Month: November 2023

Closing Thought–30Nov23

They say the way of the future is electric vehicles….they are more environmentally safe than our current means of transportation.

I am sure all the statements are accurate….but the problem as I see it is the cost.  These vehicles are not cheap and after we have ours the battery replacements can be astronomically high….then there is the charging stations….my area at this time there is one I know of and another under contruction….but what is the true cost of owning an electric vehicle.

The electric vehicle story seems to have changed lately from an expectation of rapid adoption and frantic production to a reality of cooling interest and pullbacks in investments. 

General Motors  (GM) – Get Free Report pushed back its EV targets and postponed its coming EV lineup in what it called an effort to ensure profitability; Ford  (F) – Get Free Report postponed $12 billion in EV investments; Hertz is slowing the electrification of its fleets, in part citing weak resale value; and Tesla  (TSLA) – Get Free Report remains engaged in a price war meant to entice skeptical buyers. 

While some data show that EV adoption is on the rise, with EV sales making up a record 7.9% of total industry sales in the third quarter, consumer interest is still flagging.

Polling from S&P Global Mobility found in May that only 67% of respondents are open to buying an EV, a significant reduction from the 86% of respondents that were open to such a purchase in 2021.

While EV adoption might be increasing, the growth in the sector is slowing as consumer concerns over both price and range cool interest. 

It’s no coincidence that Tesla remains so committed to slashing its prices; the biggest pressure point in the transition to EVs, according to S&P, is price. 

“Multiple hurdles need to be cleared to achieve widespread EV adoption,” S&P wrote. “Buyers may want to wait for the next technological advance, or have concerns about charging time and charger availability, but in the end, consumer finances — not engineering — lead the current buying resistance to EVs.”

Part of the gap in the adoption curve additionally involves differences between early adopters and the masses. 

https://www.thestreet.com/electric-vehicles/electric-vehicle-tesla-adoption-curve-cost

While I believe that the electric vehicle movement is an excellent idea I still wonder if we all will be able to afford to buy then operate one of these.

Just a thought.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Henry Kissinger Dead

The former NatSec adviser and former Sectary of State has died….

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the diplomat with the thick glasses and gravelly voice who dominated foreign policy as the United States extricated itself from Vietnam and broke down barriers with China, died Wednesday, his consulting firm said. He was 100, reports the AP. With his gruff yet commanding presence and behind-the-scenes manipulation of power, Kissinger exerted uncommon influence on global affairs under Presidents Nixon and Ford, earning both vilification and the Nobel Peace Prize. Decades later, his name still provoked impassioned debate over foreign policy landmarks long past.

A nice generic obit….

But there was more to his tenure than the niceties that the MSM wants you to know….his tenure was more about death and war than it was the BS spread by a warmongering press and analysts….

Do not speak ill of the dead. That’s an honorable admonition. But what of the truth? When a person dies, should he be remembered accurately? That question is acutely posed by the demise of Henry Kissinger. The veteran diplomat passed away on Wednesday at the age of 100, leaving behind a long legacy that includes such highs as the opening to China, as well as foul deeds that resulted in mayhem and death—thousands and thousands of deaths. His obituaries will be filled with hosannas from the foreign policy establishment that hailed him as the wisest of wise men. Unfortunately, those who were slaughtered in part due to his global gamesmanship are not able to comment on his contribution to international affairs.

(Mother Jones)

Thanx to Mother Jones let’s look at the blood on his hands….

Cambodia: In early 1969, shortly after Nixon moved into the White House and inherited the Vietnam War, he, Kissinger, and others cooked up a plan to secretly bomb Cambodia, in pursuit of enemy camps. With the perversely-named “Operation Breakfast” launched, White House chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman wrote in his diary, Kissinger and Nixon were “really excited.” The action, though, was of dubious legality; the United States was not at war with Cambodia and Congress had not authorized the carpet-bombing, which Nixon tried to keep a secret. The US military dropped 540,000 tons of bombs. They didn’t just hit enemy outposts. The estimates of Cambodian civilians killed range between 150,000 and 500,000.

Bangladesh: In 1970, a political party advocating autonomy for East Pakistan won legislative elections. The military dictator ruling Pakistan, Gen. Agha Muhammad Yahya Khan, arrested the leader of that party and ordered his army to crush the Bengalis. At the time, Yahya, a US ally, was helping Kissinger and Nixon establish ties with China, and they didn’t want to get in his way. The top US diplomat in East Pakistan sent in a cable detailing and decrying the atrocities committed by Yahya’s troops and reported they were committing “genocide.” Yet Nixon and Kissinger declined to criticize Yahya or take action to end the barbarous assault. (This became known as “the tilt” toward Pakistan.) Kissinger and Nixon turned a blind eye to—arguably, they tacitly approved—Pakistan’s genocidal slaughter of 300,000 Bengalis, most of them Hindus.

