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Links and Notes for December 16th, 2022

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<n>Below are links to articles, highlighted passages<fn>, and occasional annotations<fn> for the week ending on the date in the title, <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=4085">enriching the raw data</a> from <a href="http://www.instapaper.com/starred/rss/1890855/5c1g08eoy9skhOr3tCGqTQbZes">Instapaper Likes</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/mvonballmo">Twitter</a>. They are intentionally succinct, else they'd be <i>articles</i> and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.</n> <ft><b>Emphases</b> are added, unless otherwise noted.</ft> <ft>Annotations are only lightly edited and are largely <i>contemporaneous</i>.</ft> <h>Table of Contents</h> <ul> <a href="#covid">COVID-19</a> <a href="#economy">Economy & Finance</a> <a href="#politics">Public Policy & Politics</a> <a href="#journalism">Journalism & Media</a> <a href="#science">Science & Nature</a> <a href="#art">Art & Literature</a> <a href="#technology">Technology</a> <a href="#programming">Programming</a> </ul> <h><span id="covid">COVID-19</span></h> <h><span id="economy">Economy & Finance</span></h> <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2022/12/15/see-no-evil/" author="Mr. Fish" source="Scheer Post">See No Evil</a> <img src="{att_link}seenoevilbymrfish.jpg" href="{att_link}seenoevilbymrfish.jpg" align="none" caption="Mr. Fish: See No Evil" scale="35%"> The eye chart reads, <pre style="text-align: center; width: 300px; border: 2px solid black"> <span style="font-size: 4em">C</span> <span style="font-size: 3.5em; letter-spacing: .5em">API</span> <span style="font-size: 3em; letter-spacing: .35em">TALISM</span> <span style="font-size: 2.5em; letter-spacing: 0em">MAKES DOOMS</span> <span style="font-size: 2em; letter-spacing: .25em">DAY PROFIT</span> <span style="font-size: 1.5em; letter-spacing: .8em">ABLE ASS</span> <span style="font-size: 1em; letter-spacing: 3.5em">HOLE</span> </pre> <hr> <a href="https://web3isgoinggreat.com/single/ftx-ellison-wang-plead-guilty" author="Molly White" source="Web3 is Going Just Great">FTX executives Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang plead guilty to criminal charges, are cooperating with investigation</a> I love that this is now the face of global securities fraud. <img src="{att_link}benettonfaceofsecurityfraud.jpg" href="{att_link}benettonfaceofsecurityfraud.jpg" align="none" caption="The Benetton face of securities fraud" scale="50%"> Congratulations everybody! After a tremendous amount of work and effort and time, we've finally achieved the dream! We have even more fraud and inequality than ever before, but it's now no longer just old, white men committing it! Now, we have a good mix of identities and backgrounds committing crimes and ripping off the poor and unsuspecting! Way to go everybody! Kudos all around. <h><span id="politics">Public Policy & Politics</span></h> <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/12/16/vmhb-d16.html" source="WSWS" author="Johannes Stern">German parliament agrees purchase of F-35 fighter jets for nuclear war against Russia</a> <bq>For one thing, it makes it clear that the ruling class is prepared to wage nuclear war to advance its imperialist interests—<b>even if it means the deaths of tens of billions of people and the potential destruction of the entire planet.</b></bq> That's more people than actually exist. Calm down. <bq>The “historic” rearmament requires historic attacks on the working class. While billions are gushing into the Bundeswehr, massive cuts are being made in the areas of health, education and social welfare. Adjusted for inflation, the 2023 budget includes the biggest cuts since the end of World War II. <b>The health budget alone will be cut by almost €40 billion (!) from €64.36 billion to €24.48 billion</b>[...]</bq> Not sure I can trust that number, not after the <iq>tens of billions of people</iq> data-point above. <bq><b>The €10 billion now being squandered on fighter jets alone could be used to hire more than 34,000 additional teachers for five years</b>; or nearly 52,000 nurses for the same period in the health care system, which is also completely underfunded.</bq> <bq>Within the federal government, the Greens are taking a particularly aggressive stance. <b>“We are pleased to be able to put the most modern jet in the world in the capable hands of the pilots of our air force,” said Philip Krämer, who sits on the defence committee for the former pacifists.</b> His colleague Sebastian Schäfer stressed that the task now must be to “ensure a functioning and rapid operational readiness.”</bq> The greens! I guess everyone loves money. <hr> <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2022/12/13/patrick-lawrence-germany-the-lies-of-empire/" source="Scheer Post" author="Patrick Lawrence">Germany & The Lies of Empire</a> <bq><b>German businesses, along with many German citizens, were vociferous critics of the sanctions regime the U.S. imposed on Russia</b> — and effectively on Europe, indeed — after the U.S.-choreographed coup in Kiev eight years ago set in motion the current crisis in Ukraine.