Category Archives: Uncategorized

Asteroseismology:

Asteroseismology is the study of oscillations in stars. Stars have many resonant modes and frequencies, and the path of sound waves passing through a star depends on the speed of sound, which in turn depends on local temperature and chemical composition. Because the resulting oscillation modes are sensitive to different parts of the star, they inform astronomers about the internal structure of the star, which is otherwise not directly possible from overall properties like brightness and surface temperature. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Gaia telescope’s new map of the Milky Way will let us rewind time,” Alex Wilkins, NewScientist (18 June 2022):

One particular type of tsunami-like vibration that changes a star’s shape, known as a starquake, was detected on some stars when it shouldn’t have been possible according to current theories. “Gaia is opening a goldmine for ‘asteroseismology’ of massive stars,” said Conny Aerts at KU Leuven in Belgium in an ESA statement.

From last week, I think.

Via Mashable, Logically has a report on just how easy it is to scam in the cryptocurrency industry – and why you need to be careful:

Logically’s detailed report follows just how these crypto scams played out on the Stellar blockchain. Stellar, a network like Bitcoin or Ethereum, allows anyone to create their own tokens in “5 easy steps.” The QAnon influencers would create scam tokens and then transfer their holdings out for real money or more establish cryptocurrency after telling their followers to invest. This is commonly known as a “rug pull” in the crypto space. The tokens were created under the domain name “Indus.Gold,” and the QAnon influencers would tell their followers that the crypto was backed by a real New York bank with a similar name. In fact, many of the scam cryptocurrencies followed a similar naming pattern in order to make them sound connected to an actual real company. Logically found that none of these tokens had any connections to the companies they were named after.

For example, Sungold token, which was pitched to their followers as being “backed by a Kazakh gold mine,” was supposedly “linked” to a Russian company of the same name. Logically could not find any information to back this claim up. This scam, however, netted the QAnon influencers approximately $2 million according to Logically.

But rather than focus on cryptocurrencies and what appears to be their inherent dangers, I’d like to shift focus – your’s and mine – to this term influencers. These are people that have found they can sway portions of their viewers’ judgments, and whether for good or ill is not unbalanced.

That is, that they can sway their audience’s judgment, or more to the point yours’, has little to no connection as to whether it’ll improve your life, or degrade it. I’d love to be able to say, This is the problem with social media, but quite honestly this sort of problem has existed from time immemorial. Human beings follow leaders, take their suggestions/orders, and imitate them as a survival behavior.

But leaders and influencers are not, by virtue of their position, uh, virtuous, now are they? That subspecies that is out for its own benefit and will rubbish the lot of you is known as grifters, scammers, scam artists, and a few other terms of approbation.

Social influencers, such as those mentioned in the above article, as well as other, more old-school influencers such as Gwyneth Paltrow, proprietor of Goop, or Jimmy Baker, former televangelist and, more recently, shiller of various fake meds, have surprisingly little to base their claim to being influencers to their names, or, as one famous, late author put it, They’re selling their jawbone, more or less. Paltrow works in the field of New Age products, while Bakker is from the older field of religious hucksterism. Neither field has produced much in the way of positive social influencers.

And, it appears, Internet-based social influencers, often hiding behind pseudonyms, have their share – and perhaps it’s a majority share – of influencers out to scam a buck, rather than give good advice.

I know that nearly everyone looks for that role model, that source of good advice about a world that can be puzzling and frustrating. My advice is to be careful. To examine thoughtfully such advice. To ping it with adversarial questions, even if only in your own mind. To find ways to peek behind the curtain, examine that advice’s construction.

And to do that with all the social influencers, on and off of the Internet.

Here it is from old Gallup:

Younger, Liberal Americans Least Likely to Believe in God

Belief in God has fallen the most in recent years among young adults and people on the left of the political spectrum (liberals and Democrats). These groups show drops of 10 or more percentage points comparing the 2022 figures to an average of the 2013-2017 polls.

Which is no surprise. The bad behaviors exhibited on the right, such as grifting, promoting theocracy, indulging in mendacity and deceptions at the highest levels of the judiciary in order to secure funding of religious institutions and doctrines, and much more of which I’m undoubtedly not aware, makes it easy for the youth, who have not yet made major intellectual and moral investments in the idea of a Divinity, to back away and reconsider the whole proposition of a Divinity, much less a Manifest Destiny, white supremacy, and a bunch of other unmoored ideas.

