Their assessment found that six out of nine “planetary boundaries” had been broken because of human-caused pollution and destruction of the natural world. The planetary boundaries are the limits of key global systems – such as climate, water and wildlife diversity – beyond which their ability to maintain a healthy planet is in danger of failing.
The broken boundaries mean the systems have been driven far from the safe and stable state that existed from the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, to the start of the industrial revolution. The whole of modern civilisation arose in this time period, called the Holocene.
The assessment was the first of all nine planetary boundaries and represented the “first scientific health check for the entire planet”, the researchers said. Six boundaries have been passed and two are judged to be close to being broken: air pollution and ocean acidification. The one boundary that is not threatened is atmospheric ozone, after action to phase out destructive chemicals in recent decades led to the ozone hole shrinking.
As is my wife’s custom, she is talking to her family at the breakfast table. Suddenly somebody mentioned hard boiled eggs. I immediately thought of this.
At a senate hearing on Tuesday, lawmakers were shown two shriveled bodies with shrunken heads – alongside video footage of “unexplained anomalous phenomena” – by Jaime Maussan, a sports journalist turned UFO enthusiast. Maussan said the remains were more than 1,000 years old and belonged to “non-human beings that are not part of our terrestrial evolution”.
“It’s the queen of all evidence,” Maussan claimed. “That is, if the DNA is showing us that they are non-human beings and that there is nothing that looks like this in the world, we should take it as such.”
Other studies have suggested the mummies, which were found in Nazca, Peru, in 2017, are fraudulent.
This cracked me up:
Gutiérrez Luna said that Congress had not taken a position on the theories put forward during the hearing but stressed the important of listening to “all voices, all opinions”.
and this too:
Nonetheless the congressional hearing was a sign of the increased respectability of a field once seen as the reserve of conspiracy theorists.
From the reserve of conspiracy theorists to the realm of the crackpot crazies.
Sounding a fresh alarm about white supremacism and extremism in the military, a coalition of more than 35 human rights groups, experts and faith organizations this week called on the Secretary of Defense to account for the department’s apparent lack of progress.
“Extremism undermines the strength of the military and our democracy,” the groups, led by Human Rights First, wrote in a letter Wednesday to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
The letter cites a USA TODAY investigation published in July, which found the military could show almost no progress on a collection of reforms Austin called for more than two years ago.
The organizations called for a public update, noting that the military’s own study of extremism in the ranks has been completed but never publicly released, as USA TODAY reported exclusively in July.
@OzarkHillbilly: Isn’t it weird how animal life on another planet evolved exactly the way it evolved here on Earth? Head with eyes/ears, etc., skeleton with ribs, legs, arms, etc.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the quickest way to expose U.S. military secrets is to become a gamer.
Case in point: A War Thunder player recently posted images from the F-117 Nighthawk’s flight manual on a forum that players frequent, marking the 12th time that classified or sensitive information has been shared in the video game’s community, according to Brandon Lyttle, of the Niche Gamer website.
War Thunder is a multiplayer combat game that attempts to give users a hyper-realistic simulation of U.S. and foreign military technologies. The forum’s focus on realism has proved to be its Achilles heel, as players have repeatedly put a desire to make a point or settle an argument ahead of good OPSEC.
In this case, the data about the stealth fighter posted by the War Thunder user included locations of its sensors, engine specifications, and firing angles, Niche Gamer first reported on Monday. Eventually, the entire thread in which the player posted about the F-117 was taken down.
There will be hand waving about the F-117 being retired and being 70s/80s 1st Gen stealth technology but the fact is other classified info is also ending up in the public domain.
This is the latest example of classified or sensitive information being posted on War Thunder. In 2021, a War Thunder player who claimed the video game had not accurately depicted what the British Challenger-2 main battle tank is capable of posted an image taken from the tank’s technical manual. The following year, War Thunder users posted sensitive information about the F-16 Fighting Falcon and F-15 Eagles.
@OzarkHillbilly: Most people are not equipped with the knowledge or critical thinking skills to counter hardcore conspiracy theorists. This isn’t at all a new problem; it was just as true 50 years ago as it is today. But 50 years ago the conspiracy kooks didn’t have anywhere near the platform for disseminating their views, and they were largely kept at arm’s length by mainstream society. “Respectable” people didn’t give these views the time of day, but it’s very likely if you got them into a room with one of these folks, many of them could have been converted within an hour. The reason they rejected those opinions had less to do with understanding why they were bogus than with holding an image of the believers as flakes. The crackpots can get by a lot of people’s defenses simply by presenting themselves as “normal.” If you’ve ever listened to the stories of people who have been radicalized, there’s almost always a theme of having had their expectations of what a believer is supposed to look and sound like demolished.
A small data point on China: we have an employee in Shanghai and we use a local firm specializing in hiring and administering employees for companies like ours. As an example of what they do and they talk to us about, they administer her payroll deductions according to Chinese law. As an example of what they do and do not talk to us about, they keep her political file up to date, which is important because gaps in her file would prevent her from getting employed by a Chinese company at a future date. Anyway, other than those types of things, we deal with everything else directly. Starting a few days ago she has had increasing difficulty connecting to her Office account. It wasn’t like a flip was switched, but rather her Teams meetings became a little choppy, and then more choppy and within a few days were so choppy as to be unusable. At this point, for the past couple of days she hasn’t been able to access her corporate email. Is it an ISP issue? Perhaps. Is it a change in government policy? Maybe. But if so it’s not an announced one. And no one is likely to directly relay that to her. My guess is that if that is the case, it’s not affecting foreign firms with large presences there, but rather she is getting swept up in something aimed at the general population. When I lived there, this type of thing would happen on our personal accounts around big dates, like the Tiananmen Square anniversary or the Moon Festival in October, or when Putin came to visit. But as far as I know there is nothing significant going on now. It could turn out to be an ongoing problem or it could be cleared up tomorrow.