</bq> <bq>Earlier this year Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s first post-coup president, shocked everybody when he stated publicly that Kiev never had any intention of honoring the commitments it made when it signed the Minsk Protocols: <b>The talks in the Belarusian capital and all the promises were meant simply to buy time while Ukraine built fortifications in the eastern regions</b> and trained and armed a military strong enough to wage a full-dress war of aggression against the Russian-tilted Donetsk and Lugansk regions.</bq> <bq>There was never any interest in the federal structure envisioned in Minsk II. <b>There was never any intention of granting the breakaway regions the measure of autonomy Ukraine’s history and its mixed languages, cultures and traditions called for.</b> Committing to all that was a ruse intended to deceive Moscow and the Donbass republics while Ukraine rearmed and shelled the latter in anticipation of the war that broke out in February.</bq> <bq>In Die Zeit, the second of the two interviews, <b>Merkel described the Minsk talks as “an attempt to give Ukraine time… to become stronger,”</b> later expressing satisfaction that this strategy — a straight-out abuse of the diplomatic process — has succeeded.</bq> <bq><b>Germany now tells the lies of which the American empire is made</b> — a matter of anxiety and sadness all at once. If scorched-earth diplomacy is a fitting name for what the West has been up to in its dealings with Russia since 2014, as I think it is, <b>the German bridge between West and East has been burnt.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2022/12/14/after-41-years-in-prison-mumia-abu-jamal-may-finally-get-a-chance-for-new-trial/" source="Scheer Post" author="Marjorie Cohn">After 41 Years in Prison, Mumia Abu-Jamal May Finally Get a Chance for New Trial</a> <bq>The Supreme Court held in Brady v. Maryland that when the prosecution suppresses evidence favorable to the accused, it violates due process if the evidence is material to guilt or punishment, regardless of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecutor. <b>There is a Brady violation when there is a “reasonable probability” that if the evidence had been disclosed to the defense the result of the trial would have been different.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/john-pilger-silencing-lambs-how-propaganda-works/281884/" source="Mint Press News" author="John Pilger">Silencing the Lambs. How Propaganda Works</a> <bq>[Leni Riefenstahl] told me that the ‘patriotic messages’ of her films were dependent not on ‘orders from above’ but on what she called the ‘submissive void’ of the German public. <b>Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked. ‘Yes, especially them,’ she said.</b> I think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western societies.</bq> <bq><b>The United States dominates the Western world’s media.</b> All but one of the top ten media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google, Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American owned and controlled.</bq> Twitter is <i>now</i>. Until relatively recently, it was mostly owned by Saudi Arabian nationals. It was a U.S. company, but foreign-owned. I'm not sure what implications this had, but the owners were not based in North America. TikTok is huge. It is based in China. <bq>In my lifetime, <b>the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, mostly democracies. It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries.</b> It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries. It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries.</bq> <bq>In the years before he died in 2008, the playwright <b>Harold Pinter</b> made two extraordinary speeches, which broke a silence. <b>‘US foreign policy,’ he said, is ‘best defined as follows: kiss my arse or I’ll kick your head in. It is as simple and as crude as that.</b> What is interesting about it is that it’s so incredibly successful. It possesses the structures of disinformation, use of rhetoric, distortion of language, which are very persuasive, but are actually a pack of lies. It is very successful propaganda. <b>They have the money, they have the technology, they have all the means to get away with it, and they do.</b></bq> <bq>In accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, <b>Pinter said this: The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.</b> You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. <b>It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.</b></bq> <bq>‘It means the brainwashing is so thorough we are programmed to swallow a pack of lies. <b>If we don’t recognise propaganda, we may accept it as normal and believe it. That’s the submissive void.</b></bq> <bq><b>On 25 April, the US Defence Secretary, General Lloyd Austin, flew into Kyiv and confirmed that America’s aim was to destroy the Russian Federation – the word he used was ‘weaken’.</b> America had got the war it wanted, waged by an American bankrolled and armed proxy and expendable pawn. Almost none of this was explained to Western audiences.