Some of this will apply to the Left as well, as absolutely no one should escape scrutiny, but, while there are missteps, they are not as egregious, obvious, and sleazy as those on the right.

They keep putting us in the same trivial, bad roles!

Bloodlust! (1961) brings forth Dr. Balleau, perhaps damaged by “the war,” unspecified, who has a passion for hunting. To this end, he has bought an island and populated it with various wild animals, the taxidermied specimens of which adorn the walls of his spacious homes.

And so do some rather more exotic critters, if you know where to look.

Four young people, two lasses and their courters, go out on a boat tour, and the boat’s captain drinks himself into oblivion. They take a dinghy to an island they sight and wander around a bit, until one of them falls into a traditional man-trap. Soon enough, Dr. Balleau shows up, and they are conveyed to his palatial estate.

One thing leads to another, and the good bad Doctor decides he has uses for all of his new guests: the ladies, the usual, while the gentlemen are to be … hunted. The young people have put their spare time to good use, and discovered the lab where he preserves his exotic prey.

It’s not a pretty sight. But they get a hint as to what’s coming.

Well, mediocre acting and a distinctly vicious temperament lead to the usual dashing about in the dark, double crossing, and … well … it should be exciting.

It’s boring.

Repetitious and stilted dialog, marching stereotypes, and a generally sleazy atmosphere offset the psychological flaws and scenery chewing on offer, and in the end it feels a bit like a waste of time.

But your mileage may vary.

An additional observation of the fifth televised hearing has occurred to me, which I have not seen otherwise addressed, and that’s this:

There’s all this mention of pardons, and yet many of those desiring said pardons were left destitute of a pardon on January 20th, 2021, when Biden was inaugurated.

What’s going on?

It’s necessary to remember that Trump is a bully, narcissist, and wannabe mob boss. The most valuable people he knows are those that are dependent on him. Most often, it’s because they’ve criminally blundered and are staring at a possibility of prison, dishonor, and/or loss of wealth.

Keep in mind that, once a pardon is awarded, it cannot be taken back.

So Trump doles them out sparingly. He reasons that no one else can or will save these applicants, so by showing he’ll give them out, such as to former Sheriff Arpaio, who’s too old to really be of service to Trump, he reminds the others that they’d better be prepared to jump really, really high to get the tuna pardon. Through this mechanism, he extracts maximum value from the pardons.

He takes risks, of course, but that’s just part of the game.

A clumsy effort, about average for Trump’s fourth-rate group of sycophants.

In this case, he keeps teasing the chance that he’ll run again for the Presidency. And maybe he will, although I personally doubt it. But so long as he can tease these dependencies that they can yet win pardons, perhaps pardons for any damn thing they might have done, they’ll keep leaping out of the water as high as they can go.

Because that’s how corruption works.

Since the last update …

• Wisconsin Senator Johnson (R) was apparently involved in the January 6th insurrection in that he was asked to deliver two slates of fake electors to VP Mike Pence (R) during the ceremonial count. A Pence aide told Johnson’s aide to not make the delivery. When asked about this on Wednesday, Johnson pretended he was on his phone. How this will affect the general election remains to be seen.
• Also in Wisconsin, the previously mentioned large number of GOP challengers to Senator Johnson in the primary have shrunk to one, Doug Schroeder. Some test polling by Marquette University indicates Johnson is down by only modest amounts to the most likely winners of the Democratic primary.
• In Missouri, candidate and disgraced former governor Eric Greitens’ lead in the Republican Senate primary has the Republican leadership thoroughly spooked, to the extent that they’re trying to sabotage it. Which is not unprecedented, I feel sure. I think the part the Republican leadership is missing is that someday soon, due to the toxic team culture they’ve long engendered, they’ll be replaced by Greitens lookalikes.
• Congress has managed to pass a modest gun bill. Its significance for the Senate elections? Now Republicans cannot be credibly accused of ignoring the deaths of children in favor of their ideology, or so they think. It’s important to note that of the fifteen Republican Senators who voted for the bill, only two, Young of Indiana and Murkowski of Alaska, are up for reelection, and of these two, only Murkowski is running a real risk. Four of the thirteen remaining Senators are retiring at the end of this Congress, which I believe is all the Republicans who are retiring, and so they’re not endangering their careers. The remaining nine face, at worst, a delayed reaction in two+ or four+ years, unless the extreme step of a recall is orchestrated by the far-right gun rights absolutists. Those Republicans who voted NO and are up for reelection will face uncomfortable questions over the matter, as will Young and Murkowski over their YES votes, and the importance of that will vary from State to State.
• With regards to those Republicans voting YES on the gun bill, it may be worth tracking their political donations over the next few years to see if there’s any impact.
• Roe v Wade was overturned. While I haven’t, and won’t, read the opinion, because I’m tired of being irritated with Alito’s broken logic from last time, I will note that conservatives are trying to calm the waters. I don’t know if it’s working, but after reading Erickson’s piece (partial – I won’t listen to him) and O. Carter Snead’s forced, shallow piece, I doubt many pro-choicers will be convinced. But it may have quite some impact on some close Senate races if non-political independents who normally don’t vote are so infuriated that they turn out and vote. This may or may not show up in polling, and it may simply not occur. But there is potential.

