Ode to the Sub-GED Class

To anyone paying attention, it's clear that wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 continues to bet on the sub-GED class to come through, yet again.

Now we find that he's out to poison the blood of the electorate by seeing to it that knuckledraggers without any education or identifiable skill will get paid as much as teachers or accountants or coders. All of whom do have education and skill; well, may be not so much for coders. But you get the idea. Idiot Brown Shirts will rule.

But Mr. Lighthizer dismissed studies critical of Mr. Trump’s tariffs, describing them as biased in favor of free trade and arguing that inflation had held steady during the administration. He also said that while efficiency, profits and low prices were important, the priority should be encouraging more manufacturing jobs for Americans without college degrees.

Well, no one who's had at least high school econ would believe that China, et al, pays extra on their exports. It's the American consumer, of course. There's that great line from "The Usual Suspects"

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist. And like that... he is gone.

Studies have decided that imports are a net benefit to the sub-GED knuckledraggers from all those Asian locales.

The Orange Jesus may well be convincing some of the sub-GED crowd that he's on their side (Not!), but it's fur shur that no one else is biting. Of course, the sub-GED crowd is rather large in many/most/all of the so-called Swing States. As mentioned in these missives a few times, Sleepy Joe 'won' by 7,000,000 votes, but he squeaked by with 5-digit margins in those Swing States. And much of that 7,000,000 difference (~5,000,000) came in California. Another reason the Electoral College was a sop to the slave south.

The Oracle of Atlanta

The news has it that JN.1 is already dominant (44.2%) and could get near to Covid-Ο's massive peak. Not claiming that it will meet it. But there's a problem: that assertion is based on CDC's "Nowcast" figure for this week, and that's a stat estimate. The Nowcast is two periods (4 weeks) out from the last 'hard data'. Version 2 of this missive will see how accurate it turns out to be.

I Told You Fucking So - 15 December 2023

Well, boy howdy, but at long last, we find out that the Spooks really do know what really happened in 2016. Too bad they didn't tell us in 2016 before Comey gave the election to the Orange Jesus. Not that this is news here.

The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government's assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, sources tell CNN.

May be that Christopher Steele isn't such a damn liar, after all? As I said from the beginning, they ain't be nuthin that da NSA don't know the foreigners are sayin, or e-mainlin, or textin, or anyting else. No wonder the Orange Jesus shredded it.

To quote our Dear Leader, Sleepy Joe: this is a big fucking deal.

By The Numbers - part the thirty eighth

Performance inflation is everywhere. Well... except when it's in your venue, and there it's because you and yours are now so much better with no help from Da Man. Two examples:

Yale's been dinked for giving out A's like Christmas candy

Nearly 80 percent of all grades given to undergraduates at Yale last academic year were A's or A minuses, part of a sharp increase that began during the coronavirus pandemic and appears to have stuck

Now, if you go and read the report, you'll find that Yale isn't an outlier, nor are the Ivys a group outlier. It's everywhere. It's been a bugbear for decades, going back to, at least, my undergraduate time many decades ago. And, so far as that all goes, now that college atheletes (in the Upper Level schools) can be paid directly (well, it's not likely to get stopped), how soon will they no longer even be required to take classes and get grades? Already, may haps?

Schools with "the most financial resources and the biggest brands" would form a new subdivision that could set its own rules for roster size, recruitment and transfers.

OTOH, it is today announced that the arbiters of Golf have decided that players, especially professionals, have been blasting through par like A bombs. And, of course, that has been going on for years. The R&A and USGA have been trying to keep the ball in play where the course designers intended. So, now (well, in a few years) golf balls are expressly limited in how far they can go under specified test conditions

The longest hitters are expected to see a reduction of as much as 13-15 yards in drive distance. Average professional tour and elite male players are expected to see a reduction of 9-11 yards, with a 5-7-yard reduction for an average LPGA or Ladies European Tour (LET) player.

And, of course, this isn't the first time the arbiters got outraged by a cool new ball.

One might argue that Ivy grade inflation and golfer driving distance inflation aren't the same. But the fact is, for golfers, the arbiters have allowed ever more clever ways for equipment manufacturers (clubs and balls) to make everyone special. It's not often they put down the hammer ('anchoring' a long putter being tossed is the only other edict I recall at the tip of my tongue), so golfers should be happy. Most other sports, and college atheletes in particular, are more actively governed.

Cottage Cheese - Redux

Truly dedicated readers will recall the prediction that commerical real estate was skating on thin ice. Yes, they are.

Well, some of those chickens are now roosting in plain sight. And, as usual, the NYT has the numbers.

About 23 percent of office space in the United States was vacant or available for sublet at the end of November, according to Avison Young, a real estate services firm, compared with 16 percent before the pandemic.

So, what to do? What to do?

Office landlords, hit hard by the work-from-home revolution, are resorting to a desperate measure in the real estate world: "handing back the keys."

Well, as is obvious, that just means the owner just defaults on the loan(s). Would that civilians could get away with that:

But there's a difference: Big property companies can keep doing business after they default, and are even considered savvy for jettisoning distressed buildings.

Homeowners who stopped paying their mortgages, though, suffered a huge hit to their credit ratings and had to find somewhere else to live.

By The Numbers - part the thirty seventh

Today brings Krugman's scheduled offering. He takes up the issue, appearing here a few times, about the effect of increasing life-span-at-birth on SS and Medicare. He reaches the same conclusion that I, and other intelligent lifeforms, have: increasing the eligibility ages for them will only hurt the poor and downtrodden, aka the group the Right Wingnut Populists claim to support. But he doesn't offer up any numbers. Well, I'll take up the gauntlet, once again.

Curiously, someone put the column title (not always at an author's discretion), "Nikki Haley Is Coming for Your Retirement", which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since the NYT is the newspaper of record for the well-to-do, not Joe Sixpack who favors the New York Post and the Murdoch Universe. Be that flaw as it may.

