A reader points out my error concerning generation and consumption of energy in 2019:
Electricity generation and energy consumption are not the same thing. The latter includes transportation and other uses, I’ll bet.
Gah. I thought I compared the titles of the two graphics and they were the same, but obviously they are not. I was wr- … wr- … wr – …
In case you were not keeping up with the TikTok social media saga, WaPo has a near-tutorial on it:
President Trump’s promise this week to bar the popular, Chinese-owned TikTok from operating in the United States is the latest move in his increasingly hostile posture toward Beijing that echoes a broader, anti-China stance within the Republican Party ahead of the November elections.
In essentially every reference to the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes, covid-19, Trump has derided it as the “China virus,” faulting the country for being unable to contain it as it spread beyond its borders and led to more than 17.6 million cases worldwide. When he floated a potential TikTok ban in a television interview last month, Trump indicated it was in retaliation for China’s role in the pandemic.
Curious about the two strategies that Trump can pursue? TikTok was acquired by Chinese company ByteDance, both of which had an American presence, and it seems that there’s a law that mergers subject to American jurisdiction that have a national interest component maybe retroactively refused permission, essentially forcing the sale of TikTok to a more acceptable entity.
Or TikTok can simply be banned, as Professor Chesney explains on Lawfare:
4. But there’s also much talk about a simple “ban” on TikTok. Is that just wishful thinking by parents, or is that a thing the President can do?
Yes, it’s a real thing, thanks to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). But it’s complicated.
IEEPA is another example of Congress delegating to the executive branch an aspect of its constitutional control over foreign commerce. Think of it as a general pre-delegation of authority to impose embargoes as well as more-targeted sanctions against foreign entities—backed by criminal law sanctions—for a broadly-defined array of circumstances in which the president determines that U.S. national interests are at stake. (For a deep-ish dive into IEEPA, check out Episode 133 of the National Security Law Podcast). When the president wants to use this authority, he first must issue a public proclamation of a “national emergency” on a particular situation or subject, under the National Emergencies Act. This opens the door to using IEEPA itself. Under IEEPA, the president (or the executive branch entity acting on the president’s behalf through a further delegation) can investigate, regulate or simply prohibit—that is, ban—an array of activities involving a sanctioned entity (including payments, notably) and can freeze the assets of that entity (thereby prohibiting all dealings with the foreign entity’s interests in those assets). Sometimes this authority is exercised by the president only to the extent of creating a specific sanctions regime, with the actual sanctioning of particular entities to be done at a later date (if it is done at all). At other times, the creation of the sanctions regime is accompanied by at least an initial set of designations of specific entities.
I don’t blame you if you’re not a lawyer and skipped all that, but, yes, TikTok can be banned from US commerce. Professor Chesney also explains the first option – forcing a sale – as well.
The interesting part is this, from the WaPo article:
Earlier in the day, the president had been considering an order that would force China’s ByteDance to sell off the U.S. portion of TikTok over national security concerns, but Trump later emphasized to reporters traveling with him that he did not support a deal to let a U.S. company buy TikTok’s U.S. operations.
Microsoft is still the leading contender to purchase TikTok if a deal goes through, according to people familiar with the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
I suspect the matter is more delicate than the WaPo article suggests.
Trump is currently nettled concerning China because he views, wrongly or not, the Covid-19 pandemic as their fault. The WaPo article says as much.
If TikTok is forced to sell, a sale could be into a competitive market. That is, there may be several bidders for the TikTok entity, forcing the price so high that the current owners, ByteDance of China, would make out like bandits. That might lead to propaganda from China about Trump’s “assistance” in securing such a huge profit, which would be a lovely return volley in this tennis match. Trump would lose face[1] inside China as well as within the United States – he’ll be seen as being outfoxed by the Chinese.
I also included the paragraph on Microsoft being a prime bidder because Microsoft sits on a pile of cash, and if Microsoft did buy TikTok, that would bring Microsoft into the social media market. And Facebook might not like that. While Facebook has, of late, interfered with right wing propaganda, by and large they remain one of the largest purveyors of right wing propaganda in the social media space. On balance, Trump or his allies may not wish to alarm Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, by presenting him with a well-funded competitor with a long history of success. The Zuck might suddenly implement more stringent filters on right wing propaganda, and that would not work in Trump’s favor.
