“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.”
–Joan Robinson, Cambridge University
— Barry Ritholtz (@ritholtz) June 26, 2019
Finally, someone has given a good reason for students to take an economics course.
“America will never be a socialist country,” President Trump said as he launched his bid for re-election last week.
That declaration was an effort to frighten Americans and undermine growing support for expanding Medicare and Social Security—two popular programs that have long been derided as “socialist.” Mr. Trump’s declaration hypocritically ignores that he and his Republican colleagues are the nation’s leading purveyors of an insidious form of corporate socialism, which uses government power and taxpayer resources to enrich Mr. Trump and his billionaire friends.
………
Consider the corporate socialism we’ve seen on Wall Street, where the high priests of unfettered capitalism reign. As you will recall, Wall Street’s deification of “free markets” went out the window in 2008 as they watched the financial crisis caused by their own greed and illegal behavior threaten the existence of some of the largest financial institutions in the country. Suddenly, Wall Street became strong supporters of big-government socialism.
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But more Americans are noticing the contradiction between coddled socialism for the rich and the destruction of opportunity for everyone else. I am confident that we will be able to build a grass-roots movement that will not only defeat Donald Trump in this election but finally create a government that works for all people, not just the billionaire class.
Preach it, Brother!
I am not sure why, but I cannot connect to the Wi-Fi at the house in Neskowin (Oregon coast).
Do no blogging tonight.
Posted via mobile.
Busy with family stuff, thought the Twitter machine seems to indicate that Kamala Harris cut Joe Biden a new one.
When the debate stage drops to single digits, I’ll watch.
Someone posted a GIF from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and I noticed a similarity to Deadpool.
Completely missed the reference when I saw Dead Pool.
It also explains the “Chick chickah” thing that Ryan Reynolds does.
How did I miss this?
Arby’s looked at this and said, “Here, hold my beer.”
Making burgers from carrots is one thing, but making carrots from burgers is demented:
From venison, elk, and duck to sandwiches with layers upon layers of meat and curly fries stacked on top, Arby’s has offered some particularly unique products in the past.
Now the sandwich chain is flipping the vegan “meat” trend on its head, leaning into its “We have the meats” slogan and creating its most bizarre concoction yet: the “megetable,” a vegetable made out of meat.
And Arby’s new megetable, the “Marrot,” is exactly what it sounds like: a meat-based carrot that not only tastes like the orange vegetable but has much of its nutritional value.
Conceptualized by Neville Craw, Arby’s brand executive chef, and his sous-chef Thomas Kippelen, the Marrot boasts more than 30 grams of protein and more than 70% of the recommended daily amount of vitamin A.
Of course, the first thing that is wrong is that Arby’s is making a meat carrot.
Almost is as disturbing is that Arby’s has an executive chef and sous chef.
Mind blown.
Tom Tomorrow asked a question:
does anybody know a good place I could take my horse to and ride til I can't no more
— Tom Tomorrow (@tomtomorrow) June 24, 2019
While I do not think that my response was one for the ages, it was pretty good:
Clearly the desert, because there ain't no one for to give you no pain.
— Jack Dorsey Is Objectively Pro-Nazi (M.G. Saroff) (@40_Years) June 24, 2019
I live for these (very) small victories.
As I type this, I am boarding, a plane, Alaska Air flight 385, to Portland for my dad’s tombstone unveiling.
I will be in the air when Elizabeth Warren and the usual suspects take the stage.
Posted via mobile.
Can Activists Trust Nancy Pelosi’s Instincts on Impeachment?
Seriously, her dance on impeachment is not 11 dimensional chess, it’s just cowardice, and this is a disaster.
First, you cannot win if you never try to score a goal, and second, if people don’t believe that you have the guts to fight for them, they won’t vote for you.
They only want K-12 students to help, so talk to your younger friends, or the children of your younger friends, and get them to suggest “Rover McRoverface.”
You could also suggest “Wade” as in “Rover Wade”, if you want to see someone’s head explode:
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is beginning to take shape. Earlier this month, crews installed some of its legs and six of its wheels. Now, the vehicle needs a name, and for that, NASA is turning to students. Beginning in fall 2019, NASA will run a nationwide “Name the Rover” contest open to K-12 students in the US. The spacecraft will need a name by July 2020, when it’s expected to launch.
