Lambert and I, and many readers, agree that Ukraine has created the worst informational environment ever. We hope readers will collaborate to alleviate the fog of war – both the real fog and the stage fog – in the comments. None of us need more cheerleading and unrelated meme rehearsals; there are platforms for that. Low value, unrelated pom-pom-wavers will be summarily minted.
And for those new here, it’s not just a polite request. We have written site policies and those who comment have agreed to those terms. To avoid having to resort to the nuclear option of shutting down comments altogether until more common sense prevails, as we did during the Greece bailout talks in 2015 and shortly after the election of 2020, we are going to be ruthless in moderating and blacklisting offenders.
–Yves
PS Also, before further stressing our already stressed moderators, read our site policies:
Please do not write to us asking why a comment has not appeared. We don’t have the bandwidth to investigate and respond. Using the comments section to complain about moderation/trigger decisions earns this commenter troll points. Please don’t. These comments will also be deleted if we come across them.
Clash of the Titans Science. Neutrino experiments.
The expected financial crash is finally here Alabama Moon (KW).
Credit Suisse and the hunt for the weakest link in global finance The Economist vs. No, Credit Suisse is not on the brink Bloomberg
Andrew Smithers: Careful! Bad models equal bad results McAlvany’s Weekly Commentary. From September, still relevant.
Why Ethereum’s Big “Merger” Is Causing Big Headaches France Media Agency
Internet Owners: Big Data and Big Real Estate (preprint) Daniel Greene (paying at Social Studies of Science). Worth reading:
If the Internet is a “network of networks”, these networks must have physical points of interconnection. These points must be housed, guarded and maintained, lest traffic be disrupted and the global economy stagnate. Essentially, someone – Markley, Equinix, 60 Hudson Street Owner LLC – collects rent for operating highly specialized buildings, with state-of-the-art air conditioning, security and power systems, in which tenants make their networks available for interconnection, create relationships with strategic partners and store digital assets. The speed of streaming and the ease of the cloud only exist because of these location-based economic relationships. I call companies like Equinix and Digital Realty internet owners. At the heart of the new economy is one of the oldest: real estate.
Climate
Colorado state fish swims back from brink of extinction CNN
Pacific Surfliner and Metrolink facing 60-day service outage in Oceanside, San Diego official says The trains. “Concerns about erosion along part of the coastal railway line.”
UC researchers may have finally figured out how to recycle plastic bags into something useful Local News Matters (DL).
Water
The gift of water (KW):
Water is perhaps the strangest thing in the universe (a fascinating video) pic.twitter.com/qeueqAq993
—Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) September 24, 2022
#COVID-19[FEMININE[FEMININE
Excessive death rates for Republicans and Democrats during the Covid-19 pandemic (PDF) Jacob Wallace, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham and Jason L. Schwartz NBER. “The excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats is concentrated in low-vaccination counties and only materializes after vaccines become widely available.”
Norwegian Cruise Line Drops All Masks, Vaccines and COVID-19 Testing Rules USA Today (KW).
NIH awards more bat coronavirus funding to EcoHealth linked to Wuhan lab Washington Examiner (MA).
China?
Real estate crash in China: “a financial crisis in slow motion” FT
United States-China competition: who wins? (video) Chas Freeman, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. From June. Invigorating stuff.
Burma
The NUG’s economic war against the Myanmar military The Stimson Center
The Koreas
North Korea sends missile hovering over Japan in escalation PA
Squid Game, Blackpink, kimchi pancakes… How South Korea became such a world power Guardian
Dear old Blighty
Analysis: UK bond market crash shines light on Big Bang plans for London Reuters
Tory MPs plot to avoid welfare cut after humiliating U-turns Guardian (KW).
How Palantir will rob the NHS Cory Doctorow, pluralist
European disunity
Poland demands 1.3 trillion euros in reparations from Germany during WWII Deutsche Welle
Warning about winter shutdown of German energy exports FT
One of Northern Europe’s biggest vegetable brands, HAK, halts all production for six weeks Euroweekly (KW).
End of a tradition: Paris says goodbye to the iconic paper metro tickets France 24
New not so cold war
As part of bid for new long-range rockets, Ukraine offers US targeting surveillance CNN
Military briefing: what nuclear weapons could Putin use against Ukraine? FT
Sweden sends dive vessel to probe Nord Stream pipeline leaks Reuters (KW).
Frustration over war in Ukraine spills over Russian state TV PA
Kharkov and the mobilization Jacques Baud, Le Postil
Mercenaries may have helped the ancient Greeks turn the tide of war Science
Biden Administration
Competition Authority Gives FTC New Tool on Gig Worker Policies Bloomberg
Judges to consider strike-related property damage claims Law360
Supreme Court refuses to hear case over DOJ ‘screening teams’ used in Trump research The hill
On The Money – The Looming Threats Against Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness The hill
The governor using the currency requests financial assistance from the issuer of the currency Stephanie Kelton, The Lens (ctlieee).
US Army’s massive PR machine unable to dig Navy out of Red Hill jet fuel contamination hole Antiwar.com (ReSilc).
2022
OPEC+ production cut threatens gas price spike ahead of midterm The hill
2024
Trump sues CNN for $475 million in defamation lawsuit Jonathan Turley
Accademia Groves
At NYU, students were failing organic chemistry. Who was to blame? NYT (KLG).
Intelligence Community
Police state surveillance
The onion and the Supreme Court. Not a parody PA. From The onion deposit:
Black Injustice Tipping Point
The first of many; read thread (ctlieee):
Inventions that would not exist without black women. pic.twitter.com/OIABdEaqas
— Africa™ Archives (@Africa_Archives) October 3, 2022
Class struggle
Doomsday Bunkers, Mars and ‘The Mindset’: The Tech Brothers Try to Thwart the Doomsday The conversation
Tech billionaires are actually dumber than you think Counter punch (Re Silc).
The macabre art of cooking “popular pies” Atlas Obscura (KS).
What if Elon Musk loses the Twitter case but challenges the Delaware court? Philadelphia plaintiff
“A stroke of luck”: the oldest webcam in the world is still monitoring San Francisco SFGate
Antidote of the Day (via):
See Yesterday’s Links and Today’s Antidote here.