@Kylopod: About 15 years ago there was an especially embarrassing example of this when one of the “legitimate and skeptical” Bigfoot “researchers” announced he was having a press conference to reveal that the body of an actual Bigfoot had been discovered, and in the Bigfoot world it was widely seen as the proof that would finally convince all the skeptics, change their reputations into heroic scientists instead of cranks, yada, yada, yada. The frozen carcass turned out to be a rubber ape suit frozen in a block of ice, in a fraud perpetrated by two guys who cooked it up to claim award. The “researcher” paid the reward, scheduled the press conference and started hyping it. I remember when it happened much was made initially about how this particular researcher was serious, and properly skeptical and so forth.
@MarkedMan: I just looked up “Steve Kulls” the researcher who got hoaxed in the above Bigfoot story. It looks like he’s still at it and, surprise, surprise, his LinkedIn photo shows him as a goofy tactical gear man-boy.
@JohnSF: It’s still jarring to see people act that out. I’m sure there are blind spots like that in my own life – like, I might think certain things that aren’t backed by facts but I just don’t know it – but this is just so public. When it shows up as a “press conference gone wrong”, it’s just a head-scratcher. You didn’t even think that maybe the guy selling you a “Bigfoot corpse” might have ulterior motives, even though “Bigfoot research” is considered a fringe/crazy enterprise? You don’t even recognize where you are on the social spectrum?
It would be like someone emailing me about getting paid to juggle in my spare time and me just being like, “Cool! Sounds great! I’m in!”
@ptfe: The notion of the lone wolf researcher making some giant discovery or invention and taking down the establishment is a powerful cultural myth that’s been instilled in us through movies, books, and even the way the actual history of figures like Darwin and Einstein is typically presented. The unsexy reality is that most scientific and technological advancements are done through corporate teams, often working under a government grant. And yes, the whole enterprise is shot through with groupthink, politics, and the profit motive. But that doesn’t mean they are about to be shown up by a guy tinkering in his garage.
And that’s without even getting into the way conspiracy theories and just general conspiratorial thinking is constantly promoted in popular culture like the X-Files, Capricorn One, Dan Brown, and indeed the entire genre of conspiracy thrillers.
@ptfe: I have a friend who simply cannot understand why I remain skeptical about space aliens visiting us here on earth. To him the evidence is so overwhelming and of course all the world governments would want to cover it up and it is believable they have been successful at it for decade after decade. I don’t ever bring it up myself and when he does I merely point out that this has been going on for 75 years and the evidence has never gotten any better despite the fact that billions of people are walking around with high resolution video cameras in their hands. Thing is, he’s a very smart guy in other respects. There’s something about this such that he seems to need to believe it, and I’m no shrink and so won’t even try to figure that out.
I was surprised that yesterday, aside from a two line comment by CSK, there was no mention of Mitt Romney retiring. One time presidential candidate and the second biggest liar in Republican history, and his departure is unremarked.
In his announcement he tied Hawley, Cruz, and Vance together as the smartest, and smarmiest, three guys in the Senate. @charontwo: links to a critique of an Atlantic piece on Mitt Romney. The Atlantic notes that Romney singles the three out as smart, oily liars, but neither Romney nor Atlantic mention they’re all three sponsored by Peter Thiel. I’ve been bitching that money is the most important thing in politics and no one talks about it.
I’m old. I’ve watched the mantle passed from Nelson Bunker Hunt to Richard Mellon Scaife to the Koch Bros and now to a new generation represented by Peter Thiel. I guess we see progress os a sort. Used to be the richest guy in the state would get himself appointed to the Senate to schmooze in the most exclusive club and watch out for his money. Now Thiel is so rich he can hire three guys (3+?) to do it for him.
And Romney’s going out with his usual grace and style, pointing out that his Party has gone nuts with Trump, but refraining from doing anything about it. He could say vote Blue, but no, he has to also slap at Biden on his way out.
@gVOR10: Re: Romney. One of the most frustrating thing about Romney’s run for the presidency was was when I realized that if anything even remotely involves finance the press makes no effort to understand it, which led to Romney admitting over and over that he devastated the workers lives in the companies his private equity fund acquired, but the press never even realized what he was saying. I refer to him bragging about how successful he was in making them more “efficient”. The problem is that the layman assumes that “efficiency” referred to the business itself, but it actually referred to the efficiency of the capital invested. You can make the actual business of a company more efficient in many ways, such as adding a special production fixture that reduces manufacturing time, scheduling shipments to minimize the warehouse space needed, etc. The problem is those types of efficiencies requires deep understanding of the business. On the other hand, if what you are concerned about is the efficiency of the capital invested, the easiest way to do that is to take on debt. Rather than use, say $100M of your own money to generate a return of X, you use $10M of your own money plus $90M of debt to get a return of (X – interest payments). Even though the overall return is lower because of the interest, the investors get that return on $10M rather than $100M profit. But, and here’s where the devastation comes in, that is in jeopardy if those interest payments are so high they make the company unprofitable. So Mitt and his pals forced the businesses to increase profitability the tried and true way. They reduced workers salaries, took away pensions (this was the 70’s and 80’s – people still had pensions), rescheduled work shifts to be sheer hell, took away medical coverage, made more people “part time” employees, called hourly workers “managers” so they didn’t have to pay them overtime, and tossed older, higher paid workers out on the streets and replaced them with kids at lower salaries. Mitt would give a speech bragging about what a business genius was he was for increasing efficiency, secure in the knowledge that only his fellow business leaders understood what he was talking about.