Anyone who says, as Haley does, that the retirement age should rise in line with increasing life expectancy is being oblivious, perhaps willfully, to the grim inequality of modern America. Until Covid struck, average life expectancy at 65, the relevant number, was indeed rising. But these gains were concentrated among Americans with relatively high incomes. Less affluent Americans — those who depend most on Social Security — have seen little rise in life expectancy, and in some cases actual declines.

As offered here in the past, life expectancy at birth has, indeed, risen dramatically since 1900, and a bit less so since 1930 (a reasonable benchmark for SS benefit start):
at birth 1900 - 47
at birth 1930 - M:58 F:62
at birth 2021, est - 76

So, the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts scream, "this can't go on!!! nearly 30 fucking years longer!!! this can't go on!!!" They are, per usual, lying.

First and foremost, almost oll of that increase in lifespan has been due to reduction in early death, mostly through drugs and vaccines. In other words, more births lived through working age which led to an increase in SSA revenue compared to 1930. Or another way: the Baby Boomers' incomes were what made generous SS benefits possible for their parents and grandparents. You're welcome. SS was never, and could never be, an 'individual retirement account'; if that had been the implementation, no one would have gotten SS until about when Kennedy was shot, assuming a 30 year work life. It was implemented as a current account system so that those reaching 65 would receive benefits irregardless of how long they had 'contributed' to SS; they didn't contribute. It is just a dedicated tax input.

What actually matters is what's happened to geezer life expectancy over that time frame. If geezers still live about as long as they did in the Good Ole Days, then the bitching is all theatre.

So, what are those numbers?

Here's the numbers, once again
all folks
at 65 (1950) - 13.9
at 65 (2007) - 18.6

poor folks
at 65 (1950) - 13.9
at 65 (2007) - 17.2

So, how to 'save' SS?? The straightforward solution is to simply increase the income level that contributes and, of course, make it progressive just as income tax is supposed to be. For 2023, the max is $160,200. Not even near the 1%-ers' level. There hasn't been an adustment since 1990. Let's do it again. So, yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

And, just so ya know: those of the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnut Brigade who point to the at-birth numbers and insist that such dramatic increases are in the future imperils 'the rest of us' are lying. Of course. The dramatic increase from 1900 to 2000 (or so) was due to much better medicine (and public health initiatives, which the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts hate; it's Socialism and all that) are about done with. The easy 80% (or may be 99.9%) and all that. The improvement in overall survival from cancers and heart diseases is barely out of the noise. Get old enough, and one or the other will get you if dementia (there's no therapy known to work here) doesn't. And, by the bye, ignore 'cancer survival rates' or 'heart disease survival rates' numbers as the answer. What matters is the mean/median length of survival from disease. Just because the survival rate may rise, doesn't mean that the afflicted live longer, just that more of them live long enough to die after the same length of time they always have.

This is the crux of the matter for cancer (2022)

However, overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were only prolonged by a median of 2.80 and 3.30 months

Yeah, that's going to keep lots and lots of geezers on SS so much longer.

Externalities - part the second

Near as I can find, the earliest example of Dr. McElhone's oft shared observation, "The world is not linear" was in 2015, in the context of resource depletion.

To no one's surprise, NYT, once again has a long piece on the water wars of the West; just have a gander at the graph of the pumping by the Barrick mine. The aspect of which that is so stupid is, in the states mentioned, the largest slurpers of that finite resource are the ones making the rules regarding how much and who can do the slurping.

And, while we're here, is a massive example of the effects of the Tyranny of Average Cost, to wit: we spent a lot of money on capital (which we intend to recoup with a healthy profit) in anticipation that the past would continue undiminished forever, so we have the right to slurp as is most profitable to us:

Ms. Erling testified at the committee meeting, expressing deep concern. She told lawmakers that "massive investments" had been made based on existing Nevada water law and that "massive pieces of our economy have grown up around those investments."

This is the exact same excuse for stopping alt-energy initiatives: if the Damn Gummint allows roof top solar, for example, only the rich will benefit and we'll have to increase prices to the poor because we have all that expensive plant and equipment to pay for, bought on the assumption that we'd be pushing so many more wee little electrons on those big fat wires.

What's so pathetic about rampant capitalism, unlike the variety sold by neo-con econ types, is that real capitalists slough off as many externality costs as they can buy off the Damn Gummint to permit. Now, one might ask, why are they so short-sighted? Do they not care about their kids and grandkids and further generations? Ah, no, they don't. So far as the water crises go, the rich (farmers, miners, industrialists) will simply abandon the burned out land, take their piles of cash, and move to some place that does have water; the real owners may well be living in the well watered Northeast, anyway. They and their spawn will have plenty to continue to waste.

The story in Montana is even more grotesque.

Good Omen? Bad Omen?

Well, it is announced that Milei is Dear Leader of Argentina. An acolyte of Bone Spur Samurai, who claimed that if he didn't win, it had to be because the election was rigged.

He had warned that if he lost on Sunday, it may have been because the vote was stolen. After signs emerged on Sunday that he would win, Mr. Milei's campaign told reporters that the election was clean.

Now, one need note that he was behind in polling before the run-off. May haps he used Chinese smart thermostats and Italian satellites to switch votes?

What's the omen, from the USofA point of view of course? Good: Milei has a year to show what a Trumpian can do to an economy and society; nothing good except for the moneyed elite. Bad: he doesn't get to do all the venal things he wants, and the result is ambiguous.

Chief among his promises is No New Taxes, just like Poppy Bush. Of course, as in the USofA, only the little people pay taxes, thus only the little people support governance. Remove what support there is for the underclass, and revolt is possible. We'll see.

I Told You So - 14 November 2023

Well, yet more data supporting the assertion that Demon Inflation isn't driven by dirty, greedy wage workers, but the burning off of all that Covid Cash:

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed prices were flat over last month and rose 3.2% over the prior year in October, a deceleration from September's 0.4% monthly increase and 3.7% annual gain in prices.

Too bad for the vermin hating MAGA Morons.