This WaPo article was fascinating for what it didn’t consider. First, the flagrant flag flying:

On the morning the House Jan. 6 committee held its second public hearing, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was across town, echoing an instruction he has repeatedly given fellow Republicans: Ignore it.

Speaking to donors gathered at the Georgetown Four Seasons, McCarthy instead recommended Republicans talk about other issues that could help them regain the majority in both chambers of Congress, according to people familiar with the meeting, such as the soaring inflation rate and record-high gas prices — all under Democrats’ watch.

While most rank-and-file members in the Republican House conference have heeded his direction, another influential Republican has tuned into every hearing and has grown increasingly irate — to “the point of about to scream at the TV,” according to a close adviser — with what he views as the lack of defense by his Capitol Hill allies.

That being Trump, of course.

The thing about Trump and McCarthy is that they have history. On January 6th, McCarthy was reportedly angry and frightened and ready to put a knife in Trump’s back. More recently, Trump has been gloating over McCarthy’s rolling over and kissing his feet.

Could McCarthy’s “mistake” be an exceedingly nasty revenge? Corporations, faced with a quarterly loss, will often pile all sorts of bad financial things into that quarter on the theory that one really bad quarter is often forgotten by investors if the following quarters are much better.

Similarly, McCarthy may be trying to pile all the bad shit on Trump and a small coterie of his malignant adherents, such as Clark and Gaetz and all that crew, before setting the boat on fire and pushing it out to sea.

OK, probably not. I don’t take McCarthy as being that smart, that gutsy.

But there is a fascinating congruency. Maybe I’ve misjudged McCarthy.

As public polls indicate American citizens are becoming more and more inclined to prosecute former President Trump for his activities aimed at overturning the 2020 Presidential election, on the right, which I’ve admittedly avoided of late, there seems to a concerted effort to dissemble and distract. Erick Erickson, one of the leading pundits, had this to say today, in the context of President Obama’s premature Nobel Prize and Trump’s Abrahamic Accords:

Today, you can call Israel from Dubai, learn about Israel in books in Dubai’s libraries, and now fly to Israel from Dubai.

This would not have happened but for Donald Trump. He deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

A false equivalence, of course. While I felt Obama’s prize^[1] was, at best, premature, it would have been more accurate to have given it to the American people for voting a war-mongering Party out of office – and that may have been the real message, sotto voce.

Meanwhile, I note that the situation in the Middle East is quite fluid and may have come to the point where dropping existential enmity made sense. Too, there are other possible factors to consider, such as out and out bribery.

Back on point, Erickson wants to keep his base stirred up and not paying attention to the disaster happening in their own philosophical backyard, so the news of the overturning of Roe v Wade drew this response:

It is official. The United States Supreme Court, with an opinion written by Justice Alito, has ended the terror of Roe v Wade, sending the issue back to the several states.

My bold. Oh, the horror of women controlling their own bodies. But he’s not done yet with the mad distractions:

Democrats keep screaming that Republicans are fascists who want to destroy America. They keep encountering an issue that should give them pause.

In the January 6 hearings, in society, in the polling — there are a lot of Republicans who have moved on from Trump or never liked Trump and they’d still vote for him over them. There are a lot of Republicans who don’t think 2020 was stolen and who condemn what happened on January 6, but they’d still vote Trump over Democrats. But Democrats have never been willing to self-reflect and wonder what about them makes so many reject them. [And then off to his radio broadcast, which I skipped.]