</bq> <bq><b>Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is wanton and inexcusable.</b> It is a crime to invade a sovereign country. There are no ‘buts’ – except one. <b>When did the present war in Ukraine begin and who started it?</b> According to the United Nations, between 2014 and this year, some 14,000 people have been killed in the Kyiv regime’s civil war on the Donbass.</bq> <bq><b>In less than a decade, a ‘good’ China has been airbrushed and a ‘bad’ China has replaced it</b>: from the world’s workshop to a budding new Satan.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.mintpressnews.com/chris-hedges-israel-rise-jewish-fascism/282961/" source="Mint Press News" author="Chris Hedges">Israel and the Rise of Jewish Fascism</a> <bq><b>Alon Pinkas, writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, calls the coalition government, scheduled to take power in one or two weeks, “a kakistocracy extraordinaire: government by the worst and least suitable collection of ultranationalists, Jewish supremacists, anti-democrats, racists, bigots, homophobes, misogynists, corrupt and allegedly corrupt politicians.</b> A ruling coalition of 64 lawmakers, of whom 32 are either ultra-Orthodox or religious Zionist. Certainly not a coalition Zeev Jabotinsky, the father of Revisionist Zionism, or Menachem Begin, the founder of Likud, could have ever imagined.”</bq> <bq><b>His appointment, along with that of other far-right ideologues, including Bezalel Smotrich, to be in charge of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), effectively jettisons the old tropes liberal Zionists used to defend Israel – that it is the only democracy in the Middle East</b>, that it seeks a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians in a two-state solution, that extremism and racism have no place in Israeli society and that Israel must impose draconian forms of control on the Palestinians to prevent terrorism.</bq> <bq>The old tropes Israel employed to justify itself were always more fiction than reality. Israel long ago became an apartheid state. It directly controls through its illegal Jewish-only settlements, restricted military zones and army compounds, over 60 percent of the West Bank and has de facto control over the rest. <b>There are 65 laws that directly or indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel and those living in the OPT.</b></bq> <bq><b>After the recent execution of an unarmed Palestinian</b> who was shot three times at point-blank range and then again while on the ground, by an Israeli border policeman during a scuffle which was captured on video, <b>Ben-Gvir called the officer a “hero."</b></bq> <bq>Ben-Gvir, who considers Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish settler who in 1994 massacred 29 Muslims worshipers in Hebron, “a hero,” has announced an imminent visit along with other Jewish extremists to the site of the mosque. <b>When Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s opposition leader, went to the mosque site in September 2000, it ignited the Second Intifada.</b></bq> <bq>Those in the establishment of our community who insist that Jewish America must stand united and unquestioningly loyal to Israel no matter what are <b>doing a deep, deep, disservice to the health of the Jewish community.</b></bq> <bq><b>An uprising will be used by Israel to justify savage reprisals that will dwarf the punishing economic blockade and wholesale slaughter meted out in Gaza during Israel’s assaults in 2008, 2012 and 2014</b>, which left approximately 3,825 Palestinians killed, 17,757 wounded and over 25,000 housing units partly or completely destroyed by Israel, including multi-story apartment buildings and entire neighborhoods. <b>Tens of thousands were left homeless and huge swaths of Gaza were reduced to rubble.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=91458" source="NachDenkSeiten" author="Ulrich Heyden">Mythos Merkel zerplatzt: „Friedenskanzlerin“ bekennt, dass Minsker Abkommen nur ein Trick war</a> <bq>Die Bundeskanzlerin wurde von den deutschen Mainstream-Medien als zurückhaltende Politikerin dargestellt und auch von vielen Linken für „bedachtes Handeln“ gelobt. Nun stellt sich heraus: <b>Es war alles nur ein Schwindel. Merkel wollte nicht Frieden und Abrüstung, sondern Kiew Zeit geben, eine handlungsfähige Armee aufzubauen.</b> Und dass Kiew die „Volksrepubliken“ militärisch zurückerobern wollte, das war auch unter Selenski – ein Jahr nachdem er gewählt worden war – Usus.</bq> <bq>Weitere militärische Erfolge der prorussischen Freiwilligen wären wohl möglich gewesen, wenn am 12. Februar 2015 nicht <b>in aller Eile das von Angela Merkel und dem französischen Präsidenten Francois Hollande initiierte Minsker Abkommen unterzeichnet worden wäre</b>, in dem ein Waffenstillstand, Wahlen, Entmilitarisierung und ein Autonomie-Status für die „Volksrepubliken“ Donezk und Lugansk vereinbart wurde.</bq> <bq>Nach Abschluss des Minsk-2-Abkommens im Februar 2015 riet man den „Volksrepubliken“, nicht zurückzuschießen, wenn ukrainische Truppen schießen. Moskau setzte zu 100 Prozent auf die Umsetzung des Minsker Abkommens. <b>Die Zurückhaltung Russlands wird von deutschen Mainstream-Medien ausgeblendet. Stattdessen wird vom „russischen Expansionismus“ gesprochen.