Chile: Nixon and Kissinger plotted to covertly thwart the democratic election of socialist president Salvador Allende in 1970. This included Kissinger supervising clandestine operations aimed at destabilizing Chile and triggering a military coup. This scheming yielded the assassination of Chile’s commander-in-chief of the Army. Eventually, a military junta led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet seized power, killed thousands of Chileans, and implemented a dictatorship. Following the coup, Kissinger backed Pinochet to the hilt. During a private conversation with the Chilean tyrant in 1976, he told Pinochet, “My evaluation is that you are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world and that your greatest sin was that you overthrew a government which was going communist.”

East Timor: In December 1975, President Suharto of Indonesia was contemplating an invasion of East Timor, which had recently been a Portuguese colony and was moving toward independence. On December 6, President Gerald Ford and Kissinger, then Ford’s secretary of state, en route from a visit to Beijing, stopped in Jakarta to meet with Suharto, who headed the nation’s military regime. Suharto signaled he intended to send troops into East Timor and integrate the territory into Indonesia. Ford and Kissinger did not object. Ford told Suharto, “We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem and the intentions you have.” Kissinger added, “It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly.” He pointed out that Suharto would be wise to wait until Ford and Kissinger returned to the United States, where they “would be able to influence the reaction in America.” The invasion began the next day. Here was a “green light” from Kissinger (and Ford). Suharto’s brutal invasion of East Timor resulted in 200,000 deaths.

Argentina: In March 1976, a neofascist military junta overthrew President Isabel Perón and launched what would be called the Dirty War, torturing, disappearing, and killing political opponents it branded as terrorists. Once again, Kissinger provided a “green light,” this time to a campaign of terror and murder. He did so during a private meeting in June 1976 with the junta’s foreign minister, Cesar Augusto Guzzetti. At that sit-down, according to a memo obtained in 2004 by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit organization, Guzzetti told Kissinger, “our main problem in Argentina is terrorism.” Kissinger replied, “If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly.” In other words, go ahead with your savage crusade against the leftists. The Dirty War would claim the lives of an estimated 30,000 Argentine civilians.

Throughout his career in government and politics, Kissinger was an unprincipled schemer who engaged in multiple acts of skullduggery. During the 1968 presidential campaign, while he advised the Johnson administration’s team at the Paris peace talks, which were aimed at ending the Vietnam War, he underhandedly passed information on the talks to Nixon’s camp, which was plotting to sabotage the negotiations, out of fear that success at the talks would boost the prospects of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Nixon’s opponent in the race. After the secret bombing in Cambodia was revealed by the New York Times, Kissinger, acting at Nixon’s request, urged FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to wiretap his own aides and journalists to discover who was leaking. This operation failed to uncover who had outed the covert bombing, but, as historian Garrett Graff noted in his recent book, Watergate: A New History, this effort seeded “the administration’s taste for spying on its enemies—real or imagined.” 

In 1976, Kissinger was briefed on Operation Condor, a secret program created by the intelligence services of the military dictatorships of South America to assassinate their political foes inside and outside their countries. He then blocked a State Department effort to warn these military juntas not to proceed with international assassinations. As the National Security Archive points out in a dossier it released this week on various Kissinger controversies, “Five days later, Condor’s boldest and most infamous terrorist attack took place in downtown Washington D.C. when a car-bomb, planted by Pinochet’s agents, killed former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his young colleague, Ronni Moffitt.”

These are just a few of the major actions….yes I remember them all as I am old and was a teacher and lecturer in international relations.

When Kissinger was up for a Noble Peace Prize I sent a letter condemning the idea to the Noble Committee but like most of these things it was ignored no matter how many of us protested the very idea.

Whatever his accomplishments, his legacy includes an enormous pile of corpses.

Sorry to say he will not be missed by me….that is cold and hard but so is the truth.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Closing Thought–29Nov23

Ever heard of ‘Project Q’?

These days there is mounds of hoopla over the use of AI….it is a bane for some and a welcome innovation for others. Some use it to prepare better posts (I do not)….others use it to scam others…..the there is Project Q.

Before moving forward, it should be noted that all the details about Project Q* — including its existence — comes from some fresh reports following the drama around Altman’s firing. Reporters at Reuters said on November 22 that it had been given the information by “two people familiar with the matter,” providing a peek behind the curtain of what was happening internally in the weeks leading up to the firing.