I’ve written about the problems of the Democrats before, but to this I can only say this: Yet, these Didn’t like Trump, never will Republicans still voted for him, supported him, and refused to recognize his many failures. And now many MAGAites are the nominees of the Republicans for the November election for many positions as the Republican continues to accelerate to the right.

And extremist and disgraced Eric Greitens is positioned to win the Missouri nomination for the open Senate seat for Missouri.

Erickson is frantically trying to separate the Republican base from the cesspool that is Trump, because if he acknowledges that the culture of evangelicals, gun rights absolutists, out and out paranoiacs, and endemic distrust of liberals, who happen to be fellow Americans, that is the foundation of the conservative movement, in combination with the culture of toxic team politics of the Republicans, then he’s acknowledging that the conservative movement is a toxic, dead-end philosophy. And that might break the movement. Well, not because of little old Erickson – but he would be another brick falling out of the wall.

So he’s avoiding giving the hearings any credence, as it appears everyone else on the right is doing. Last night’s Fox News review of yesterday’s hearing boiled down to Nothing new, very dull.

I found the hearing fascinating, myself.

¹ Obama’s Nobel was for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples“. Notably, at least one clip of his acceptance speech could be read as a rebuke of the Nobel Committee, whether he meant it that way or not.

The fifth televised meeting of the Panel went over material with which I was mostly familiar: the story at the DoJ in the days after the election was done and the votes counted, involving the tawdry and possibly illegal actions of the former President. The following points came to mind as I watched:

• The three witnesses, Acting AG Rosen, Deputy AG Donoghue, and Assistant AG Engel, were outstanding advocates for the DoJ, both then and now. They communicated its mission and operational requirements, and why Trump’s frantic attempts to corrupt it were intolerable.
• Midway through, it became clear that the Trump, his allies, and his minions were, and are, a pack of fourth-raters, going up against first raters.
• While it was never a mystery why senior Trump Administration officials have complained that they can’t find the jobs that are normally available to former staffers of their seniority, this really threw into vivid relief why they can’t – fourth-raters, and that’s what many of them turn out to be, are not desired by top law, lobbying, and other firms with a stake in the business of Washington. Trump promised the best and delivered mediocrity. I expect that their counterparts in the House and Senate will have similar problems when they leave, or are thrust out of, Congress: Gaetz, Cawthorn, Greene, Gohmert, Biggs, Gosar, and many others show all the signs. My bet is they’ll start their own firms and scratch a living off their reputation as former members of Congress, but do nothing significant.

I’m looking forward to the next hearing.

BTW, there was news today that Jeffrey Clark, a former Assistant AG who was amenable to Trump’s plans in return for promotion to AG, had his home searched today by the FBI.

Keep in mind that the Panel has no authority to order such a search. The FBI is an arm of the DoJ, not Congress.

That means AG Garland, or FBI Director Wray, is paying attention and managed to convince a judge to OK the necessary paperwork to conduct such a search. The news on this should be very interesting. How long will we have to wait for its disclosure? I don’t know.

I’ve been thinking for a week about Andrew Sullivan’s contention that

But this complexity misses something important — the contingent importance of individuals in human history. And the truth is: we would not be where we are now without Donald Trump, and Donald Trump alone. He is unique in American history, a president who told us in advance he would never accept any election result that showed him losing, and then proved it. He tried to overturn the transfer of power to his successor by threats and violence. No president in history has ever done such a thing — betrayed and violated the core of our republic — from Washington’s extraordinary example onwards. The stain of Trump is as unique as it is indelible.

Without wishing to mitigate the guilt of the former President, I must point out that it takes two to tango, that without a receptive audience the former President, well, he’d just be Donald J. Trump, strongly disliked by most of his hometown of Manhattan, and probably known as a screaming nincompoop.

In other words, the training of the conservative base to accept the baseless contentions of the former President, from Crime is at a terrible peak! to All the elections I lose are rigged! to Migrant caravans of rapists!, the willingness to swallow such ludicrous claims without limit, it’s all an indictment of a civil society that failed to properly bring these people to political maturity, and thus an indictment of that segment of society vulnerable to these depredations.

Before someone mutters Your political maturity may be my political brainwashing, a position I understand and respect, I believe that such a position cannot be maintained in the face of the spectacle, the avalanche of evidence illustrating the absolute credulousness of this segment, from sources such as the televised hearings of the January 6th panel to the egregious behavior of many state GOP parties, such as my neighboring State’s, the exceptionally clownish and embarrassing Wisconsin GOP. We can list everything from the endless grifting, much like H. Ross Perot’s Endless sucking noise, but into the wallets of the deeply dishonest Donald “No, there’s no Election Defense Fund” Trump and his allies, the lies, all the way to Every Single Believer in the Prophetic Movement.