</b></bq> <bq><b>Waren denn die Beschießungen von Schulen und Wohnvierteln im Donbass durch die ukrainische Armee seit 2014 kein Angriff und kein Überfall?</b> War denn die Aufrüstung der Ukraine durch Nato-Staaten nicht Mithilfe bei dem geplanten Angriff der ukrainischen Armee auf die „Volksrepubliken“?</bq> <bq>Doch wenn sich jetzt Menschen im Westen hinstellen und Russland als Hauptverursacher des Krieges anklagen, vom „russischen Überfall“ sprechen und kein Wort über die Kriegsetappe 2014 bis 2018 mit 14.000 Toten – vor allem auf Seiten der „Volksrepubliken” -, so scheint mir das realitätsfremd.</bq> <bq>Werden sie das Eingeständnis der ehemaligen Bundeskanzlerin mit Verständnis zur Kenntnis nehmen oder wird ihnen jetzt klar, dass <b>die NATO schon seit 2014 einen militärischen Konflikt vor Russlands Grenze vorantreibt?</b></bq> <hr> <a href="http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-kremlins-cold-war-with-modern-world.html" source="Exile in Happy Valley" author="Nicky Reid">The Kremlin's Cold War with the Modern World Has Become a Russian Tragedy</a> <bq>[...] when it comes to understanding warfare, it is of the utmost importance to understand the so-called enemy, especially when you exist within the walls of an empire that thrives on assigning them daily like math homework. <b>Sometimes this means struggling to comprehend what can bring even the most honorable of people to throw that first punch that initiates a war.</b></bq> <bq>When I was first initiated into the antiwar movement as a pissed-off teenage dirtbag, <b>I was enlightened by left-wing firebrands like William Blum and Ward Churchill who dared to put themselves in the uncomfortable shoes of the men who hijacked four planes on September 11th to initiate a holy war.</b> They weren't justifying such clearly despicable violence; they were attempting to provide context on how it became inevitable.</bq> <bq>The truth is that what inspires Pashtuns to join the Taliban is precisely what inspired a Queer pagan anarchist like me to join the antiwar movement. <b>I don't want to see my people assimilated into a soulless empire any more than they do.</b></bq> <bq>Outsiders have conspired to destroy the Russian people for centuries specifically because they are a people so resistant to conquest who have had <b>the misfortune of building this culture on the most strategically valuable piece of real estate on the planet</b>, the land bridge that unites Europe and Asia. For this sin, the Russian people have rarely known a day in which they weren't under threat of foreign subjugation, and it was this existential fear that inspired the Russian people to build a state in the first place.</bq> <bq>Meanwhile, the serfs became slaves in all but name, creating a perfect playground for western capital to expand its toxic Industrial Revolution. <b>By the First World War, Britain, France and America essentially owned the Tsars like toy poodles and ran most of the factories and railroads</b> that polluted what Trotsky once called the "pristine roadlessness" of the Russian countryside.</bq> <bq><b>After being savagely ravaged by Boris Yeltsin's shock capitalism and encircled by an ever-expanding NATO empire</b> bent on nothing short of world domination, Vladimir Putin was able to unite the Russian people in their darkest hour with allusions to Russian nationalism, <b>but Putin himself is the product of the very excesses he has pledged to fight.</b></bq> <bq>Russia's greatness lies not on the battlefields of Europe but in the windswept plains and birch tree forests that inspired men like Peter Kropotkin and Leo Tolstoy to seek the kingdom of heaven within. It is this culture, a culture of asceticism and mercy, a culture of Cossack drifters and solitary dreamers, that continues to inspire those of us who resist assimilation into a modern world starved of reverence for the beauty of the old one. <b>Russia must once again become too wild for princes to tame and invite the world to join her around the fire. Then and only then will the conquest end.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=91398" source="NachDenkSeiten" author="Angelica Pérez und Marc Perelman">Präsident von Kolumbien [Gustavo Pedro] zum Ukraine-Krieg: „Ein Nato-Spiel, das den Aufbau einer russischen Reaktion begünstigt hat“</a> <bq><b>Ich frage mich, warum es einige Invasionen gibt, die gut sind und begrüßt werden, während dieselben Leute, die diese Invasionen begrüßen, andere ablehnen.</b> Gibt es gute Invasionen und schlechte Invasionen, oder gibt es eine Machtachse, die das eine oder das andere bestimmt und qualifiziert, die einen fördert und die anderen angreift, je nach ihrem eigenen geopolitischen Interesse?</bq> Der Kolombianischer Präsident spricht die Wahrheit. <bq>Wir werden niemals offensiv vorgehen. <b>Soweit ich mich erinnern kann, ist kein lateinamerikanisches Land jemals in die Offensive gegangen.</b> Wir sind immer defensiv gewesen, und ich glaube, dass das wichtig ist, denn in der großen Verfassung unserer Völker muss der Weltfrieden stets als Priorität festgeschrieben sein.