Category Archives: Uncategorized

As I, and no doubt everyone else, suspected, the urgencies of winning wars override concerns about killer robots. David Hambling reports in NewScientist (16 July 2022, paywall):

International attempts to regulate the use of autonomous weapons, sometimes called “killer robots”, are faltering and may be derailed if such weapons are used in Ukraine and seen to be effective.

No country is known to have used autonomous weapons yet. Their potential use is controversial because they would select and attack targets without human oversight. Arms control groups are campaigning for the creation of binding international agreements to cover their use, like the ones we have for chemical and biological weapons, before they are deployed. Progress is being stymied by world events, however.

Russia’s need to win in Ukraine, whether it be due to Putin’s egotism, or his alleged devotion to a dead Russian Orthodox mystic, or a realization that the world’s overpopulation suggests food sources, such as Ukraine, a very large food exporter, need to be secured in order to guarantee his legacy is viewed as positive, makes concerns about killer robots secondary.

A United Nations’ Group of Governmental Experts is holding its final meeting on autonomous weapons from 25 to 29 July. The group has been looking at the issue since 2017, and according to insiders, there is still no agreement. Russia opposes international legal controls and is now boycotting the discussions, for reasons relating to its invasion of Ukraine, making unanimous agreement impossible.

So the question becomes Which evolutionary technological path will see the emergence of “killer robots”, aka solely AI directed battlefield weapons? And what special undesirable characteristics will accompany them? At the moment, and I think in line with expectations, drones are a leading candidate. I’ve been hearing about ‘loitering munitions’ for months in reports on Putin’s War, these being drones lurking above for periods of time, utilized only when the operators see, or are informed by spotters, of a target. Everyone worries that the human element could be excluded in favor of an on-board “AI”, or recognition and decision making elements. But that part may be unavoidable:

[Gregory Allen at the Center for Strategic and International Studies] says the extensive use in Ukraine of radio-frequency jamming, which breaks contact between human operators and drones, will increase the interest in autonomous weapons, which don’t need a link to be maintained.

Defensive tactics and technologies are no doubt under development even as we speak, but I haven’t heard much beyond this report.

They just keep dancin’!

• Vice found a recording of Ohio GOP Senate nominee J. D. Vance advocating married couples exhibiting domestic violence stay together, made during a talk at Pacifica Christian High School. This is a test, but not of Vance. It’s a test of his opponent, Rep Tim Ryan (D), and Ryan’s allies, because there’s a lot of nuance going on here. Vance himself grew up in a violent family, and wrote about it in Hillbilly Elegy, so he has first hand knowledge. His response to a request for comment has, I think, some subtly incorrect logic to it – he’s confusing a dependent variable for an independent variable, which alters the character of the article, and the final conclusion. But I do have to respect his first-hand knowledge, although I think the imposition of a one-size-fits-all rule such as his “marriage is sacred and therefore divorce shouldn’t happen” is a basic mistake. But if Ryan or his allies try to make this into a campaign issue, they may end up alienating a significant fraction of the electorate who still believe in the sacredness of the institution of marriage. All it takes is respect for that view, even if you think it has limits. Will the Democrats figure this out? Will Vance have to try to bait them into a trap?
• Wisconsin’s embattled Senator Johnson (R), fighting for his political career, has “signaled” support for same-sex marriage, presumably in a bid for some independent votes this November. Then he voted against a Veteran’s health care bill that he had earlier voted for; it had been returned to the Senate for “technical reasons.” Sounds like he got confused, and, as I’ve mentioned before, the Senator appears to be suffering from dementia.
• Alaska’s Juneau Empire: “Add another unusual poll number to U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s history of them, as a survey published Monday states her net job approval rating has increased by 22% since President Joe Biden took office.” Noted Murkowski-hater Donald J. Trump appears to be headed for disappointment this November.
• In Missouri NBC News may have the reason for Greitens fall in the polls: “A super PAC aimed that’s [sic] been attacking former GOP Gov. Eric Greitens is outspending other groups and candidates ahead of next week’s Senate primary in Missouri, and it appears to be driving down Greitens’ standing in the race.” My question: if the winner isn’t Greitens, will the winner be to the left or the right of Greitens? And will he engage in violence if he loses?
• The latest AJC poll for Georgia shows Senator Warnock (D) leading challenger Herschel Walker (R) by 3 points. Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver has 3% support in the poll, and may split the Republican vote if he persists. A-rated SurveyUSA gives Warnock a commanding 9 point lead in their latest poll. Pundit Erick Erickson still believes in Walker. I remain of the opinion that voting for Walker is a sign of either the ignorance or the political depravity of the Georgia electorate.
• Senator Kelly (D) of Arizona has the formal support of the very small moderate Republican group Republicans for Kelly. Will it be possible to tell if it has any effect on the overall vote? My guess is that the winner of the Republican primary will be so extreme that Kelly will win the general election without too much difficulty, but it’s only a guess.
• Finally, Republican base enthusiasm for a party that seems to be run by a pack of dubious characters, as measured by small dollar donations, may be substantially less than Democratic base enthusiasm for their own candidates. I’ve seen this mentioned in several sources, here’s WaPo. If a good measure, it suggests the Democrats may not be losing control of the House or the Senate in November, errrr, January, oh whatever’s the proper month. I continue to think that seven Republican Senate seats are in danger, Democrats may have one or two in danger. We’ll know more when more primaries are completed and polls conducted after that.