These are the American citizens who’ve abandoned common sense, who’ve harassed anyone who stood in their path to power, and have forgotten what brought them freedom and prosperity: democracy.

And they, moreso than Donald J. Trump, are the biggest threats to the United States of America, because without dynamite, the match to the fuse is nothing more than some amusing sparks.

This nomination is a bit shocking, as it’s January 6th insurrection witness “Rusty” Bowers, Speaker of the Arizona House, who described being asked to cheat (and refusing), and how his family and his terminally ill daughter were physically harassed by Trumpists. You have to wonder if he was gelded or something.

“If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again,” Bowers said. “Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the county. In my view it was great.” [AP]

If it was that great then why was Trump dismissed overwhelmingly by the voters? And he doesn’t appear to be paying all that much attention to Trump’s impact on the country, does he?

If I’d only waited a day for the June 21st primaries to complete. Sigh….

• In Alabama, Katie Britt defeated crushed Rep Mo Brooks in the Republican primary runoff yesterday. Britt has former President Trump’s endorsement, but quite possibly only because Trump despises Rep Brooks for a social faux-pas of a comment he made in connection with the January 6th insurrection investigation. Minus a scandal or black swan event, or perhaps Brooks shrieking about election rigging, Britt should easily defeat the Democratic candidate, Will Boyd, and Alabama will continue to have a far-right Senator.
• Senator Crapo (R) of Idaho will be facing David Roth (D), who appears to have little political experience and little chance of winning. This was determined back in May and I was just a bit flippant about Democratic chances in Idaho. I fear I remain flippant.
• North Carolina’s Beasley-Budd race has a poll I missed yesterday, as WRAL/SurveyUSA’s poll from a week or so ago shows Beasley up by 4 points, 44% to 40%, the first lead for the former NC Supreme Court Justice. How much of this is Trump’s, Biden’s, or the candidate’s influence is difficult to tell. It has to be encouraging for the Democrats of North Carolina, in any case, and should give them some impetus.

There, all caught up. Yeah, sure I am.

I finally got around to taking a look at this year’s Texas GOP’s party platform. I couldn’t finish it, as it struck me not as a coherent document – and, to be honest, I’ve never read one of these before, so perhaps coherence isn’t a virtue in these things – so much as a litany of personal grievances, dressed up in lawyer language and never really discussed. For example, Section 46:

46. Energy Production: We support free–market solutions and immediate removal of government barriers and direct subsidies to the production, transportation, reformulation, refining, and distribution of energy. We oppose federally directed plans and proposals that favor renewable energy sources that may constitute a nuisance, or otherwise have a substantially negative impact on neighboring landowners, including harming property values of our neighborhoods, farms, and ranch areas.

I can’t help but notice how they ignore the dangers in such installations. Government direction of just such regulations keep farms and ranches safe. Or, despite their advocacy of unfettered free market principles, is Section 72.

72. Personal Data Privacy: We demand that all rights to privacy that individuals have in their homes should be extended to all digital data via the use of strong public key encryption technologies. We call upon Texas to prohibit vendors of the State of Texas and its subdivisions from selling or sharing data captured in providing services to Texans. We support laws limiting the ways in which internet providers, electronic applications, websites, schools, government entities, and others may access the electronic communications or documents of all Texans.

Since I don’t have a benchmark, it’s hard to render a really fair judgment. But I just have to say this just strikes me as something a bunch of fourth-raters would put out. In particular, I noticed that the word fetus was verboten, in favor of the ridiculous pre-born human. With no mention of the woman’s health or desires; she’s apparently just a baby crib with legs rather than wheels.

But they yelled at Senators Cornyn (R-TX) and Cruz (R-TX), so that’s a point in their favor.

For those who keep mumbling that Biden’s to blame for gas prices because of dad-gum this and dad-gum that, including Erick Erickson and other right-wing attack dogs – I can’t bring myself to write pundit – this WaPo article on the refining industry may be a real eye-opener. First quote:

“I don’t think you are ever going to see a refinery built again in this country,” Chevron CEO Michael Wirth said in an interview with The Washington Post this month.