</bq> <bq><b>Was die Toten angeht, so verblassen der Krieg in der Ukraine oder die Kriege in Libyen, Syrien oder im Irak im Vergleich zu den Zahlen der Toten in Lateinamerika</b>, ohne dass ein Krieg zwischen Nationen erklärt worden wäre. Aber es ist sehr ein Krieg, der dieses Gemetzel bewirkt hat, und der nach Nixons Slogan der Krieg gegen die Drogen ist.</bq> <bq>Ich denke, es gibt sehr wohl eine Möglichkeit: Wenn der Staat in Form von rechtlichen Vergünstigungen, in Form der Eröffnung von Möglichkeiten für ein normales Leben, von Wissen, einschließlich des Wohlstands dieser Regionen, ihnen eine Hand reichen würde, <b>wären viele Menschen bereit, von dieser Seite der dunklen Welt auf die Seite des Aufbaus eines intensiven Lebens zu wechseln.</b></bq> <bq><b>Der berühmte Pablo Escobar verblasst gegenüber der Macht von Organisationen, die heutzutage eine ganze Armee im Stil der Marineinfanterie auf die Beine stellen können</b>, Gebiete in jedem Teil Amerikas kontrollieren, Staaten wie Haiti in die Knie zwingen und die Demokratie dermaßen destabilisieren, dass sie Amerika zu einem der gewalttätigsten Orte gemacht haben.</bq> <bq><b>Wir schlagen vor, dass das gesamte Geld, das für einen gescheiterten Krieg ausgegeben wird</b>, das heißt viele Milliarden Dollar, <b>für die Prävention des Drogenkonsums ausgegeben werden sollte</b>, damit mit Kokain das Gleiche geschieht wie mit Nikotin.</bq> <bq><b>In Kolumbien lässt sich belegen, dass sich der Konsum von Tabak oder Zigaretten, der Nikotinkonsum allgemein, durch die Präventionskampagne und die Veränderungen, die die Gesellschaft im Laufe der Zeit erfahren hat, fast auf Null reduziert hat</b>, ohne zu kriminalisieren. Es ist nicht leicht, in Kolumbien jemanden zu finden, der raucht. Warum ist das möglich, wo der Zigarettenkonsum legal ist und der Kokainkonsum nicht?</bq> <bq>[...] diskutieren, <b>was aus Venezuela wird, wenn die Nachfrage nach Öl einbricht, um die Menschheit vor der Klimakrise zu retten.</b> Wie man zu einer produktiven Wirtschaft übergeht.</bq> <bq>Der Punkt ist, dass man <b>in dieser Frage der Menschenrechte mit moralischer Autorität sprechen muss.</b> Und es stellt sich heraus, dass Viele, die andere kritisieren, in ihrem eigenen Land ein noch größeres Problem haben.</bq> <bq>Niemand in der Regierung sollte die Möglichkeit oder die Straffreiheit haben, die Menschenrechte zu verletzen. Aber wir gehen von einem Grundsatz aus: <b>Es geht nicht darum, die Länder zu verurteilen, so dass sie immer weiter gegen die Menschenrechte verstoßen, sondern darum, dass sie auf der Grundlage eines politischen Abkommens, eines Paktes, aus solchen Geschehnissen herauskommen.</b></bq> <bq>Die Geschichte der Menschen ist noch nicht geschrieben worden, die bei der Überquerung der Grenze starben oder getötet wurden, die Geschichte der sexuellen Gewalt, die es in diesem Hunderte von Kilometern langen Gebiet gab, wo Millionen von Menschen von einer Seite auf die andere gehen müssen, weil sie ein und dasselbe Volk sind. Aber <b>eine politische Entscheidung blockierte das und überließ den Raum den schlimmsten Verbrecherorganisationen, was die Brutalität angeht.</b></bq> <bq>Es ist uns gelungen, Sektoren der Gesellschaft anzuziehen, <b>Millionen von Kolumbianern, die gegen uns gestimmt haben, sind jetzt mit uns.</b> Ich sage nicht, dass dies auf Dauer so bleiben wird. Aber bisher hat uns das ermöglicht, im Land stark zu sein.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://usefulidiots.substack.com/p/extended-episode-how-do-pro-russian" author="Useful Idiots" source="SubStack">Extended episode: How Do Pro-Russian Ukrainians See the War?</a> <bq>Anna Soroka, joining the Useful Idiots from Ukraine, is the former Deputy Foreign Minister of the Luhansk People's Republic. She joins Useful Idiots to share what it’s like being on the other side of a civil war that has now escalated into a full-blown proxy war with Russia. Sometimes discussions about war can become abstract, but it’s important to go “behind enemy lines” and hear from real people on the other side.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/12/21/how-to-stay-warm-without-turning-the-heating-on-uk-poverty-and-its-moron-premium/" author="Kenneth Surin" source="CounterPunch">“How To Stay Warm Without Turning The Heating On”: UK Poverty And Its “Moron Premium”</a> <bq>The late Anthony Bourdain said when visiting Cambodia in the aftermath of Henry Kissinger’s secret bombing campaign of that country during the Vietnam War (more bombs were dropped on neutral Cambodia than were deployed during the entire Second World War): “Anyone who visits Cambodia today would want to beat Henry Kissinger to death with their bare hands”.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2022/12/14/patrick-lawrence-in-ukraine-the-autumn-of-oligarchs/" author="Patrick Lawrence" source="Scheer Post">In Ukraine, the Autumn of Oligarchs</a> <bq>Ukraine’s crop of oligarchs, like the Russian Federation’s, date to the years immediately after the demise of the Soviet Union. <b>What the inebriated Boris Yeltsin, tool of neoliberal Clintonians, did to post–Soviet Russia, Leonid Kuchma did to Ukraine.