Roe, Roe, Roe Your Gat

Well, boy howdy!! Now that the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts have caught the anti-choice dump truck after all these decades, what's next?? Note that the latest Gallup numbers shows a mere 13% for some kind of absolute ban. Yet, the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts cling to the 'belief' that they're the only righteous folks. This from Ohio

While lawmakers cannot directly change the amendment through legislation, Speaker of the Ohio House Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) said, "As a 100% pro-life conservative, I remain steadfastly committed to protecting life, and that commitment is unwavering. The legislature has multiple paths that we will explore to continue to protect innocent life. This is not the end of the conversation."

Of course, these self-same Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts are against things like free school lunches; can't have poor folks feeding at the government trough.

So, what's the next? Gun laws, of course. Where do the American People stand? Well, about the same as Choice. Gallup, to no surprise, has numbers for that, too. A mere 10% want less strict gun control. How's that for a dump truck worth chasing? As one might expect, for such a triggering subject (sarcasm intended, of course), the pro-death squad hates the notion of widespread, accurate data on civilian defensive gun use (DGU), thus there are fighting numbers. Oh well. So, here's one effort.

According to the most recent firearms violence report, published in April, 2 percent of victims of nonfatal violent crime — that includes rape, sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault — and 1 percent of property crime victims use guns in self-defense.

Other numbers are even murkier: suicides, neighbor-on-neighbor disputes, spousal homicides, and so on.
suicide = 26,993
neighbors = no simple number to be found, but the report sheds a good deal of light

If you grew up in the coal mining region of eastern Pennsylvania your chance of dying of a gunshot is about half that if you grew up in the coalfields of West Virginia, three hundred miles to the southwest.

spousal homicides = 70/month (2019)

So, yeah... We need more pistol packing mamas.

Dumb Shit

So, there are just a few TeeVee shows that I'm drawn to: How the Universe Works and Nova among them. Mostly for the universe topics. Tonight's Nova wasn't about the universe, but the 'rise' of China's tech sector. The crux of the episode is Huawei, which means, mostly, cellphones. Turns out that the 'tech writer' responsible for the presentation (I didn't note whether he's among the show writers) sounds more like a China propagandist. The first third to half of the episode is about Huawei's 5G 'innovation' and, of course, the banning of the company.

So, here's the dumb shit part: the 'tech writer' narrator makes a big deal out of Huawei's dominance in 5G infrastructure, crowing about how their 5G gear makes 5G so much better than what comes before and that Huawei is so much ahead of the good ole USofA. We all know, don't we, that such is 4G/LTE, yes? Well, soto voce, the narrator tells us that Huawei's 700 Mhz gear is what makes 5G the high-button shoes of tomorrow. And we all know, don't we, that the key to such devices is the litho machines from ASML? (The narration finally does admit that much later. Key parts are made right here in The Land of Steady Habits.) Yikes!!!

It would be nice if such programs spent a few minutes deciphering for the viewer the difference among: low (700 Mhz), mid (C-band Ghz), and mmWave (high Ghz) 5G. 700 Mhz 5G is only distinguishable from LTE by instruments, not cellphone users. Gad. One might wonder how much Xi paid PBS for this dumb shit.

That Pesky Exponent - part the third

Once again, into the maths. Here's a new paper which contends that climate change, aka global warming, is proceeding faster than previously predicted. Why should anyone be surprised? As Dr. McElhone often opined, "the world is not linear." No, it isn't.

The planet is on track to heat up at a much faster rate than scientists have previously predicted, meaning a key global warming threshold could be breached this decade, according to a new study co-authored by James Hansen — the US scientist widely credited with being the first to publicly sound the alarm on the climate crisis in the 1980s.

If you read the whole enchilada, you'll find some who disagree, but assuming that natural processes are linear is almost always a mistake. Just look at the world population graph. Ain't no straight line to be seen. Well, at least when it matters. That's the cruelty on non-linear processes: they look straight-line early-on, but eventually drop their Romulan cloak long after you're convinced that life goes on ever so incrementally, and to quote Ralph Kramden, "To the Moon Alice, to the Moon!" .

The Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts claim all this is woke nonsense and that Mother Earth is merely 6,000 years old and early man frolicked with Dino and cousins. And that God promised never to destroy mankind. Yeah, right.

Balancing Acts

There's been some uptick in reports about 'alternative' energy, mostly wind and solar. Sleepy Joe wants Bongo Bucks for upgraded transmission; places with nearly 100% wind and/or sunshine are places with few to no humans. We build petro pipelines without questioning said wisdom, but not for the other two.

A wind farm proposed for coastal Viginia is running into opposition. Boy Howdy!!

If you keep your ear to the ground, you'll find the opponents to any and all things wind/solar are those with some financial interest in fossil fuels. Who wooda thunk it? Not I said the cat.

Regular reader will note missives about both the tyranny of fixed cost and average cost (the titling changed along the way for reasons lost in the mysts of time). And this is all the reason fossil fuel adherents need. Energy production is very capital heavy, and thus has little margin against drop in demand. The CPAs figured out the spend on plant and equipment based on known and predicted demand for those wee little electrons and petro molecules. Remove even a wee bit of said demand, and the CxO class in fossil fuel energy companies start to feel their sphincters tightening. Never mind that fuel-less generation of those wee little electrons is really a win-win for the rest of us.

Without all that demand assumed from the past, profit drops. And so the salaries and bonuses for the CxO class. That they're managing to turn Mother Earth into a burnt out cinder by the time their grandkiddies reach adulthood (likely, sooner) makes not a whit of difference.

The 'alternative' I find most interesting, but barely a blip on the radar, is tidal generation. The tides move inexorably; well mostly so in human time scales. Turns out the moon has moved away over that billions of years of our twin existence, and as such the tidal force has diminished. The scientists figure the early tidal forces made Mother Earth not such a great place to live.

An Interesting Map

It's been quite a while since I've mentioned the NYT Covid page, but wander on over there anyway. The second section offers four maps; go to "Vaccinations". Somethings are odd about it.

First, as one might expect, Blue States have higher vaccination rates. Intelligent folks, them. Red States, are umm... Red. As you might expect.

Second, there are a couple of, perhaps, unexpected bluish places. Parts of Arizona and New Mexico are. Geezer havens, one might conclude; most imports from Blue States. Far North Minnesota is bluish, as well?