Kathy’s first law of scientific research: In general, the smaller and more subtle a measurement is, the instruments required become larger and much more expensive.
For example, it takes a HUGE complex like CERN with multiple BIG detectors to find the decay products of the Higgs boson. It takes two sticks and a protractor to measure the Earth’s circumference.
That’s what’s driven research from an individual pursuit to large, complex, well-funded organizations.
Even when you have one brilliant lead researcher figuring out all kinds of things, like for example Ernest Rutherford, you find they had the backing and support of a research institution, including staff that carried out many tedious and meticulous experiments. TL;DR Rutherford never bounced alpha particles off gold foil.
Remember Kim Davis, the “small town”* Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples in 2015? She’s been ordered to pay $100K in damages for violating the civil rights of one of the couples. Another episode of FAFO. Also. in keeping with my theme of no one talks about money, the linked Guardian article notes a gay rights group supporting the couple, but makes no mention of whatever holy roller foundation or RW legal entrepreneur group is supporting the ex-clerk.
* The press always characterized it as a small Kentucky town, population 7,000. But it’s the home of Morehead State College, enrollment 8,800. Makes for a little different picture.
…and even the way the actual history of figures like Darwin and Einstein is typically presented.
The folklore at least is that Einstein was trying to describe his early thinking about general relativity to someone in a hand-waving sort of way and complaining that he needed to somehow make things rigorous. Whoever he was talking to supposedly said, “This fellow Ricci-Curbastro has developed something he calls tensor calculus…” The Ricci tensor is, I have been told, deeply important to formalizing general relativity. (The math there is way beyond my pay grade.)
John Mack of Harvard became a UFO proponent in 1990. I was living in Cambridge at the time, and he held meetings of people who claimed to have been kidnapped by space aliens. Those meetings were closed to the press and general public.
Michael saying nurses get a pass from calling him dear or hon in yesterdays thread made me think of Mu, as Mu even posted pics of when he was in the hospital and talked about flirting with some cute nurses who attended him.
Mu, are you around or just taking a sabbatical from posting on forums like this one?
Also, gVOR10 Romney is still a GOPer, so a swipe at Biden was pretty much expected of him and does not bother me at all.
Even though he is retiring, it still took a bit of guts to declare there are enemies of the United States in his political party. The thing is that doing something about it could be rather frightening, but at least someone who made it to the point where they could have been our President is saying there are traitors in Congress who need to dealt with. Better than saying nothing.
Many folks are full of bluster when they rant about wanting to shoot liberals, because the last thing they really want is the US to become one large hot zone where gunfights can break out anywhere and anytime. They just want us to bend the knee once they take over the government
If we fight back it spoils the utopia vision they have of life in this country once they take over.
Ask the tourists in the Russian occupied parts of Ukraine how pleasant their vacations are when there were arms/fuel depots being blown up not all that far from where they were trying to relax on a beach.
I do not buy it that no one who is ostensibly on our side will not push back violently against minority authoritarian rule, I think a forced takeover of government institutions in this country will be anything but simple.
I could also be totally wrong, and MAGA takes over our country soon with barely a peep from the opposition. I really hope that does not come to pass.
According to ABC, Gannett newspapers is seeking to hire reporters who will cover…Beyonce and Taylor Swift.
Cocktail party chatter:
Me: What do you do?:
Other guest: I’m a rough, tough newspaper person.
Me: Really? That must be exciting.
Other guest: You got that right.
Me: What do you cover?
Other guest: (Narrows eyes; looks stern and forbidding) I’m on the Taylor Swift beat.
There will be hand waving about the F-117 being retired and being 70s/80s 1st Gen stealth technology but the fact is
…that people with security clearances HAVE NO DISCRETION to decide which of the classified material they have access to is “really” sensitive or harmful if released. This could not be made any more explicit in all of the training and annual refresher briefings. There is a procedure for reporting material that you think might be improperly classified; it does not involve gamer websites. (Or Mar-a-Lago, for that matter.)
The notion of the lone wolf researcher making some giant discovery or invention and taking down the establishment is a powerful cultural myth…The unsexy reality is that most scientific and technological advancements are done through corporate teams, often working under a government grant.
The lone wolf model happens just often enough to keep the trope alive. Barry Marshall really did drink a basically home-brewed culture of H. pylori to test his theory that the bacteria was responsible for peptic ulcers when most of the experts believed that couldn’t be the case. He may not have been a lone wolf (he partnered with Robin Warren, a slightly older, more experienced pathologist), but he was close enough that it’s not much of a stretch to say that chronic ulcers are curable now because of a lone wolf working outside of the establishment.
Examples like Marshall are valuable for helping us remember that the scientific consensus is not always right. They are less valuable when we forget that exceptions that prove the rule remain, in the big picture, exceptions. They become harmful when conspiracy theorists decide that they are not exceptions at all, but actually represent the rule.