In order to avoid all of that, a simple ban on doing business must instead be used. It doesn’t stop a sale in and of itself, but it does decrease the urgency. And a sale might be banned, even if it was done on fallacious grounds.
I suspect the Trump Administration is trying to perform a highwire act in which the lead aerial performer has proven himself dreadfully inadequate in the past. Can they pull this one off?
Deicide:
Deicide is the killing (or the killer) of a god. The concept may be used for any act of killing a god, including a life-death-rebirth deity who is killed and then resurrected. [Wikipedia]
Dammit, I really need to POOP!
For a modern take on the ancient gladiators of yore, Guns Akimbo (2019) isn’t a bad take on the emptiness that supposedly afflicts every new generation. Miles is its embodiment, a meek programmer at a company that creates kids’ games in order to “suck money out of the wallets of their parents.”
Then he stumbles into a game for adults, games that are a lot tougher.
A lot bloodier.
Rather … final.
And Miles is a pacifist vegetarian.
But when a psychotic is firing guns at you, and you find yourself with guns in your hands, there’s not a lot of choice, no matter how long or far Miles is willing to take the old Dr. Who dictum And lots of running! Discovering that pacifism has little traction against the irrationality that permeates the cosmos in which he finds himself, it eventually becomes clear that the creatures who stand in his way are but the rocks in the wall up which he must clamber to find … God. The God that has ordered his gladiatorial self into an especially bloody Hell (and one that moves very slowly, at that!), purely to collect wealth from those creatures of the original realm who may, themselves, inadvertently cross over.
Because this God wants to infect our world with his sensibilities, one might say.
So what can one say about a person who traverses the moral spectrum from pacifism to … deicide? Is this a story arc or what?!
It’s a little bit too whiney, but more than willing to subvert expectations and make jokes about genitalia guaranteed to leave the guys clutching their crotches. Guns Akimbo starts out wobbly, but, as my Arts Editor said, It didn’t suck nearly as much as I thought it would.
But it’s not as funny as it wishes it were. The humor, if you will, comes from the entire package, and will be found only through gritted teeth.
A lovely mocking has occurred:
Regarding an increase in pedestrian fatalities as ride hailing services have become available, a reader writes:
I think you need to provide some evidence that the number of vehicle trips has increased with ride hailing, and even better, that the increase matches the curve for increased accidents. My bet is that it does not, and that instead, we are actually seeing an increase in accidents per mile driven or per trip.
From the study summary:
Ride-hailing services also seem to have increased a number of driving-related costs, including vehicle miles traveled, gasoline consumption, and traffic congestion, as measured by annual hours on the road. These increases likely are derived in part from the number of ride-hailing vehicles on the road. Drivers are subsidized by their companies to remain on the road even during lulls in demand. An increase in ride hailing was also associated with a dip in the use of public transportation in large metro areas, suggesting that some riders substitute ride-hailing services for public transportation.
However, they provide neither numbers nor graph. It’s unsurprising that, whichever metric is best to use, it has increased: drivers and their companies want revenue, and you won’t get it sitting at home or in a bar.
A reader responds to the news that spiky neural networks perform better if periodically fed noise, thought to be the equivalent of sleep:
I think the researchers are on to something there. We know that we have perceptual flaws, especially visual. But we also know that it works nearly perfectly most of the time, filling in the missing gaps of the blind spot, etc. in near real time. Sleep may be just the thing that allows our systems to continue working at near optimum.
It’s not entirely clear how, at least to me, although I speculate that it fuzzes out the need for precision which would otherwise become too demanding for real world interactions.
But what do I know? I’ve never worked with a neuromorphic processor, and probably never will.
What can it ever be? NewScientist (20 June 2020, paywall) has the answer:
A team led by Goetz Laible at AgResearch, a government-owned research institute in New Zealand, wanted to find out if it could make cetuximab [a bowel cancer drug] at higher volumes more cheaply – by genetically engineering goats to produce the protein in their milk.
