Author Archives: Hue White

Or rosebush. Or I’m not sure. It’s red. It resides next to the air conditioner.

The desperation of the Republicans to draw a moral equivalency between themselves and the Democrats is becoming marked. Over the weekend, news broke of the latest Trump Administration scandal, as summarized by Steve Benen:

Even among those who’ve come to expect the worst from the Trump administration were taken aback last week with new revelations about the Republican-led Justice Department. The New York Times was first to report that federal investigators secretly seize communications records from at least two Democratic members of Congress, some of their staffers, and even some their family members.

Ranking GOP member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) had a response to the suggestion that perhaps Congress should be investigating this latest embarrassment to the American democracy:

“Both classified leaks and abuses of power are serious offenses that must be met with strict consequences. We know that the Justice Department is capable of abusing its power, as it did when it secretly spied on and ran intelligence operations against the Trump campaign. We also know that classified information in congress’ possession can leak to the press, as was the case with the classified Carter Page FISA – the product of that abuse. We do not know whether the effort to investigate such leaks was another example of an abuse of power by the Justice Department.

[Bold mine.]

Here’s the problem: despite numerous allegations and investigations, no evidence supporting said allegations ever emerged.

But Republicans can’t have that. They have a repellent character in the White House who abused his position unlike any other President, and if they admit that he’s far worse than the Democrats’ worst, then they risk losing votes.

And so they cling to what are most kindly described as unproven allegations; for realists, they’re better described as brazen Trumpian lies. And Senator Grassley is capping off a long career in the Senate by participating in those lies.

It’s such a fucking embarrassment. He used to be respectable. Now he babbles on about his physical condition and indulges in lies after rubber-stamping nearly all of the Trump-nominated judiciary – while doing nothing else.

From Newsweek:

In a way only they can, supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory are bizarrely suggesting there was huge significance in the moment a cicada flew around the neck of President Joe Biden before he boarded Air Force One. …

We The Media, a collection of QAnon advocates with more than 225,000 subscribers on its Telegram account, believes Biden swatting at the cicadas is actually “comms,” a secret message that can be decoded by QAnon supporters.

“JOE BIDEN BITTEN BY A CICADA – COMMS? Just so happens that Cicada nymphs emerge after a 17-year childhood underground!!!” We The Media wrote.

For QAnon supporters, anything that can be linked to the number 17, no matter how tenuous, can be interpreted as “comms” for them as Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet.

And that’s why I’m neither religious nor properly respectful of symbolism.

I must admit I found Erick Erickson’s post from a couple of days ago to be interesting, at least in part. It begin with a quote from the Wall Street Journal, which I don’t read, and extrapolates from there.

From individuals with smartphones and a few thousand dollars to pensions and private-equity firms with billions, yield-chasing investors are snapping up single-family houses to rent out or flip. They are competing for houses with ordinary Americans,

Here’s the problem, corporate America and particularly private equity America has decided that Americans no longer want the American dream. American middle-class homeowners no longer need homes to buy. So instead, they’re buying up every available property on the market and then forcing you to rent because the home is too expensive for you to buy, the land is too expensive for you to build, and lumber prices have gone up so much, you’re forced into a rental market even though you want to be a homeowner. These corporations were so focused on if they could do it, they haven’t asked if they should do it and they’re driving up home prices. They’re gentrifying neighborhoods against the neighbors’ will. They’re driving up property prices and they’re forcing you to pay more and more. If you want to own land or buy a house, you are forced to move further and further away from even the suburbs out into rural America.

It’s fascinating how Erickson’s prediction parallels Professor Turchin’s observations of secular cycles, isn’t it? As Turchin’s agrarian societies enter the disintegrative phase, the prices of land skyrocket and land accumulates to holders who rent it out for profit to the farmers. This is often caused by the farmers having children and dividing their land into less and less sufficient plots for the kids – usually the males. Perhaps we’re headed for a Turchin crash.

But also notice Erickson’s clinging to the status quo. I half expected him to decry the advent of the electric vehicle as well, wailing that the extinction of the fossil-fueled vehicle (hah! I kill myself!). Why is home ownership the dream of all Americans still? Perhaps it’s not. After all, an iconic emblem of the Millenials is the story of the job seeker who turned down a cushy job because it wasn’t on a bus route, much to the bewilderment of their would-be boss.

And finally, if prices are being driven up, perhaps this is a good thing. This may motivate people to increase their valuable skill sets, rather than sitting around drinking beer, gossiping, or praising their divinity. Don’t get me wrong, religion is a carrier of morality, but at some point you should admit that you have learned that morality and really don’t need to go to church. Increasing the skill set makes it more likely you can buy a house, at least in Erickson’s future.

This is all going to come crashing down. At some point, people are going to decide they are sick of renting and want to buy. They’re going to be priced out of markets and people are going to leave. They’re going to move further out into rural areas. They’re going to buy houses there where these corporations aren’t and the property prices are going to crash. You’re going to have whole empty suburban corridors with collapsing homes because corporate America never asked if they should do this. They never asked if they should wipe out the American dream. Congress will likely act on this and I’m in favor of it. Private equity companies are putting rental markets into pension funds.