And Romney’s going out with his usual grace and style, pointing out that his Party has gone nuts with Trump, but refraining from doing anything about it. He could say vote Blue, but no, he has to also slap at Biden on his way out.
QFE.
Impressive: HW leaking to the press his Hillary vote and Cindy McCain’s Biden endorsement.
Romney is still hedging. It’s not that impressive. I’ll give him a hat tip, but an ovation? No.
Hunter Biden has been charged with 3 felony gun charges. Appears they are throwing the book at him because these charges are rare.
Word is Republicans are not pleased.
One thing that would help correct the perception of scientific research, would be a change to the Nobel Prize rules.
As is, a Noble in Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine, can only be shared by 3 people at most. This might have sufficed when the prizes were set up at the dawn of the XX Century, but not any more.
The limit makes more sense for the Literature and Peace awards (the economics prize, as I recall, is administered by the Nobel Foundation, but was set up separately).
Thing is a paper or series of papers for a revolutionary development will list a lot of people (and leave out many as well), but a Nobel for it will go to two or three of them. A rule change allowing a prize to be shared by all involved, would make it clear how many people are behind most developments.
@Kathy: oh, but ABC and CBS had to break into regular programming with this breaking news! It must be of the utmost importance! President Hunter Biden being charged… no, wait…
@dazedandconfused: I’ve wondered for a while which group is larger in the general populace: those who are unwilling to say “Beetlejuice” three times and those who are unwilling to say “Candyman” five times in front of a mirror.
@Rick S: for 2nd Amendment absolutists, these charges put them in an interesting position. Plus, they can’t implicate Uncle Joe with these charges, which is the whole idea of all the Hunter hoopla.
Any thoughts on the upcoming Frasier reboot/sequel?
IMO, while Grammer was the star of Frasier, the show was stolen by the characters of Martin, Eddie, Daphne, and above all Niles. None of them will be on this new show.
I think it may wind up like the reboot/revival/sequel of Night Court. I’ve seen some eps, trying to give it a chance, but the characters plain lack any chemistry between them.
Hunter is fighting back now based on “selective prosecution” and appears to have a pretty strong case, plenty of documentation and maybe more to come now that he is seeking it.
Can anyone tell me how many people have been federally indicted for purchasing a gun while dealing with substance abuse issues? I don’t know the answer, but in my over 29 years as an attorney, I have never heard of it.
@charontwo: The selective prosecution argument is weak sauce. Selective prosecution can be a basis to have Hunter’s case dismissed in the same way that I could have a chance at sleeping with Taylor Swift–it’s theoretically possible but highly unlikely. This is the mirror image of Trump claiming that he is being selectively prosecuted because Biden and Pence also had classified documents they shouldn’t have had, and those of us who scoffed at that claim when Trump made it shouldn’t dignify it when it’s made on Hunter’s behalf.
Hunter is being selectively prosecuted because of who he is, but under the standard to have a case dismissed for selective prosecution that almost certainly will not get his case dismissed. Nor should it. We ought to prosecute prominent people who break the law in circumstances where we would cut someone else a break. The deterrent effect of prosecuting the prominent is far higher than the deterrent effect of our normal practice of winking at misbehavior by the well-connected while throwing the book at the unwashed masses. Our country might be in a better spot today if there had been a little selective prosecution of Trump three or four decades ago.
@charontwo: The selective prosecution argument is weak sauce. Selective prosecution can be a basis to have Hunter’s case dismissed in the same way that I could have a chance at sleeping with Taylor Swift–it’s theoretically possible but highly unlikely. This is the mirror image of Trump claiming that he is being selectively prosecuted because Biden and Pence also had classified documents they shouldn’t have had, and those of us who scoffed at that claim when Trump made it shouldn’t dignify it when it’s made on Hunter’s behalf.
Hunter is being selectively prosecuted because of who he is, but under the standard to have a case dismissed for selective prosecution that almost certainly will not get his case dismissed. Nor should it. We ought to prosecute prominent people who break the law in circumstances where we would cut someone else a break. The deterrent effect of prosecuting the prominent is far higher than the deterrent effect of our normal practice of winking at misbehavior by the well-connected while throwing the book at the unwashed masses. Our country might be in a better spot today if there had been a little selective prosecution of Trump three or four decades ago.
One possibility is that the gun charge is tossed out because the statute behind it is ruled unconstitutional. United States v. Rahimi is before the Supreme Court now. Rahimi violated a domestic-abuse inspired injunction against owning firearms, but was found to have two anyway.
There’s a school of thought that says this Court will throw that out as unconstitutiuonal, and if they do, then Hunter’s charges go up in smoke, too. It’s hard to see why the same test would strike down the law under which he was charged. But then the other charge fails, too, since the falsehood was not material to the government.
@Roger: Hunter is being selectively prosecuted because of who he is,
Yes, however trump is being prosecuted because unlike Biden and Pence he refused to obey a lawful subpoena and actually obstructed the justice dept in their attempts to recover documents that trump had no right to possess.
@Roger: Our country might be in a better spot today if there had been a little selective prosecution of Trump three or four decades ago.
And yes on that last bit, except for the fact that it WOULD NOT have been a selective prosecution. As is it was selectively “not enforcing the law” because he was rich and could bleed their budget dry.
We ought to prosecute prominent people who break the law in circumstances where we would cut someone else a break.
Nah, we should just treat people equally.
