Monthly Archives: April 2021

In case you wonder if the Georgia Republicans are justified in claiming they’ve liberalized voting laws, here’s Stacy Abrams eating Senator Kennedy’s (R-LA) lunch on the question.

"Ok, I get the idea. I get the idea" — Stacey Abrams gave Sen. John Kennedy waaaaay more than he bargained for when he asked her to list off provisions of the Georgia voter suppression bill she objects to pic.twitter.com/PP7s7ZltMS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 21, 2021

A helpful compendium and aid to a nuanced issue.

Dike:

But if magma travelled from [Mercury’s] core through its mantle, finally solidifying to form a crust on the surface, that could have stirred up the core. Usually, volcanoes are fuelled by many small veins of magma called dikes, but Mercury may have been cooled by melted rock flowing through larger tubes called heat pipes. [“Mercury may have shrunk because magma was being piped to the surface,” Leah Crane, NewScientist (3 April 2021)]

The last of the first spring flower pictures.

Can’t quite guess? It’s lungwort.

The big Foxconn plant that was going to save Wisconsin’s bacon and make then-Governor Walker (R-WI) a serious national political force continues to … shrink:

Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn is drastically scaling back a planned $10 billion factory in Wisconsin, confirming its retreat from a project that former President Donald Trump once called “the eighth wonder of the world.”

Under a deal with the state of Wisconsin announced on Tuesday, Foxconn will reduce its planned investment to $672 million from $10 billion and cut the number of new jobs to 1,454 from 13,000.

This’ll continue to be a blight upon everyone involved. It’s quite possible Walker will never hold elective office again.

This Politico report on a recent SCOTUS decision is from three weeks ago and demonstrates … well … I’m not quite sure:

In a little-noticed 8-0 decision, the Supreme Court just lodged a blow to large corporations. The rare, unanimous outcome marked a distinctly progressive pivot on a thorny jurisdictional question that has bedeviled plaintiffs in corporate liability cases for decades.

But the most significant effect of the decision might be the message it sends that the court, with its decisive 6-3 conservative majority, is not condemned to predictably partisan splits.

Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court consolidated two cases brought in connection with accidents involving vehicles manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. The plaintiffs alleged that Ford was at fault, and brought the cases in the states where the accidents occurred and the motorists had resided: Montana and Minnesota. The Montana resident was killed when a tread separated from a rear tire of her 1996 Explorer, causing the SUV to land upside down in a ditch. The Minnesota resident suffered serious brain damage when, while a passenger in a 1994 Crown Victoria, his airbag failed to deploy after the driver rear-ended a snow plow.

Ford tried to get both suits thrown out on the rationale that they could only be brought where Ford designed, manufactured or sold the cars; personal jurisdiction, as it is known, is an area of constitutional law that historically has given corporations a home-field advantage when defending product liability claims, among others. Given the court’s pro-business track record in these cases, Ford had reason to be sanguine about the outcome. Instead, the unanimous ruling departed from the court’s solidly conservative trajectory stretching back over 40 years.

So SCOTUS is slapping Big Business in the face, and that includes the entire conservative wing, with the exception of Justice Barrett, who did not hear the arguments.

Is this Chief Justice Roberts getting the conservative wing together and telling them to cool it in the interests of keeping the Court relatively non-political?

Or did Justice Kagan’s arguments simply carry the day?

This is important because a Court that pays attention to image, while not a new behavior, has to be part of a counsel’s fact-base when deciding on how to spend their clients’ or employers’ money.

On the other hand, I can certainly see requiring large corporations such as Ford to come to the consumers’ local Court. If they’re willing to sell in that jurisdiction, then they’d better be ready to be sued there as well. Yes, these are used vehicles in these particular suits, but the car manufacturer has a substantial presence in the consumers’ residential locations.

So remember, if you need to sue Big Business, you may be able to do it in the comfort of your own district – and it may be due to a desire to keep the Court looking non-political.