First, the researchers inserted genes into goat embryos that carried instructions on how to make cetuximab in the mammary glands. Female goats were then impregnated with the embryos and their genetically modified offspring were born five months later.
The offspring were all female and once they began lactating, they were able to produce about 10 grams of cetuximab in each litre of their milk. Since goats produce about 800 litres of milk every year, this means that each could manufacture multiple kilograms of cetuximab in a year.
“It’s a lot more economic to make cetuximab in animals because their mammary glands can produce large amounts of proteins,” says Laible. The genetic modification didn’t appear to affect the goats’ health, he adds.
Clever – and you can eat the factory once it’s exhausted, too. Purity and efficacy of the produced drug still need to be evaluated, but it sounds really cool, especially if it’s a heritable trait and doesn’t upset the goats.
Over the last week some more Senate campaign polls have been released, which I’ve been gathering up for one big post.
NBC News/Marist, via The Detroit News, has found that in Arizona, Kelly (D) leads appointed incumbent McSally (R) 53% to 41%. That 12 point lead is well outside the margin of error of 4.1 points. Public Policy Polling has similar results of 51% to 42%, CNN gives Kelly a 50-43 point lead, and Morning Consult gives Kelly a huge lead of 16 points, 52 percent to 36 percent. That last one sounds like an outlier.
NBC News is reporting another NBC News/Marist poll finds Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham leads GOP Sen. Thom Tillis by 9 points, with the backing of 50 percent of voters, compared to Tillis’ 41 percent. Public Policy Polling has Cunningham up by 8 points, 48% to 40%. Morning Consult has a similar lead for Cunningham, 46-37%. It’d be more comforting to see Cunningham solidly break the 50% barrier.
In Maine, Public Policy Polling has the least loyal GOP Senator, Susan Collins, still behind State Rep and Speaker of the House Sara Gideon (D), 42%-47%; a Colby College poll gives Gideon a 44-39% lead. In past elections, Collins has won her seat by comfortable 20-30 point margins, so this is an unfamiliar position for Collins. Her current TrumpScore of 67.5%, the lowest of all GOP Senators, doesn’t cover up the fact that she voted against conviction in the impeachment trial of the President, asserting “I believe that the president has learned from this case.” Her lack of judgment and her vote to confirm Justice Kavanaugh appears to be coming back to haunt her.
OnTheIssues: John James.
Michigan’s Senator Gary Peters (D) retains a 10 point lead over challenger John James (R), according to a Fox News Poll, while Morning Consult suggests a larger lead, 49 percent to 35 percent., and CNN gives Peters a big 54-38% lead. Recent reports indicate the Trump campaign, down 49-41 in the Fox News poll, has withdrawn from the state. Will this help or hurt James, a businessman and former Army Ranger Army veteran who is Ranger-qualified (this is not the same as being an Army ranger – my mistake)? It’s not clear to me that James is a Trump devotee; his front campaign page does not mention the President, and OnTheIssue’s analysis of the scant data available on James (he’s never held elective office) suggests he’s not a hard right conservative. So far, it does not appear the independents of Michigan have found him appealing. It may be that James has chosen a poor time to be a Republican candidate. Running for a top legislative position without prior experience may also be working against him, as the Amateur ethic finally appears to be flaming out.
There is no question of amateurs in Colorado, where former Gov Hickenlooper (D) is leading incumbent Senator Gardner (R) 48-42%, according to Morning Consult. At the beginning of the campaign season – the day after the November 2018 election, I think – Gardner was considered to be one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents, so his showing against a popular former Governor is actually fairly credible. His TrumpScore is 89.1%, but it’s worth noting that’s over two Congresses; in the current Congress, it’s a much lower 82.9%. He may not be competitive with Senator Collins of Maine in disloyalty to the President, and he did not vote for conviction in the Trump Impeachment proceedings, but claims of independence from Trump cannot quite be dismissed out of hand. Trump is not mentioned on the front page of Gardner’s Senate Campaign page, either. Gardner is one of the most likely incumbents to score a come-from-behind win, even in relatively liberal Colorado, but he has some climbing to do, and has to hope Hickenlooper stumbles.
