Links and Notes for June 16th, 2023

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• COVID-19
• Economy & Finance
• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Art & Literature
• Philosophy & Sociology
• Technology
• Video Games

COVID-19

”Es gibt vier Hypothesen, was hinter Long Covid stecken könnte (Interview mit Akiko Iwasaki)” by Jakob Simmank (Zeit Online / Archive.is)

“Ich glaube fest an den Nutzen von Impfungen. Aber alles hat seinen Preis. Wir müssen Impfnebenwirkungen erforschen, um sicherzustellen, dass die – wenigen – Betroffenen identifiziert, entschädigt und vor allem gut behandelt werden können.”

“Wer in der akuten Infektion hohe Mengen des Coronavirus im Blut hat, eine Reaktivierung von EBV aufweist, bei wem bestimmte Autoantikörper nachweisbar sind oder wer Diabetes hat, der erkrankt später deutlich häufiger an Long Covid ( I Su et al., 2022 )”

“Corona ist nicht vorbei, nur weil fast jeder über Impfungen und Infektionen mit dem Virus in Kontakt gekommen ist. Das Virus und damit das Risiko für Long Covid verschwindet ja nicht.”

Economy & Finance

Banks Are Using High Interest Rates to Rip Off Depositors by David Sirota (Jacobin)

“For Americans needing basic banking services, this translates into predation. As Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, noted in a recent letter spotlighting the scheme, a new Bank of America customer will receive about “0.01% on a savings account, but pay 6.90% on a mortgage and 15% to 27% on a credit card.” Not surprisingly, that bank just reported $14 billion in net interest income in the most recent quarter — a 25 percent increase.”

“Paying almost nothing to depositors while lending out their savings at high interest rates is a dream come true for bankers. As a Deloitte report put it: “Such economic calculus makes sense: why not grow interest income while keeping interest expenses under control?” For everyone else, though, this is a scam. Short of nationalizing the banking system, what can be done about such a systemic rip-off?”

““The solution is simple: Make interest payment on reserves conditional on banks passing the higher rates to depositors,” he writes, adding that “the central bank could set a maximum margin as a condition.” Even better would be measures helping individual depositors access the same government-provided interest rates that commercial banks already enjoy.”

“Those bankers understand the truism best summarized in the television show Mr. Robot : “Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world.””

Public Policy & Politics

Nord-Stream-Sprengung – Gedanken zur „Ukraine-Version“ by Jens Berger (NachDenkSeiten)

“Wenn man einmal hypothetisch annimmt, dass diese Erkenntnisse korrekt sind, würde dies für die US-Regierung und mehr noch die Bundesregierung eine ganze Reihe an unbequemen Fragen aufwerfen. Immerhin ginge es um Staatsterrorismus, wenn nicht gar um einen kriegerischen Akt gegen die deutsche und europäische Energieversorgung. Begangen von der Ukraine; einem Land, das die Bundesregierung als einen Wertepartner und sogar Verbündeten sieht und das nicht nur finanzielle, sondern auch militärische Hilfen in Milliardenhöhe von Deutschland bezieht.”

“Sollte sich die Version bestätigen, kann dies nicht ohne Folgen bleiben. Wie dumm muss man sein, einen Staat, der einen kriegerischen Akt in dieser Dimension auf unsere Infrastruktur begangen hat, weiterhin zu unterstützen? Seltsamerweise wird aber auch diese Frage nicht gestellt. Man legt sich darauf fest, dass die Ukraine hinter den Anschlägen steht, weigert sich aber, die Konsequenzen daraus zu ziehen. Das kann zwei Gründe haben: Man hat seine Souveränität und seine eigenen Interessen bereits so weit aufgegeben, dass man sich von einem Land wie der Ukraine vor der Weltöffentlichkeit auf der Nase herumtanzen lässt.”

China and Palestine: No To ‘Piecemeal Crisis Management’ by Ramzy Baroud (Scheer Post)

“Compared to the United States’ position, which perceives the UN, and particularly the Security Council, as a battleground to defend Israeli interests, the Chinese political discourse reflects a legal stance based on a deep understanding of the realities on the ground.”