According to the article, Project Q* was a new model that excelled in learning and performing mathematics. It was still reportedly only at the level of solving grade-school mathematics, but as a beginning point, it looked promising for demonstrating a previously unseen intelligence from the researchers involved.

Seems harmless enough, right? Well, not so fast. The existence of Q* was reportedly scary enough to prompt several staff researchers to write a letter to the board to raise the alarm about the project, claiming it could “threaten humanity.”

On the other hand, other attempts at explaining Q* aren’t quite as novel — and certainly aren’t so earth-shattering. The Chief AI scientist at Meta, Yann LeCun, tweeted that Q* has to do with replacing “auto-regressive token prediction with planning” as a way of improving LLM (large language model) reliability. LeCun says all of OpenAI’s competitors have been working on, and that OpenAI made a specific hire to address this problem.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-project-q/

Speaking of the singularity…..

There’s at least one expert who believes that “the singularity”—the moment when artificial intelligence surpasses the control of humans—could be just a few years away. That’s a lot shorter than current predictions regarding the timeline of AI dominance, especially considering that AI dominance is not exactly guaranteed in the first place.

Ben Goertzel, CEO of SingularityNET—who holds a Ph.D. from Temple University and has worked as a leader of Humanity+ and the Artificial General Intelligence Society—told Decrypt that he believes artificial general intelligence (AGI) is three to eight years away. AGI is the term for AI that can truly perform tasks just as well as humans, and it’s a prerequisite for the singularity soon following.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a45780855/when-will-the-singularity-happen/

That should give bloggers something to rail about in the coming years.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Hey! Ukraine!

Ukraine? You remember them….that was the war before everyone got their panties in a wad over the Middle East (yet again)…..remember?

I read a story that made me shake my head….it seems that Ukraine and Russia could have avoided all the death and destruction in the early days of the conflict…..

David Arakhamia, a high-ranking member of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People political party, said that Kyiv could have ended the war with Russia after a month if it agreed not to join NATO. The official said that Moscow was not concerned about other issues, such as “denazification,” but only wanted Kyiv to agree to neutrality.

In an interview with TV channel 1+1, a Ukrainian network, Arakhamia confirmed previous reporting that Moscow and Kyiv had nearly agreed to end the war in March 2022. Still, Ukraine’s Western backers pushed it to try to win the war against Russia. “They really hoped almost to the last moment that they would force us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality,” Arakhamia  said.” It was the most important thing for them. They were prepared to end the war if we agreed to – as Finland once did – neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.”

Arakhamia, who led the Ukrainian negotiation team, said that other issues, such as the protection of ethnic Russians in Ukraine and the “denazification” of the government in Kyiv, were less important to Moscow. “In fact, [neutrality] was the key point.” He continued, “Everything else was simply rhetoric and political ‘seasoning’ about denazification, the Russian-speaking population and blah-blah-blah.”

The high-ranking official explained that Kyiv was unlikely to accept Putin’s offer during the talks in Istanbul because the Ukrainian leadership did not believe Russia could be trusted. However, he went on to say that then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson cemented Kyiv on the path of fighting a long war with Russia. “[The deal] could only be done if there were security guarantees. We could not sign something, step away, everyone would relax there, and then they would [invade] even more prepared – because they have, in fact, gone in unprepared for such a resistance, Arakhamia said. “Moreover, when we returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight.”

Arakhamia explained that while Kyiv’s Western backers did not discourage talks, they advised against accepting a deal. “They actually advised us not to go into ephemeral security guarantees, which could not have been given at that time at all,” he stated during the interview.

The statements in the interview by Arakhamia confirm several reports from other officials – Russian, Turkish, and American – that a deal was offered by the Kremlin in the early days of the war to withdraw Russian forces to the prewar lines in exchange for Kyiv’s vow to never join NATO.

Now, after 20 months of war, Ukraine’s Western backers are discussing Kyiv’s opening dialogue with Moscow. Since the talks in the early months of the conflict, Russia has annexed four regions of Ukraine, suggesting Moscow is likely to demand more territorial concessions than what was once on the table for Kyiv.

(antiwar.com)

Seems semi reasonable that neutrality would be a demand….but that was not to be.

Why?

I have my opinion as you have yours.

But unlike most people I look at both sides of the situation…..

Sad that whoever or whatever prevented the ‘war’ could not be agreed upon for whatever reason….I am sure the dead and injured would have been a lot happier if it had been.

Then there is all this money being wasted on this conflict….and apparently I am not alone….

As lawmakers in Washington weigh sending billions more in federal support to Kyiv to help fight off Russian aggression, close to half of the U.S. public thinks the country is spending too much on aid to Ukraine, according to polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Those sentiments, driven primarily by Republicans, help explain the hardening opposition among conservative GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill who are rebuffing efforts from President Joe Biden to approve a new tranche of Ukraine aid, arguing that the money would be better spent for domestic priorities.