These pension funds run by private entities for the government now demanding that you yourself rent your house instead of buying your house. It takes away the dream of homeownership and an available pool of equity from American consumers. This forces them to be renters for life and drives up rental prices. This is not sustainable long term. I can see it coming. After the collapse, the major hedge funds and private equity groups will go to the government for a bailout and can do it because they have access to subsidized guarantees and access to the FDIC that you, the individual home buyer do not have. They can get away with it. It’s not a free market. It’s not really even capitalism. It’s cronyism and they’re calling it capitalism.

A capitalist society without morality is no better than a communist society. Sure, more people are elevated out of poverty, but a whole lot of rich people take advantage of everyone else just like in communism. You’ve got to have a real free market. This isn’t one. Not only that, you’ve got to have some grounding in morality and be able to question whether or not you should do something instead of can you do something. This has been going on now for a number of years and it is escalating. The government is going to step in. When they do, it’s going to be a burden on all of us, unless we stop it now instead of waiting until it festers out of control.

The application of capitalism to the private sector seems like such a stretch, doesn’t it? Especially for such a speculative prediction on his part.

But it’s worth taking a thought about it.

It’s unsung efforts like these that I find intriguing:

Flat-pack furniture is commonplace, and flat-pack pasta might be one day too.

Wen Wang of Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania and her colleagues have developed edible 2D pasta that swells into 3D shapes when cooked, such as long spirals resembling fusilli and saddle shapes similar to conchiglie.

The researchers believe that flat-pack dry pasta could drastically reduce the amount of packaging required for the foodstuff, as well as saving on storage and transportation space.

For example, when macaroni is packaged, around 60 per cent of the space in the box or bag is air, estimates Wang.

The 2D pasta morphs into 3D shapes when boiled because each piece is lined with tiny grooves, less than 1 millimetre wide, in particular patterns. The grooves increase the surface area of some parts of a piece of pasta. Areas with a higher surface area absorb water and swell faster, says Wang, who now works at food and drink company Nestlé. [“Flat pasta that morphs into 3D shapes when cooked saves on packaging,” Donna Lu, NewScientist (15 May 2021)]

That’s the sort of cool stuff that tickles me.

You’ve come a long way to pick up a girl, friend.

Stranger From Venus (1954) is an amiable tale of a visit from our elder brothers to the Sunward side, who are deeply concerned that our moral sciences are not keeping up with our nuclear sciences.

After that, I can only say that, despite the earnest acting, it’s all painfully dull. It does not seem to have aged well.

For those of us who, like my Arts Editor and I, own electric vehicles (EVs), the limited range and recharge times are key limitations on more widespread adoption of EVs. Apparently, though, there may be relief on the horizon, and Witgren on Daily Kos has a handy wrap-up on the news & rumors:

News stories have been hitting sites for a few weeks now that a new battery tech is about to hit the markets for small-scale consumer testing (later this year or early next year) that could be a game-changer in many ways in our battery tech, including for electric vehicles.

The batteries, which are aluminum-ion batteries, incorporate a graphene structure into the battery structure. I don’t pretend to understand all the ins and out of the science, but here are the claims for it — and Graphene Manufacturing Group out of Brisbane is ready to hit the market (on a small scale test market) with its first batteries perhaps as soon as later this year.

• 3x the energy density of lithium-ion batteries. The flip side of this is they are also about 3x heavier, so while you can pack more energy in a smaller package, the weight is going to remain about the same.
• Charging is 20-60x faster than lithium batteries. A “coin” battery, for example, can be fully charged in less than 10 seconds, while a cell phone battery could be fully charged in less than five minutes. An electric vehicle could easily be topped off in minutes as well, making “refueling” stops not so different to stopping for gas now. Worst case, maybe you catch lunch or dinner while your vehicle recharges.
• No overheating issues. GMG’s managing director notes that lithium-ion batteries are prone to overheating when charging or discharging at rapid rates and EV’s require cooling systems to deal with that. So far, these aluminum-ion batteries have shown no sign of such thermal issues, which in turn means space and weight saved on cooling systems that can instead be used for — more batteries and thus, more range!
• The coin batteries have been cycled 2,000 recharge cycles with no loss in performance. If this holds true for larger batteries, another huge leap. Lithium batteries begin to lose performance after a few hundred charge cycles, losing about 20% of their capacity after 1,000 cycles. If these new batteries are experiencing no appreciable performance loss after 2,000 cycles, suddenly we have batteries that could last for many years.
• Aluminum is abundant and the materials in these batteries are recyclable.

If this turns out to be true, it’d be good news for us EV owners and the planet. But it’s the first I’ve heard.

News that El Salvador is adopting Bitcoin as a national currency may have reached your ears. But this made me laugh:

The law passed by El Salvador’s legislative assembly makes no mention of mining. But during a live conversation on Twitter Spaces on Tuesday night, Bukele announced an idea that had suddenly occurred to him: El Salvador’s volcanoes could be used as a renewable source of geothermal energy.