“Washington has repeatedly cautioned Tel Aviv against its growing proximity to Beijing. US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, went as far as warning Israel in March 2019 that, until Tel Aviv re-evaluates its cooperation with China, the US could reduce “intelligence sharing and co-location of security facilities.””

“A simple discourse analysis of the Chinese language regarding the situation in Palestine clarifies that Beijing sees a direct link between the US and the continued conflict, or the failure to find a just solution.”

The Rape of Lady Justice by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post)

“Now we have a Miami grand jury handing up indictments on 37 charges related to the documents case. Of these, we must note, 31 counts come under the Espionage Act of 1917. This escalates matters very considerably. A former president and a current contender for the presidency now faces the gravest charge for which American law provides.”

“Trump now keeps company with, among others, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden — others charged under the Espionage Act since the Wilson administration passed this unambiguously unconstitutional law to silence those critical of America’s entry into World War I a century and some ago.”

“If I am right, the objective is to keep him tied up in judicial rope until the election next year is fought and won. We are already hearing from the nitwittier of mainstream commentators, Rachel Maddow among them but not alone, that it would be fine were Justice to drop all charges providing Trump commits not to run next year.”

“Hillary Clinton, James Comey, James Clapper, John Brennan, Joe Biden, the last as vice-president and now president: This is an extremely truncated list of those who, since Trump’s election in 2016, have gone uninvestigated, untried and un-convicted as felons, and I use this term advisedly. Clinton’s breach of security was vastly worse than the worst Trump is accused of. Clapper and Brennan lied to Congress under oath. Even according to the incomplete record available to us, an investigation of Biden’ Ukrainian and Chinese business dealings would almost certainly leave him in an orange jumpsuit.”

“I recall thinking, after the Supreme Court stole the 2000 elections to hand it to George W. Bush, “This society has lost its capacity to self-correct.” I wish the confirmations of this that followed were not so numerous. Citizens United in 2010, when corporations were declared people — it is still strange to type that phrase — was a mile marker. Lately, to skip across a long list, the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have a legal right to seek damages from unions running strikes for their members’ rights.”

“Problems of judicial imbalance and courts in the service of private or political interests have a long history in America, yes. What is going on now at Justice and the various grand juries it has convened are the straight-line consequences of the corrupt use of the department and its law-enforcement agencies during the criminal years of Russiagate. This abuse of the judiciary, notably by way of the Espionage Act, went all the way to the top last week. This is the significance of our moment. Liberal authoritarians are now availing of the courts and the extremities of American law to eliminate a political candidate in the service of a Democratic president of failing competence — that is, to determine the probable outcome of an election.”

“Trump the former president and Trump the major-party candidate, however, represent the aspirations of tens of millions of Americans who felt unheard and unseen before he rode down the Trump Tower elevator in 2015. If you humiliate this man—trials, convictions, handcuffs, chains, jumpsuit—his supporters will feel his shame as their own. Furthermore, it would be impossible to overstate the international scorn and disdain that would be heaped upon the U.S. after a sordid spectacle better suited to an s-hole country in the developing world. We have a two-party system. If you hobble one candidate, tie him up in court and/or jail him, you no longer have the pretense of a democracy—you’ve created a one-party system. Biden will become America’s Saddam.”

EU interior ministers abandon the Geneva Refugee Convention by Martin Kreickenbaum (WSWS)

“The EU wants to set up at least 30,000 detention places at the external borders, so that with a procedure lasting four months, up to 120,000 refugees per year could be turned away in a fast-track process. These people would then be threatened with up to 18 months’ detention pending deportation, so that they could be interned for up to two years simply because they fled wars, misery and hardship out of desperation.”

“[…] the EU Commissioner for Migration and Asylum, Ylva Johansson, declared the agreement a “historic event”. In fact, it is historic only in the sense that the European Union is abandoning the Geneva Refugee Convention and significantly increasing the misery of refugees at the EU’s external borders and on the escape routes.”