Yet opposition to aid is down slightly from where it was a month ago in another AP-NORC poll. Now, 45% say the U.S. government is spending too much on aid to Ukraine in the war against Russia, compared with 52% in October. That shift appears to come mostly from Republicans: 59% now say too much is spent on Ukraine aid, but that’s down from 69% in October.

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-ukraine-russia-congress-white-house-2cd1be27f7f635e9a89fdbdb9eedb646

I agree but then I think we are wasted or spending too  much on Israel and Taiwan.

NO country, I do not give a crap who they are, should get an open ended free ride at the expense of the US citizenry.  NO COUNTRY!

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lefo ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–28Nov23

If you live in the UK do not die without a will!

I seems that if you die without a will then the King can reap some benefits….

The deaths of thousands of people in parts of England have increased the personal wealth of King Charles III, according to a Guardian investigation that might persuade many people—especially those opposed to the monarchy—to write wills. In most of England and Wales, the assets of people who die with no will and no known next of kin go directly to the government. But under a system that dates to feudal times, those assets go to the king’s Duchy of Lancaster property estate if the person dies in a former dukedom that covers a large area of northwest England that includes Liverpool and Manchester. In Cornwall, the assets go to the Duchy of Cornwall, now controlled by Prince William.

The duchies have long claimed that the funds, known as “bona vacancia”—Latin for “vacant goods”—are donated to charities. But documents seen by the Guardian show that only a small proportion of the funds go to charities and duchy officials have been granted permission to use bona vacancia funds to upgrade properties that are rented out for profit. One source says duchy officials consider the revenue “free money” and a “slush fund” to renovate properties including town houses and vacation homes. Charles inherited the Duchy of Lancaster when his mother died last year. Earlier this year, he received almost $33 million in his first annual payout from the property estate.

The Guardian notes that many of those who died without wills or next of kin lived in homes far more humble than the ones their assets are being used to renovate. Friends of people whose assets were claimed by the duchy say they’re dismayed that the funds are being used to increase the king’s wealth. “It’s shocking and it shouldn’t be happening,” says Charlie Briggs, a friend of retired nursery manager Val Taylor, whose assets were transferred to the king’s estate after she died last year at age 72. “It would be OK if the money was going to people who deserve it but not if it is going to an organization that has plenty,” he says. (Read more King Charles III

Please any UK readers could let my readers know if this is true and why is it so.

All I can do is shake my head….I am in no way in awe of the monarch….I think it is a free ride for giving nothing back.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

2010 All Over Again

This is for those with short memories….

In 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up and cause a massive oil leak that dumped about 200 million gallons of oil into the central Gulf of Mexico….it contaminated sea life, beaches and ruined the economy of many Gulf Coast states like Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi beaches were spared the bad stuff for our barrier islands protected our beaches for the most part but Florida and Alabama were not so lucky.

In case your memory is not what it once was….here are some facts….

Fact #1: More than 200 million gallons of crude oil was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

Fact #2: Deepwater Horizon was a 9yr old semi-submersible, mobile floating, dynamically positioned drilling rig that could operate in water up to 10,000’ deep.

Fact #3: At 9:45am high pressure methane gas from the well expanded into the drilling riser and rose into the drilling rig, the rig ignited and exploded

Fact #4: Over 16,000 miles of coastline was affected during the spill. The coastlines of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida were all affected.

Fact #5: 5.5 million feet of oil spill containment boom was deployed to help collect the oil.

Fact #6: Over 8,000 animals were reported dead 6 months after the spill.

This spill effected the seafood industry as well….fish were not caught, shrimp were not fished, oysters were dead and crabs were contaminated…all of which is a mainstay of the Gulf Coast industry….so why am I going on about past doings that most have forgotten?

Easy.

Deja vu.

Just when the fishing grounds were on the rebound from the Deepwater fiasco….it is happening again….

A leak from an underwater pipeline released more than 1 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico before the flow was shut off, the Coast Guard estimated. The leak was spotted Thursday, about 19 miles offshore of the Mississippi River Delta southeast of New Orleans, Reuters reports. Main Pass Oil Gathering Co. turned off the 67-mile line the same day. On Friday and Saturday, overflights saw the oil moving to the southwest, away from the Louisiana shore, per WDSU. No injuries or shoreline impacts have been reported.

rews are searching for the source of the leak, which was near Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish, using underwater remote-operated vehicles. The Coast Guard said three skimming vessels are trying to remove the oil on the surface. The National Response Team was activated, the Environmental Protection Agency said, which mobilizes 15 federal entities to help

While the spill is dwarfed by previous spills, like the Deepwater Horizon crisis that saw 130 million gallons of crude pouring into the Gulf in 2010, it’s nonetheless a grim environmental catastrophe that could have devastating effects on the local environment.