</b> Kuchma’s presidency, from 1994 to 2005, was a godawful mess of fraud, corruption, and media censorship. Among much else, he set in motion and oversaw the same sort of rapacious, free-for-all privatization schemes Yeltsin got going in Russia. <b>Your typical Ukrainian oligarch active during the Kuchma years will have paid taxi fare for state-owned and–operated assets worth billions.</b></bq> <h><span id="journalism">Journalism & Media</span></h> <a href="https://taibbi.substack.com/p/notes-on-fbitwitter-story-link-to" author="Matt Taibbi" source="TK News">Notes on FBI/Twitter Story: Link to Text Version of Twitter Files Thread</a> <bq>People who deliver information to the press do so for all sorts of reasons, and as journalists we of course consider them. Again, however, they’re not our main responsibility. <b>We only have two questions in situations like this: is the material real, and is it of public interest?</b> If the answers are yes, then we’re in, at which point the public absolutely should judge us. However, they should do it on the basis of the material, not other considerations, like whether or not we’ve called out the right fifty people before hitting send. Elon Musk has been candid and straight with me, and there are a lot of things about him I definitely like, but he doesn’t need my endorsement and neither should anyone else. If we had a real press corps, its minions certainly wouldn’t be calling me about him or Bari Weiss at this moment. <b>They [should] be calling about the FBI, DHS, ODNI and other such over-empowered entities, whose secrets are only just starting to bleed out. They’re the story, everything else is a head fake</b>, and people like Mehdi know it.</bq> <h><span id="science">Science & Nature</span></h> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/space-debris-expert-orbits-will-be-lost-and-people-will-die-later-this-decade/" source="Ars Technica" author="Eric Berger">Space debris expert: Orbits will be lost—and people will die—later this decade</a> <bq>[...] <b>you have more and more countries saying, "Hey, I have free and unhindered use of outer space.</b> Nothing legally has me reporting to anybody because I'm a sovereign nation and I get to do whatever I want." I mean, I think that's stupid.</bq> <bq>It's not like companies want to trash space, right? It's in their best interest to keep space viable for commerce, too.</bq> This statement is so woefully unaware of the incentives. Countries and companies shouldn't want to trash space because it affects long-term viability. In the short term, though, they will spend as little money as possible to inflate quarterly profits and reap quick, easy returns. They will each think that they'd better take advantage before their enemies/competitors do. We have never come up with a good answer to "if I don't do it, someone else will...so it might as well be me," that doesn't invoke an appeal to principle. That has not mattered on a large scale for a very long time---if it ever really did. <hr> <a href="https://quillette.com/2022/12/08/how-do-they-know-this/" source="Quillette" author="Christopher J. Snowdon">How Do They Know This?</a> <bq>Unemployment figures are notoriously vulnerable to political manipulation. <b>Under the Conservative government of Thatcher and Major, there were 31 changes to the way unemployment is measured.</b> Some of these adjustments were trivial but many of them were, Sturge says, “not just tweaks but quite major changes to who was included and, more often, excluded from the count.” <b>This not only made it extremely difficult to compare unemployment statistics over time</b>—in some cases, it prevented people from claiming out-of-work benefits.</bq> <bq><b>The Office for National Statistics is one of the few parts of the British state that still works well</b> and there are some things we don’t really need to know. As Sturge says, “Who cares how many Austrians there are in Wolverhampton?”</bq> <bq><b>The bigger problem, which Sturge’s book seeks to address, is the misinterpretation of statistics by people who should know better (and often do).</b> In this regard, it is surprising that she does not write more about the pandemic, when an impressive amount of raw data became available to anyone with an internet connection but was widely misrepresented by bad-faith actors and horribly misunderstood by the statistically naive.</bq> <bq>If you take one point away from Bad Data it should be that the vast majority of statistics are estimates, some of them are very rough estimates, and statisticians are constrained by limited resources and bounded knowledge. It is not a crisis. Outright fraud is rare, but <b>when confronted with an impressive statistic, especially when it seems surprising, it is worth asking, “How do they know this?” Very often the answer will be that they don’t really know it at all.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/integral" author="Zack Weinersmith" source="SMBC">Integral</a> <img src="{att_link}image.jpg" href="{att_link}image.jpg" align="none" caption="THE SQUARE ROOT OF THE LOG OF THE INVERSE TANGENT OF e TO THE i TO THE GODDAMN SON OF A BITCH." scale="50%"> <h><span id="art">Art & Literature</span></h> <a href="https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2022/12/on-the-road-vanuatu.html" source="3 Quarks Daily" author="Bill Murray">On the Road: Vanuatu</a> <bq>“What the Chinese tend to do is that they put heavy investment into countries that simply don’t have the means to pay back the debt,” an expert told Australia’s Channel 9. <b>“If China can get a country so deep in debt that it can’t pay back that debt, then they will take something else in return … (like a) port.”