPO investors sell their stakes on the public markets.

I believe that this article constitutes a declaration against interest.

If the Department of Justice and the the New York Attorney General were to actually enforce anti-fraud laws, we'd see a parade of executives being frog-marched out of their offices in handcuffs.