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.
Natural inspiration Science. “Far from being passive vessels at the mercy of their circumstances, organisms can directly influence evolution.”
NASA’s Dart probe will crash into an asteroid in Earth’s first defense test Guardian
Ravi Menon: Critical economic uncertainties Bank for International Settlements. Menon is Chief Executive of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Beware of the ‘hedging curse’: How to tell when a market crash is overdone Bloomberg
The Crypto Industry Isn’t As Ethical As Private Equity, Says Buyout Billionaire FT. God’s goodness!
Climate
Exxon’s long-term adoption of carbon capture in the Houston area just got massive support from Congress Inside climate news
Salmon snoop around the banks trying to escape the Klamath River High Country News
#COVID-19[FEMININE
Pourquoi Omicron pourrait rester dans les parages NYT. Les deux suivants de cet article–
La sous-lignée Omicron BA.2.75.2 présente une évasion importante des anticorps neutralisants (préimpression) bioRxiv. Extrait du résumé : “Dans des échantillons de sérum récents de donneurs de sang à Stockholm, en Suède, BA.2.75.2 a été neutralisé, en moyenne, à des titres environ 6,5 fois inférieurs à BA.5, faisant de BA.2.75.2 le plus résistant à la neutralisation variante évaluée à ce jour. Ces données font craindre que BA.2.75.2 puisse effectivement échapper à l’immunité humorale dans la population. Notez la déclaration d’intérêt concurrent.
L’immunité humorale SARS-CoV-2 imprimée induit l’évolution convergente d’Omicron RBD (préimpression) bioRxiv. «L’interaction entre l’évolution convergente des variantes d’échappement et un répertoire d’anticorps moins diversifié conduirait finalement à des variantes hautement échappables, posant un grand défi aux vaccins et aux anticorps actuels. Il pourrait même être pire que l’infection par les variantes d’évolution convergentes finales prévues puisse entraîner une augmentation de la gravité de la maladie en raison du nombre limité d’anticorps neutralisants obtenus immédiatement après l’infection. … [O]Your results suggest that the herd immunity established by natural infection might be hard to stop [Receptor Binding Domain (RBD)] evolution and ending the pandemic, and vaccine boosters using BA.5 may not provide broad enough protection against emerging subvariants harboring convergent mutations. I would be interested to hear what the Brain Trust thinks of these three links.
Vancouver mother files regulatory complaint against school district over breakdown Radio Canada. For more on school ventilation, see NC here.
China?
Xi’s central status reaffirmed as party unveils congress guests Bloomberg
About these “coup” rumors Sinocism. I believe this New York-based account was the epicenter of the rumors, which circulated on my Twitter feed for about a day:
East #Xi Jinping Under arrest after #Military #Cut? 3 senior anti-Xi officials sentenced to death
Conflicting Findings, Evidence and Facts Regarding Xi’s Mysterious “Disappearance” After Returning to China #China
Scenario to https://t.co/b2m1RBy4lM
Video on https://t.co/IHVGOxrSvf pic.twitter.com/0oenbjfl9B— Jennifer Zeng 曾錚 (@jenniferzeng97) September 24, 2022
I thought this was the funniest take:
Putin: Our gas is working well for you, buddy?
Xi: Try now man. So far, so good
Falun Gong: Xi was removed from office
🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/oq2w8hYoTs— Keawe Wong 凯王 (@KeaweWong) September 24, 2022
I’m not sure about Falun Gong, though.
* * * What is China really doing in the countries of the South? The China Project
* * * Here to stay? China’s cityscapes transformed by thousands of COVID test booths Reuters. Well, that’s the approach a serious country would take.
* * * Here is the strategy to prevent China from taking Taiwan The hill. RAND and Brookings.
Defeat the Chinese Navy, Defeat the Chinese War Plan war on the rocks
Strategic Defense Review: China is not a military threat Pearls and Irritations. Australia.