The contest is part of NASA’s ongoing effort to engage the public in its Moon to Mars mission, which will search for signs of microbial life, characterize the planet’s climate and geology and pave the way for human exploration. If you’re not a K-12 student but want to get involved, NASA is also accepting applications to judge the contest submissions.
As you may be aware, Duncan Hunter, (the son) of Duncan Lee Hunter, is under investigation for misuse of campaign funds.
What I did not know, until now, was that it is alleged that he spent his money on his girl(s) on the side:
Federal prosecutors alleged in a new court filing this week that Rep. Duncan D. Hunter used campaign funds to help facilitate extramarital affairs, and they want to show jurors evidence of the relationships at his upcoming trial.
The filing Monday alleges Hunter (R-Calif.) used campaign money to fund trips, dinners and drinks with women with whom he was romantically involved — three lobbyists, a woman who worked in his congressional office and another who worked for a member of House leadership.
In the new filing, prosecutors allege Hunter’s romantic entanglements blossomed as he used campaign money for large expenses — such as a ski trip near Lake Tahoe — and small ones, such as Uber rides to and from the women’s homes.
………
Hunter and his wife, Margaret, were charged last year with using more than $250,000 in campaign funds to pay for family vacations, theater tickets and other personal expenses. Prosecutors say he used his campaign account as his “personal piggy bank” to live well beyond his means.
………
Hunter’s wife, meanwhile, pleaded guilty in the case this month and agreed to “tell everything,” according to a copy of her agreement with prosecutors. Prosecutors revealed in another court filing they have texts between Margaret and her husband, who have three children, in which they discussed using campaign funds on personal expenses.
………
Ammar Campa-Najjar, a Democrat who is challenging Hunter in the next election, tweeted that Hunter was “literally in bed with lobbyists.”
(emphasis mine)
The kicker is that he won reelection last year, when he had already been charged.
There has been a lot of outrage over how DoJ Lawyer Sarah Fabian has been saying that children in detention do not need mattress, or soap, or toothbrushes or real blankets in detention facilities kept so cold that they are nicknamed “Refrigerators”.
Well, it turns out that she’s done worse things.
In particular, she argued for putting children in solitary confinement under the Obama administration:
………
The United States’s loathsome argument—that it is “safe and sanitary” to confine children without soap, toothbrushes, dry clothes, and on concrete under bright lights—is morally indefensible. It’s also a spectacularly foolish argument to raise in the famously liberal Ninth Circuit, where the United States should have expected exactly the reception that it got. And even though the litigation began under the Obama administration, it was the Trump administration that elected to bring this appeal and ask the court to bless these inhumane conditions as “safe and sanitary.” That’s an extremely aggressive legal argument, and one that suggests that the disturbing conditions being reported at confinement centers are intentional, not a sign of mere neglect.
It is right and fit to condemn the Trump administration for its argument and its treatment of children. But it’s wrong to think the problem can be cured with a presidential election. Trump will depart; the problem will not depart with him. This administration is merely the latest one to subject immigrant children to abusive conditions. It’s been 35 years since Jenny Flores was strip-searched in an adult facility. Before Sarah Fabian defended concrete floors and bright lights for President Donald Trump, she defended putting kids in solitary confinement for President Barack Obama.
Remember, the UN has defined solitary confinement as torture, and the DoJ, and ICE, and CBP asked the courts to allow them to torture children with solitary confinement in 2015:
The Department of (in) Justice recently submitted a motion in opposition to a lawsuit filed by mothers and their children who want ICE to stop torturing their children by placing them in solitary confinement.
The DOJ now can be called the DOIJ for its monstrous defense and advocacy for the following policy:
ICE also has family residential standards that govern discipline and cover, among other things, a situation where a resident has participated in the offense of “insurrection,” which is defined as “[p]articipation or encouraging another to participate in unauthorized activity such as protesting or rioting.” See ICE/DRO Residential Standard, Discipline and Behavior Management, at 17, attached hereto as Exhibit O.6
The ICE disciplinary standards state that their purpose is to “provide a safe and orderly living environment” at ICE family residential facilities, and to “manage discipline and behavioral problems in a manner that ensures the safety and welfare of staff, residents, and visitors.” Exhibit O at 1. “Insurrection” is considered a major offense at ICE family residential facilities, and under the standards requires separation from the general population. Id. at 16-17. Medical observation rooms may be used to facilitate this separation.