In Georgia, incumbent Senator Perdue (R) has a lead over challenger Jon Ossoff (D), an investigative journalist with no elective offices to his credit, but it’s not a big lead, according to Morning Consult: 45 percent to 42 percent, which is just within the margin of error. Ossoff does have a history of big fund-raising, which may make for a hair-raising campaign over the next 90-odd days. Perdue’s colleague, appointed incumbent Senator Loeffler (R), faces a special election in the form of a jungle primary, and the only news I’ve seen is that Loeffler’s taking a lot of flak from fellow Republican Rep Doug Collins, a Trump favorite. While Loeffler is unlikely to win reelection, a Collins replacement would be no better.
In South Carolina, ALG Research, for LindseyMustGo.com, finds incumbent Senator Graham (R) ahead of challenger Jaime Harrison, 49-45%. I’m taking this opportunity to extend my condolences to Senator Graham in his loss in the Trump Lickspittle contest, as I believe former Senator and AG Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, through his pledges of allegiance to the disdainful President Trump, must be declared the victor.
Right here in Minnesota, despite the frantic warning emails from incumbent Senator Tina Smith (D) that challenger and former Rep Jason Lewis (R) is within striking distance, Public Policy Polling gives Senator Smith a comfortable 48%-39% lead. This is in line with the special election Smith won in 2018 as the appointed incumbent, beating hockey name Karin Housley by 11 points, and there’s little reason to believe that Lewis will close the distance before election day.
New Hampshire’s incumbent Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D) doesn’t yet have a definitive Republican opponent, but a recent University of New Hampshire poll suggests it may not matter – she holds double-digit leads and more than 50% support over both of her most likely opponents. In my original coverage of this seat, I suggested this might be a race to watch, but it appears Shaheen has matters well in hand.
Finally, the Senate is seen as a critical piece of political landscape by both parties, and Senator McConnell (R), Majority Leader, doesn’t much care for President Trump’s feelings, according to this CNN report:
Sen. Mitch McConnell is allowing Republican Senate candidates to do whatever it takes to salvage their campaigns ahead of what Republicans increasingly fear could be a devastating election for their party.
In recent weeks, the Senate majority leader has become so concerned over Republicans losing control of the Senate that he has signaled to vulnerable GOP senators in tough races that they could distance themselves from the President if they feel it is necessary, according to multiple senior Republicans including a source close to McConnell.
As the CNN report notes, this will be a tightrope for GOP candidates, whether incumbents or challengers. So long as President Trump retains his popularity, he will be a potent intra-party force, so for those Senators who are perceived to have abandoned him – and that’s an exceedingly short rope – they may find themselves under attack prior to and after the election, win or lose. See former Senator Sessions (R-AL) for a graphic lesson in consequences for a former Trump favorite, who discovered that loyalty to nation coming before loyalty to Trump is not tolerated by Trump – or his base, as Sessions lost the primary to regain his old Senate seat to political novice Tommy Tuberville, and lost badly.
Trump’s base is not composed of politically savvy people, so their basis of assessment is not an informed knowledge of the issues, but simply the view put forward by Trump. When a Republican Senator disagrees, he’s considered a traitor to the Cause. Alternative views need not apply in the Party of RINO-ism. Intolerance is an increasingly strong rule within the Republican Party, and many are discovering that intolerance is an unpleasant way to live when you’re on the wrong end of the spear.
And Trump’s decisions down this stretch run will help decide Senate races. I’m not talking campaign, but simply governance decisions. He’s not built a good base in this area, as his abdication of responsibility has served him ill, as has his denial that the coronavirus was a threat for a very long time. He could come back, though, if he began acting responsibly. Has he started that after that “change in tone” day when he admitted things will get worse before they get better?
Conservative theological pundit Erick Erickson’s mail to non-subscribers suggests bewilderment at the President’s actions:
If the President would pour himself into fighting the virus and give people confidence that he is focused on it, that would buy him time to focus on the economy after calming people down. Polling consistently shows the public prefers President Trump to handle the economy. That same polling shows consistently the public is way more worried about the virus and wants to see that the President is fighting it. Right now, all they seem to see are mixed messages and trolling.