Reminiscent of Ghostbusters, isn’t it?

Last we saw our trusty heroes, Fin Sheppard had just blown up a tornado composed of menacing fish, and his former wife, April, has found his actions, while perhaps unconscious of personal danger, at least useful in that said whirling vortex of doom has collapsed. Sharknado 2:The Second One (2014) finds our heroes bound for New York City in a jet liner.

And, as they come swooping in on the ol’ Apple, something’s on the hunt. Something that goes bump in the night.

And it wants revenge.

But family and red shirts friends await them, wanting to indulge in all those touristy things, like baseball, and hot dogs, and getting bloody stumps bandaged up. Who will survive? And who will become a bloody smear, suitable only as a hors d’ouevre?

Silly and heart-breaking (why do all the hot ladies think Fin is hot?), and replete with guest stars, Sharknado 2 is for that night where you want nothing of significance to happen.

From WaPo in an article on a paleontology dig that is yielding results suggesting T. Rex hunted as part of a pack:

The researchers are still exploring why the tyrannosaurs would have hunted together but believe a collective effort helped them compete against large, plant-eating dinosaurs.

No! T. Rex may have competed with other predators for prey, but they don’t compete with the prey itself.

They just eat them.

And just for fun …

This letter from Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) is a bit startling:

Dear Woke Corporate America,

I hope you are all having fun with your virtue signaling. I hope you are enjoying trying to one-up each other and showing how woke you can be, all the while believing that you are more sophisticated and morally superior to the hard-working people of this country.

You must have loved the accolades from your elitist, left-wing peers when you took the MLB All-Star Game from Georgia. What a fun day for you on Twitter. Congratulations.

Never mind that you have destroyed working people’s jobs and hurt people who haven’t worked since COVID-19 took a member of their family or destroyed their small business.

You get texts from your elitist friends praising you for your courageous stand when you support “mostly peaceful” movements that loot small businesses, set fire to government buildings, and take the lives of innocent people.

It goes on with brazen threats of what’ll happen in 2023 when the Republicans win back Congress: no more corporate welfare, etc etc.

I must say that it’ll be getting chapters in future history books all of its own.

I suppose the Republicans see their strategy of changing election laws to disadvantage non-Republican voters as possibly their last gasp before they’re forced to do normal politicking – that is, putting forth policies that the public likes, finding people who are more honorable to run, have competency, and that sort of thing.

The stuff that they’ve gradually become worse and worse at.

The American relationship to its territories – such as American Samoa, Puerto Rico, D.C., etc – is a bit fraught because they are infamously lacking in Federal representation, one of the foundation stones of the United States. The Democrats would like to make at least some of them States, as Steve Benen notes:

The Democratic-led House is expected to vote this week on the “Washington, D.C. Admission Act” (H.R. 51), which would welcome D.C. as the nation’s 51st state. The plan entails carving out a new federal district — limited to the National Mall, to the west of Capitol Hill — where there are no residents, while making the rest of D.C. a state.

But after some discussion with my Arts Editor, we more or less agreed that it doesn’t sit so well with us making D.C. into another State, even if lawmakers as diverse as Goldwater, Nixon, and Biden have been in favor of the transition. We’d rather see D.C. be made part of one of the local States and attain representation, as well as control of the National Guard, in that way. The lack of control inherent in the uneasy relationship between D.C. and the Federal government was a major issue during the January 6th insurrection.

But it occurred to me today that we could take an aggregate approach. This would consist of making all extant territories, not otherwise with Representation, into an ad hoc State, duly allocated its two Senators and however many Representatives in Congress as is appropriate. D.C. could either become a core member of this unnamed State, or it could become part of one of its neighboring States; Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and all the others could also have, at their option, be part of the ad hoc State, or become a State of their own.

That might be a good compromise for  my competing dislikes of a city-state and of some American citizens lacking full representation at the Federal level.