“Every day is going to be a new idea,” Bukele told the audience of over 25,000, according to Coindesk. The following day, he announced on Twitter that he had directed the country’s state-owned geothermal electricity company to develop a plan that would allow bitcoin miners to tap into “very cheap, 100% clean, 100% renewable, 0 emissions energy from our volcanoes.”

Hours later, Bukele said that engineers had already dug a new well that would become the center of a new bitcoin mining hub, and shared a video of the steam pouring out. [WaPo]

As El Salvadoran wealth transfers from American dollars, the other national currency, into bitcoin, I’d view that as being at increasing risk. If things go south, will Bukele survive? People hate it when their wealth disappears after trusting the word of their leader.

And, weirdly, this all reminds me of the Internet bubble of 2000. Things became downright bizarre just before the big meltdown. Just a word to those who remember.

Spaceweather.com has something new – at least to me:

Something big may be about to happen on the sun. “We call it the Termination Event,” says Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), “and it’s very, very close to happening.”

If you’ve never heard of the Termination Event, you’re not alone. Many researchers have never heard of it either. It’s a relatively new idea in solar physics championed by McIntosh and colleague Bob Leamon of the University of Maryland – Baltimore County. According to the two scientists, vast bands of magnetism are drifting across the surface of the sun. When oppositely-charged bands collide at the equator, they annihilate (or “terminate”). There’s no explosion; this is magnetism, not anti-matter. Nevertheless, the Termination Event is a big deal. It can kickstart the next solar cycle into a higher gear.

“If the Terminator Event happens soon, as we expect, new Solar Cycle 25 could have a magnitude that rivals the top few since record-keeping began,” says McIntosh.

This is, to say the least, controversial. Most solar physicists believe that Solar Cycle 25 will be weak, akin to the anemic Solar Cycle 24 which barely peaked back in 2012-2013. Orthodox models of the sun’s inner magnetic dynamo favor a weak cycle and do not even include the concept of “terminators.”

“What can I say?” laughs McIntosh. “We’re heretics!”

The researchers outlined their reasoning in a December 2020 paper in the research journal Solar Physics. Looking back over 270 years of sunspot data, they found that Terminator Events divide one solar cycle from the next, happening approximately every 11 years. Emphasis on approximately. The interval between terminators ranges from 10 to 15 years, and this is key to predicting the solar cycle.

One wonders if a strong cycle means strong events as well. One more challenge for the world, eh?

Concerning the unannounced Putin/American war, a reader remarks:

Attacks like the one on Colonial are made by large, organized-criminal groups which absolutely need some kind of shelter — the kind Russia (or other nations) can provide. And with capitalism’s constant rush to the bottom on paying for the effort, infrastructure and technological insurance to avoid these kinds of things, we will only see more and worse in the future until (if ever) we see some political come-to-Jesus moments on cooperation for security.

In our societal organization, government is, or should be, the responsible party for security issues such as this, with the ability to lay taxes or go into debt in order to raise the resources for the countermeasures. It’s been a tenet of the libertarians that the free market can do damn near anything society needs, but when, as my reader notes, the rush to the bottom would interfere with accomplishing necessary goals, it’s clear the markets’ ability to resolve this category of problems is deeply flawed at a fundamental level.

The other part of the problem, of course, is the fact that our systems are vulnerable in the first place.

From NASA Earth Expeditions:

Several eddies dot the ocean off the coast of Ireland and Scotland. Waters at the center of the eddies can either be high or low in phytoplankton biomass (green or blue colors). Photo Credit: Norman Kuring/NASA GSFC.

For the rigid, tenets, or principles, do not only come first, but that’s all there is: the collection of principles may accumulate, but they, as a group, hardly ever decrease.

For the flexible, a principle is always up for evaluation, results traceable to it, as well as relevant context, decreeing its fate: Always, sometimes, never again a principle.

So when I read this Steve Benen summary of the future of certain current Republican governors, the above is what eventually came to mind:

About a year ago at this time, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) was among the nation’s most popular governors, having been credited with a response pandemic response, and it seemed likely that the Republican governor was on track for a relatively easy re-election campaign in 2022 in his increasingly “red” state.

But as it turns out, DeWine, an old-guard conservative and longtime fixture of Ohio politics, will have to overcome a high-profile rival — from his own party. …

Texas: Incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is facing at least one primary challenger, with former state Sen. Don Huffines, a wealthy businessman, launching his gubernatorial campaign last month. Huffines’ principal complaint against Abbott is that the incumbent took the coronavirus crisis too seriously. The state’s primary field may yet grow.

Idaho: Incumbent Gov. Brad Little (R) is facing an intra-party challenge from incumbent Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin (R), who also kicked off her candidacy last month. As a local report recently explained, “McGeachin garnered national attention last fall over a gun-toting, Bible-holding appearance on an Idaho Freedom Foundation video, in which elected officials criticized Little for emergency health orders over the coronavirus and questioned whether the pandemic exists.”

Georgia: Incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has already drawn at least one primary rival, with former state Rep. Vernon Jones launching a statewide bid in April. As a local report noted at the time, Jones “aims to tap into GOP anger at Kemp for resisting Trump’s demands to overturn Joe Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia in November.”