</b></bq> Vulture capitalism is quite literally the well-established, western business model in the Global South. The IMF has never pretended to anything else. Grab 'em by the balls and squeeze until they cough something up. It's super-neat to watch people pretend that China invented it. When the west does it, it's gloriously purifying neoliberal capitalism and privatization optimizing away the inefficiencies of lesser and less-enlightened cultures. When the Chines do it, it's (rightly) considered evil---or at least less than honorable. Taking advantage of the disadvantaged is bad no matter who does it. And it's not even clear how often China does it---they just recently forgave $23B of debt to several countries. <bq>We sat in the twilight and watched a dozen frogs in every direction at every moment, bounding, jumping, head up, head down, throat pulsing, hurrying this way or that, up the path or under the bush, and we saluted them and their day.</bq> <h><span id="technology">Technology</span></h> <a href="https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/12/as-long-as-were-on-the-subject-of-captchas.html" author="Bruce Schneier" source="">As Long as We’re on the Subject of CAPTCHAs</a> <img src="{att_link}bishops_who_dissented_from_the_christological_findings_of_the_first_council_of_nicaea.jpg" href="{att_link}bishops_who_dissented_from_the_christological_findings_of_the_first_council_of_nicaea.jpg" align="none" caption="Captcha: Bishops who dissented from the Christological findings of the First Council of Nicaea" scale="50%"> <img src="{att_link}select_all_images_where_if_you_were_to_add_a_decrescendo_it_would_add_to_the_musicality_of_the_piece_without_being_interpreted_as_an_overly_heavy-handed_metaphor_within_the_context_of_the_thematic_material..jpg" href="{att_link}select_all_images_where_if_you_were_to_add_a_decrescendo_it_would_add_to_the_musicality_of_the_piece_without_being_interpreted_as_an_overly_heavy-handed_metaphor_within_the_context_of_the_thematic_material..jpg" align="none" caption="Select all images where if you were to add a decre...aphor within the context of the thematic material." scale="50%"> <h><span id="programming">Programming</span></h> <a href="https://blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2022/12/15/the-future-of-net-with-wasm/" source="JetBrains Blog" author="Khalid Abuhakmeh">The Future of .NET with WASM</a> <bq>In addition to running standalone .wasm files, you can use Wasmtime inside your applications to consume third-party dependencies. The portability of the WASM format opens up a world where you can have native interop with a standard format across all languages. <b>Wasmtime also supports debugging using popular native debugging tools like GDB or LLDB, which many of the IntelliJ-family products already support.</b></bq> Can it replace C as the lingua franca? <bq>[...] threading may not be an issue in the near future as .NET adds multi-threaded support to WASM. Wasmtime also enables multiple threads with an experimental flag, but your technology stack will need to take advantage of that feature.</bq> <bq>[...] there is currently no outward socket support. Lack of socket support limits a WASM application’s ability to communicate with dependencies like a database or web service. Discussions of a Socket specification will resolve this issue, allowing for more robust WASM apps. In addition, <b>this should enable .NET developers to use data access tools like Entity Framework Core or Dapper with few issues.</b></bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names" source="W3" author="Richard Ishida">Personal names around the world</a> <bq>Icelanders prefer to be called by their given name (Björk), or by their full name (Björk Guðmundsdóttir). Björk wouldn’t normally expect to be called Ms. Guðmundsdóttir. <b>Telephone directories in Iceland are sorted by given name.</b></bq> <bq><b>In the Chinese name 毛泽东 (Mao Ze Dong) the family name is Mao, ie. the first name when reading (left to right). The given name is Dong. The middle character, Ze, is a generational name</b>, and is common to all his siblings (such as his brothers and sister, 毛泽民 (Mao Ze Min), 毛泽覃 (Mao Ze Tan), and 毛泽紅 (Mao Ze Hong)).</bq> <bq><b>Spanish-speaking people will commonly have two family names.</b> For example, María José Carreño Quiñones (José being a part of her given name) may be the daughter of Antonio Carreño Rodríguez and María Quiñones Marqués.</bq> <bq><b>Typically, two Spanish family names would have the order paternal+maternal, whereas Portuguese names in Brazil would be maternal+paternal.</b> However, this order may change. Furthermore, some names add short words, such as de or e between family names, such as Carreño de Quiñones, or Tavares e Silva.