“Ocean wildlife will almost certainly pay a terrible price for this huge pipeline spill, which is less an accident than an entirely predictable consequence of offshore oil operations,” said Kristen Monsell, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement.

This does not make national news….no one cares if I am honest  those mental midgets do not have to try a eek out a living from the Gulf.

How long must these crises go on before someone cares enough to put a stop tho this insanity?

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Closing Thought–27Nov23

I thought it was about time for me to reinstate the ‘Closing Thought’ portion of my day.

EGG PRICES

A few months ago the word came out that many chickens had to be destroyed because of Avian Flu and there would be a shortage of eggs for market….as soon as word got out supermarkets in my area raised prices of eggs to 6 and 7 dollars a dozen….not all followed suit but the chain stores seem to be more inclined to do so.

I said then that it was all so much bullsh*t.

There has been a legal ruling against some egg producers….

An Illinois jury ruled this week that several major egg producers conspired to limit the country’s supply of eggs in order to raise prices in a case stemming from a federal lawsuit originally filed 12 years ago, per the AP. Kraft Foods, the Kellogg Company, General Mills, and Nestle USA alleged in the lawsuit originally filed in 2011 that producers used various means to limit the US domestic supply of eggs to increase the prices of eggs and egg products during the 2000s, causing them to overpay for eggs. The time frame of the conspiracy was an issue throughout the case; jurors ultimately determined damages occurred between 2004-2008. A jury unanimously delivered its verdict Tuesday in the Northern District of Illinois and damages will be decided in a trial scheduled for next week.

The jury found the egg suppliers and trade groups who participated in the conspiracy were Cal-Maine Foods, United Egg Producers, United States Egg Marketers, and Rose Acre Farms, the family company of John Rust, who’s running for Indiana’s US Senate seat in 2024. Court documents show the defendants denied the claims. However, the jury found the egg suppliers exported eggs to reduce the overall supply in the domestic market, as well as limiting the number of chickens through means including cage space, early slaughter, and flock reduction, court documents say.

The jury found the egg suppliers and trade groups who participated in the conspiracy were Cal-Maine Foods, United Egg Producers, United States Egg Marketers, and Rose Acre Farms, the family company of John Rust, who’s running for Indiana’s US Senate seat in 2024. Court documents show the defendants denied the claims. However, the jury found the egg suppliers exported eggs to reduce the overall supply in the domestic market, as well as limiting the number of chickens through means including cage space, early slaughter, and flock reduction, court documents say.

Bloomberg Law reports lawyers for Cal-Maine Foods “appeared stunned by the verdict,” with two lawyers dropping their heads to their chests and leave them there. For the first time, the defendants have been held liable for their antitrust violations,” Brandon Fox, an attorney representing the food manufacturers, said in a statement. “We are now going to turn our attention to the damages phase.” Bloomberg Law reports the same jury will decide the damages amount in a trial slated for next Wednesday, and whatever number they settle on will be trebled.

I say good!  Make the bastards pay and the candidate should withdraw for being a money grubbing tool.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Rise Of The Fourth Reich?

With the victory of Wilders in the Nederlands I thought I would take a closer look at what is happening here in the good old US of A.

It is looking more and more like the tide of Fascism is coming at a break neck pace to the US and the 2024 election will tell the tale.

There has been much talk and speculation that a Trump win in next November contest would spell disaster for this country (something I agree on)

There is a specter on the horizon of a republi-fascist coming…..

The ridiculous Trumpenleft fascism-denying criticism continued even after the orange beast sent thousands of his frothing backers to physically attack the US Capitol in an effort to block Congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election –  the putsch attempt that Trump wanted to participate in alongside AR-15-toting Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and Proud Boys.

Here we are now coming up on the third anniversary of January 6.  Trump and his party have been screaming it off the rooftops ever since: they are a fascist menace to what’s left of US democracy. And now they may well come to power in 2025 with a fully worked up plan for the Christian white nationalist takeover of the US state.

I have been documenting this at painstaking length here and on CounterPunch across the Biden years and cannot repeat all the details here (my writing on this topic is probably already at the word count level for a small book).

That said, here are four of the most relevant recent developments:

The Republi-Fascist Specter Looms

Trump is looking for few good men (fascists)…..