The glaring anomaly? Maverick Cty., TX, the only Blue spot in the state. One might wonder why. The wiki tells all:

In 1972, Maverick County was one of the only counties in Texas where George McGovern received a majority of the vote. The last Republican to carry the county was Herbert Hoover in 1928.

A lonely island of Blue in a sea of idiocy.

Thought For The Day - 21 October 2023

Well, it seems to be true that beer drinkers are just knuckledraggers. Bud continues to find that out.

The company reported a 13.5% decline in third-quarter US revenue per 100 liters, a key measure of beer sales, as an ongoing backlash to Bud Light continues. The brand's customers turned their backs on Bud Light after the company partnered with a transgender influencer — and then muddled its response.

But, there is the bright side: I guess Mike Johnson feels vindicated. Even a smidgen of tolerance is too much. Today, of course, is a Pagan Holiday. Of course it is. They all are.

By The Numbers - part the thirty sixth

crypto:

Cryptocurrency has an energy consumption problem. Bitcoin alone is estimated to consume 127 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year — more than many countries, including Norway.

AI:

These 1.5 million servers, running at full capacity, would consume at least 85.4 terawatt-hours of electricity annually—more than what many small countries use in a year, according to the new assessment.

Back in the beginning of the USofA (call it circa 1800), most Americans were subsistence farmers. Don't take much resources or education to walk behind a mule and breed kids. Mike Johnson wants us to do that.

I Told You So - 28 October 2023

It has happened again!! Earlier this month, was this missive which posited that Vlad, per usual, is the net winner in the Hamas-Israel fiasco. Here's this guest pundit from the NYT.

Russia is emerging as a major beneficiary of the war. With minimal effort, Moscow is reaping the benefits from the regional chaos that threatens Israelis and Palestinians with devastation and desolation.

QED

By The Numbers - part the thirty fifth

If you've taken in the recent reports on economics of the USofA, you might be wondering what the pundit class, and econ class, have to say about it. They have much to say, of course. What none of them that I've seen has said squat about the elephant still sitting in the room: Covid savings. Here's a survey of some pundits. You can guess which scenario fits my brain.

One of the more pessimistic takes out there, from researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, takes this approach. They calculate that excess savings peaked at about $2.1 trillion in August 2021, but by the second quarter of this year less than $190 billion remained, putting them on pace to be depleted in the current quarter.

If that were true, it would be hard to explain the latest growth figures. Well, unless they're just Fake News ginned up by the Fed (no cabal of Left Wing progressives, ya know). Where'd the Bongo Bucks come from? No explanation yet offered that I've seen.

Goldman Sachs, for example, calculates that as of July there were $1.3 trillion in excess savings, an amount equal to about 5% of gross domestic product.

Now that is something to behold. And would go a good way to explaining how the USofA economy keeps chugging along. The worry for Sleepy Joe and his acolytes: will the Good Times Roll until next election? Or will they disappear just before said election, a la Dubya? Only the Shadow knows.

Put Your Money...

Well, the USofA Bidnezzmen are cheering Sleepy Joe's initiative to send Bongo Bucks (about $106 billion of them) to Israel, Ukraine, and such to battle for truth, justice, and the American way. It'll be quite interesting, and informative, to see how many of them are willing to ante up the Bongo Bucks (corporate and personal) needed to reimburse Uncle Sugar's generosity. My guess is: not a penny's worth. There'll be more on the subject anon.

Thought For The Day - 11 October 2023

Return with us now to the thrilling days of yester-lawyer!! Not I, just my brother in law.

The mouthpiece set have the term (Latin, of course): cui bono, which translates as "who benefits?"

The events in Israel/Gaza really benefit only Putin. The Palestinians won't gain anything. Hamas is likely to be severely damaged, if not obliterated, and Bibi and the rest of the Israeli RRW will slink into the desert.

Did Vlad order Hamas to attack? Only the NSA knows for sure, but given the analysis of the failure of the IDF (significant amounts being not for attribution), it wouldn't take too much Intelligence for Hamas to figure out the plan. Mostly, the IDF front lines, so to speak, were (nearly?) all remote control and wireless. Knocking them out only took a kamikaze drone apiece. And that fence? The videos show it's not much more than chicken wire.

In due time, the RRW in our benighted Congress will chant, "Support for Israel, screw the Ukranian Nazis!!" After all, the Rapture Cabal needs Israel to stay around a bit longer. Vlad takes Ukraine, thence Poland, Hungary, and the rest to re-make the USSR. You have my word on it.

Thought For The Day - 2 October 2023

Xi Donjon and his acolytes are bleating to a faretheewell, out of court, of course; there be sanctions from Da Judge for such behavior if they pulled such stunts in front of Da Judge. Chief among these bleats: no harm, no foul; we never missed a payment on these loans. Which sounds like a sound argument, until one considers the whole point of the fraud: get a smaller vig. Now, the fact of the lying is fraud in and of itself, which is how Xi Donjon got hoisted on his petard, so it matters not whether the loans were repaid on schedule. But would they have been as easily paid off if the loans had been based on the true value of the collateral? How much more would the vig be, in that circumstance? Only the Shadow knows. Perhaps James does, and we'll find out as the trial progresses. I'll bet Tim O'brien has an inkling.

... had written that Trump was not a billionaire and that his net worth actually ranged between $150 million and $250 million.

That's in 2005 dollars. Trump sued for $5 billion. Lost, of course. Alas, O'Brien is bound by NDA.

Types is Types

Derek Lowe is my favorite drug blogger, and this latest is worth reading. You'll likely need a bit of The Wiki to get a bit of jargon, but again, it's worth it.

This new paper is going to annoy a lot of people, but I think that's fine. Its author, Arash Sadri, has undertaken an extensive review of the origins of all approved small-molecule drugs (1144 of them). His claim is that only 123 of them were discovered by purely target-based assay methods, and that the rest have to be described as discovered through phenotypic means. He notes that the share of target-based drugs in new approvals has grown over the years, but that there has never been a year when they surpassed the phenotypic ones.