“The EU Parliament had recently reprimanded Saïed for his authoritarian style of government. He has ruled by presidential decrees since his coup in July 2021, and more than 20 politicians and journalists are in prison. Now the delegation offered him over a billion euros to block refugees from leaving the country and, if they make it anyway, to take them back and imprison them.”

SPLC Hates Moms Who Hate Woke by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice)

“Moms for Liberty is antagonistic to many of the newly-introduced changes in public schools and similar arenas designed to influence the views of young children. Disagreeing with woke isn’t hate, unless there is no tolerance for disagreement.”

“It’s bad enough that so many have lost tolerance for disagreement, the ability to agree to disagree about what is appropriate to teach children. It’s worse that parents who believe they, not teachers or school administrators, are charged with teaching their children values and morality, are being told they have no choice as to what ideology is taught in the classroom. But for the SPLC to reduce mothers who disagree with their children being indoctrinated into an ideology with which they disagree as being tantamount to neo-Nazis is outrageous.”

The USA’s Covert Empire by Caitlin Johnstone (Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix )

“In an interview shortly before his death Daniel Ellsberg said the US runs a “covert empire”, which is a really good way of putting it. A giant globe-spanning cluster of nations consistently moves in alignment with the dictates of Washington, but they all keep their official flags and their official governments, so it doesn’t look like an empire despite functioning as one in every meaningful way.”

Journalism & Media

Propaganda auf allen Kanälen by Jens Berger (NachDenkSeiten)

“[…] die Gefahr einer Eskalation ist ohnehin gegeben. So gesehen kann man sich aus humanitärer und geopolitischer Sicht eigentlich nur wünschen, dass diese Offensive ohne noch größere Opfer scheitert und so der Weg für „eine rasche diplomatische Lösung“, wie es Politico formuliert, eröffnet wird. In den deutschen Redaktionsstuben wird dies sicher für so einige Tränen sorgen.”

Art & Literature

Bad Manors by Kate Wagner (The Baffler)

“What was once a mix of modest, low-slung ranch-style houses interspersed with pockets of turkey oak scrub has been invaded by gargantuan homes with equally oversized trucks parked in the driveway. They tower over their older neighbors at a tragicomical scale difficult to convey, each identically crafted for maximum cheapness and interchangeability. Behold the McMansion in all its readymade, disposable grandeur.”

“[…] it wasn’t until 2008 that the McMansion firmly imprinted itself on the national consciousness. Recall the endless newsreels of oversized, foreclosed houses that implied that the subprime mortgage crisis was caused not by the predatory lending institutions who foisted junk mortgages on inexperienced homebuyers but by the greedy poors who wanted more house than they could afford, all in order to imitate their idols on MTV Cribs […]”

“Buyers with children, but without the means to send them to private school, want to live in good school districts, which necessitates moving to wealthier neighborhoods on account of the American public school system’s entrenched racism and inequality. Architecturally speaking, the reason for the McMansion’s persistence is that it is the path of least resistance for building a house of a certain size.”

“Perplexingly, despite the ascent of interest rates that might otherwise deter buyers from procuring a mortgage, building McMansions remains immensely profitable. PulteGroup—which constructs housing under several subsidiaries, including Pulte Homes—made over $13 billion in 2021, and while that revenue encompasses a range of property types, McMansions are certainly among them. These are simple, crude realities.”

Rates rose in 2022. Also, only shitty, stupid, wasteful things are profitable in the U.S., so of course McMansions will somehow still be a going concern.

“It is a testament, too, to a Reagan-era promise of endless growth, endless consumption, and endless easy living that we’ve been loath to disavow. The McMansion owner is unbothered by the cost of heating and cooling a four-thousand-square-foot mausoleum with fifteen-foot ceilings. They see no problem being dependent—from the cheap material choice of the house to the driving requirements of suburban life—on oil in all its forms, be it in extruded polystyrene columns or gas at the pump. The McMansion is American bourgeois life in all its improvidence.”

“One day the McMansion, once a token of financial tomfoolery, will instead epitomize our nihilistic, environmental death drive. More than half a century of urban planning prioritizing sprawl has gotten us to where we are now: choked by endless freeways, numbed by carbon-copy strip malls, secluded in catchpenny houses with no sense of human scale.”