“It’s been 50 years since we built a new one,” Wirth said. “In a country where the policy environment is trying to reduce demand for these products, you are not going to find companies to put billions and billions of dollars into this.”

That’s a shocker. We – or at least I – never hear how much it costs to build and operate a refinery. And then there’s that thing called maintenance:

In the absence of any offers, LyondellBasell plans to shut its 700-acre operation on the Gulf Coast no later than the end of next year. Quitting the refining business, the company said in a statement, “is the best strategic and financial path forward.” The company did not comment on industry speculation that a fire that knocked part of its century-old Houston facility offline last week may push the closure date even sooner, as LyondellBasell faces the prospect of costly repairs.

The facility refines about 264,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

“These are aging physical plants where steel needs to be replaced, equipment needs to be overhauled, new pumps maybe needed,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economist at the University of Houston.

“Just getting the equipment you need could take three years….”

Even the pro-fossil fuel Trump Administration could not persuade the industry to keep refineries open. It’s not so much electric vehicles themselves as the ratio of profit to cost is so small, and the magnitude of cost is so large, as to render the equation existentially dangerous to the companies involved. Add in the cost of accidents, including their fiery, explosive nature:

A 38,000-pound fragment of the plant was hurled across the river by the explosion. Nobody was killed, but 3,271 pounds of highly toxic hydrofluoric acid leaked into the community.

And the entire refining industry is distinctly unappetizing. It leaves me actively wondering how solar and wind power compare for future maintenance and expansion. Wind is fairly easy, as putting up a windmill isn’t a new technology, and I don’t think there’s a great deal of toxic waste to worry about, once the blades are built. They do need a bit of grease, though, and regular maintenance. Too bad about your views, millionaires, but it’s this or lights out.

Solar I’m less certain. And nuclear has some immense costs which must be brought down.

That article is something of an eye-opener.

Some updates of interest:

• In California, VP Kamala Harris’ (D-CA) appointed successor, Senator Alex Padilla (D), will be facing attorney Mark Meuser (R), as expected, in Padilla’s first elective race for this seat. As this is a jungle primary, with the top two advancing to the general election, the primary also functions as a poll – at least for my purposes, which is to stay informed. The results: Padilla has 53.5% of the vote, while Meuser was well behind him at 14.3% of the vote, but no one else in the field had more than 6.7% of the vote. [Yahoo! Entertainment] Padilla just has to avoid stepping in potholes.
• In Georgia, the ability of a gibberish-spewing candidate to potentially successfully compete against a sitting Senator and pastor of a storied church continues as Senator Warnock (D) is tied with Herschel Walker (R) in a recent poll. Color me gobsmacked. Are Georgians really that lacking in self-respect?
• Something I didn’t know, courtesy a concerned, or maybe panicked, post by Erick Erickson: In Missouri, the primaries do not have a runoff if no one reaches 50% in a given race. One election, the winner moves on to the general without regard to the percentage of ballots won. And that means disgraced former Republican Governor Eric Greitens, currently leading in the GOP primary for the Senate nomination (June 8th on RealClearPolitics) by 6 points with 26% of those polled could win outright. But this Greitens ad may have thrown the Republican Senate primary into doubt, as it could alienate undecideds. Absent a strong Democratic contender, I do not think the Senate seat is in danger of slipping from Republican hands, but this is yet another, expected sign of a political party that, having lost its guardrails against extremism, is proceeding to eat itself, and won’t stop until only its own tail protrudes from between its fangs.
• North Carolina appears to feature a close race between Trump-endorsed Rep Ted Budd (R) and former State Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley (D), as MSN reports from ten days ago: The most recent polling for the Senate contest was conducted by Civitas/Cygnal on behalf of the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think-tank. That survey showed Budd ahead by only 2 percent, well within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.95 percent. The Trump-backed Republican was supported by 44 percent of likely North Carolina voters compared to 42 percent that backed Beasley. Carried out from May 21 to 22, the poll included 600 respondents. That and another poll also cited were awfully darn small, though. Wait for bigger polls or bigger gaps before pinning your political identity on the results of this race.
• BayNews9 reports that incumbent North Dakota Senator John Thune Hoeven (R) won his primary easily and will face engineering professor and political newcomer Katrina Christiansen (D). This seems to change little in the political calculus.
• The Utah primaries have not yet been held, but the most likely matchup has been polled, and shows incumbent Senator Mike Lee (R) with a slight lead over Evan McMullin. Let’s wait a month and see if Senator Lee has incurred the wrath of Utahn voters, or merely a frown.
• Like Utah, Vermont primaries have not been held, but in this race for an open seat currently held by the Democrats, Rep Peter Welch (D) reportedly polls at 62%, while the likely Republican candidate, former U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan, was favored by only 27%. I hadn’t heard of any Republican expectations of a pickup of the Vermont Senate seat, and that’s probably just as well.