In a nutshell: the Drug Industrial Complex has spent many Billions of dollars in an attempt to find a new and betterer way of finding drugs. Turns out, according to the paper, not so much. And, in fact, it doesn't surprise me; I've always been unconvinced that chemists, et al, have truly reliable methods to document and directly measure what happens at the atomic level.

Potency and selectivity for the stated target are simply not sufficient (by themselves) to make a drug, as anyone with any experience knows, but if we really believed in the "strong form" of the target-based drug discovery paradigm, wouldn't they be (outside of tox failures, of course).

Which is another way of saying, through the side door of course, that the Drug Industrial Complex's bleating that it costs billions and billions of Bongo Bucks to get a 'new' drug to patients; and therefore the Drug Industrial Complex needs yet more billions in profits to carry out its mission. That unit cost of success is driven up by the massive count of candidates that never make it through a 'good' PIII trial.

Sadri concludes that "even if target-based drug discovery recorded the effects of molecules on all proteins and every othersingle component of the human body, as in a hypothetical and impractically ideal polypharmacological target-based scheme, it would still have inferior efficiency compared tophenotypic drug discovery."

One has to constantly wonder whether keeping a compound 'in development' without regard to incremental results just to keep the flow of salaries going is really just confined to one-trick pony nano-caps?

Question For The Day - 27 September 2023

Ah, yes, another Cereal!

Didn't want a 'part the second' Thought or wait a day or two to get the title legit. And this really is a question.

Now dat Da Judge has here come, I find conflicting statements on the meaning of his fraud finding. And, they're significantly different. Da Judge killed the business licence(s?) of TTO, a New York entity, but the meaning with regard to Xi Donjon's business future is conflicting:
- some say without the licence(s), TTO no longer can hold the businesses sitting on ground of New York state
- some say without the licence(s), TTO no longer can hold the businesses anywhere in the Great Wide World, since their existence is grounded (so to speak) in the New York state licence

Rather some difference, say what?

Thought For The Day - 27 September 2023

And you thought the USofA had it bad in The Great Recession?? Try this for size:

Even China's population of 1.4 billion would not be enough to fill all the empty apartments littered across the country, a former official said on Saturday, in a rare public critique of the country's crisis-hit property market

Now, that's one Boy Howdy! What's that phrase about eggs and baskets?

The Tyranny of Average Cost - part the twenty second

While listening to one of the talking heads on MSNBC, I heard one of the Union folk confirm a number that felt right: the labor cost in the BoM of a car is 5%. Now, of course, that could just be aggressive posturing by one side in a fight. But, then I let my fingers do the walking through the Yellow Googles, and found this YouTube piece:

Both sides in the long strike at General Motors by the United Autoworkers Union agree on one thing, the labor deal is only 5% of the product cost to the company.

And, for the record, there are myriad other sources. And, that was the 2019 fiasco.

In the Olde Days of my undergraduate yut, it was a given that the capital/labor ratio was, is, and always will be - 80/20. Manufacturing on the whole, is really feeling the pinch of The Tyranny. Ever more automation seemed to be the way to go; get rid of all those slackers. But The Tyranny begins to bite should demand/output slacken. You can't fire a machine, now can you? Since they ain't be smart enough to increase demand, thus increasing output, and reducing capital cost per vehicle, they're resorting to the same-old same-old: squeeze the help. Problem is, how much squeeze is there? With a reported $21,000,000,000 in profit the last year, they ain't much blood left in that stone.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

It appears that the brain dead Billionaires who own most of professional sport, remain zombified. The latest example:

Robert Saleh's team still claimed a 22-16 overtime victory Monday against the reigning AFC East champs, the Buffalo Bills, despite Aaron Rodgers suffering what looks to be a devastating Achilles injury.

So far, there's only Brady (and he only had one good year with Tampa Bay); 99.99% of the other sports geezers bought for stupid-high prices have blown out some body part early on. I'd speculate that Rodgers' instant failure is the earliest of the early; any other would almost have to be in some pre-season fiasco.

The Mets proved that aging once-superstars don't help much. It looks like the Jets will prove it once again. And so it goes^{™Linda Ellerbe}.

Growth Spurt

Regular Reader will, no doubt, recall the many times these essays have made reference to the conundrum of econ growth: from the beginning of human history econ growth was explicitly tied to population growth. This is kind of ironic, since econ types have always, in their hearts and minds, based the entirety of the field on one axiom - individual wants and needs are infinite. They ain't be enough to satisfy a human.

Now, today global population is, more or less, 8 billions. In 1850, to put a pin in the argument, that number was, more or less, 1.2 billions. For the USofA, those numbers are 330 and 23 millions, more or less. By 1850, white folks had invaded the entirety of what became the lower 48; all of which was usurped from Natives and Mexicans and a few French. Propelled by Westward Expansion and Monroe Doctrine, both offered as reason (excuse?) for exploiting whatever resources might be found West of the original 13, econ growth naturally was deemed synonomous with population growth. After all, most of the West was mostly subsistence farming, and thence animal husbandry, which demanded more labor hands to make stuff. Make babies!

The Industrial Revolution which ensued drove losing subsistence farmers to cities, both as pull from factory work and push from failing farming. Even as urbanisation continued at increasing pace (today, 83% live in metropoli; they ain't be too many shithole county citizens yet they demand that only they should run the USofA), the notion of econ growth from population growth never lost its appeal.

That's starting to change, if not here in the USofA, than elsewhere.

It's days as today that convince me, once again, that the Editors of the NYT have a cynical sense of humor. As I've mentioned before, I take my Times in the Dead Trees Version, which makes it possible to see this humor on display. Today brings yet another example. The front page of the Business section has two related, or conflicting depending on one's side of the fence, reports. One from China and the continuing implosion of its residential real estate sector. The other from Japan on a new-ish thesis for solving the population/resource/growth conundrum. Given the Editors' sense of humor, the reports conclude right next to each other inside.

So, Regular Reader will not be surprised that both reports, taken together, lead to the solution expounded here: there's no reason why econ growth has to be tied to population growth. Since it is acknowleged that each human embodies infinite demand for goods and services (there's no such a ting as Too Much!), then economies can continue to expand GDP and standard of living without adding to an already taxing burden of bipeds with opposable thumbs. But that requires a systematic, which is to say global, restructuring of econ. Good luck with that.