“One day we will look at five-thousand-square-foot McMansions and Hummers and desert golf courses the same way we look now at thalidomide: a ginormous fuck up. That’s assuming we manage to plan for the future and come through a political fight antithetical to the mortal coil of capitalism: late, fossil, or otherwise.”

“The present crisis surrounding the depleted Colorado River, owing to overconsumption and a world-historic megadrought plaguing the Southwest since the 2000s, will be the first real test of the McMansion way of life, the life of endless plenty. If the recession saw entire suburban developments reduced to eerie ghost towns, imagine what water rationing will do to golf courses in Phoenix, Arizona. Already, the nearby city of Scottsdale has cut off the wealthy suburb of Rio Verde from the municipal water service, leaving residents holding the bag. When the resources of the commons no longer subsidize the whimsies of the rich, when there is truly nothing left to drink or burn in the tank, then, and only then, will we be able to look at the McMansion in retrospect.”

My Search for Warren Harding Is the Funniest Novel You’ve Never Heard Of by Zsofia Paulikovics (Jacobin)

“Most of Plunket’s reviewers, as well as the writer himself, agree that My Search for Warren Harding could never have been published today. The implication is that it would not pass the hands of a sensitivity reader; I think it could not be published because nothing this funny is being written today, in the novel form at least. In the Los Angeles Review , Plunket talks about how, after several rejections, My Search for Warren Harding finally found a publisher when Ann Beattie showed it to Gordon Lish. “‘I don’t know why I’m publishing this. I never publish books like this. It’s not literature,’” Plunket recalls Lish saying. “Then he’d light another cigarette and say, ‘But it’s harder to do than literature.’””

Philosophy & Sociology

The Jersey Barrier by Justin Smith-Ruiu (Hinternet)

“I feel most at home in the blurrier corners of the world, honing my descriptive powers on the objects I find there, rather than wasting my time in that far more pedestrian task of getting good at describing objects that come with their contours well marked.”

Are Social Justice Politics Serious, or Not? by Freddie de Boer (SubStack)

“[…] socialists were the OG critics of identity politics; Eric Hobsbawm, Todd Gitlin, Richard Rorty, Adolph Reed − these guys were lobbing bombs at identity politics decades before the first conservative ever uttered the word “woke.” I know this is a lonely corner I’m on, at this point, but that antagonism is exactly what we should expect: identity politics and socialist politics are not incidentally at odds, but are rather inherently and existentially incompatible. The heart of left-wing practice is communitarianism, putting the group before the individual, and the fundamental complaint of identity politics is “hey, what about me?!?” People really don’t want to confront this incompatibility because it’s socially and professionally uncomfortable for them, and most self-identified socialists understand that if you were to force people to choose, you’d end up with an even smaller rump of American socialism than we have today.”

Technology

How to go to war with your employer by Drew Devault

“The sense of “going to war” here should rouse in you an awareness of the resources at your disposal, a willingness to use them to forward your interests, and an acknowledgement of the fact that tactics, strategy, propaganda, and subterfuge are among the tools you can use – and the tools your employer uses to forward their own interests.”

It is an absolute tragedy that it’s come to this. And that the argument about working conditions is so egocentric. It’s all about the individual getting as much as they can for themselves.

“If you have finer-grained insights into your company’s financial situation, you can get a closer view of your worth to them by dividing their annual profit by their headcount, adjusted to your discretion to account for the difference in the profitability of your role compared to your colleagues.”

Wow. Calculating like an HFT. There is no value accorded to working with interesting people on interesting things. This has to be a joke. Does this author even have a job? Has he ever even run a company? Or been part of one? Did he bother to lay out the parameters under which you would even be justified in behaving this way? Like all wars, engaging in this one will destroy you just as surely as it will destroy your enemy.