Massachusetts: Incumbent Gov. Charlie Baker (R) hasn’t yet said whether he’ll seek a third term, but if he does, the governor’s popularity may not shield him from a GOP rival. Not only has the state party taken steps to weaken his partisan power, but former state Rep. Geoff Diehl appears to be gearing up for a possible gubernatorial primary. Diehl has complained, among other things, about Baker endorsing Trump’s impeachment in January.

At first, all I could think was that the governors in question had simply not exhibited enough callous incompetence, whether it be in response to the Covid-19 pandemic or the Presidential election. They had to be replaced by far more incompetent, power-hungry amateurs who were better at the anti-abortion jig and the pro-guns polka than the incumbents, who had been ruined by responsibility.

But eventually it occurred to me that, quite seriously, they had not been unquestioningly loyal enough to the first principles of the GOP: Rights before responsibilities, the free market trumps everything, religious institutions don’t have to follow the rules, and never trust experts.

That inability to evaluate principles, to suspend them when they work against the best interests of society in special circumstances, isn’t the mark of the morally flexible, but of the morally responsible. By clinging to their questionable principles, the challengers hope to mark the incumbents as morally suspect, even as they save the lives of the citizens in their care.

It’s the mark of scoundrels and cads, quite frankly, even when they’re trying to torpedo a scoundrel like Abbot.

It’s well worth recalling the speech of William Barr at Notre Dame a few years back, with commentary by Catherine Rampell:

On Friday, in a closed-door speech at the University of Notre Dame, Attorney General William P. Barr talked at length about a “campaign to destroy the traditional moral order.”

The alleged perpetrator of this campaign?

“Militant secularists,” who insist upon keeping government institutions free from the influence of any faith or creed.

To be clear: This was not merely an affirmation — delivered by a devout Catholic, while visiting a Catholic university — of how privately taught religious values can contribute to character development or stronger communities.

No. This appeared to be a tacit endorsement of theocracy.

Advocates of theocracies fall into two categories, the religious zealots and the callous grifters. I think, based on Professor Richardson’s summary of the news yesterday concerning the actions of Barr during his tenure, we have an answer to the question of which category Barr falls into:

Under then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Department of Justice subpoenaed from Apple the records of the communications of California Democrats Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, and—we learned at about 11:00 tonight—Eric Swalwell, both of whom were key critics of Trump. The department also investigated members of their families, including one child. The government seized the records of at least a dozen people.

Here I insert my obligatory salute to my favorite lickspittle, Jefferson Beauregard Session III, and note that this paragraph is merely for context.

“[G]ood God,” journalist Jennifer Rubin tweeted. “They were running a police state.” For the Department of Justice to subpoena records from congressional lawmakers is extraordinary. For it to investigate their families, as well, is mind boggling.

Department officials did not find anything, and the investigations slowed down.

Remember back in May 2019, when the Senate was interviewing William Barr, who replaced Sessions as attorney general, after his delayed release of the Mueller Report, and then-Senator Kamala Harris asked him if then-president Trump or anyone else in the White House had ever asked him to open an investigation into anyone? Barr danced around the question and then refused to answer it.

It turns out that when Barr became attorney general in February 2019, he revived the languishing investigations, moving personnel around to ramp up the inquiry. Even after the Trump administration itself declassified some of the information that had been leaked, undercutting the argument for continuing an investigation, Barr insisted on keeping it going.

The Justice Department did not find that the Democrats they were investigating were connected with the leaks.

The DOJ also subpoenaed the records of journalists from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and CNN to try to find leakers, a serious threat to freedom of the press.

Meanwhile, of course, as journalist Chris Hayes pointed out on Twitter, at the same time the White House and its operatives at the Department of Justice were secretly subpoenaing the records of members of Congress, they were refusing to answer congressional subpoenas of White House personnel.

I take this to be diagnostic of the religious zealot, who, having overcome the obvious doubts that accompany belief in a Divinity for which there is little to no evidence, finds it not beyond his abilities to believe his political adversaries are evil enemies as well. Politics is about power; religion quite often is as well. The social miasma of the one, masquerading as heavenly manna that often leads to social gains (Barr as AG), then envelops the rest of the victim’s life, infecting them with a paranoia-like

So if Barr was convinced that Schiff, et al, were the bad guys, it’s not surprising that he disregarded all norms and procedures in his pursuit of proving that he’s right.

And remember how Barr suddenly disappeared from the news, much to Trump’s anger? My suspicion is that Barr, finding that all of his investigations and his defenses (of Flynn and all the other prosecutions in which he interfered, which earned him not one, but two, letters from former DoJ employees demanding he resign in disgrace) had come to naught, was finally abashed enough that he tried to slink away. His religious-mania fueled certainty of his own rightness had smashed into reality.

Just as his wrecking ball of self-righteousness had rendered the norms and the law nothing but splinters before his wrecking ball.

Religion, as a carrier of heuristic morality, has some sort of place in the world. But a full awareness of the fallibility of religious understanding, its common negative use as a power ladder from which Crusades after worldly power can be launched, render it a real danger when an ambitious & feckless person – such as Barr, or Trump, or any of a large number of people of nearly all faiths and nationalities are examples of – starts the climb.