The Koreas
The presidential election through the lens of turnout and cynicism The blue roof
Sophisticated scams lure job seekers to lawless corners of Southeast Asia The star
India
18 men rescued in Kolkata as police stop interstate racketeering Hindustan time
Syrian
Exiled dissident fuels anti-hijab protests in Iran Dexter Filkins, The New Yorker. I have to say I’m very dubious when practical accounts suddenly appear, especially when the evidence is mostly video, especially when we have some form in regards to the Axis of Evil, and above all when the stories confirm the track record of a major Democratic constituency, PMC women. Unfortunately, however, reverse engineering the truth from bullshit is very, very difficult. That said, the deck: “Since 2014, Masih Alinejad has been posting videos of Iranian women removing their headscarves. When a 22-year-old died last week in the custody of the vice squad, the country exploded. Alinejad’s funding over the years:
Alinejad is a seller for Voice of AmericaUS Agency for Global Media, etc. Apparently, The New Yorker’s vaunted fact-checking department missed this detail when the article was first published, as seen in the correction at the end of the article.
* * * Transfer of Libyan detained at Guantánamo Bay approved NYT. The Bridge: “This decision continues the Biden administration’s efforts to reduce the wartime prison population and find countries willing to take inmates.”
European disunity
Italy set to elect most right-wing government since Mussolini Policy. Comment:
We are only 7 months into this miserable war, and already the neofascists are back in power in Italy for the first time since Mussolini, and the neo-Nazis are in power in new NATO member Sweden . https://t.co/qXuwdyAk9W
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) September 25, 2022
* * * The EU is descending into anarchy Detachment
European industry buckles under the weight of soaring energy prices Irish Examiner
Germany secures single tanker on Gulf of Scholz tour Bloomberg
* * * Berlin has a surprising soft spot for its Soviet memorials Bloomberg
Dear old Blighty
Can “That” (1976) happen again? Stephanie Kelton, The Goal. A crisis of the pound sterling.
Grief totalitarianism (podcast) London Review of Books
New not so cold war
In Ukraine, the United States is leading us towards war with Russia John Pilger, Keeper. Since 2014, still relevant.
Putin has just escalated his war in Ukraine. Here’s your expert guide to what’s to come. Atlantic Council
* * * Ukrainians spooked by Russia’s predestined referendums PA. I’m not sure I like house-to-house voting very much. But I like the prospect of Azovs blowing up a few polling stations even less. And as I said, I am flabbergasted that Ukraine’s tactic of bombing the Donbass has not proven to be mobilizing, at least in the Donbass. It is a perplexity!
Kazakhstan snubs Russia, says it won’t recognize referendums in Ukraine Hindustan time
* * * In southern Ukraine, fierce fighting and deadly costs NYT. “The Ukrainian government does not usually disclose casualty numbers, but soldiers and commanders interviewed last week described battlefield casualties as ‘high’ and ‘massive’. They described large offensives in which columns of Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles attempted to cross open fields only to be pounded mercilessly by Russian artillery and blasted by Russian mines.
* * * News from the home front: Russia under conditions of partial mobilization Gilbert Doctorow
Military briefing: How will Russia’s mobilization affect the war in Ukraine? FT
All the Tsar’s Men Foreign Affairs
Biden Administration
Highly Popular and Under Attack: The Political Battle on America’s Public Lands HuffPo
Supply Chain
Ukrainian ports shipped about 4.7 million tonnes of food under grain deal Hellenic Shipping News
Police state surveillance
FBI judge misled judge who signed warrant for Beverly Hills seizure of $86 million cash LA Times. The FBI? Surely not.
Woman seriously injured after the Colorado police cruiser she was placed in was hit by a train NBC
Imperial Collapse Watch
Why Trade Couldn’t Buy Peace FT
Nimitz drinking water contaminated with jet fuel, Navy acknowledges Miltary.com
Class struggle
The US rail deal was presented as a fait accompli. Now that they’ve seen it, the workers don’t agree Fort Worth Star Telegram
The two biggest rail unions will not count votes on contracts until mid-November The trains. Mission accomplished!
I tried replacing Google with TikTok, and it worked better than I thought The edge. I just installed it. I will say the integration is very easy (and you can search and watch right away easily). I did a search for “N95” and immediately found 3M Aura videos, as well as duckbill fit tests. The results pages weren’t filled with ads either. OTOH, the world of short video is foreign to me. But maybe I have to give up the unequal battle….
Antidote of the day (Going through):
Bonus Antidote. Ring :
I guess the alarm clock doesn’t get any better than that, the sound! Two of the 24 elephants in our rescue center are hunting birds early this morning. #WFFT @WFFTailand pic.twitter.com/ee9id0Mum1
— Edwin Wiek (@EdwinWiek) September 26, 2022
Double Bonus Antidote:
See Yesterday’s Links and Today’s Antidote here.