He can’t help but dribble out some more every time he opens his mouth:

[former President] Trump was asked in an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity set to air Monday night whether GOP congressional candidates should run on the so-called make America great agenda.

“If they want to win, yes. We’ve expanded the Republican Party,” he said, citing the electoral gains he made among Hispanic voters in the 2020 presidential election. “If you want to win and win big, you have to do that. You have to do it.” [The Hill]

[Bold mine.]

Wah Wah Wah …

Yes, that would be the Republican Party’s popularity plunging under President Trump.

But Spaceweather.com sets me straight:

Researchers once thought that Southern Lights were exact counterparts of Northern Lights on the opposite side of Earth. Indeed, the physics is the same. Energetic particles rain down from space, causing the atmosphere to glow green, purple, and pink. Simultaneous observations of Earth’s poles from space, however, show that auroras dance differently at the two ends of our planet–an assymetry that researchers are only beginning to understand.

The upshot: Southern Lights may be present even when Northern Lights are not. Monitor the Amundsen-Scott camera for updates.

Keeping in mind that magnetic fields have polarity and that the Sun’s magnetic field flows out with the solar wind, I can see that the interactions will be different in different locations on the Earth magnetic field. The details escape me, though, as I did poorly in college physics.

And there’s a fascinating pic at the link above.

If you’ve got an anti-electric vehicle Luddite in the family, perhaps in a few years you can give him this for a Christmas present – an electric tugboat:

Does your old baby need to be replaced finally?

Crowley Engineering Services has released the design details for the first fully-electric tugboat with autonomous capability for the U.S. market.

Crowley is promoting the design as a sustainable and high-performing solution for ship assist and harbor services in any port. It leverages a large battery system and power saving technology enabling a fully-electric mode of operation while producing zero air emissions or greenhouse gases. The 82-foot tug will provide 70 short tons of bollard pull, with an Azimuthing drive propulsion system with two 1,800 kW motors and a 6 MWh battery. [gCaptain]

A perk of all-electric:

With no exhaust stack, the tug has 360 degrees of visibility from the pilot’s station, allowing the operator to see without obstruction.

It just might win over that old curmudgeon of a relative.

CNN is reporting former Vice President Walter Mondale has passed away. He was one of the good guys. May he rest in peace.

When it comes to bitcoin, Megan McArdle is a believer … in utility:

Most of the value of a bitcoin has accumulated in the past 12 months, as the price of a bitcoin increased almost tenfold since April 2020. Yet underlying that value — bitcoin’s real-world, non-speculative, non-hobbyist uses — are things such as transferring money out of countries with currency controls or dealing in certain illicit goods or offering an alternative to currency in countries experiencing hyperinflation. In these contexts, it looks less like a currency than a substitute for expensive jewelry — something small, reasonably durable and highly valuable, which is thus relatively easy to move across borders undetected or to store and liquidate in case society collapses. But at least jewelry is pretty to look at in the meantime.

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if that isn’t the right analogy. Maybe techno-utopians just like looking at bitcoin the same way brides like being able to see two months of their spouse’s work flashing on their hand. And what’s wrong with that? [WaPo]

I’ll be keeping an eye out for other skeptical opinions on cryptocurrencies. Given how wrong I’ve been about Paypal (“What unique utility does it have?”), unpublished, I’m looking forward to someone unveiling why I can’t live without cryptocurrencies.

This is our Pasque flower, an early spring bloomer.

Steve Benen’s rant concerning the acceptance of a huge donation by disgraced for RNC member Steve Wynn by a Republican House group headed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) cross-breeds into whimsy. First, the end of the rant:

And yet, here we are, watching Kevin McCarthy praise and thank Steve Wynn — even vowing to work with him again in the near future — as if the sexual misconduct allegations are simply less important than Republicans’ quest for power.

Quest for Power. Yeah.