Anyone caught stealing nuclear secrets and staging a coup would be charged and prosecuted. Anyone candidate caught falsifying campaign donations would be charged and pled out (but Trump won’t take a plea, so that’s on him).
Any drug user who lied about their drug use on a gun application would typically be ignored or fined. See: any number of gun owning rural opioid-addicts or celebrity potheads.
Hunter Biden is only being prosecuted where most others would not because Republicans are mad David Weiss has been after the Bidens for five years and found nothing of import.
Hunter did the crime so let the legal process play out. Republicans still are mad because they know it’s a big whoop nothingburger.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1702143516875333986.html
Peter Thiel’s cat’s paws: Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley J.D. Vance.
As is my wife’s custom, she is talking to her family at the breakfast table. Suddenly somebody mentioned hard boiled eggs. I immediately thought of this.
Corrected headline: Lauren Boebert: congresswoman kicked out of musical for being a self-entitled ass
They live among us: Mexican senate hears testimony on extraterrestrial life: ‘We are not alone’
This cracked me up:
and this too:
From the reserve of conspiracy theorists to the realm of the crackpot crazies.
Yes, the problem is not going away and will not go away. Like cockroaches.
‘Attack on military readiness’: Human rights groups sound new alarm on extremism
@OzarkHillbilly: Isn’t it weird how animal life on another planet evolved exactly the way it evolved here on Earth? Head with eyes/ears, etc., skeleton with ribs, legs, arms, etc.
Military secrets leaked on ‘War Thunder’ forums yet again
There will be hand waving about the F-117 being retired and being 70s/80s 1st Gen stealth technology but the fact is other classified info is also ending up in the public domain.
The one in which DeSantis promises executions minus due process…
https://www.threads.net/@aaron.rupar/post/CxJ9BsNAWbL
Remember that DeSantis oversaw torture at Gitmo.
@Tony W: I mean, those ancient aliens seeded the entire galaxy, so it’s no surprise…
@OzarkHillbilly:
I saw this…they don’t even look believable.
@ptfe: …and then lost interest in further travel.
@OzarkHillbilly: Most people are not equipped with the knowledge or critical thinking skills to counter hardcore conspiracy theorists. This isn’t at all a new problem; it was just as true 50 years ago as it is today. But 50 years ago the conspiracy kooks didn’t have anywhere near the platform for disseminating their views, and they were largely kept at arm’s length by mainstream society. “Respectable” people didn’t give these views the time of day, but it’s very likely if you got them into a room with one of these folks, many of them could have been converted within an hour. The reason they rejected those opinions had less to do with understanding why they were bogus than with holding an image of the believers as flakes. The crackpots can get by a lot of people’s defenses simply by presenting themselves as “normal.” If you’ve ever listened to the stories of people who have been radicalized, there’s almost always a theme of having had their expectations of what a believer is supposed to look and sound like demolished.
@Tony W: Or maybe they just know what the koala is smiling about.
A small data point on China: we have an employee in Shanghai and we use a local firm specializing in hiring and administering employees for companies like ours. As an example of what they do and they talk to us about, they administer her payroll deductions according to Chinese law. As an example of what they do and do not talk to us about, they keep her political file up to date, which is important because gaps in her file would prevent her from getting employed by a Chinese company at a future date. Anyway, other than those types of things, we deal with everything else directly. Starting a few days ago she has had increasing difficulty connecting to her Office account. It wasn’t like a flip was switched, but rather her Teams meetings became a little choppy, and then more choppy and within a few days were so choppy as to be unusable. At this point, for the past couple of days she hasn’t been able to access her corporate email. Is it an ISP issue? Perhaps. Is it a change in government policy? Maybe. But if so it’s not an announced one. And no one is likely to directly relay that to her. My guess is that if that is the case, it’s not affecting foreign firms with large presences there, but rather she is getting swept up in something aimed at the general population. When I lived there, this type of thing would happen on our personal accounts around big dates, like the Tiananmen Square anniversary or the Moon Festival in October, or when Putin came to visit. But as far as I know there is nothing significant going on now. It could turn out to be an ongoing problem or it could be cleared up tomorrow.
@Kylopod: About 15 years ago there was an especially embarrassing example of this when one of the “legitimate and skeptical” Bigfoot “researchers” announced he was having a press conference to reveal that the body of an actual Bigfoot had been discovered, and in the Bigfoot world it was widely seen as the proof that would finally convince all the skeptics, change their reputations into heroic scientists instead of cranks, yada, yada, yada. The frozen carcass turned out to be a rubber ape suit frozen in a block of ice, in a fraud perpetrated by two guys who cooked it up to claim award. The “researcher” paid the reward, scheduled the press conference and started hyping it. I remember when it happened much was made initially about how this particular researcher was serious, and properly skeptical and so forth.
@MarkedMan: I just looked up “Steve Kulls” the researcher who got hoaxed in the above Bigfoot story. It looks like he’s still at it and, surprise, surprise, his LinkedIn photo shows him as a goofy tactical gear man-boy.
@MarkedMan:
The old story: It’s easy to fool somebody who wants to be fooled.
@Tony W: It’s a mystery!
@JohnSF: It’s still jarring to see people act that out. I’m sure there are blind spots like that in my own life – like, I might think certain things that aren’t backed by facts but I just don’t know it – but this is just so public. When it shows up as a “press conference gone wrong”, it’s just a head-scratcher. You didn’t even think that maybe the guy selling you a “Bigfoot corpse” might have ulterior motives, even though “Bigfoot research” is considered a fringe/crazy enterprise? You don’t even recognize where you are on the social spectrum?