The problem, of course, is that most of econ in most parts of the globe remains mired in the population-means-econ growth meme. How to ditch that self-destructive tendancy?

The China problem is the immediate canary in the coal mine. While the USofA had a residential real estate driven Great Recession, it was caused by invisible oversight of the real estate financial markets, China's problem is the direct result of government intervention. Fixing that will require Xi's elimination, not the Putin style, necessarily. Both China and India will be forced, either by wiser heads or Mr. Market's Invisible Hand, to accept the sorry reality: they've both tried to implement the 19th century econ growth paradigm far too late when population exceeds natural resource endowments: they ain't be any virgin land of milk and honey left. So sorry.

Xi Donjon is famous for saying that the USofA is full up. To some extent he's right. On the resource side, it's more like: it's all gone. The sub-GED knuckledraggers in the shithole counties don't have a better idea. There was a report recently about the state of USofA's aquifers: you don't miss your water til your well runs dry. Turns out, in some places, draining an aquifer is perfectly legal.

Several states including Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado have rules that allow groundwater to be pumped from some regions until it's gone. Some areas have even set official timelines for how quickly they plan to use up groundwater over the next few decades.

Just the sort of sub-GED knuckledraggers that will Make America Great Again.

Greed, Inc.

"The Da Vinci Code" is both a book I've never read, and a movie I've never seen. So looking through my cable menu, there is the film on one of the commercial infested channels. But it's listed as running 3½ hours, which is nuts since the wiki lists its running time as just 2¾. Luckily, there's the record feature and skip-ahead feature. Have to wait until tonight to see it, but it's worth it. And Hollywood can't figure out why they have a Labour Problem?

Brexit - part the third

Well, the wolf has fully shed its clothing. It was some seven years ago, in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, that I had a mea culpa moment. One needs do so every now and again. This is what was predicted:

But many of the poorer places in Britain that receive the most aid from Europe also voted decisively to leave. Promises were made by the leaders of the so-called Leave campaign that exiting the European Union would lead to a bonanza of money no longer being sent to Brussels, the seat of the European government. After the vote, they almost immediately retreated from those promises, leaving the future of aid programs funded by Europe in peril.

So, to no great surprise, The Guardian reports on one part of the aftermath

Farmers in England are being left without crucial nature recovery payments and unsure of what to plant after delays to a post-Brexit scheme.
...
The sustainable farming incentive (SFI) is part of a package of payments that is replacing the EU's common agricultural policy, which paid land managers for the amount of land in their care.

Surprise, surprise. And, of course, as in many/most/all industrialized economies, the shitkickers in the countryside rule the damn gummint. Kind of like our sub-GED Rednecks who are intent on remaking the USofA in their uneducated image.

House of Cards

All this weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth is so 1980's. Back then, about the start of the decade, the notional mortgage rate peaked (in recent memory, of course). While some econ/finance professionals still contend that selling price and interest rate aren't inversely correlated, every where one looks, they are. The reason is simple: neither number matters much; what matters is the monthly nut of the average mortgage seeker. And that number is fixed in the short term by... income. So, if a builder or current mortgage holder wants to move a house, comps don't matter. What matters is median income of the slice of the market being targeted. And that means the bank and the builder are stuck. The monthly nut is out of their control.

The easiest way to generate large capital gains on a dwelling is to buy when interest rate is peaking. If you can, of course. Once the rate regresses to the mean, assessed value will climb just because the nut will always, and I mean always, be slurped up by the bank and the builder. Nothing left on the table. When the bank can't impose its will on Mr. Market, the builder will instantly up the selling price. Absolutely no reason to leave even a crumb of the nut on the table.

100 Percent

There's been controversy for decades about the correlation between damn gummint/academia/NGO basic research and drugs approved for drug companies. one such study concludes that the number is 100%, for a specific timeframe:

Amid debates over costs — and profits — from a coronavirus vaccine, a new study shows that taxpayers have been footing the bill for every new drug approved between 2010 and 2019.

Not everyone goes that far, but there's no debate that drug companies do little, if any, foundational research and development. Most, if not all, employed by drug companies disagree, but the fact remains that most drugs come out of basic biological/chemical research not done by private industry.

Which all brings us to some reporting today on the current meme of the various -glutide drugs. This is a long report by the estimable Gina Kolata (had I known one could make some kind of a living as a science reporter back when I was starting college...).

Obesity affects nearly 42 percent of American adults, and yet, Dr. Engel said, "we have been powerless." Research into potential medical treatments for the condition led to failures. Drug companies lost interest, with many executives thinking — like most doctors and members of the public — that obesity was a moral failing and not a chronic disease.

That's part one. Here's part two:

In the 1970s, obesity treatments were the last thing on Dr. Joel Habener's mind. He was an academic endocrinologist starting his own lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and looking for a challenging, but doable, research project.

If you read on, you'll find that his work led directly to the -glutides.

Here's part three:

In 1990, John Eng, a researcher at the Veterans Affairs medical center in the Bronx, was looking for interesting new hormones in nature that might be useful for medications in people.

His work was the next big step.

And so it went to private drug companies to commercialize the -glutides.

I never kept a link, but I suppose Dear Reader can find one if so motivated, though some wag described semaglutide thus: "This is what starvation looks like." The reason for the bon mot is simple: it is now public knowledge that semaglutide, at least in high enough dose, strips all tissue not just fat. It's called muscle wasting. We can all look like the octogenarian Mick Jagger.

HMMM? - part the second

Well, it's Game, Set, Match and on the record. As predicted, the Lost Ark Smith sought was the DMs and other non-public texts. Yeah, I still bet there's at least one, "Shit!! I lost to Sleepy Joe!!" DM in the Ark.

In the hearing on Feb. 7, 2023, Howell referenced Musk, asking: "Is it because the new CEO wants to cozy up with the former president?"

Birds of a RRW flock together.