Who here remembers the movie Quest For Fire (1981)? I think someone could do a screamingly funny parody of that film as a simple one minute video, with Quest For Power as the title.

Incidentally, one of my co-workers at the time (F. W. Woolworth’s, for those who were wondering) reported she heard a wee little voice ask, What are they doing, Mom? at a rather inopportune moment during that movie.

If you like Taiko drumming, this might tickle your fancy.

Over the weekend came the news that some of the farthest fringe-right House of Representatives members were considering forming something called the America First Caucus. While it already seems to be fading out under accusations that the proposal is itself a veiled racist document, I found this bit interesting from their proposal:

The America First Caucus recognizes that our country is more than a mass of consumers or a series of abstract ideas. America is a nation with a border, and a culture, strengthened by a common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.

These guys, they do realize that the dominant political tradition is monarchy? That, arguably, it’s absolute monarchy?

What a pack of chumps.

Joe Biden may turn out to be Donald Trump’s savior.

Hear me out.

The former President is motivated, as his family has said, by money and by fear of being seen as a loser. His entire “I won I won I won!” Trumpian bit is about satisfying those twin drives, as, in the latter case, Richardson notes:

In part, this appears to have been a fund-raising ploy. Thanks to a terrific story by Shane Goldmacher in the New York Times, we now know that the Trump campaign boosted revenues by tricking donors into making recurring donations before the election, replenishing its badly depleted funds. When unsuspecting donors found out and complained, the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee ended up having to make more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million. That money came in after the election, as Trump promised to fight the election results because, he said, he had been cheated.

And that has led to this:

But the more they harden Trump’s base by pretending that the former president won the 2020 election, the harder it is for them to move away from Trump. In Republican primaries in Republican states, candidates are vying to get Trump’s endorsement.

It is a vicious downward spiral, based on a lie. As Utah Senator Mitt Romney, who was the Republican candidate for president in 2012, said after the insurrection, “The best way we could show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth.” And yet, Republican lawmakers continue to feed the narrative that Trump won in 2020.

But here’s the conundrum Biden may be solving. Each of those Republicans that publicly believe in the Big Lie that Trump really won the election – by a landslide – despite the multiple recounts and court cases that Trump unequivocally lost, even when they landed in the courts of judges appointed by Trump, these Republicans, whether they are outlandish fourth-raters like Gosar or Gohmert, or they’re nameless members of the base, are a signal.

They are a signal to the rest of the world that the moral depravity at the center of the Republican Party may also infect American society as well. International observers do take note, it’s part of their duty.

And what does moral depravity say about the dependability of the United States as a … pillar of international financial?

The value of those dollars will decrease.

Yeah. With every lie Trump tells in his desperate attempts to extract more and more money from his base, each of those dollars’ true value decrease as a result of international observers’ judgement that the United States is not as trustworthy as it once was.

Trump is, essentially, chasing the proverbial receding goal, with his every step causing it to recede ever more.

The error of short-term thinking, which is all Trump has.

His savior? JOSEPH R. BIDEN, President of the United States, who has displayed great energy in acknowledging and engaging with problems that Trump could do little more than cry out that they were minor and would go away, even as his Administration crumbled around him. While the results of Biden’s efforts are not known, and will not be known for a while, and will not all be positive, the character of these efforts are those of a highly competent, knowledgeable politician who knows to push back on hatred, how to successfully engage with his political opponents, and how to run a massive bureaucracy.

And that supports the stock of the United States in the world, and thus the financial worth of Trump.

Nothing, though, can support and advance the honor and trustworthiness of Trump.  At this point, the mass of lies has no excuse. And that’s part of the equation, too, isn’t it? Doing business with the dishonorable is always bad for business.

But right now it’s plausible to think that the efforts of Biden are playing some small part in keeping Trump from a disaster he could never forecast for himself.