Previous prancing here.

Long-term readers may remember occasional pictures of denizens of a tomato patch climbing the garage. This year, my Arts Editor decided she was tired of all those tomatoes, so most of the patch is dedicated to … sunflowers. They’re not blooming yet, but they’re getting close.

“They’re nincompoops, but they’re malevolent nincompoops,” Former DOJ official @DavidLaufmanLaw says of the Trump allies behind newly revealed emails planning the fake elector scheme. pic.twitter.com/MlvqLhDnPh

— New Day (@NewDay) July 27, 2022

‘Malevolent nincompoops.’ Yep, that’s about right.

Earlier this month Matt Taibbi put out an excellent post on the cost of cryptocurrencies, and what really caught my eye was the juxtaposition of these two paragraphs:

Using digital currencies to help the billions around the world with no access to banking services become participants in a system that has long excluded them is a great thing, in theory. The issue is the structure of these companies. If a stablecoin firm is taking your dollar and trying to make money lending it somewhere, they’re just “unregulated, uninsured, unaudited banks,” as one financial analyst puts it.

And

However, if the transparency goal isn’t maintained in crypto finance, and risk is allowed to exist that digital assets could end up fought over in something like a bankruptcy court, then you’ve just exchanged one brand of “centralized ledger” for another — maybe even a worse version. “There are so many good things about this industry, right? The micropayments, the cheap transactions, the transparency on chain and so on,” says a high-ranking executive for another oft-criticized crypto firm. “But there is also a ton of centralized behavior still.”

For my money >cough<, there’s a contradiction in this dislike for a centralized ledger when it comes to stablecoin trying to make money through lending out assets. Banks have traditionally acted as a centralizer, a concentrator, of wealth, because in order to act as a lender it must do so.

Decentralization may sound great, but negating a necessary pillar of how we’ve done things, and then try to continue to do it, seems like a lovely brick to be installed on that legendary path of good intentions.

Taibbi concludes:

The tragedy of a corrupted crypto universe is exactly the same story, of a “bespoke” financial market grown to fantastic dimensions in a regulatory dead zone, with a cash-fattened congress keeping questions to a minimum, and the same old insiders extracting billions before a crash that will inevitably be paid for by the rabble again. In fifteen or twenty years, maybe, crypto will evolve to revolutionize finance and eliminate insider corruption in the way its adherents hoped, much as the Internet eventually really did change everything from commerce to communication. But we’re still at the stage of clearing out the phonies, the Pets.com and eToys equivalents, and there are a lot still out there.

If ever.

Phlox, balloon flowers, something, Clematis – it was quite a show!

This was found on an island surrounded by the unholy hybridization of flamingos with alligators.