When does my blood run cold? When someone of a religious nature exhibits arrogance in the religious vector. They beat the atheists, every time the atheists attack the Bible, to use an example I didn’t record. It’s one of the first steps down to a worldly Hell of mistaken certainty, provincialism, and far worse things.

In response to my remarks concerning Chinese population policy changes, a reader responds:

Their population is still growing, just not as fast. Only when it stops growing in actuality will I believe the projections.

I also have to laugh (sickly) at the phrase “demographic crisis” because of the slowing growth. What a clever way to hide what they really mean: having too many people allows us to have slave labor, and extract now from the future when we leaders are all dead.

Elderly become more and more of a burden as they burgeon, so demographic crisis means that work expended on taking care of the elderly as a percentage of total work, or even more accurately by those who are qualified to perform eldercare.

That said, the Communist Party is notorious for its lack of concern for human rights. It prioritizes retaining power, and the loyalty of the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) let’s it otherwise abuse the citizenry. The population policy restraints had to do with available resources, I should imagine.

WaPo’s Perry Bacon has a piece on political strategy to save American democracy, and I think I cannot agree with one point:

Fifth, we need leaders in every sector of America, from faith to business to sports, to emphasize democratic values. It won’t be enough if the pro-democracy message is carried only by politicians and the media. And it can’t be vague “voting is important” rhetoric. Those taking democracy-eroding actions — like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Trump — have to be named and shamed.

No. Shame “works” when you’re preaching to the choir. But for those who failed to join the choir, those who hate politics and don’t want to spend the time on it, shaming is quite often the moral equivalent to an an ad hominem attack, which is an attack on the character of the person presenting the argument, rather than the argument itself. Ad hominen attacks strike most folks, especially those who are citizens of democracies, as the tactic of folks who can’t muster a good argument.

Look: Generally, writers are told to know their audience. But in this case, Bacon needs to remember that his audience isn’t his readers, but the people who go out and vote – and don’t like to pay attention to politics otherwise. Sure, Bacon and I and all the other pundits are aware that, for example, there is no evidence of systematic election fraud that could turn the recent Presidential contest, but when Republican politicians implement restrictions on voting, they don’t call it that. They call it election security. And that sounds good to the unaware.

Excuses like these shouldn’t be met by shaming. They need to be met with arguments and facts. By inviting those unpolitical folks, so uneasily aware of the events of January 6th, into the argument, asking them to discuss and contribute to the issue, they can feel part of civil life – because they will be. That will incline them to find your arguments and political philosophy more attractive.

Shaming doesn’t promote inclusion. It comes across as manipulative. It turns its audience into puppets. And most folks just want to be treated with respect.

Yesterday’s revelations concerning a little-considered facet of the communications encryption debate deserves a little analysis for what I missed, not what I hit. First, the revelation:

The badge of the FBI operation.

Law enforcement officials — some of whom Tuesday could barely contain their glee — announced they had arrested more than 800 people and gained an unprecedented understanding into the functioning of modern criminal networks that would keep fueling investigations long past the coordinated international raids that took place in recent days.

The effort was “one of the largest and most sophisticated law enforcement operations to date in the fight against encrypted criminal activities,” Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, the deputy executive director for operations of Europol, the agency that coordinates police activity among the 27 European Union countries, said in a news conference in The Hague.

For nearly three years, law enforcement officials have been virtually sitting in the back pocket of some of the world’s top alleged crime figures. Custom cellphones, bought on the black market and installed with the FBI-controlled platform, called Anom, circulated and grew in popularity among criminals as high-profile crime entities vouched for its integrity. [WaPo]

Most importantly:

The [alleged criminals] believed their Anom devices were secured by encryption. They were — but every message was also fed directly to law enforcement agents.

“Essentially, they have handcuffed each other by endorsing and trusting Anom and openly communicating on it — not knowing we were watching the entire time,” Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said.

In other words, our would-be malefactors believed in the magic word ‘encryption,’ became careless, and then became victims. Would they have been caught without those phones? Probably not, because they would have remained more than cautious.

‘Encryption’ became the honeypot that drew them in. It became the spell that cursed them, the carrot that enticed them out of their camouflage and into the clutches of the police.

This may put a damper on using ‘encrypted communications’ without reservation; it’s a lesson that, if you’re doing something law enforcement disapproves of, you may still be caught, no matter how much the magic spell is invoked.

For encryption enthusiasts, it may be time to put the fascination with technology away and return to considering the human factor.

From NewScientist (15 May 2021):

Keeping time accurately comes with a price. The maximum accuracy of a clock is directly related to how much disorder, or entropy, it creates every time it ticks.

Natalia Ares at the University of Oxford and her colleagues made this discovery using a tiny clock with accuracy that can be controlled. The clock consisted of a 50-nanometre-thick membrane of silicon nitride, vibrated by an electric current. Each time the membrane moved up and down once and then returned to its original position, the researchers counted a tick, and the regularity of the spacing between the ticks represented the accuracy of the clock.

They found that as they increased the clock’s accuracy, the heat produced in the system grew, increasing the entropy of its surroundings by jostling nearby particles. “If a clock is more accurate, you are paying for it somehow,” says Ares.