Nostradamus - part the first

Well, it's always fun to predict the future, especially when one can point to some recent history, which supports some past history. So, we have this report which tells us what Xi Donjon would do if, Satan forbid, the RRW rabble put him in the White House again. He's on record that he'll eviscerate any one or department which calls him out. That's what dictators do.

The Chinese government, facing an expected seventh consecutive monthly increase in youth unemployment, said Tuesday that it had instead suspended release of the information.

The unemployment rate among 16- to 24-year-olds in urban areas hit 21.3 percent, a record, in June and has risen every month this year. It was widely forecast by economists to have climbed further last month.

A point of reference too often ignored between the RRW and the rest of us: the RRW suppress data, or make up 'alternative facts', when data contradicts the will of the Dear Leader. Said Will simply rules by fiat to make rules that in turn make life easier for Dear Leader and his acolytes. Just as any mob boss, Xi Donjon follows the same course. He lied about Covidiot Infection^™, and of course the Big Lie of 2020. Here's an early example

Throughout the campaign, Trump openly mocked employment data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis as "phony" and "totally fiction." His tone changed when he wanted to take credit for a good jobs report. In March, Sean Spicer said at a press briefing that the President wanted to make clear that the unemployment rate "may have been phony in the past, but it's very real now."

So, China has a serious problem. On the one hand, it's long since abandoned the One Child Policy, which recognized that infinite growth of population couldn't sustain. But it was abandoned. Now, Xi gets to reap the results.

As in every society since the beginning of time, the talented and ambitious move from the shithole countryside to the cities to find work which fits an educated citizen. China is no different.

Xi Jinping, the country's top leader, has called for young people to go to remote areas to find work — to "eat bitterness," a Chinese expression that refers to enduring hardship. [sounds a lot like Mao]

But China's educated young people today want jobs with good working environments in fields such as the internet, education, culture and entertainment. Those jobs, for the most part, are not located in the countryside.

"College students do hope to go to big cities," said Nie Riming, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law, a research organization.

Given that Xi Donjon's base is shithole county Rednecks, what do you think might happen?

As it happens, that first piece mentions Country Gardens, another builder near collapse. Of interest here, is that this situation is the result of CCP's insistence that people be, largely, restricted to 'home' ownership as 'investment'. Isn't working out. But, one need be careful: there's a powerful cabal here in the Red, White, and Blue that's been pushing the same notion for some generations. In case one has forgotten, The Great Recession was driven by that cabal.

HMMM? update

What if (I don't know for sure as I type) Twitter stores DMs? And, what if wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 sent Eastman or Jared or Ivanka or Rudy - "Well, it's a pisser to lose to Sleepy Joe!"

I may not know jackshit, but Jack Smith likely does.

[update - the Ides of August]
Turns out -
- Twitter (by any name) does store DMs, even after the user has deleted them
- Andrew Weissmann, so far alone, since this was posted has made the same observation

And, of course, the indictment count has grown to 4 and the criminal count to 91; so far.

China Doll

Faithful Reader will likely recall the number of times (well... I don't without looking it up) the problem for slave-wage economies has been mentioned; to wit - such economies can only function (mostly, if not completely, for The Elites running the country) if they have open access to high-wage counterparts to dump the goods and services. The USofA and Europe specifically in this day and age. China has been the archetype since Nixon "opened China" in 1972, allegedly for the purpose of providing a new market space for USofA made goods and services. That was all a lie, of course, just as it was for Mexico and the rest of southern America. The purpose was getting access to slave-wage labor; and so it has happened.

So, today brings fresh data that the gag isn't working anymore. Xi's xenophobic and stupid "Zero Covid" 'policy' is being blamed for the burgeoning crisis, but one may also posit that this is the inevitable result of China's ravenous assault on the West.

Exports from China, which has the world's second-largest economy after that of the United States, have now declined for three months in a row while imports have fallen for five consecutive months. The numbers reflect declining foreign demand for Chinese-made products, falling domestic demand, a real estate crisis and geopolitical tensions, including the war in Ukraine.

Note that reference to "real estate crisis". It's been long known that Xi has tried to rein in real estate speculation, but how much different is the Chinese model of 'investment' in one's house than the USofA?

China - 30% of GDP.
USofA - 17.7% of GDP.

But while smaller as a percent of GDP, housing and related activities remain bigly

When looking at gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy, housing plays a significant role. Housing's share of GDP was 17.7% in the first quarter of 2021, the latest data available when writing this, which represents a near 14-year high. The housing market can therefore push up or pull down growth, and, right now, housing is a main driver of the expansion.

Well, what about household wealth?
China - 70%
USofA - 68% (but with some caveats)

As we found with The Great Recession, figures don't lie by liars figure. Xi is learning that lesson.

The Easy 80 Percent

Dr. McElhone was fond of many sayings, including "the easy 80%", meaning, of course, that success is non-linear in effort and/or effect. Happens all the time. The Reader may note the number of essays here on the capitalist's dilemma: often called The Tyranny of Fixed Cost. Pharma typically calls the cost of bringing a drug to market as $X billion. What they don't tell you: most drugs are modifications of existing drugs, most drugs are derived from government and academic and NGO research labs, and that $X billion number is reached by dividing total R&D spend by number of drug approvals in some time span. That last bit is key: pharma lumps all the costs wasted on worthless drugs into the numerator; they demand to be paid for failing.

So, here's another admission.

"This is very much the way that the industry argues that the pricing works," [Stacie Dusetzina] said. "In the rare disease space, for example, there's a strong argument that the price per person has to be really high because it's a smaller group of people using it."

The moral of the story? Pharma has tackled most of the diseases that affect most of the people most of the time, cancer being the obvious exception. We're left with the low sub-populations/diseases but still, there's that pesky $X billion bill for the drug. Like it or don't, but all you non-childbearing Pooh Bears will be paying for all those PPD sufferers. Who said Socialized Medicine was a bad thing? Or, to put it more bluntly: without Socialized Medicine (whether overt or covert), not even the rich could afford such drugs out of pocket.

Billions

You owe it to self to read up this piece. It's the RRW going all bananas.