It would be like someone emailing me about getting paid to juggle in my spare time and me just being like, “Cool! Sounds great! I’m in!”
@MarkedMan: He looks like a real peach of a guy.
@ptfe: The notion of the lone wolf researcher making some giant discovery or invention and taking down the establishment is a powerful cultural myth that’s been instilled in us through movies, books, and even the way the actual history of figures like Darwin and Einstein is typically presented. The unsexy reality is that most scientific and technological advancements are done through corporate teams, often working under a government grant. And yes, the whole enterprise is shot through with groupthink, politics, and the profit motive. But that doesn’t mean they are about to be shown up by a guy tinkering in his garage.
And that’s without even getting into the way conspiracy theories and just general conspiratorial thinking is constantly promoted in popular culture like the X-Files, Capricorn One, Dan Brown, and indeed the entire genre of conspiracy thrillers.
@ptfe: I have a friend who simply cannot understand why I remain skeptical about space aliens visiting us here on earth. To him the evidence is so overwhelming and of course all the world governments would want to cover it up and it is believable they have been successful at it for decade after decade. I don’t ever bring it up myself and when he does I merely point out that this has been going on for 75 years and the evidence has never gotten any better despite the fact that billions of people are walking around with high resolution video cameras in their hands. Thing is, he’s a very smart guy in other respects. There’s something about this such that he seems to need to believe it, and I’m no shrink and so won’t even try to figure that out.
I was surprised that yesterday, aside from a two line comment by CSK, there was no mention of Mitt Romney retiring. One time presidential candidate and the second biggest liar in Republican history, and his departure is unremarked.
In his announcement he tied Hawley, Cruz, and Vance together as the smartest, and smarmiest, three guys in the Senate. @charontwo: links to a critique of an Atlantic piece on Mitt Romney. The Atlantic notes that Romney singles the three out as smart, oily liars, but neither Romney nor Atlantic mention they’re all three sponsored by Peter Thiel. I’ve been bitching that money is the most important thing in politics and no one talks about it.
I’m old. I’ve watched the mantle passed from Nelson Bunker Hunt to Richard Mellon Scaife to the Koch Bros and now to a new generation represented by Peter Thiel. I guess we see progress os a sort. Used to be the richest guy in the state would get himself appointed to the Senate to schmooze in the most exclusive club and watch out for his money. Now Thiel is so rich he can hire three guys (3+?) to do it for him.
And Romney’s going out with his usual grace and style, pointing out that his Party has gone nuts with Trump, but refraining from doing anything about it. He could say vote Blue, but no, he has to also slap at Biden on his way out.
@gVOR10: Re: Romney. One of the most frustrating thing about Romney’s run for the presidency was was when I realized that if anything even remotely involves finance the press makes no effort to understand it, which led to Romney admitting over and over that he devastated the workers lives in the companies his private equity fund acquired, but the press never even realized what he was saying. I refer to him bragging about how successful he was in making them more “efficient”. The problem is that the layman assumes that “efficiency” referred to the business itself, but it actually referred to the efficiency of the capital invested. You can make the actual business of a company more efficient in many ways, such as adding a special production fixture that reduces manufacturing time, scheduling shipments to minimize the warehouse space needed, etc. The problem is those types of efficiencies requires deep understanding of the business. On the other hand, if what you are concerned about is the efficiency of the capital invested, the easiest way to do that is to take on debt. Rather than use, say $100M of your own money to generate a return of X, you use $10M of your own money plus $90M of debt to get a return of (X – interest payments). Even though the overall return is lower because of the interest, the investors get that return on $10M rather than $100M profit. But, and here’s where the devastation comes in, that is in jeopardy if those interest payments are so high they make the company unprofitable. So Mitt and his pals forced the businesses to increase profitability the tried and true way. They reduced workers salaries, took away pensions (this was the 70’s and 80’s – people still had pensions), rescheduled work shifts to be sheer hell, took away medical coverage, made more people “part time” employees, called hourly workers “managers” so they didn’t have to pay them overtime, and tossed older, higher paid workers out on the streets and replaced them with kids at lower salaries. Mitt would give a speech bragging about what a business genius was he was for increasing efficiency, secure in the knowledge that only his fellow business leaders understood what he was talking about.
@Kylopod:
Kathy’s first law of scientific research: In general, the smaller and more subtle a measurement is, the instruments required become larger and much more expensive.
For example, it takes a HUGE complex like CERN with multiple BIG detectors to find the decay products of the Higgs boson. It takes two sticks and a protractor to measure the Earth’s circumference.
That’s what’s driven research from an individual pursuit to large, complex, well-funded organizations.
Even when you have one brilliant lead researcher figuring out all kinds of things, like for example Ernest Rutherford, you find they had the backing and support of a research institution, including staff that carried out many tedious and meticulous experiments. TL;DR Rutherford never bounced alpha particles off gold foil.
Remember Kim Davis, the “small town”* Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples in 2015? She’s been ordered to pay $100K in damages for violating the civil rights of one of the couples. Another episode of FAFO. Also. in keeping with my theme of no one talks about money, the linked Guardian article notes a gay rights group supporting the couple, but makes no mention of whatever holy roller foundation or RW legal entrepreneur group is supporting the ex-clerk.
* The press always characterized it as a small Kentucky town, population 7,000. But it’s the home of Morehead State College, enrollment 8,800. Makes for a little different picture.