All of this is enough to make one wonder if the President even really wants to win. If he does, why is he online trolling his opponents with claims of delaying the election instead of bunkering down and acting like the man in the arena in charge and command of a national fight against a deadly virus?
There are less than 100 days and a lot at stake. The winners will shape the state legislative and congressional lines for a decade. This is bigger than the presidency. Does the President care?
So long as Erickson does not accept that this President is mentally ill, and the conservative movement is pathologically stricken with religious nonsense and hubristic certainty, he’ll find the President’s actions frustrating and confusing.
I think the President wants to win, but he doesn’t understand how. His perception of the world is that it doesn’t change. After all, he got away with lying and cheating for decades as a real estate developer, and acting is much the same. It worked the first time as a candidate, why not the second?
But the electorate has watched and learned, per polling results. We’ll see just what they’ve learned come election day – or perhaps a couple of weeks later, when all the counting is done. I hope we’re done with this spasm of amateurs, whether they’re CEOs or religious nutcases, as well as arrogant, frantic ideologues, whose false idols (sorry, sorry, that was a stretch) have betrayed them in times of crisis and even times of calm – think the 2017 tax reform bill which did nothing for us, despite GOP predictions.
And Trump doesn’t get it – he doesn’t get that the environment has changed. Hell, the GOP didn’t even create a new platform for this President election cycle, they just crossed out 2016 and wrote in 2020, at Trump’s direction. Change? Change is evil, not to mention uncomfortable.
Deny it.
If you think 2020 can’t get any worse, Dr. Tony Phillips notes a recent study that indicates that a Solar Minimum, which the Sun is enmeshed in currently, doesn’t mean the Sun can’t experience a monstrous case of the hiccups:
“In late October 1903, one of the strongest solar storms in modern history hit Earth,” say the lead authors of the study, Hisashi Hayakawa (Osaka University, Japan) and Paulo Ribeiro (Coimbra University, Portugal). “The timing of the storm interestingly parallels where we are now–near Solar Minimum just after a weak solar cycle.”
The 1903 event wasn’t always recognized as a great storm. Hayakawa and colleagues took an interest in it because of what happened when the storm hit. In magnetic observatories around the world, pens scrabbling across paper chart recorders literally flew offscale, overwhelmed by the disturbance. That’s the kind of thing superstorms do.
So, the researchers began to scour historical records for clues, and they found four magnetic observatories in Portugal, India, Mexico and China where the readings were whole. Using those data they calculated the size of the storm.“It was big,” says Hayakawa. “The 1903 storm ranks 6th in the list of known geomagnetic storms since 1850, just below the extreme storm of March 1989, which blacked out the province of Quebec.”
Today’s solar face, from which sunspots are virtually absent. A red herring, I presume.
Communications were scrambled – in 1903, meaning telegraph operators were unable to easily communicate with each other. Telephones became unworkable: In Chicago, voltages in telephone lines spiked to 675 volts–“enough to kill a man” according to headlines in the Chicago Sunday Tribune. That was annoying and maybe disturbing back then. Today? We might experience country-wide electrical grid failures, satellites providing critical services might be irremediably damaged, during the worst of it, the Internet might disappear – and provide a reason to dismiss Elon Musk’s irritating, to astronomers, scheme to use satellites for the Internet.
Perhaps Phillips is a bit of a drama queen, but the changes of this sort of thing happening are non-zero. Just as were Trump’s chances of becoming President – barely non-zero.
But could it become reality?
I was thinking that the Democrats, especially if asked by the Senate Republicans, could produce articles of impeachment very quickly, get them passed, and on to the Senate in a matter of a few days – no matter how much House Republicans object.
But, of course, why would the Senate Republicans ask?
And then this came along.
The co-founder of the Federalist Society, who voted for Trump and opposed both the Mueller probe and Ukraine impeachment, says the president’s tweet about delaying the election is grounds for impeachment: https://t.co/FOmO1X57lC
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 30, 2020
The Federalist Society is very conservative. If the co-founder is willing to say that Trump’s yapping is grounds for impeachment, is it possible that Senator “Moscow” McConnell (R-KY), in hopes of saving his Senate majority and himself, might be willing to throw the President under the bus, dance on his grave, and appeal for the Republican base and the independents to vote for them after redemption?