</bq> <bq>For example, the wife of Борис Николаевич Ельцин (Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin) is Наина Иосифовна Ельцина (Naina Iosifovna Yeltsina) – note how the husband’s names end in consonants, while the wife’s names (even the patronymic from her father) end in ‑a. By the way, <b>a slightly less formal way of writing Russian names follows the order familyName-givenName-patronymic, such as Ельцина Наина Иосифовна.</b></bq> <bq><b>Filipinos also write their name with a middle initial, but it represents the mother's name before marriage rather than a given name.</b> For example, in Maria J. Go, the initial represents Jimenez, the previous family name of Maria's mother. (In fact, an initial may represent more than one name: 'D' may stand for 'Dela Cruz' when the name is written in full.)</bq> <bq>For example, Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan is a Kerala name from Southern India, <b>usually written V. S. Achuthanandan which follows the order familyName-fathersName-givenName.</b></bq> <bq>[...] the Arabic Abu Karim Muhammad al-Jamil ibn Nidal ibn Abdulaziz al-Filistini <b>translates as "Father of Karim, Muhammad (given name), The beautiful, Son of Nidal, Son of Abdulaziz, the Palestinian".</b> Karim is Muhammad's first-born son.</bq> <bq>For example, <b>the family name of 東海林賢蔵 (ie. the first three ideographic characters on the left) may be transcribed or pronounced as either Tōkairin or Shōji.</b> Furthermore, different kanji characters may be pronounced in the same way, so romanization (ie. Latin script transcription) tends to lose important distinctive information related to names. For example, <b>庄司, 庄子, 東海林, and 小路 can all be romanized as Shōji.</b> Some Japanese names use archaic ideographic characters, or characters that are no longer used in modern Japanese. The pronunciation of these characters may not be recognized. Because of these issues, <b>Japanese people will commonly provide a phonetic version of their name (using a non-ideographic Japanese kana alphabet) along with the normal written version.</b></bq> <bq>If you do still feel you need to ask for constituent parts of a name separately, <b>try to avoid using the labels ‘first name’ and ‘last name’ in non-localized forms</b>, since these can be confusing for people who normally write their family name followed by given names.</bq> <bq>This will depend on what you need to do with the data, but obviously it will be simpler, where it is possible, to <b>just use the full name as the user provides it.</b></bq> <bq>It may be better to ask separately, when setting up a profile for example, how that person would like you to address them.<box>Your profile Full name What should we call you? (for example, when we send you mail?)</box><b>This extra field would also be useful for finding the appropriate name from a long list, and for handling Thai nicknames.</b></bq> <bq>[...] <b>don't require that people supply a family name. In cultures such as parts of Southern India, Malaysia and Indonesia, a large number of people have names that consist of a given name only</b>, with no patronym. If you require family names, you may create significant problems in these cultures, as users enter garbage data like "." or "Mr." in the family name field just to escape the form.</bq> <bq><b>Don't normalize the casing in names.</b> Some names (such as 'McNamara') contain capital letters that are not the first letter; others (such as 'van der Waals') include words that are not capitalized. Forms should preserve the case the user enters and not coerce such names to always and only use capital letters at the start of each word.</bq> Damn skippy. My credit cards are all wrong. My U.S. passport is wrong. <bq>Or will you want to send them correspondence in their own language, but track them in your back-office in a language such as English? If so, <b>you may want to store the name in both Latin and native scripts</b>, in which case you probably need to ask the user to submit their name in both native script and Latin-only form, using separate fields.<box> Your profile Name (in your alphabet) Latin transcription (if different)</box>Note that <b>Japanese users may need to provide a transcription in a Japanese syllabic script rather than/in addition to the ideographic form.</b> This could lead to a third field in the example above.</bq> <bq><b>The treatment of small words such as "von", "de", and "van" brings additional complexity to sorting.</b> Sometimes the prefixes are significant, other times they are not.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://death.andgravity.com/pwned" author="Adrian" source="death and gravity">Has your password been pwned? Or, how I almost failed to search a 37 GB text file in under 1 millisecond (in Python)</a> This is a wonderful investigation in improving the performance of a Python script for searching a 37GB file. <hr> <a href="https://time.graphics/line/593132" author="Lazie Wouters" source="">Microsoft .NET History</a> This is a very detailed timeline history of Microsoft .NET and related releases and acquisitions (e.g. GitHub). The more recent history is a bit sparse, but the diagram is editable, so perhaps people will join in. <img src="{att_link}dotnethistory.jpg" href="{att_link}dotnethistory.jpg" align="none" caption="Snapshot of .NET History (ca. 2018)" scale="50%">