• The Deseret News has Utah incumbent Senator Mike Lee (R) ahead of challenger and Democrat-endorsed Evan McMullin (I) by about 5 points. While that’s hardly overwhelming, it’s still a hill to climb – but it is climbable. And surprisingly close.
• In Ohio, a poll by Innovation Ohio has Rep Tim Ryan (D) leading lawyer and author J. D. Vance (R) for the to-be open Senate seat currently held by the Republicans. The lead is five points. However, FiveThirtyEight has no listing for Innovation Ohio, so keep that grain of salt handy. This would qualify as at least a minor upset, and probably a major upset, since current seat occupant retiring Senator Portman (R) has won by commanding margins in the past.
• I lost track of the Missouri race, and thus missed the poll in late June from Trafalgar that indicates disgraced former Governor Eric Greitens (R) is basically tied with Vicky Hartzler (R) for the GOP nomination for the to-be open seat of retiring Senator Blunt (R), and Eric Schmitt (R) is in hot pursuit, which is quite a change from a month and a half earlier when Greitens had a 6 to 7 point lead. It’s close enough now that an endorsement from any of the three candidates still stuck in single digits might be enough to push the endorsee into the winner’s circle. No mention of the Democrats, they seem a disorganized lot. Trafalgar gets an A- from FiveThirtyEight.
• In the first Illinois poll for the Senate general election that I could find, Illinois incumbent Senator Duckworth (D) has a nearly 10 point lead over challenger Kathy Salvi (R), who proclaimed herself the only Republican who could defeat Duckworth during the primary. The pollster is Victory Research, which has a rating of only B/C from FiveThirtyEight. Salvi’s challenge is big, but not impossible.
• General sentiment continues to run against Republicans, if this report from Global Strategy Group is to be believed: Supporters of the Republican Party are seen as more prone to violence in pushing their agenda than supporters of the Democratic Party, and those who feel the Republican Party is prone to violence cite January 6th, Trump, and the insurrection at the Capitol. The key? The January 6th insurrection.
• In Washington State Senator Murray (D) has won a second poll, a Crosscut.Elway poll, by 20 points. FiveThirtyEight knows of an Elway Research pollster, and gives them an A/B rating. I do not know if there’s a connection between Crosscut.Elway and Elway Research. While there’s a long ways to go, it appears the Washington Republicans have dug themselves a hole and then started using a credit card.
• I don’t put a lot of credence in “generic ballot” polling, because politics is local, local, local, and quite dependent on the particular candidates’ reputation. But the Emerson College Polling result over the weekend is interesting, not only for it showing Republicans and Democrats virtually tied, when Republicans had earlier had a substantial lead, but also to show the importance of the economy to voters to be decaying (down 7 points to being of primary importance to 51% of those polled), while abortion and crime are tied at a distant #2, and then healthcare, immigration, housing, and Covid-19. Other generic ballot polling has varied wildly over time and pollster, so the essential meaning of this poll isn’t entirely clear, but it does suggest that the economy either isn’t as important as the GOP would like to believe – or voters are happier with the Democrats’ performance than the GOP would have its base believe.

Takeaways? The fried chicken. And Senators Duckworth (D) and Murray (D) seem safe enough, barring a black swan event or incompetent campaigning. Ryan is not safe, but promising, Lee has an uncomfortably small lead, relative to expectations, which may in the future be affected by folks’ perceptions of the former President, and Missouri remains a big question mark.

Perhaps most important, though, is the impression that it’s only just beginning to dawn on the Republican strategists that the January 6th insurrection is a big ol’ anchor around Republicans’ necks. I don’t read right-wing pundits much, as just about all of them are disconnected from reality, appear to be paid propagandists, or at best don’t know how to justify their complaints in a compelling manner. Erick Erickson’s my biggest exposure, and, while he does acknowledge the insurrection happened and he condemns it, he remains convinced, or at least is trying to convince his audience, that the economy is far more important than an attempted insurrection by folks carrying Christian Nationalist, Trump, and Confederacy flags, and no one is paying attention to the Dobbs decision.. He’s been busy celebrating the imminent conservative overwhelming victory, while busily ignoring the actual evidence, with only a couple of exceptions.

But maybe he’s more realistic in his subscriber-only posts and/or his radio show. I dunno, I won’t pay for that.

Earlier updates of dubious morality are here.

It feels like deja vu but it’s not – because this is what social media looked like thirty-five years ago:

In April 2021, [Kate Glavan and Emma Roepke]’s followers [on Instagram] encountered an invitation to a new medium: “Join Geneva and meet other Sea Moss Girlies.” Within minutes, fans flooded in.

Geneva allows groups of people to talk in different topic-oriented rooms, similar to chat apps like Slack or Discord. Absent follower counts and likes, members are free to interact without the pressure of public metrics, an algorithmic feed, or company oversight shaping their conversations. Fans of the platform say it offers a more intimate, community-oriented experience than traditional social networks.