In other words, if a mother protests or encourages another to protest, DOJ, led by the lawyer-warrior in favor of locking up toddlers and children, Sarah B. Fabian, ICE has a right to punish the mothers’ children with solitary confinement.
I would note that the pace of deportations under the Obama administration are still outpaced by those of the Obama administration.
There is a special place in hell for both of them.
I was reading this web comic, and I thought that this is some seriously f%$#ed up sh%$.
And then I realized that there is no element of parody involved in this.
We live in Bizarro World.
Most significantly was that, for the first time in over a decade, they narrowly lost the election for Mayor, which did not just a political earthquake, but would eliminate the party’s control over patronage in Turkey’s largest city.
Faced with this treat, Erdoğan petitioned electoral commission to invalidate and re-run the elections, and the commission, being largely a tool of Erdoğan did so.
Well, in the new elections, Ekrem İmamoğlu defeated the AKP candidate in a land slide:
Turkey’s opposition has won a high-stakes rerun of the Istanbul mayoral election, a serious blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and a landmark victory in a country where many feared democracy was failing.
Shortly after initial results pointing to a landslide win for the opposition coalition candidate, Ekrem İmamoğlu, emerged on Sunday evening, the candidate of the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP), Binali Yıldırım, conceded and congratulated his rival.
The repeat election, designed to undo İmamoğlu’s narrow surprise win in the 31 March contest, was an unprecedented test for both Turkey’s fragile democratic institutions and Erdoğan’s political future.
………
The president issued his congratulations to İmamoğlu on Twitter after initial results showed that with 99% of ballots counted the People’s Republican party (CHP) candidate had increased his lead in March, of 13,000 votes, to an astonishing 777,000, or 54%.
Crowded parties broke out on Istanbul’s main shopping streets and in liberal neighbourhoods.
I rather hope that this is the beginning the end for Erdoğan, btu I rather imagine that the this is the point where the opposition begins fighting with each other.
Yes, this is a very young Peter Capaldi:
Via @MattChorley & Times Red Box: proof that the Conservative Party has embraced English Maoism. pic.twitter.com/21uGMNNXA6
— John Harris (@johnharris1969) June 18, 2019
Seriously, the Tories have some seriously f%$#ed up priorities.
Permafrost in Canada is melting at a rate faster than the most alarmist models predicted:
Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.
A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilised the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia.
“What we saw was amazing,” Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters. “It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years.“
………
The paper was based on data Romanovsky and his colleagues had been analysing since their last expedition to the area in 2016. The team used a modified propeller plane to visit exceptionally remote sites, including an abandoned cold war-era radar base more than 300km from the nearest human settlement.
Diving through a lucky break in the clouds, Romanovsky and his colleagues said they were confronted with a landscape that was unrecognisable from the pristine Arctic terrain they had encountered during initial visits a decade or so earlier.
The vista had dissolved into an undulating sea of hummocks – waist-high depressions and ponds known as thermokarst. Vegetation, once sparse, had begun to flourish in the shelter provided from the constant wind.
………Even if current commitments to cut emissions under the 2015 Paris agreement are implemented, the world is still far from averting the risk that these kinds of feedback loops will trigger runaway warming, according to models used by the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
We are in for a world of hurt.
He is actually this.
And the polling
It turns out that of all the names given to driver assistance technology, Autopilot is the one most likely to cause over-reliance on the tech.
This is not a surprise. Overselling the feature, and generally overselling the features of his car, has been central to the business plan for Tesla Motors.
Does the name “Autopilot” cause people to overestimate the abilities of Tesla’s driver-assistance technology? It’s a question that comes up in the Ars comments almost every time we write about the feature.