It’d be vastly entertaining. The Democrats would have to be sure to get McConnell on the record, guaranteeing the necessary votes to attain conviction, otherwise the Democrats would look bad.
Just … something to keep in mind. I suspect Trump would be honored to be impeached twice, even if he was convicted – he’d make the record books, be relieved of taking a chance on losing the reelection, and just claim the establishment had it in for him all along.
Relativity Space has an attractive approach to space travel:
Relativity’s goal is to disrupt the entire process of manufacturing rockets. “For the last 60 years, the way rockets have been built hasn’t really changed,” says Ellis. Instead of relying on the traditional, complicated assembly line of machines and people sculpting and piecing together parts of a vehicle, Relativity wants to make building a rocket almost entirely automated. The trick? Using giant 3D printers that can create all of the parts needed to build a rocket — from the engines to the propellant tanks and structure.
At the company’s Los Angeles headquarters, Relativity has the largest metal 3D printer by volume, a machine that’s capable of creating parts that are up to 20 feet tall and 10 feet wide. It’s called Stargate, another nod to Starcraft, and the team designed this printer from scratch, which means they can scale it up if needed. Ellis says that by relying on printers like this for manufacturing, the team will be able to produce about 95 percent of the rocket through 3D-printed automation. The last 5 percent still requires human labor. Most of that human interaction will be centered on testing, shipping, and very small amounts of manual assembly. [The Verge]
The article speaks of the speed and reduction in price of assembly, but, if the printers are up to snuff, this should also reduce mistakes that can take down a rocket, a device operating in a very demanding environment. They’ve already secured a launch pad at Cape Canaveral; once they can successfully launch, they want to go beyond SpaceX – they want to go to Mars, and then find a way to takeoff from there.
It’s just like a pulp SF novel from the 1950s. And very cool.
(h/t CT)
Neologism:
- A new word, expression, or usage.
- The creation or use of new words or senses.
- Psychology
- The invention of new words regarded as a symptom of certain psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia.
- A word so invented.
- Theology A new doctrine or a new interpretation of scripture. [The Free Dictionary]
Noted in “The Roots Of Wokeness,” Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish:
Language changes, and we shouldn’t worry about that. Maybe some of these terms will stick around. But the linguistic changes have occurred so rapidly, and touched so many topics, that it has all the appearance of a top-down re-ordering of language, rather than a slow, organic evolution from below. While the New York Times once had a reputation for being a bit stodgy on linguistic matters, pedantic, precise and slow-to-change, as any paper of record might be, in the last few years, its pages have been flushed with so many neologisms that a reader from, say, a decade ago would have a hard time understanding large swathes of it. And for many of us regular readers, we’ve just gotten used to brand new words popping up suddenly to re-describe something we thought we knew already. We notice a new word, make a brief mental check, and move on with our lives.
An interesting explication of the problematic roots of ‘wokeness.’
Rhubarb the Cat, as Cleopatra: Certified Scene Stealer And Ravager. And Peter Lorre knows it.
The Comedy Of Terrors (1963) is a clumsily constructed comedy concerning a funeral parlor operator and his oppressed henchman, frustrated opera-singer wife, demented father-in-law, and his troubled relationships with his landlord and his bottle. Full of tired tropes, it displays flashes of ingenuity, but in the end, I’d rather have that hour and a half back.
Only watch this if you’re a Price, Karloff, Lorre, or Rathbone completist. Incidentally, this is a rare ‘neutral’ role for Rathbone, who usually played antagonists, with the obvious exception of his Holmes portrayals.
But, really, that shouldn’t lure you in. This is a Venus flytrap of a movie.
This is of concern, via Steve Benen:
The debate that’s coming into focus is centered around an unsettling question: are “reform” efforts at USPS [by Louis DeJoy, new head of the USPS] part of a deliberate political campaign?