@Kylopod:
The folklore at least is that Einstein was trying to describe his early thinking about general relativity to someone in a hand-waving sort of way and complaining that he needed to somehow make things rigorous. Whoever he was talking to supposedly said, “This fellow Ricci-Curbastro has developed something he calls tensor calculus…” The Ricci tensor is, I have been told, deeply important to formalizing general relativity. (The math there is way beyond my pay grade.)
@Kylopod:
John Mack of Harvard became a UFO proponent in 1990. I was living in Cambridge at the time, and he held meetings of people who claimed to have been kidnapped by space aliens. Those meetings were closed to the press and general public.
@gVOR10:
Donald Trump was ecstatic with glee at the news.
This headline from the Associated Press says it all:
“Alex Jones spent over $93,000 in July. The Sandy Hook families who sued him have yet to see a dime.”
Michael saying nurses get a pass from calling him dear or hon in yesterdays thread made me think of Mu, as Mu even posted pics of when he was in the hospital and talked about flirting with some cute nurses who attended him.
Mu, are you around or just taking a sabbatical from posting on forums like this one?
Also, gVOR10 Romney is still a GOPer, so a swipe at Biden was pretty much expected of him and does not bother me at all.
Even though he is retiring, it still took a bit of guts to declare there are enemies of the United States in his political party. The thing is that doing something about it could be rather frightening, but at least someone who made it to the point where they could have been our President is saying there are traitors in Congress who need to dealt with. Better than saying nothing.
Many folks are full of bluster when they rant about wanting to shoot liberals, because the last thing they really want is the US to become one large hot zone where gunfights can break out anywhere and anytime. They just want us to bend the knee once they take over the government
If we fight back it spoils the utopia vision they have of life in this country once they take over.
Ask the tourists in the Russian occupied parts of Ukraine how pleasant their vacations are when there were arms/fuel depots being blown up not all that far from where they were trying to relax on a beach.
I do not buy it that no one who is ostensibly on our side will not push back violently against minority authoritarian rule, I think a forced takeover of government institutions in this country will be anything but simple.
I could also be totally wrong, and MAGA takes over our country soon with barely a peep from the opposition. I really hope that does not come to pass.
According to ABC, Gannett newspapers is seeking to hire reporters who will cover…Beyonce and Taylor Swift.
Cocktail party chatter:
Me: What do you do?:
Other guest: I’m a rough, tough newspaper person.
Me: Really? That must be exciting.
Other guest: You got that right.
Me: What do you cover?
Other guest: (Narrows eyes; looks stern and forbidding) I’m on the Taylor Swift beat.
@Scott:
…that people with security clearances HAVE NO DISCRETION to decide which of the classified material they have access to is “really” sensitive or harmful if released. This could not be made any more explicit in all of the training and annual refresher briefings. There is a procedure for reporting material that you think might be improperly classified; it does not involve gamer websites. (Or Mar-a-Lago, for that matter.)
@Kylopod:
The lone wolf model happens just often enough to keep the trope alive. Barry Marshall really did drink a basically home-brewed culture of H. pylori to test his theory that the bacteria was responsible for peptic ulcers when most of the experts believed that couldn’t be the case. He may not have been a lone wolf (he partnered with Robin Warren, a slightly older, more experienced pathologist), but he was close enough that it’s not much of a stretch to say that chronic ulcers are curable now because of a lone wolf working outside of the establishment.
Examples like Marshall are valuable for helping us remember that the scientific consensus is not always right. They are less valuable when we forget that exceptions that prove the rule remain, in the big picture, exceptions. They become harmful when conspiracy theorists decide that they are not exceptions at all, but actually represent the rule.
@gVOR10:
QFE.
Impressive: HW leaking to the press his Hillary vote and Cindy McCain’s Biden endorsement.
Romney is still hedging. It’s not that impressive. I’ll give him a hat tip, but an ovation? No.
Hunter Biden has been charged with 3 felony gun charges. Appears they are throwing the book at him because these charges are rare.
Word is Republicans are not pleased.
@becca:
Folks are rarely charged for these offenses, but I guess after five years of nothingburger, David Weiss had to give Republicans something.
Of course Republicans are not happy. They want Hillary, Obama, and Biden charged, not some ne’er do well son voters don’t care about. Oh well.
@Kylopod:
@Roger:
One thing that would help correct the perception of scientific research, would be a change to the Nobel Prize rules.
As is, a Noble in Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine, can only be shared by 3 people at most. This might have sufficed when the prizes were set up at the dawn of the XX Century, but not any more.
The limit makes more sense for the Literature and Peace awards (the economics prize, as I recall, is administered by the Nobel Foundation, but was set up separately).
Thing is a paper or series of papers for a revolutionary development will list a lot of people (and leave out many as well), but a Nobel for it will go to two or three of them. A rule change allowing a prize to be shared by all involved, would make it clear how many people are behind most developments.
@becca:
@DK:
Spoiled children who don’t get what they want for Christmas usually throw a tantrum. It’s not exactly newsworthy.
@Kathy: oh, but ABC and CBS had to break into regular programming with this breaking news! It must be of the utmost importance! President Hunter Biden being charged… no, wait…
@becca: Are they complaining about the two-tier system of justice and how unfair it is that Hunter is being treated differently?
@DK: Whenever I hear how upright and brave Romney is criticizing Republicans I think of the photo of him having dinner with a gloating Trump
@OzarkHillbilly:
Never say “Beetlejuice!” three times, I always say. You never know what might pop up.