In this case, you pay for it by pouring more ordered energy into the clock, which is then converted into entropy. “By measuring time, we are increasing the entropy of the universe,” says Ares. The more entropy there is in the universe, the closer it may be to its eventual demise. “Maybe we should stop measuring time.” The scale of the additional entropy is so small, though, that there’s no need to worry, she says.

That raises so many questions in my mind, beginning with Why does it matter that we’re measuring time?

And I know I’ll never understand the explanation for this observation when it comes out, unless it’s Ooooops, retraction time!

Theistnormativity:

These anti-atheist clauses [in the body of State law] and the failure to remove them reflect a phenomenon I call “theistnormativity,” which is the normalization of the belief in God as being tied to good and moral citizenship. [“Why it matters that 7 states still have bans on atheists holding office,” Kristina M. Lee, Religion News Service]

This made my Arts Editor laugh out loud:

On the climate change front, it’s time for that CO₂ roulette from Mauna Loa:

That’s no better than last time, is it? Which is the point. Meanwhile, CO₂ isn’t the only emergency that needs fixing – here comes nitrogen, as noted in NewScientist (15 May 2021, paywall):

THERE is an invisible gas in Earth’s atmosphere that is feeding an environmental crisis. The damage gets worse every year. If things are left unchecked, we are heading for a global disaster. And here is the most worrying thing about this gas: it isn’t carbon dioxide.

Nitrogen is normally thought of as inoffensive stuff; after all, this colourless substance makes up 78 per cent of Earth’s atmosphere. When you feel a refreshing breeze on your cheeks, it is mostly nitrogen molecules swishing past. Our ecosystems naturally cycle nitrogen from the air in and out of our soils, where it forms an essential nutrient for plants. The trouble is, this cycle is now dangerously out of whack because of human activity. The result is nitrogen in harmful forms swamping the wider environment.

Some of the effects of this crisis have been obvious for ages. We have long known, for instance, that pollution from nitrogen-bearing compounds prompts algal blooms that choke waterways. But other effects are now coming into focus too, like the way nitrogen pollution is killing peat bogs. Compounds of nitrogen are also damaging the delicate balance of the atmosphere.

A United Nations panel set up to assess the problem has revealed just how bad things have become. In fact, nitrogen pollution is one of the most dire crises we face. Fortunately, there are ways that we can dig ourselves out of this hole – but they will involve wholesale changes to how we grow our crops.

And given that in the United States farmers are, understandably, rather conservative, this’ll be a bit of a tussle as well.

Back in 2016 I professed concerns about the survival of democracy, especially if it is not given both competent people to run it and a proper advocacy. It is both disturbing and reassuring to see the President of the United States shares similar concerns:

This is a defining question of our time: Can democracies come together to deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world? Will the democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century prove their capacity against modern-day threats and adversaries? I believe the answer is yes. And this week in Europe [during the President’s trip], we have the chance to prove it. [WaPo]

Although my concerns are more granular: can the citizens of democracies drop their delusions, learn the new information technologies, and retain their sanity in the face of the chaos and mendacity of the autocracies? As I said in 2016:

The real key for a democracy is honesty. That’s where it all begins. As we saw in the last election, between Trump lying every time he opened his mouth, and deceit flooding the Internet, and naive Internet denizens actually believing sometimes unbelievable crap, we are stuck with a government led by a highly inexperienced politician who is busy populating his proposed leadership team with similarly inexperienced zealots.

The question is whether we can survive and compress Turchin’s disintegrative period, or will we find ourselves in a Civil War which reduces the population to the point where we can tolerate the delusional? Unfortunately, advancing technology makes it harder to withstand the delusional, as improved information, communications, and military technology make it more difficult to ignore them.

Or at least guys of Senator Manchin’s (R-WV) age would affirm. Consider his defense of the Senate filibuster:

The right to vote is fundamental to our American democracy and protecting that right should not be about party or politics. Least of all, protecting this right, which is a value I share, should never be done in a partisan manner. [Charleston Gazette-Mail]

That’s a nice start.

During my time as West Virginia’s secretary of state, I was determined to protect this right and ensure our elections are fair, accessible and secure. Not to benefit my party but all the people of West Virginia. For example, as secretary of state I took specific actions to establish early voting for the first time in West Virginia in order to provide expanded options for those whose work or family schedule made it difficult for them to vote on Election Day. Throughout my tenure in politics, I have been guided by this simple philosophy — our party labels can’t prevent us from doing what is right.

Ah, credentials! But, in this case, the credential card is designed to distract from the realities of the situation.

Democrats in Congress have proposed a sweeping election reform bill called the For the People Act. This more than 800-page bill has garnered zero Republican support. Why? Are the very Republican senators who voted to impeach Trump because of actions that led to an attack on our democracy unwilling to support actions to strengthen our democracy? Are these same senators, whom many in my party applauded for their courage, now threats to the very democracy we seek to protect?

Uh oh. Are there specific objections to the bill? How does it favor any group over another? Or does it simply make it easier for qualified voters to exercise the franchise?