These questions are getting louder. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on Twitter yesterday, “Mail delays could mean delays for mail-in ballots, essential supplies, and life-saving medications. Louis DeJoy is the Betsy DeVos of the Postal Service, and he’s sabotaging his own agency when its work has never been more important.”
I think the Biden campaign should put out an announcement that, in the event of a Biden victory, all Trump political appointees concerning whom credible complaints are made will be thoroughly investigated, and those found to have engaged in malfeasance will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Sometimes reminders are helpful. If nothing else, some appointees will consult with their lawyers, and, realizing their contemplated actions might leave them open to a legal attack, desist their maleficent ways.
At least it would generate some conversation.
From a week or two ago, the stargazer lilies finally emerged:
President Trump’s favorite campaign miracle:
The president has repeatedly touted a “silent majority” of Americans he expects to show up en mass on Election Day to shock pollsters and help him repeat his surprising 2016 victory. His campaign has developed lengthy slide shows aimed at disproving public polls and predicting a swell of unexpected support that will propel Trump past Democratic rival Joe Biden in November. [WaPo]
Here’s where the real deciders lie:
That roughly 40% that didn’t vote in 2016, those are the potential deciders. If they come out in significant numbers, and are as appalled by Trump’s America as are those who are being polled, the right wing “hidden voters” won’t matter.
Geographic maps are interesting if your interest is geography. If it’s something else?
Population density map of the US also shows the Great Plains really well too. Source: https://t.co/L1gG7y5stv pic.twitter.com/59WVNo470y
— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) July 27, 2020
Kuestenmacher appears to be a demographer and map aggregator. This lovely – and hysterical – map illustrates not only how our population is spread out, but could be enhanced to demonstrate how some Senators represent many people, and some Senators only a few – yet each has an equal vote in the Senate.
In an update on candidate Trump’s promise to renew the coal mining and coal-fired power industries, the latest information from President Trump’s Administration is, well, negative:
2018, coal supplied 13%.
This continues to be good news for folks in general, but bad news for coal industry workers. Fortunately, retraining is certainly possible, and there are jobs.
For more information, see this Mark Sumner post on The Daily Kos.
Addendum: WaPo has a different way of looking at the above:
I’m not sure how to reconcile that Coal at 23%.
Are you in control of your use of technology, or is it controlling you? Sunny Fitzgerald has some tips in case you’re discovering the tail is wagging the dog:
I’m aware that late-night screen time impedes restful sleep and mindless morning scrolling can start the day on a negative note. I’d already implemented numerous mental health and sleep strategies: turned off notifications, removed most social media apps from my phone, tried various meditation practices, limited caffeine to early morning hours and more. Yet, since the early days of the pandemic, I’ve frequently caught myself bingeing on bad news. …
Additionally, according to Presnall, content is increasingly designed to “trigger hyperarousal by playing on our more primitive emotions — fear and outrage” which activates the survival centers of our brain. So, we continue looking for answers by clicking on recommended content rather than searching separately for every piece of information. And in doing so, we “reinforce the [artificial intelligence or algorithm behind the platform] to think that this is the type of news we want” — unintentionally attracting more of the same.
Rather than relay Fitzgerald’s tips – you can go to their article for that – I’d like to note how this resonates with my readings on manipulative communications strategies. As Fitzgerald notes from one of her experts, most web sites are deliberately designed to be sticky, sticky to your brain. They want your attention, because then they can pound on you with ads.
All without your realizing it.
Similarly, as Garvey notes in The Persuaders, the goal of commercial ad creators and political messaging operations is to manipulate your behavior, without your knowledge, to do what they want – spend money, vote their way, think their way.
I’m not saying they’re always wrong, even if they are, but, far more importantly, be aware. Regardless of whether you trust the source or not, try to always split off part of your mind to monitor how information is being communicated to you, whether information you know should be present is omitted, and the stylistic signals that someone is being less than fully honest. It’s a process to learn, the signs you can both learn about and learn on your own, and forming the habit can take a lot of effort.
But it lets you be you, and not someone’s thumb puppet.
If you haven’t read the late Rep John Lewis’s goodbye editorial in The New York Times, go do so.
Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.
You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.