@dazedandconfused: I’ve wondered for a while which group is larger in the general populace: those who are unwilling to say “Beetlejuice” three times and those who are unwilling to say “Candyman” five times in front of a mirror.
@becca:
I’m waiting for the outrage of this blatant violation of Hunter’s Second Amendment Rights.
Still waiting.
Any minute now.
@Rick S: for 2nd Amendment absolutists, these charges put them in an interesting position. Plus, they can’t implicate Uncle Joe with these charges, which is the whole idea of all the Hunter hoopla.
They won’t. I may be one of the few people in Washington Co broadcasting my politics everywhere I drive, but I’m not alone here.
Also the blowhards never say a thing to me.
@DK: What’s the betting line on how quickly it gets thrown out of court?
Yeah, Boebert might appear or shudder MTG!
@becca: At least they have a newly martyred hero to get behind.
Any thoughts on the upcoming Frasier reboot/sequel?
IMO, while Grammer was the star of Frasier, the show was stolen by the characters of Martin, Eddie, Daphne, and above all Niles. None of them will be on this new show.
I think it may wind up like the reboot/revival/sequel of Night Court. I’ve seen some eps, trying to give it a chance, but the characters plain lack any chemistry between them.
@DK:
Hunter is fighting back now based on “selective prosecution” and appears to have a pretty strong case, plenty of documentation and maybe more to come now that he is seeking it.
The latest episode of “I never thought the leopards eating faces party would eat my face,” will feature beloathed Israeli PM Bibi and St. Elon Mars God Emperor of Phobos.
This time I literally expect Bibi to lose face.
@charontwo:
https://twitter.com/KeishaBottoms/status/1702376301145780591
https://twitter.com/mrbromwich/status/1702395015094231124
@charontwo:
This is serious, as selective prosecution can be a basis to have a case dismissed.
@charontwo: The selective prosecution argument is weak sauce. Selective prosecution can be a basis to have Hunter’s case dismissed in the same way that I could have a chance at sleeping with Taylor Swift–it’s theoretically possible but highly unlikely. This is the mirror image of Trump claiming that he is being selectively prosecuted because Biden and Pence also had classified documents they shouldn’t have had, and those of us who scoffed at that claim when Trump made it shouldn’t dignify it when it’s made on Hunter’s behalf.
Hunter is being selectively prosecuted because of who he is, but under the standard to have a case dismissed for selective prosecution that almost certainly will not get his case dismissed. Nor should it. We ought to prosecute prominent people who break the law in circumstances where we would cut someone else a break. The deterrent effect of prosecuting the prominent is far higher than the deterrent effect of our normal practice of winking at misbehavior by the well-connected while throwing the book at the unwashed masses. Our country might be in a better spot today if there had been a little selective prosecution of Trump three or four decades ago.
@charontwo: The selective prosecution argument is weak sauce. Selective prosecution can be a basis to have Hunter’s case dismissed in the same way that I could have a chance at sleeping with Taylor Swift–it’s theoretically possible but highly unlikely. This is the mirror image of Trump claiming that he is being selectively prosecuted because Biden and Pence also had classified documents they shouldn’t have had, and those of us who scoffed at that claim when Trump made it shouldn’t dignify it when it’s made on Hunter’s behalf.
Hunter is being selectively prosecuted because of who he is, but under the standard to have a case dismissed for selective prosecution that almost certainly will not get his case dismissed. Nor should it. We ought to prosecute prominent people who break the law in circumstances where we would cut someone else a break. The deterrent effect of prosecuting the prominent is far higher than the deterrent effect of our normal practice of winking at misbehavior by the well-connected while throwing the book at the unwashed masses. Our country might be in a better spot today if there had been a little selective prosecution of Trump three or four decades ago.
@charontwo: This is my shocked face:
One possibility is that the gun charge is tossed out because the statute behind it is ruled unconstitutional. United States v. Rahimi is before the Supreme Court now. Rahimi violated a domestic-abuse inspired injunction against owning firearms, but was found to have two anyway.
There’s a school of thought that says this Court will throw that out as unconstitutiuonal, and if they do, then Hunter’s charges go up in smoke, too. It’s hard to see why the same test would strike down the law under which he was charged. But then the other charge fails, too, since the falsehood was not material to the government.
Yes, however trump is being prosecuted because unlike Biden and Pence he refused to obey a lawful subpoena and actually obstructed the justice dept in their attempts to recover documents that trump had no right to possess.
Try again.
And yes on that last bit, except for the fact that it WOULD NOT have been a selective prosecution. As is it was selectively “not enforcing the law” because he was rich and could bleed their budget dry.
@Roger:
Nah, we should just treat people equally.
Anyone caught stealing nuclear secrets and staging a coup would be charged and prosecuted. Anyone candidate caught falsifying campaign donations would be charged and pled out (but Trump won’t take a plea, so that’s on him).
Any drug user who lied about their drug use on a gun application would typically be ignored or fined. See: any number of gun owning rural opioid-addicts or celebrity potheads.
Hunter Biden is only being prosecuted where most others would not because Republicans are mad David Weiss has been after the Bidens for five years and found nothing of import.
Hunter did the crime so let the legal process play out. Republicans still are mad because they know it’s a big whoop nothingburger.
@DK:
Actually, I think I agree with the Hillbilly. Noblesse oblige. The more privilege you have, the stiffer the penalties for abusing it. That seems fair.