Critics warn that some customers will assume something called “Autopilot” is fully self-driving. Tesla’s defenders counter by pointing out that autopilot capabilities in planes aren’t fully autonomous. Pilots still have to monitor their operation and intervene if they have a problem, and Tesla’s Autopilot system is no different.
A new survey from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety brings some valuable hard data to this debate. The group asked drivers questions about the capabilities of five advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). They identified the products only by their brand name—”Autopilot,” “Traffic Jam Assist,” “Super Cruise,” etc. Survey participants were not told which carmaker made each product, and they did not learn the capabilities of the products. There were 2,000 total respondents, but each was asked about only two out of five systems, leading to a few hundred responses for each product.
………
For example, 48 percent of drivers said that it was safe for a driver to take their hands off the wheel when Autopilot is active, compared with around 33 percent for ProPilot Assist and less than 30 percent for the other systems named. Six percent of drivers said it was safe to take a nap in a car with Autopilot, while only three percent said the same for other ADAS systems.
Tesla further compounds this issue by promising that full autonomous driving will be available in a matter of the next few months.
This, and Theranos, is what happens when the Silicon Valley, “Fake it Until You Make It,” is applied to the real world.
Someone has come up with a method of engraving riblets on the surface of aircraft using laser interference patterns.
Riblets are (very) tiny grooves carved in the surface of an aircraft to reduce skin drag:
A process to automatically laser drag-reducing riblets onto the painted surfaces of aircraft has been developed by two German companies, laser surface treatment specialist 4JET and aircraft paint supplier Mankiewicz.
The Laser Enhanced Air Flow (LEAF) technology uses laser interference patterning to rapidly create fine streamwise grooves in the paint topcoat. These microscopic grooves, or riblets, have long been known to reduce viscous drag from turbulent flow over aircraft surfaces.
Riblets have been proven to reduce drag by up to 10%, for fuel savings on long-haul airliners of more than 1%, the companies say. Ways of exploiting this benefit have been previously developed, from covering the airframe with grooved plastic film to embossing riblets into the topcoat during painting. But issues from accessibility to durability have so far prevented adoption.
Removing paint using lasers is a well-known technology, but is too slow to create the high density of riblets required to achieve drag reductions, the companies say. Instead of creating the grooves line-by-line using a single laser spot, 4JET says it has developed a way to speed up the process by a factor of 500 using laser interference patterning.
The laser beam is split into two and recombined on the surface so that the light waves overlap in a controlled way. This superposition creates a pattern with dozens of equidistant lines with alternating high and low intensity within a single laser spot. This allows about 1 m³ (35 ft.³) of riblet area to be created in less than 1 min., the companies say.
Way to think outside of the box.
The Germans adopted the term “Concentration Camp” for their camps, which were better described as death camps, because it put a civilized gloss on what was a barbaric enterprise.
This week, conservatives weaponized Jewish suffering to divert discussion from the massive human rights abuses occurring at our border.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), daughter of the man who called torture “enhanced interrogation,” scolded Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for using the term “concentration camp” to describe the growing civilian detention system, including the reopening of Fort Sill, previously a Japanese American internment camp, to hold children.
Since then, Jews have split on whether it’s appropriate to use “concentration camp” outside the context of the Holocaust. There are those who find the term too emotionally charged, or who believe the sheer scale of the Nazi Final Solution bars any possible comparison.
Though I disagree, I understand. My father turned seven on June 22, 1941, the day the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. I was raised with the story of how my grandmother saved my dad and aunt with her quick thinking and a cramped spot on a cattle train leaving Odessa for Siberia. Those who remained were shot. As a Jew, I bear witness to the memory of those who did not survive.
I’m also a legal historian, and my research on genocide and crimes against humanity has made clear that while the Holocaust is unique in its scale and implementation, the perpetrators and motivations are not. Genocide is a human crime, not a German one. In the wake of World War II, human rights laws were written in the hopes of preventing future tragedies, not for labeling the past.
You can also listen to George Takei, who spent much of the World War II in US concentration camps:
I know what concentration camps are. I was inside two of them, in America. And yes, we are operating such camps again.— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) June 19, 2019
I have not yet had the opportunity to discuss this with a relative who spent much of WWII in a Japanese concentration camp in the Philippines, but I hope to.