During a Sunday morning panel, MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin referenced a recent Axios report by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, in which they exclusively report ex-President Donald Trump “allies are pre-screening the ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers, as part of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in 2024.”

Watch this video….

Could Trump be yet another Mussolini?

Good question and the answer is….

Former senator and MSNBC political analyst Claire McCaskill is comparing former President Donald Trump to fascist leaders such as Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, saying that Trump is “even more dangerous” because of his extreme self-centeredness and lack of political center.

McCaskill made these remarks during a discussion on the New York Times‘ analysis of Trump’s recent rhetoric against his political enemies.

McCaskill pointed out that Trump’s use of derogatory language, such as calling his opponents “vermin,” echoes the tactics employed by Mussolini and Hitler in their drives towards autocracy and dictatorship.

https://okmagazine.com/p/donald-trump-more-dangerous-mussolini-hitler-political-analyst/

From experience we know that Trump hates some Americans….the handicapped, minorities, etc….and demonizing people is what fascists and authoritarians do….every speech he makes seems to be sermon of hate….kinda like the 20s and 30s in Germany.

Donald Trump’s hate sermons are becoming even more intense and combustible. As he comes ever closer to openly quoting Adolf Hitler and the other 20th-century fascists, his behavior is clearly intentional and strategic.

Trump publicly admires and praises tyrants and demagogues and views them as role models. If he returns to power in 2025, he intends to create an American Fourth Reich. Consider Trump’s speeches, interviews and social media posts over the last few weeks.

At a rally in Hialeah, Florida, last Wednesday, Trump painted a picture of a hellish (predominantly white) America overrun by serial killers and other human monsters from foreign (and predominantly nonwhite) countries, insisting that only he could save (white) America from the death and contamination caused by Democrats and “the left.”

https://www.salon.com/2023/11/20/working-reich/

Does Donald the Orange want to set up his own little Reich with him as the master of all?

You bet your ass he does!

Just look at the speech he made on Veterans Day….it smacks of fascism…..period!

Trump’s Veterans Day Speech

Please stop being a blind follower!

Think about the future.

With Trump our future looks pretty damn bleak.

Be Smart!

Learn stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Canine News

Another Sunday and another day for a little FYI….

Many of my blogging friends have dogs and cats and since I am a super canine lover I look for stories that will inform and educate my readers whenever possible.

First the serious news….and something canine parents should be on the lookout for in their fur babies….

Veterinary laboratories in several states are investigating an unusual respiratory illness in dogs and encouraging people to take basic precautions to keep their pets healthy as veterinarians try to pin down what’s making the animals sick. Oregon, Colorado, and New Hampshire are among the states that have seen cases of the illness, which has caused lasting respiratory disease and pneumonia and doesn’t respond to antibiotics. Symptoms of respiratory illness in dogs include coughing, sneezing, nasal or eye discharge, and lethargy. Some cases of the pneumonia progress quickly, making dogs very sick within 24 to 36 hours, per the AP.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture, which has documented more than 200 cases of the disease since mid-August, has encouraged pet owners to contact their vet if their dog is sick and told state veterinarians to report cases as soon as possible. The agency is working with state researchers and the US Department of Agriculture’s National Veterinary Services Laboratory to find out what’s causing the illnesses. Dogs have died, said Kurt Williams, director of the Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Oregon State University. But without a clear way to define the disease or test for it, he said it’s hard to put a number on how many died from a severe form of the infection. Williams had a simple message for dog owners, though: “Don’t panic.”

He also said dog owners should make sure their pets are up to date on vaccines, including those that protect against various respiratory illnesses. Labs across the country have been sharing their findings as they try to pinpoint the culprit. David Needle, senior veterinary pathologist at the University of New Hampshire’s New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, has been investigating the mysterious disease for almost a year. His lab and colleagues at the university’s Hubbard Center for Genome Studies have looked at samples from dogs in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, and more will be coming from Oregon, Colorado, and possibly other states. He said his team hasn’t seen a large increase in dogs dying from the illness, but he still encouraged pet owners to “decrease contact with other dogs.”

Please watch your pet for any signs and act appropriately.

Ever wonder how your canine kid views the world?

When we point at an object, the toddler focuses on the object, while the dog usually takes the gesture as a directional cue.

In a recent study, researchers from the Department of Ethology at Eötvös Loránd University find explanations for this phenomenon. It appears that the discrepancy is not only due to how see, but may, in fact, reflect how they think. For “smarter” dogs, the appearance of an object matters as much as its location, suggesting that their information processing is more similar to that of humans.

Spatial is the phenomenon of interpreting information in relation to space, location or distance when the same information could easily apply to an object.