In their Geneva community, called a “home,” Glavan and Roepke have an easygoing rapport with members. They exchange music and TV recommendations in long threads, they marked National Eating Disorder Awareness Week by swapping personal stories of their mental health struggles and even met up with members for an IRL picnic. [WaPo]

Even including the terminology room, though not home, this sounds like a close description of various Twin Cities Citadels (original author Jeff Prothero aka Cynbe ru Taren) from maybe 1983 through, oh, 2000. Our numbers were necessarily smaller, as we’re talking single phone line BBSes, but we had a wide age range, 10 to probably 70, from students to engineers to psychologists and a judge and and a scientist or two and … and the get-togethers, weddings, funerals

Perhaps a big difference was that a lot of us were social introverts, while it’s not clear from this article if this holds true, but probably not. Online communication is an accepted manner of social connection these days.

In any case, the tangible metrics of ‘followers’ and clicks and, perhaps, even monetization appears to substantially interfere with satisfying social interactions. While losing those measurements may make it harder to, well, measure the success of the community, the very act of measurement may lessen the satisfaction of members of the community.

And moving to a more egalitarian model of community (go read the article!) also contributes to members’ sense of belonging.

When the same solution is devised for a problem in different scenarios, i.e., convergent evolution, there’s something going on. And this has a bonus: it involves charismatic dinosaurs:

“The neat thing is that we found the body plan [of Meraxes gigas] is surprisingly similar to tyrannosaurs like T. rex,” said [Peter] Makovicky, one of the principal authors of the study and a professor in the University of Minnesota N.H. Winchell School of Earth and Environmental Sciences. “But, they’re not particularly closely related to T. rex. They’re from very different branches of the meat-eating dinosaur family tree. So, having this new discovery allowed us to probe the question of, ‘Why do these meat-eating dinosaurs get so big and have these dinky little arms?’”

With the statistical data that Meraxes provided, the researchers found that large, mega-predatory dinosaurs in all three families of therapods grew in similar ways. As they evolved, their skulls grew larger and their arms progressively shortened.

The possible uses of the tiny forelimbs in T. rex and other large carnivorous dinosaurs have been the topic of much speculation and debate.

“What we’re suggesting is that there’s a different take on this,” Makovicky said. “We shouldn’t worry so much about what the arms are being used for, because the arms are actually being reduced as a consequence of the skulls becoming massive. Whatever the arms may or may not have been used for, they’re taking on a secondary function since the skull is being optimized to handle larger prey.” [University of Minnesota News and Events]

Gotta love the painting:

By Carlos Papolio – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link.

At 36 feet long, that’s big enough to scare the hell out of me.

Lovely yellow lily:

Then I turned tail and ran!

Cryptocurrencies are big enough that they are major players in certain markets – insofar as the mining activity goes. What does that mean?

It means power companies are leary of miners because they bring other costs to the table. Consider what’s happening out in Washington State:

Source: Lake Chelan Cams

Though a lot of mining still happens in Chelan, Douglas and Grant counties, thanks to the abundant hydropower that miners prize for their energy-intensive processors, the region’s crypto industry is a shadow of its former Wild West self.

Many of the miners who flocked to the Wenatchee area during the last decade have either gone out of business or moved to other states, like Texas.

And while the three public utility districts still get inquiries from would-be miners looking for juice to run the complicated calculations that underlie cryptocurrencies, it’s nothing like the heyday from about 2014 to 2017. Back then, investors from as far away as China were eyeing about two-thirds of the region’s total hydropower output. Today, crypto mining accounts for maybe 4% of the combined output of the five hydroelectric dams.

“It’s been fairly quiet,” says John Stoll, managing director for customer utilities at Chelan County PUD, which at one point had power requests for more than 200 megawatts of power, or more than the county’s existing residents and businesses were using. The PUD’s current mining load is 8 megawatts, or around 3.5% of local load. [The Seattle Times]

At the levels miners operate, you don’t just plug your computer into the wall and start mining. Both you and your power company have to plan for this energy draw.

It’s only going to get worse. I mean, algorithmically, the plan is for it to get harder and harder to mine. That’s the explicit plan for Bitcoin.

And the current value of a Bitcoin? It appears to be stuck in a range of $20K to $25K per coin, which remains more than 50% off its highs. At these levels, energy has to come cheap to make mining economically lucrative.