“Suppose your goals are, for instance:”

• You don’t like agile/scrum and want to interact with it from the other end of a six foot pole and/or replace it with another system
• Define your own goals and work on the problems you think are important at your own discretion moreso than at the discretion of your manager
• Skip meetings you know are wasting your time
• Set working hours that suit you or take time off on your terms
• Work from home or in-office in an arrangement that meets your own wants/needs
• Exercise agency over your tools, such as installing the software you want to use on your work laptop

Jfc. You better be bringing the goods, I guess. No need to make friends at this place. I know he said “neoliberal” but this complete capitulation to a world where only you and your needs matter is tragic to contemplate. Your coworkers can go fuck themselves, I guess. This list reads like a laundry list from a teenaged, self-taught, “genius” programmer who knows everything about everything better than anyone else and has no use for anyone or their paltry opinions. They will decide what to install and what not to install. They set their working hours. They decide which kind of work to do. They decide when and where they will work. They decide when they will deign to interact with the other scum at this company with which they are forced to interact by capitalism.

“You might also have more intimidating goals you want to address:”

• Demand a raise or renegotiating benefits
• Negotiate a 4-day workweek
• Replace your manager or move teams
• Remove a problematic colleague from your working environment

It gets better! The other list was just the easy stuff that you should definitely get. Now, you’re choosing other employees, including your boss, you’re working even less, but you’re also getting paid more because you’re so amazing. Christ, this guy must have been scribbling so hard on his little night-table when he woke up from this wet dream.

Just remember: if you’re so focused on only these things, then you’re that problematic colleague they refer to.

“Likewise if you adapt the workflows around agile (or whatever) to better suit your needs rather than to fall in line with the prescription, if it makes you more productive and happy then it makes the business more money. Remember your real job – to make money – and you can adjust the parameters of your working environment relatively freely provided that you are still aligned with this goal.”

And remember: you and and only you are to decide what is and is not effective for the company’s profit line. No-one else is even close to smart enough or informed enough to determine this. Brook no arguments. Good luck!

It’s incredible how otherwise smart people have no concept of working in a team or recognizing the realities of supporting and integrating wild devices into a corporate network. Obviously, though, the author is so much better at security than anyone in their company’s IT.

Something like this guy (or any of the other videos that he’s posted about other programming languages).

Interview with Senior Rust Developer in 2023 by Jester Hartman / Programmers are also human (YouTube)

“You can go straight to management and start making your case, but another option – probably the more effective one – is to start with your immediate colleagues. Your team also possesses a collective agency, and if you agree together, without anyone’s permission, to work according to your own terms, then so long as you’re all doing your jobs – making money – then no one is going to protest.”

Really? No-one is going to protest? Because you and your buddies assumed that everyone else is an idiot and you can work autonomously within an organization as long as you’re “making money”? My god, you could never hire this person. What an absolute egocentric maniac. Just completely uncontrollable, completely confident that he can make the decision about what makes his company money—and don’t bother arguing with him because you are an idiot.

“How you are seen to be doing this may depend on how far up the chain you need to justify yourself to; if your boss doesn’t like it then make sure your boss’s boss does.”

Again, just assuming that everyone else is utterly incompetent. Breathtaking. Who hurt you?

“Simple cases, such as coming in at ten and leaving at four every day, are a case of simple exercise of agency; so long as you’re making the company money no one is going to raise a fuss.”

What fucking planet are you on? Everyone will hate you. I honestly can’t tell if he’s taking the piss at this point.

Criticism is WWE by Ryan Broderick (Garbage Day)

“f the AI revolution is really here and these tools are going to become completely enmeshed in our lives, it will eventually become harder and harder to train an AI model on completely organic content. For instance, I’ve read arguments that is it now essentially impossible to generate a large language model in English without including at least some AI-influenced text.

“I spun through the original research paper, hoping they included some kind of solution to what they’re calling “model collapse,” but their conclusion isn’t exactly helpful. “One option is community-wide coordination to ensure that different parties involved in [large language model] creation and deployment share the information needed to resolve questions of provenance,” the researchers wrote. In other words, maybe we can all work together on this.

“lmao ok. Yeah, AI is doomed.”