“This is manifested, for example, in the way dogs and children react to gestures when we show them the position of an object. Very early on, children interpret the gesture as pointing to the object, while dogs take the pointing as a directional cue. In other words, regardless of the intention of the person giving the cue, the meaning for children and dogs is different,” said Ivaylo Iotchev, first author of the study published in the journal Ethology.

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-dogs-world-salient-smarter.html

Do you think Fido is smarter than the average pup?  There could be an answer…..

Modern dog breeds haven’t quite caught up to the wolf when it comes to the size of their brains, but that size discrepancy is shrinking. The modern dog’s brain is growing larger, and it could be thanks to their interactions with humans.

A new study, published in the journal Evolution, investigated brain size in both modern and ancient dog breeds. The research team found that dog brains are getting larger the further genetically that they have evolved away from a wolf.

That was a startling finding. “The results show that the breeding of modern dog breeds has been accompanied by an increase in brain size compared to ancient breeds,” Enikó Kubinyi, a senior research fellow at the Department of Ethology at ELTE Institute of Biology, says in a news release. “We couldn’t explain this based on the tasks or life history characteristics of the breeds, so we can only speculate about the reasons.”

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a43906527/why-are-dog-brains-getting-bigger/

Should our canine soldiers get a Congressional medal?

My thought is yes they deserve all the recognition we can give them.

Man’s best friend has been one of America’s fiercest defenders for centuries.

A push in Congress to honor heroic military working dogs has refocused a spotlight on the vital role of K-9 warriors throughout U.S. history. In 2019, a Belgian Malinois named Conan helped U.S. Special Forces take down ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria after surviving an explosion inside an Islamic State tunnel. President Trump later honored Conan at the White House.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin, Michigan Democrat and a former intelligence officer, said dogs are crucial to U.S. military history. She is helping lead the fight for the K-9 medal.

“They should be respected as such,” said Ms. Slotkin, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/nov/22/four-legged-heroes-congress-weighs-valor-medal-for/

Canines serve just as valiantly as their human counterparts and in as such deserve any medals they have earned.

Just a little FYI for you canine parents…..hopefully it will be useful.

That is my stuff for Sunday….give ‘Fido’ a hug and a ‘good boy/girl’….and enjoy your Sunday.

As always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

IST Saturday News Dump–25Nov23

The Saturday after the big day and the shoppers are out and I am in my office….You have one month to get your Christmas shopping completed….good luck!

My local stuff….the weather has finally turned cooler and we even got a bit of rain….and we re-elected the idiot we have as governor….so all in all a mixed month.

The big news for us is that the New Orleans Jazz Fest will have the Rolling Stones, those geriatric rockers….tickets will be $225 a bit pricey from the other groups that are participating….tickets went on sale Friday, 25Nov and I just cannot pay that kind of money to see some 80 year old acting like a 20 something rocker….kinda pathetic.

Ever wanted to be a lawyer?  Well Oregon maybe the place for you….

If you’re a law school student who breaks out in a cold sweat at the thought of taking the bar exam, good news if you live in the Beaver State: A “more inclusive” way to becoming an attorney is here, according to the head of the Oregon Board of Bar Examiners. The Washington Post reports that now, in lieu of the “widely dreaded” two-day standardized test, students can complete an apprenticeship instead, an option approved by the state’s Supreme Court last week. Students in an American Bar Association-accredited law school who choose the Supervised Practice Portfolio Examination over the traditional bar exam will log 675 hours doing legal work under the supervision of an attorney, after which they’ll submit a portfolio based on their experiences and complete other requirements.

Oregon is the first state to offer this alternative path. The Oregonian notes that the 675-hour regimen was set up to approximate how long students typically study for the bar. Advocates of the program say it will give students who freeze up during tests a viable path, help decrease racial disparities in the law field, and lower financial roadblocks. “They won’t have to stop working to take two to three months off to prepare for the bar, or incur the cost of exam review courses,” Jo Perini-Abbott of the Lewis and Clark Law School’s Advocacy Center tells the Post.

But critics have various concerns about this new option, including that the apprenticeship isn’t long enough—one local judge says it should be closer to 2,000 hours—and will lead to inadequately trained attorneys. “I think the bar exam has value, actually,” Lane County District Attorney Patricia Perlow tells KPIC. “It requires you to focus … on a wide variety of topics, and so people who choose to go the experiential training path are going to be limited in what they know.”

Alien creatures walk among us….

The microscopic creatures are so bizarre that they’ve left some scientists wondering if they arrived here on a meteorite.

The tiny creatures mostly live in aquatic environments but can exist anywhere, including on your face.

Studies have found they can survive without water and temperatures around 300 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a blog from the Ohio State University explains: “Some theorize that tardigrades traveled to Earth millions of years ago via meteorite.