And if the supplier is charging you a special, elevated price, then you have a bigger problem. Here’s what I meant by the other costs of cryptocurrencies:

Part of that new quietude is forced. To shield local power grids from crypto’s boom-bust dynamic and short-term investment horizons, the utilities adopted new rates and other policies for their hydropower, which typically goes for around 2.5 cents to 5 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to around 15 cents for U.S. average.

Chelan County, for example, charges miners roughly triple what it charges residents for electricity. Douglas County caps its total crypto mining load at 39 megawatts (it’s currently just under 33 megawatts) and steps up rates for crypto miners 10% every six months. In Grant County, rates for “evolving industry” customers, as crypto miners are known, get bumped a few cents up if miners’ total current and requested power demand exceeds 5% of total county demand, which it has since March.

That dynamic means the power company finds it more difficult to plan for the future, and power companies hate that because power generation, at least until renewables become dominant, is an expensive project. Build too much excess capacity and the power company goes bankrupt – or raises rates.

That makes miners unpopular, mining an eyebrow-raiser, and cryptocurrencies an expensive, unnecessary hobby.

The dude on the left? The cops jailed him for stealing scenes.

The Sphinx (1933) presents a classic murder mystery – when a deaf, mute man is the most likely suspect in a murder, and yet deliberately makes conversation with a nearby janitor, well then just who goldarn did it?

But there’s more going on here. A young woman reporter gets to interview, on an ongoing basis, the murder suspect after he’s found innocent, and is enraptured by his eloquent silence and philanthropic ways. Meanwhile, she’s receiving insistent warnings from the wannabe boyfriend, as well as a cop, that she’s in a dangerous situation.

The lady’s intuition, of course, wins out.

And the bodies are piling up. Who knows what about the financial business, and why does that make them targets of the mad man with the big hands?

For all the nice complexity, the flat acting is a bit of a drag. It made me a little impatient. On the other hand, credit where due: the cops were not a member of the trope common to the era, which is the irritating, farcical nobodies. Authentic or not, these cops were serious characters with believable motivations and actions. A relief for those of us who are not fans of the farce.

It’s not a bad little story. It could have been better.

California Governor Newsom (D) is certainly getting his name on the national scene:

I try to appreciate nifty engineering, and a replacement for a moving parts mechanism with a non-moving parts mechanism always seems to fit the definition of nifty. Oh, here’s one now!

At Stanford University, engineering researcher Nina Vaidya designed an elegant device that can efficiently gather and concentrate light that falls on it, regardless of the angle and frequency of that light. A paper describing the system’s performance, and the theory behind it, is the cover story in the July issue of Microsystems & Nanoengineering, authored by Vaidya and her doctoral advisor Olav Solgaard, professor of electrical engineering at Stanford.

“It’s a completely passive system – it doesn’t need energy to track the source or have any moving parts,” said Vaidya, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Southampton, UK. “Without optical focus that moves positions or need for tracking systems, concentrating light becomes much simpler.”

The device, which the researchers are calling AGILE – an acronym for Axially Graded Index Lens – is deceptively straightforward. It looks like an upside-down pyramid with the point lopped off. Light enters the square, tile-able top from any number of angles and is funneled down to create a brighter spot at the output.

In their prototypes, the researchers were able to capture over 90% of the light that hit the surface and create spots at the output that were three times brighter than the incoming light. Installed in a layer on top of solar cells, they could make solar arrays more efficient and capture not only direct sunlight, but also diffuse light that has been scattered by the Earth’s atmosphere, weather, and seasons. [Stanford News]

Importantly, at least to me:

The basic premise behind AGILE is similar to using a magnifying glass to burn spots on leaves on a sunny day. The lens of the magnifying glass focuses the sun’s rays into a smaller, brighter point. But with a magnifying glass, the focal point moves as the sun does. Vaidya and Solgaard found a way to create a lens that takes rays from all angles but always concentrates light at the same output position.

I was concerned that this was going to be a ‘miracle’ device that requires a miracle to manufacture at scale, but this reference to current optical tech as well as 3D printing gives me hope:

After exploring many materials, creating new fabrication techniques, and testing multiple prototypes, the researchers landed on AGILE designs that performed well using commercially available polymers and glasses. AGILE has also been fabricated using 3D printing in the authors’ prior work that created lightweight and design-flexible polymeric lenses with nanometer-scale surface roughness. Vaidya hopes the AGILE designs will be able to be put to use in the solar industry and other areas as well. AGILE has several potential applications in areas like laser coupling, display technologies, and illumination – such as solid-state lighting, which is more energy efficient than older methods of lighting.