Requiem for Our Species by Chris Hedges (SubStack)

“Those in the Global South who are least responsible for the climate emergency, will suffer first. They are already fighting existential battles to survive. Our turn will come. We in the Global North may hold out for a bit longer, but only a bit. The billionaire class is preparing its escape. The worse it gets, the stronger will be our temptation to deny the reality facing us, to lash out at climate refugees, which is already happening in Europe and along our border with Mexico, as if they are the problem.”

“This human inability to foresee — or to watch out for — long-range consequences may be inherent to our kind, shaped by the millions of years when we lived from hand to mouth by hunting and gathering. It may also be little more than a mix of inertia, greed, and foolishness encouraged by the shape of the social pyramid. The concentration of power at the top of large-scale societies gives the elite a vested interest in the status quo; they continue to prosper in darkening times long after the environment and general populace begin to suffer.”

“The planet will survive. It has experienced mass extinctions before. This one is unique only because our species engineered it. Intelligent life is not so intelligent. Maybe this is why, with all those billions of planets, we have not discovered an evolved species. Maybe evolution has built within it its own death sentence.”

“We are composed of the rational and the irrational. In moments of extreme distress we embrace magical thinking. We become the easy prey of con-artists, cult leaders, charlatans and demagogues who tell us what we want to hear.”

“The awful truth is that even if we halt all carbon emissions today there is so much warming locked into the oceans deep muddy floor and the atmosphere , that feedback loops will ensure climate catastrophe. Summer Arctic sea ice, which reflects 90 percent of solar radiation that comes into contact with it, will disappear.”

“Melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica “has increased fivefold since the 1990s, and now accounts for a quarter of sea-level rise,” according to a recent report funded by NASA and the European Space Agency. Continued sea level rise, the rate of which has doubled over three decades according to the World Meteorological Organization, is inevitable. Tropical rainforests will burn . Boreal forests will move northward. These and other feedback loops are already built into the ecosystem. We cannot stop them. Climate chaos, including elevated temperatures, will last for centuries.”

“Resistance cannot be carried out because it will succeed, but because it is a moral imperative, especially for those of us who have children. We may fail, but if we do not fight against the forces that are orchestrating our mass extinction, we become part of the apparatus of death.”

The Insanity of Solitary Confinement by John Kiriakou (Scheer Post)

“Isolated in a 6-by-10 foot cell 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he spiraled into paranoia and began engaging in shocking self-mutilation. Gay stabbed himself in the eye with a razor blade. He cut off pieces of his own flesh and ate them. He cut out one of his own testicles and left it hanging on a cell door. He then stitched his scrotum closed with a zipper. Instead of being transferred to a hospital, or even the prison’s mental health unit, Gay had time added on to his sentence, all of it in solitary. His seven-year sentence eventually became 97 years. What was his crime? He was convicted in 1993 of stealing a $1 bill and a hat.”

“The research on the effects of solitary confinement on mental health is clear: Nothing good comes of solitary. It causes or exacerbates serious psychological problems and frequently leads to long-term disability or even death. The United Nations condemns it and much of the rest of the world won’t practice it in their own prisons. It is a living example of the failure of the both the U.S. prison system and the U.S. mental healthcare system. Repairing those will take a great deal of time, money, and effort. But the very first step must be to end solitary confinement.”

Teach by Zack Weinersmith (SMBC)

Teach

Narrative by Zack Weinersmith (SMBC)

Narrative

Sad by Zack Weinersmith (SMBC)

Sad

LLM by Zack Weinersmith (SMBC)

LLM

Video Games

A note on Metal shader converter by Raph Levien

“The GPU ecosystem exists at the knife edge of being strangled by complexity. A big part of the problem is that features tend to inhabit a quantum superposition of existing and not existing. Typically there is an anemic core, surrounded by a cloud of optional features. The Vulkan ecosystem is notorious for this: the extension list at vulkan.gpuinfo.org currently lists 146 extensions.”

“I understand the incentives, but overall I find it disappointing that Metal chases shiny new features like ray-tracing, while failing to provide a solid, spec-compliant foundation for GPU compute.”