Updates as warranted. No warranties apply.

And the stories concerning the dark side of cryptocurrencies keep coming:

In 2018, Alex Mashinsky held a dinner at an upscale restaurant in New York. The entrepreneur’s goal was to attract “whales” — crypto-speak for large-scale currency holders who can move markets — to invest in a nascent entity he’d created called Celsius Network.

The Ukraine-born, Israel-raised businessman spoke charmingly and passionately, according to a person who was at the dinner and described it on the condition of anonymity because it was a private event. He laid out his mission of “unbanking,” in which investors can deposit cryptocurrency outside the traditional financial system. Central to the pitch were unusually high yields for depositors in his Celsius Network — as much as 30 percent — made possible, the New York-based Mashinsky explained, because their money would be loaned out at high rates to those needing it for short-term crypto investments.

“It was incredible to watch — everyone in the room was enthralled,” said the guest. “The whales were excited and ready to write checks. Even people who might have been skeptical were on board.” [WaPo]

Sounds like a classic grift. Charismatic representative, referencing utopian ideals and, more importantly, appealing to the dark side of the human, or at least Western, psyche: Greed. Replace whale with mark; whale is far too euphemistic. If you don’t know the what of a mark, go look it up and get out of crypto now, and don’t return until you’ve learned to sniff out the con man.

Still having doubts?

Yet many of Mashinsky’s adherents have refused to give up. They see the freeze not as a sign of malfeasance but as one more piece of evidence that traditional finance wants to destroy crypto and will stop at nothing to realize its aim.

“Everyone take a look. If this is true, it’s a coordinated attack to take Celsius out. My anger is not at Alex & Celsius but at the short sellers. Spread the word!!!” said a user with the handle @evanrodts, referring to a theory that the company has been victimized by those betting on its failure.

“I have all my savings in Celsius because I trust your company,” noted the Celsius advocate @MichalMike18. “Please pull through.”

All set to throw good money after bad, which is a classic psychological symptom of someone thoroughly taken in. Even if this wasn’t a grift – and guaranteeing 30% returns sound like a grift to me – those with stars in their eyes are acting out, while others are going to swallow their losses and never say a thing.

Ego has its day.

The televised January 6th panel meetings keep rolling along, and per usual I shan’t try to summarize this one. But I will point out that this is another bend in the path of the condemnation of former President Trump for corruption. It consists of two points:

1. The official view. This consisted of three witnesses who had contact with various members of Trump’s inner circle, including himself, and showed the clumsy dance of Trump’s Dance Ensemble trying to ride that line between plausibly investigatory and corruption. Trump led the way in irreversibly crossing that line, as summarized in the replayed clips from his hour+ phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) in which he solicits corruption from the Secretary of State. I really do encourage my readers to watch those clips, and if they seem alien or even reasonable, rewatch them. They are a near-master’s class in the Art of the Bully, employing first the carrot, then the stick, suggesting the cheat wasn’t really a cheat, and that no one would blame him for being “late” to find those votes. Raffensperger was too smart, though, to fall for the mixture of rewards, threats, and blandishments, even if he was a fool to support Trump in his reelection bid.

   Also present was elder statesman and Arizona Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who described the bluff of Sure, we have the evidence, we’ll send it to you, with an implicit After you do us a little favor from Trump and Giuliani. He never received the said evidence.And Raffensperger’s COO, Gabe Sterling, described his interactions with the Trump circle, underlining its mendacity.

2. The personal view. Raffensperger, Bowers, and Sterling also presented the personal affects of computer-powered harassment, a maneuver that should fill everyone who participated with crippling shame. But the real stars of this part of the hearing were Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, her mother, and her grandmother, who had been accused by name by Trump’s inner circle of corrupting the Georgia elections. Moss and her mother appear to have PTSD. The story she told, presumably confirmed by law enforcement, was horrific; the idea that “patriotic” Americans would have invaded her grandmother’s home in order to try to perform a “citizen’s arrest” is, again, so shameful that I’d recommend those people emigrate to Russia. Immediately.