Unfortunately – for Manchin – he wants to rely on a proxy, always a tricky business, for measuring the worthiness of the bill: How much Republican opposition is there to the bill. This, in turn, exposes some questionable assumptions:

• That Republicans will put Country over Party;
• That Republicans believe all citizens should get the chance to vote;
• That Republicans are free of dangerous delusions concerning the Democrats;
• That Republicans are not under mortal threat to vote in certain ways;
• That any given Republican, knowing the filibuster will be upheld, will still vote against the filibuster;

And there’s more, but I’m bored with picking nits. All of the above may be verified through consultations concerning recent history.

But we’re not finished here, because Manchin really exposes himself:

With that in mind, some Democrats have again proposed eliminating the Senate filibuster rule in order to pass the For the People Act with only Democratic support. They’ve attempted to demonize the filibuster and conveniently ignore how it has been critical to protecting the rights of Democrats in the past.

Manchin distracts from the real point with that second sentence; indeed, he conveniently ignores the fact that many of those Democrats have formally retracted their support for the filibuster.

And the real point?

As everyone knows, it takes 60 votes under current Senate rules on the filibuster to invoke cloture.

This means that 41 members of the Senate control the business of the Senate that doesn’t fall into the categories of financial or confirmation of judicial or Cabinet nominees. As there are 50 Republican members, this means that 41 Republicans outvote the 51 Democratic members of the Senate (Vice President Harris is considered a member of the Senate for voting purposes on tie votes), which is in direct contradiction of Manchin’s first paragraph, above.

And renders his position arrant nonsense.

From a historical point of view, the filibuster isn’t a hallowed part of the Constitution; it’s an experiment. An experiment which is proving to be less and less effective as the composition and temperament of the Senate changes over time.

If Manchin cannot clarify what he finds objectionable about the For The People Act – beyond the title, of course, but legislative titling is just a peeve of mine – then he should vote for it. If Republicans will not vote for it, and he thinks that matters, then he’s not fulfilling his responsibilities as a United States Senator, and should consider resigning in shame.

And it’s really too bad. Long time readers will understand why I like this point:

As such, congressional action on federal voting rights legislation must be the result of both Democrats and Republicans coming together to find a pathway forward or we risk further dividing and destroying the republic we swore to protect and defend as elected officials.

Because I believe governance is difficult and needs contributions from many, I like the sentiment. But I recognize that contributions must be honest, and I am no longer convinced that Republicans are honest. There have been multiple admissions of guilt on that front, from Gingrich to Lee to McConnell; why should I believe such dubious characters as these have changed?

No. In better voting procedures, they see their policies and politico-religious tenets, which are diminishing in plausibility and popularity, dragging them to defeat. Better to constrict voting possibilities and scream lies about fraud than risk defeat.

Manchin speaks in fine words, but they clothe intellectual chaos. Enough, Manchin. Either admit you do not believe in the sanctity of the vote, or change your mind.

Long time readers know I view the Russian invasion of the Crimea, followed by the increased output of oil by the United States, and the interference in the 2016 and 2020 elections, as a series of maneuvers in an undeclared war between Putin’s Russia and the United States.

So astute readers will no doubt being asking Why was there little to be seen in the 2016 – 2020 period, beyond American warnings of attempts to interfere in the 2020 election?

Because in Donald J. Trump, President Putin had a patsy with whom it was better to treat politely as Trump labored to keep Putin, widely rumored to have a hold on Trump, happy. Certainly, top secret information flowed from Trump to Putin, and it started virtually from Day One. How else did Putin benefit?

Ask a Russian expert, not me. I can pick out the obvious stuff, such as top secret information and the opportunity to sell Russian arms to former American ally Turkey. But what else could there be? Back to the real story:

But Trump only lasted a single term, and, regardless of his ceaseless whining, he’s not returning. It only makes sense, therefore, for Putin to get in the next counterstroke while President Biden and his people work to unwind the foolishness we saw from Trump and his people.

And what is the counterstroke?

Ransomware. CNN/Politics provides a terse summary of recent events in an alarmingly titled article, “Ransomware attacks saddle Biden with grave national security crisis“:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a congressional hearing on Monday that Biden would make clear when he saw the Russian leader that “states cannot be in the business of harboring those who are engaged in these kinds of attacks.”

His comment came after Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm Sunday warned that “very malign actors” had the US in their sights after attacks on a pipeline, government agencies, a Florida water system, schools, health care institutions and, even last week, the meat industry and a ferry service to millionaire’s playground Martha’s Vineyard.

“Even as we speak, there are thousands of attacks on all aspects of the energy sector and the private sector generally … it’s happening all the time,” Granholm told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Alarmingly, the former Michigan governor said that foreign hackers have the capability to shut down the US power network, and counseled firms against paying ransoms demanded by hackers.

Fortunately, it appears that at least some American officials recognize this as a war:

Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, warned that the US was now reaping the consequences for failing to respond sufficiently boldly to past attacks by China, Russia and North Korea.

“We have been a cheap date. And you can’t defend yourself simply by bobbing and weaving and patching. The adversary has to understand they will pay a price, there will be a cost for attacking the United States or for attacking our critical infrastructure,” King said, also on “State of the Union.”