“Traces of biotic material have been found on 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia.

https://www.the-sun.com/tech/9646054/alien-on-earth-tardigrades/

Personally I think it is the octopus that is the alien.

Medical news is interesting….

Researchers in Texas have developed a method to keep a brain alive and functioning for several hours without being connected to the body — a truly weird scientific experiment that recalls the head in jars bit in the iconic cartoon “Futurama.”

A team led by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas took two pigs and severed connections between their heads and bodies, instead hooking the brains up to a device they call the extracorporeal pulsatile circulatory control (EPCC), which they detailed in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. The machine keeps blood pumping through the brain, mimicking the natural flow when it’s connected to the rest of the body.

The intent behind this nightmarish procedurewas to study the brain independently from other bodily functions that may influence it, but the system may also lead to better-designed cardiopulmonary bypass, a process in which machines take over your heart and lung function during surgery.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/device-keep-brain-alive

All you need is a cybernetic body and viola….immortality.

Here’s an interesting thing about pollution….

If you’re feeling guilty that you haven’t yet bought an EV or installed solar panels on your roof to cut down on your portion of greenhouse gases, you’re (somewhat) off the hook—you can blame the 1% for a lot of that pollution. A new Oxfam International report points the finger at the world’s richest for generating as much carbon emissions in 2019 as the world’s poorest two-thirds, a “grave portrait” as climate experts continue to try to combat global warming, per the Washington Post. According to the report, the 1% was behind more carbon emissions than that spewed out by all car and road transportation worldwide that year, with the wealthiest 10% responsible for half of the global carbon emissions.

The Guardian parses that 1% down even more, reporting that the greenhouse gas emissions from the homes, yachts, jets, and financial investments of a dozen of the Earth’s richest people—including Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos—exceed the yearly emissions from 2 million other homes, or from nearly five coal-fired power plants. All together, those 12 billionaires account for 18.7 million tons of carbon dioxide and equivalent greenhouse gases. Topping that list: Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, with Gates close behind and then Bezos. To put it in context, Oxfam says in a release that it would take most regular people 1,500 years to emit as much carbon as the wealthiest billionaires do in one year.

Oxfam adds that these emissions from the 1% will lead to upward of 1.3 million excess deaths caused by heat between 2020 and 2030, which the anti-poverty group notes is roughly the population of Dublin. Amitabh Behar, Oxfam International’s interim director, says it’s time to “end the era of extreme wealth,” adding that “the super-rich are plundering and polluting the planet to the point of destruction, leaving humanity choking on extreme heat, floods, and drought.” The group asserts that “fairly taxing the super-rich would help curb both climate change and inequality.” It suggests a 60% tax on the 1%, which it says would “cut emissions by more than the total emissions of the UK and raise $6.4 trillion a year to pay for the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”

It is the holidays and some seem to party and drink way too much…now AI can tell you ‘just how wasted am I’?

Start practicing your tongue twisters, because artificial intelligence might be judging your sobriety on how well you recite them soon. At least that’s what some researchers suggest after conducting a study analyzing intoxication levels based on speech that had remarkable accuracy. The Guardian walks through the findings in their paper, published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs earlier this month. In what may go down as the most fun experiment to sign up for, 18 adults of legal drinking age were given doses of vodka gimlets until they became intoxicated. The participants were then asked to recite tongue twisters every hour, while their breath alcohol levels were recorded in thirty-minute intervals.

Noting changes in voice pitch and frequency during different levels of drunkenness, the researchers then trained AI to analyze the findings—and the program was able to predict if someone was within legal sobriety limits of driving with 98% accuracy. “With the proliferation of smartphone sensors, we can now harness digital signals to more accurately predict when drinking episodes happen, enhancing our ability to intervene at the most effective moments,” Dr. Brian Suffoletto, lead author on the study, told the Register. Suffoletto, an associate professor of emergency medicine out of Stanford, believes that several real-world applications will be easy enough to develop.

“The most obvious one is as a form of ignition lock on cars [that] would not allow someone to start their car unless they could pass the ‘voice challenge,’ which could be used in certain high-risk workplaces like school bus driver or heavy machine operator to ensure public safety,” he said, per the Guardian. He added that restaurants and bars could enable devices to help manage when to cut off patrons from purchasing more drinks. While the tech behind the concept is interesting, the study only included a small sample size and racial makeup (all participants were white). “I believe that there is the potential for exciting developments that could eventually be really useful,” said Petra Meier, a professor of public health. “But obviously one would first want to test this approach in larger and more diverse samples.”

That is the round-up for this Saturday….I hope all will have a relaxing and restful day.

Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”