These two views should serve to alienate independents from ever voting for Trump, or a Trumpist, again. The slight change in strategy of using the Moss family, whose political affiliation, if any, are not stated, as well as Sterling, once again political affiliation unstated, rather than staying with Republicans, current or former, was necessary as they are witnesses and victims with the most impact.

And that was a lot of impact.

I hope more and more Americans are watching, so that they understand this monster who occupied the Oval Office for four years too many.

University of Minnesota chemical engineering researchers have come up with something clever – a way to replace expensive catalyzing metals with cheaper metals:

A team of energy researchers led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have invented a groundbreaking device that electronically converts one metal into behaving like another to use as a catalyst for speeding chemical reactions. The fabricated device, called a “catalytic condenser,” is the first to demonstrate that alternative materials that are electronically modified to provide new properties can yield faster, more efficient chemical processing. …

The catalytic condenser device uses a combination of nanometer films to move and stabilize electrons at the surface of the catalyst. This design has the unique mechanism of combining metals and metal oxides with graphene to enable fast electron flow with surfaces that are tunable for chemistry.

“Using various thin film technologies, we combined a nano-scale film of alumina made from low-cost abundant aluminum metal with graphene, which we were then able to tune to take on the properties of other materials,” said Tzia Ming Onn, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota who fabricated and tested the catalytic condensers. “The substantial ability to tune the catalytic and electronic properties of the catalyst exceeded our expectations.”

It seems to be a programmable device to make one metal look like another, rather like Field Programmable Gate Arrays can be used to simulate a CPU or other device. OK, that’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s still cool.

Unless you’re a catalytic converter thief. But with electric vehicles being the future, they already knew their future is limited.

Colorado Pols evaluation of the 2022 Colorado primary elections includes a dollop of snark:

(R) Joe O’Dea (25%)↓
The only thing O’Dea has to talk about is what other people are doing that he doesn’t like.

And that’s not the only bit.

Our pink front yard peony has just one bloom on it this year.

Perhaps a bit eager for the camera.

Well, that’s another step up.

We are sick and tired of the Republicans in Name Only surrendering to Joe Biden & the radical Left.

Order your RINO Hunting Permit today! pic.twitter.com/XLMdJnAzSK

— Eric Greitens (@EricGreitens) June 20, 2022

Mr. Greitens is running for the GOP nomination for the soon-to-be empty Senate seat in Missouri. In this ad, which may or may not also be on television, Greitens alienates all the moderate Republicans who might otherwise vote for him, and probably horrifies most of the independents.

No doubt, Greitens is trying to close the deal with the Missouri GOP base, but this could be a costly mistake, depending on who wins the Democratic primary, and how much support they get from the national Democrats.

Lefty Coaster on Daily Kos has put together a collection of tweets from the Texas GOP Convention that documents, among other issues, that Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is the latest victim of the frantic rightward slide of the GOP, at least in Texas. Here’s one tweet:

Ted Cruz gets heckled and harassed by a right winger at TX State GOP Convention, who calls him a coward and a globalist, asks him how he can like Trump after he called his wife ugly, then finished with Cancun. pic.twitter.com/L1hEvN8nV5

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) June 19, 2022

My long time readers will be unsurprised that Cruz is no longer a favorite of the far right of the GOP, but instead probably could not get nominated for the Presidency because he’s too … liberal.

But the other element of interest is the use of globalist as an epithet. While there’s certainly some legitimate concerns for unskilled and semi-skilled labor in a global market, and these should be addressed, it’s a bit ironic in a state that, because of its oil industry, has become as rich as any due to the global economy.

Isolationism connotes control, because one cannot control what’s happening on the other side of the world, and this increasingly jibes with the GOP, from its stance on abortion to the attempts of the GOP to punish those companies that don’t toe the Party line, to even their stance on guns – so long as they see guns as effective personal protection.

Which is mighty odd for a Party that is otherwise supposedly based on faith.

Something a bit alarming to read on awakening:

BIG SUNSPOT ALERT: Yesterday, sunspot AR3038 was big. Today, it’s enormous. The fast-growing sunspot has doubled in size in only 24 hours: movie. AR3038 has an unstable ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field that habors energy for M-class solar flares, and it is directly facing Earth. [Spaceweather.com]

Granted, M-class is not X-class, but still.