For those readers interested in the fate of the newspapers owned by Tribune Publishing Co, there’s a hiccup:

A Wyoming-based Swiss billionaire who formed half of the consortium making a bid to buy Tribune Publishing Co. has backed out of the deal, according to two people familiar with negotiations.

Hansjörg Wyss had joined with Maryland business executive Stewart Bainum Jr. earlier this month in submitting the $680 million proposal to a special committee of Tribune’s board, in an attempt to beat out an offer from Alden Global Capital. The development casts further doubt on whether journalists at Tribune newspapers can avoid a takeover by the hedge fund, which has a reputation for deep cost-cutting. [WaPo]

But …

Bainum — who is said to still be committed to the deal to buy Tribune and is actively seeking investors to join him — informed the special committee of Wyss’s withdrawal verbally Friday night and confirmed it in writing on Saturday. A spokesman for the special committee of Tribune’s board declined to comment.

Bainum has also completed his due diligence into Tribune’s finances and found the numbers “more than satisfactory,” one of these people familiar with the negotiations said. (Both spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to comment publicly about the deal). Bainum has fielded interest from other wealthy individuals and foundations as well.

The drama continues – and perhaps the fate of the United States.

I always did like a trifling bit of drama.

Why does “pretty” have meaning other than as as a descriptor of a person or object of pleasing aspect? I’m not casting aspersions; I recall being interviewed in middle school, which was 40+ years ago, using pretty in just this way, later seeing the quote in the school newspaper, and being puzzled as to why I would have ever used.

Why oh why oh why?

Today CNN/Business notes some volatility in bitcoin:

After a hype-filled week for cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin experienced a flash crash over the weekend, plunging nearly 14% in less than an hour, from about $59,000 to $51,000, on Saturday night before rebounding. Other popular cryptocurrencies including etherium and Dogecoin also fell dramatically, before recouping some of their losses.

Bitcoin has skyrocketed in value this year as it gained more mainstream acceptance, but the sharp price fall this weekend seems to have been triggered by an unconfirmed Twitter rumor that the US Treasury was planning to crack down on money laundering schemes involving cryptocurrencies. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

Bitcoin’s rapid overnight plunge is the latest indicator that the crypto market remains wildly volatile.

Last week crypto enthusiasm seemed to reach a peak as trading platform Coinbase went public at a valuation of $86 billion, followed by a wild 500% rally in Dogecoin — an asset that was created as a joke in 2013. Cryptocurrency backers have spent years insisting that bitcoin, ethereum and other digital coins could revolutionize the world of finance, and with the success of Coinbase’s Wall Street debut Wednesday, those backers are finally having their moment.

While 14% could be worse, it’s interesting. It makes me think one of two things is happening, if it’s not the rumor cited in the CNN/Business article.

1. Someone’s compromised one of the bitcoin exchanges. While wealth is always being compromised in most liquid wealth systems, I worry more about bitcoin as it’s not backed by a central agency. If your ‘wallet’ is compromised, who guarantees its restoration?
2. The currency is under stress. The Treasury Department rumor itself may be a primary symptom of a current that is under stress. Keep in mind that this is not a currency with hundreds of years of experience behind it, centuries of mistakes and corrections. It’s a new thing: a network computer process which is designed to become harder and harder to generate new fungible elements, whose philosophy was based on the arrogant concept that, while governments often mismanage currency, they will not; indeed, whose primary designer(s) and coder(s) lurk in the shadows of the Internet.

It’s becoming harder and harder to not conclude this is actually a scheme to make the founders rich.

But that’s just an idle observation by an outsider who’s never had a virtual wallet or possessed a bitcoin. It’ll be interesting to watch its evolution and how society uses it over the next few years.

Here’s some blue things, whose name I forget.

Yeah, I like that last one.

Kazakh Steppe.

If you think you know about the steppe, here’s a funny little quiz for you from Razib Khan. I scored a 21, which his quiz says is very good, and I did that despite not knowing much at all about the steppe – just a lot of archaeological reading.