And others, sad to say, don’t:

Unlike after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon in 2001, the new threat is exposing fractured US political unity. Republicans were quick to seize on the aftermath of the recent hack on the Colonial Pipeline that sparked gas shortages, panic buying and long lines at the pumps last month to suggest Biden was weak and had lost control. Ex-President Donald Trump, who is seeking a political comeback, claimed Saturday that cyberattacks showed lost respect for US leaders since he left office.

Such political opportunism raises doubts over whether Biden would be able to unite Washington around him, if he needed to muster a counter-attack from a major breach of US cyber defenses by a hostile foreign power.

Trump was “strong” enough to deter attacks? Highly doubtful. The people he nominated for important positions were amateurs, at best, who often were opposed to the purposes of the agencies they headed. The last Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe (R-TX), had no experience in the area, and was rejected once by the Senate for a history of mendacity on the subject. One can only imagine then-President Trump putting the squeeze on then-Majority Leader Senator Mitch “Moscow” McConnell (R-KY) to get his patsy approved on the second try.

No, Putin’s move with ransomware is designed to give the Republicans, who’ve forgotten where their loyalties, not to mention their best interests, lay, the opportunity to attack President Biden, trying to make him look bad.

Nevermind that when Trump was faced with a challenge, he retreated into magical thinking and endless lying.

It’ll be interesting to see if President Biden, and his Press Secretary Jenn Psaki, are up to the challenge of portraying this for what it is: the latest move in an undeclared war between autocratic Russia and democratic America.

Do the Republicans have any idea which side they should be on?

PS Don’t put too much faith in this report. Post-event recovery is not much of a discouragement.

A somewhat tardy issue of NewScientist (15 May 2021, paywall) informs me of yet another strategy in the process of forming for cryptocurrencies:

Cryptocurrencies based on owning a large number of hard discs, rather than using computer processors, could offer a less energy-intensive alternative to bitcoin and might even make it cheaper to build data centres – although one is already causing soaring demand for hard discs that is disrupting supply chains. …

… rival currencies [to Bitcoin] are emerging that instead make use of large numbers of empty hard discs, a concept known as proof of space.

Because hard drives are less energy-intensive to run than processors, proof-of-space currencies are touted as being more environmentally friendly. However, demand for one such currency, Chia, has become so high that some Asian countries, such as Vietnam, are reporting shortages of hard discs. The same phenomenon occurred with graphics cards, which proved to be extremely efficient at mining certain proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. Currently, around 3 million terabytes of hard disc space are being devoted entirely to mining Chia, enough to store 3 billion movies.

“Proof of space” is defined on BitcoinWiki:

Proof-of-space (PoSpace), also called proof-of-capacity (PoC), is a means of showing that one has a legitimate interest in a service (such as sending an email) by allocating a non-trivial amount of memory or disk space to solve a challenge presented by the service provider. The concept was formulated by Dziembowski et al.

in 2015. Proofs of space are very similar to proofs of work, except that instead of computation, storage is used. Proof-of-space is related to, but also considerably different from, memory-hard functions and proofs of retrievability. (The work of [?] is titled proof-of-space, but is in fact a memory-hard proof-of-work.)

After the release of Bitcoin, alternatives to its PoW mining mechanism were researched and PoSpace was studied in the context of cryptocurrencies. Proofs of space are seen a fairer and greener alternative due to the general-purpose nature of storage the lower energy cost required by storage. Several theoretical and practical implementations of PoSpace have been released and discussed, such as SpaceMint and Burstcoin.

Which seems to be missing a few words here and there. Basically, the miner must provide proof that they can, or perhaps have, dedicated a certain portion of static memory to the mining operation.

And the unanticipated result, according to NS:

Jason Feist at hard drive manufacturer Seagate says the company is experiencing strong orders and that staff were working to “adjust to market demand”.

He also suggested that these new cryptocurrencies could provide a way for companies building large data centres to offset the cost by turning them over to mining. “Chia, and similar technologies such as Filecoin and Sia, show potential ways businesses can turn their idle infrastructure into ongoing revenue,” says Feist.

Sometimes it’s difficult to diagnose desperation in engineers and scientists, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’s what we’re seeing here. Remember Proof of Stake? It was supposed to replace the original Bitcoin strategy, Proof of Work. Now, in Proof of Space, we have a different way to use up resources.

If you wish to don your paranoia bowler hat, note that Chia, the cryptocurrency company behind this scheme, is China based, which supposedly disapproves of cryptocurrencies. Indeed, a later NS (non-magazine) article notes:

Chia, a cryptocurrency intended to be a “green” alternative to bitcoin has instead caused a global shortage of hard discs. Gene Hoffman, the president of Chia Network, the company behind the currency, admits that “we’ve kind of destroyed the short-term supply chain”, but he denies it will become an environmental drain.

I have to wonder if China benefits from driving an artificial need for disc space.

In any case, this hopping from solution to solution to solution for a functional part of cryptocurrencies really makes me wonder if this is the Achilles’ Heel of cryptocurrencies. I’ve expressed the thought before: Currency is a human construct and may require human, not algorithmic, management.

The future should be very interesting in this area, but I’ll not be risking any of my money in it, I think.