Learning. There is so much of it to do, and so many people think they’re done when they’re done with school.
Don’t be one of them.
That would be the bar exam, necessary in most American states for practicing law. Professor Ilya Somin on The Volokh Conspiracy makes the case, boosted by the problematic risks and logistics of taking the bar exam in the midst of a pandemic:
The standard argument against diploma privilege is that the bar exam requirement is needed to protect consumers from incompetent lawyers. But there is no evidence that bar exams actually achieve that goal, as opposed to serving as a barrier to entry that protects incumbents in the profession from competition. The quality of legal services in Wisconsin has not suffered from its longstanding diploma privilege policy. Bar records indicate that attorneys in that state have disciplinary records similar to those in other states.
Such results are not surprising. The truth is that the bar exam is a test of arcane memorization, not a test of whether the applicant is likely to be a good attorney. That’s why, as my co-blogger Orin Kerr puts it, “when it [the exam] is over you can forget everything you just learned.”
For that reason, I have long advocated the abolition of bar exams …
I’m not sure what life would be like without the looming wall of the bar exam for new lawyers. I’m a cautious fan of hurdles, marking an accomplishment, and the societal mythos bestowing on those who make it over the hurdle with both opportunities and responsibilities – such as being an Officer of the Court. I think, sometimes, that I might have benefited from such formalities.
But maybe not. I was completely mystified by the celebration of graduating high school. I was just glad to be gone. I suppose I should have gone to the graduation ceremony for University, but I believe I was quite ill at the time – and didn’t feel like I was part of a community in any case.
But extraordinary exams such as the bar are not exclusively about testing knowledge that can be looked up just as easily; it’s also about putting together the gumption to actually sit and pass it. Much like the despised long hours for doctors during their internships, big, big challenges are necessary for lawyers who may find themselves in charge of matters involving large sums of money – or the liberty and lives of defendants.
It looks like the scientists who work on seeing small things may have hit the bottom of the turtle stack (“It’s turtles all the way down, doctor!”):
A Cryo-EM map of the protein apoferritin. Credit: Paul Emsley/MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (via nature)
A game-changing technique for imaging molecules known as cryo-electron microscopy has produced its sharpest pictures yet — and, for the first time, discerned individual atoms in a protein.
By achieving atomic resolution using cryogenic-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), researchers will be able to understand, in unprecedented detail, the workings of proteins that cannot easily be examined by other imaging techniques, such as X-ray crystallography. [Nature]
Those blobs, above, are individual atoms on the surface of a protein.
OK, so, thinking about it, there is one more turtle to go – visualizing quarks. An electron is a quark, for example. They’re the bits of reality that are really indivisible, as I understand it.
But this is – pun intended – really cool.
I don’t know a thing about neuromorphic processors or the problems encountered in trying to do computer vision with them, yet this caught my eye:
The Intel Loihi neuromorphic processor.
[Yijing Watkins of Los Alamos National Laboratory] and her colleagues experimented with programming neuromorphic processors to learn to reconstruct images and video based on sparse data, a bit like how the human brain learns from its environment during childhood development. “However, all of our attempts to learn eventually became unstable,” said study senior author Garrett Kenyon, also a computer scientist at Los Alamos.
The scientists ran computer simulations of a spiking neural network to find out what happened. They found that although it could learn to identify the data it was trained to look for, when such training went uninterrupted long enough, its neurons began to continuously fire no matter what signals they received.
Watkins recalled that “almost in desperation,” they tried having the simulation essentially undergo deep sleep. They exposed it to cycles of oscillating noise, roughly corresponding to the slow brain waves seen in deep sleep, which restored the simulation to stability. The researchers suggest this simulation of slow-wave sleep may help “prevent neurons from hallucinating the features they’re looking for in random noise,” Watkins said. [Inside Science]
By introducing noise, it seems to me – conceptually – that there’s a reduction in the purity requirements of the processors. That is, it permits a certain amount of fuzziness or abstraction in order to identify some object as a member of this or that category.
The interesting part of the article is the notion that any sentient creature will need deep sleep in order to have a usable cognitive apparatus – and that’s the rough equivalent of sleep.