Fascinating and potentially impactful and far-reaching.

Carnarium:

The web doesn’t seem to know this word very well, so here’s its usage, by Caitlyn Doughty.

OK, so it’s Latin. I still like it.

The minor controversy, relative to the major controversies already swirling around the former President, of the deleted Secret Service messages of January 6, 2020, suggests a management misstep. If the content of text messages, or other similar material, could be threatening to the status of the generators or their bosses, the existential status of that material should not be under the control of the same personnel. It should be under the control of a neutral third-party who must adhere to anti-corruption regulations and/or statutes.

I hope that was dry enough for you.

This next entry in the long-running series, temporarily lacking its Captain & Chairman BennieThompson due to a Covid infection, but ably replaced by Vice Chair Cheney, explores the actual struggle within the capitol. Among the more hair-raising new information is the Secret Service agents calling their loved ones to say farewell.

The testimony of Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor Pottinger and Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews was, of course, riveting and informative, although I thought it lacked the sheer surprise and drama brought to the table by previous witness Cassidy Hutchinson.

My soul-mates are after my ass!

And, of course, the political hit job on Senator Hawley (R-MO) was sublime and delicious.

As always, go see it for yourself. These hearings are defining moments of drama in the political world of today. Don’t deprive yourself of the experience.

Keeping in mind that the Republican Party’s ideological generational lifespan is on the order of a fruit fly, here’s a sample of the next generation of Republicans.

Far-right extremist Michael Peroutka became the Republican Party’s nominee for Maryland state attorney general with a victory in Tuesday’s primary. Peroutka’s victory is a fiery red flag about the increasing extremism of the Republican Party’s base—as is the gubernatorial primary victory of Trumpist Dan Cox. In April, both Peroutka and Cox appeared at a gathering of QAnon conspiracy theorists called “Patriots Arise.”

Peroutka declared in 2014 that the Maryland General Assembly was no longer a legitimate governing body because its support for marriage equality violated God’s law, and that therefore none of the laws it passed were “legally valid and legally enforceable.”

Peroutka was a board member of the Confederacy-celebrating, pro-Southern-secessionist League of the South. At the group’s 2012 national convention, he led the crowd in singing “Dixie,” which he referred to as “the national anthem.” He quit the League in 2014 when he decided to run for the Anne Arundel County Council, claiming unconvincingly that he had been unaware of the group’s racism.

Peroutka founded the Institute on the Constitution, a Christian Reconstructionist organization that favors religious tests for public office and teaches that the government’s role is to enforce God’s law, and that the government has no legitimate authority to “house, feed, clothe, educate, or give health care to…ANYBODY!” [Right Wing Watch]

Peroutka would no doubt chase former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) out of the Party with a rolling pin in hand. He would have been a member of the Fire-Eaters had he been around during the American Civil War. It’s clear that he has no concept of Justice, just a Trust in God approach, and since he gets to specify God’s instructions, you can bet, well, it makes it easy to justify damn silliness. Don’t believe me?

VICE’s Cameron Joseph wrote about the potential for a Peroutka victory in a story published Monday. In a 2017 story for Talking Point Memo, Joseph reported that during Peroutka’s presidential campaign, Peroutka said he was still angry that Maryland hadn’t seceded in the run-up to the Civil War, praised his son for calling the Confederal flag the “American flag,” and praised his daughter for refusing to play the Battle Hymn of the Republic in her school band.

He’s a goof, a whack job, but since he’s so far to the right he should have been laughed right off the ballot and into obscurity, we can guess this is the next generation of far-right Republicans.

For readers who remember the saga of cryptocurrency company Celsius, here’s an update:

The Israeli cryptocurrency company Celsius has filed for bankruptcy, becoming the latest casualty in the worldwide cryptocurrency crash.

The New Jersey-based, Israeli-founded firm filed for bankruptcy in New York City [July 14]. Celsius said in a statement that the decision will “provide the Company with the best opportunity to stabilize the business (and) consummate a comprehensive restructuring transaction that maximizes value for all stakeholders.”

Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows firms to remain in operation while restricting their debt. …

Writing for the Israeli business news outlet Globes, Eti Aflalo said that Celsius used customer deposits to borrow for non-liquid investments, and that this became a problem when people wanted their money back during the recent crypto crash.

“Celsius’ big problem is that it has leveraged customers’ deposits and put it in various non-liquid investments, and so a month ago when customers began demanding their money, in the equivalent of a ‘run on the bank’ there was not enough available capital to repay all their money,” wrote Aflalo. [AL-Monitor]

Yet …

One employee of a cryptocurrency fund in Israel, who wished to remain anonymous, said that Celsius’ bankruptcy is not representative of the country’s crypto scene.

“I don’t think it’s representative of how Israel is viewed as there are many quality crypto companies and pioneers of the space here,” he told Al-Monitor. “There is a level of respect in general for Israeli tech.”

First ripple of a tsunami, or just a standard result for any industry? Time will tell.

NBC News has a report on some legislative activity:

The House passed the Respect For Marriage Act Tuesday to codify legal same-sex marriage nationwide, fearing that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court will rescind the right after it overturned Roe v. Wade last month.

The vote was 267-157, with 47 Republicans joining a unanimous Democratic caucus in supporting the legislation.

I cannot help but wonder if a rigorous SCOTUS would overturn such a law on the basis of the 10th Amendment.

Professor Richardson supplies an Earl Landgrebe group nomination:

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who testified before the January 6 committee, has been formally censured by the Arizona Republican Party. Tonight, the chair of the party announced the censure over a number of “offenses.” The censure called for voters to throw Bowers out of office.

Quash:

To set aside; to void. As in “to quash a motion” or “quash evidence.” [Cornell Law School/Legal Information Institute]

Noted in “Republican Rep. Jody Hice subpoenaed in Georgia Trump election probe,” Dareh Gregorian, NBC News:

Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., is fighting a subpoena to testify before the Georgia special grand jury hearing evidence in an investigation into possible 2020 election interference by former President Donald Trump and others, court papers show.

Hice, a Trump ally who voted to reject the state-certified election results in Georgia and Pennsylvania on Jan. 6, is seeking to quash the subpoena from the grand jury assisting the Fulton Co. district attorney’s investigation.

Professor Richardson summarizes the Idaho GOP’s platform concerning fetuses:

And yet, on Friday, by a 4-to-1 margin, delegates to the Republican Party convention in Idaho rejected an amendment to their platform that would have permitted an abortion to save the life of the mother. The platform considers any fertilized egg a person from the moment of fertilization, even before implantation, and criminalizes abortion from that moment on as murder. The delegates did agree to exempt miscarriage from criminalization.

So, when a fetus threatens the life of the expectant mother – say, an ectopic pregnancy – should the fetus be charged with attempted murder? Threats to the life of the mother?

The fetus is a person according to them, after all.

Or should we consider the fetus, which lacks cognition and even a brain, to be possessed by some demon that requires exorcism? Should those pregnancies that endanger the health and life of the expectant mother be attended by a cleric “qualified” to exorcise demons?

Precautionary exorcisms? Sounds like a windfall for the ambitious cleric. I sense online classes in Exorcisms are an imminent business opportunity.

Serious questions. Real beard pullers, I must say.

While President Biden’s critics howl and run around about his son, how’s he doing in his primary responsibility?

Judging by the wall-to-wall coverage of the visit, with analysts hailing all the moves and gestures of the American leader, Biden clearly captured the hearts of Israelis. He managed that despite being considered a political “leftist” in Israeli terms, and an antithesis to his predecessor Donald Trump, who is more popular in Israel than in the United States. Biden was warm, attentive and sometimes funny. His love for Israel is clearly authentic and inspires trust. He is not ashamed of it, taking pride in it. Israelis love it, ignoring the fact that Biden is the last Democrat of his kind. [Ben Caspit, AL-Monitor]

But…

The “Jerusalem Declaration” signed by the two leaders during the visit, which spoke of the values shared by their countries, could become irrelevant if Israel continues its slide to the right, becoming more conservative and religious, less democratic and liberal. Israel’s distancing from the Democratic Party in recent years and from the mainstream of American Jewry is one of the most worrisome processes that threaten Israeli national security these days.

Hard to fault that after the teeth-gritting, for everyone but Trump and Trumpists, requirement that he play nice with Crown Prince and alleged murderer Mohammed bin Salman.