Klingenstein and the Claremont Institute push a harder-edged rightwing politics, and he appeared in a series of videos released in 2022 where he argued that American conservatives are in a "cold civil war" with "woke communists", and that "education, corporate media, entertainment, big business, big tech... together with the government function as a totalitarian regime".

What's amusing about such blather is that many of his billionaire brethren spend a shitload of their moolah engaging in sportswashing, which practice Saudi has taken to a new level and visibility. At least in the USofA (and, it appears, the UK as well at least), professional sport leagues engage in very explicit, very aggressive 'communism' in the form of draft lotteries, salary caps (for players, only, of course), luxury tax (oohhh!!) and the like all in the quest for 'balance' among the various teams; make sure the playing field is level (well, really; tilted to aid the incompetent) so even a shitty team can win soon. One of the stated excuses for this communist ideology is that 'large market' teams would dominate the sport if left unchecked, destroy the 'small market' teams due solely to having more moolah. That's Communism with a capital K. Given that billionaires (almost?) universally got their moolah just by destroying their small fish brethren.

Sauce, geese, ganders. Well, all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

How many professional teams are owned by billionaires? A lot.

Of course, Steve Cohen is the counterargument to the jibe from the RRW: "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" Batshit J. Moron is, of course, the legacy method. Money and brains don't have a high correlation.

Thought For The Day - 4 August 2023

Ya wanna know some ting? One might wonder why is it that Mad Dictator Don's mouthpieces haven't been blaring that he can't be prosecuted? I suck up a lot of news, but have not seen any reporting of such blaring.

The reasoning, such as it is, goes like this: the Jan. 6 cases flow from conduct that happened while he was President, and for which he was impeached, and from which he skated. So, since the Constitution makes punishment of Presidents through impleachment, which has already done and dusted, why can he be prosecuted criminally for conduct he was acquitted of? I don't buy it, but it seems strange that Lauro would claim First Amendment coverage, when that claim is nonsense. Enquiring minds need to know.

Sweet Home Alabama

It is said that Batshit J. Moron's favorite President is Jackson.

If it were possible to have a bromance across the centuries, Presidents Andrew Jackson and Donald Trump would almost certainly qualify.

Well, here's the money quote:

"John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it."

All these years later, a Son of The Confederacy has gone and done it. Again. The government of Alabama has told the Supremes to go to hell. Whether the 6 RRW Supremes invalidated the Map in an attempt to burnish a truly soiled image, one can't know. Now someone is up agin it. Does Sleepy Joe send the National Guard to enforce a proper Map and protect all the polling places in the now 2 majority Black districts?

Only the Shadow knows.

Lawman

While I started out as a chem major, P. Chem did me in. But not before I'd had a dose of physics. The current issue in the Red West is the confluence of global warming, possibly El Nino, and the many decades old lie about water flows through the Colorado. Many chickens have come home to roost. We well watered and temperate New Englanders will not accept climate refugees from the Red West; especially not Texas.

All of which reminds me of the Laws of Thermodynamics. You can find many articles on the innterTubes, but one professor (of many, I suspect) put it thus:
- the first law says you can't get something for nothing
- the second law says you can't even break even

Some wag I read long ago blamed our current level of political dysfunction on the invention of air conditioning, particularly central and window units for houses. Air conditioning made it possible for hordes of sub-GED rednecks to procreate at break neck speed, thus leading to them asserting that their brand of society (ante-bellum) is superior; and all that.

One can also find on the innterTubes estimates of the added burden of global warming due to those two laws: that air conditioning unit next to your 70° house in 110° Phoenix spits out hot air. Who wooda thunk it?

By The Numbers - part the thirty fourth

So now Farmers Insurance has bailed, Gov. DeMented's fief has to rely on Socialist Insurance (at a nice profit for Gov. DeMented).

With nearly 1.14 million policies as of December 2022, Citizens is the largest home insurer in Florida — with 50% more policies since January 2022.

And, of course, premiums through the roof.

I guess the Social Darwinist streak in Gov. DeMented knows no bounds. And, of course, there's no global warming (this is just woke lies) or climate change.

I guess he'll be blaming God for punishing all those trans people in FL, as well as the horde of sub-GED rednecks who voted for him. A guy can't catch a break.

Here's a list of the 30 such state plans (not all states, hmmm?) as I type.

Most sources list Florida as having the most 'insurer of last resort' policies; some say California. One water, the other fire. How Biblical.

Thought For The Day - 20 July 2023

Dear Jason:

Just so yeah know - small towns make small brains. You want the decisonmakers of the land, public and private, from this bunch? I guess that would Make America White Again, but all progress would be stopped. I guess that's also the point?

I Told You So - 17 July 2023

Some essays ago, I opined that Rush didn't get fluids physics. Well, here's some proof that such is what led to the implosion:

Carbon fiber, though, is much more effective in resisting pulling forces than crushing forces, such as compression. It resists pulling for a while before breaking, but collapses or buckles if pushed on or compressed.

Greednomics

Well, it's finally happened. May be Tony and Mike won't be back after the holiday. If they do come back, I'll bet there'll be another 5 minutes of ads. Swell. Thing is, Disney isn't exactly in the poor house

Disney's television division, which includes ABC, ESPN, FX, the Disney Channel and National Geographic, reported $7bn in revenue in fiscal year 2022, up 3% from a year earlier, with a $2.5bn operating profit, a 13% increase.

Now, depending on how 'operating profit' is defined by Disney (likely not Gross Profit; generally GP net of bloated Overhead), Mickey made a return of, wait for it, 38%. And remember, that's almost surely after paying the Corner Suits their millions. What a country.

Balance

As a callow young undergraduate, I cycled through a few majors before ending up in economics. This was in the late 60s (yes, there were years before 2000), and the notion of affirmative action was just beginning to bubble. As it happened, one of my professors took up the idea during a discussion. He structured the argument thus

We have a 100 yard dash with two runners. They both come to the starting line in standard running duds, but before the race is started, Blue must put on a rucksack with 50 pounds of rucks in it. Green does not.

The race starts, and Green sprints ahead. When Blue reaches the 50 yard mark, he is told to drop the rucksack with its 50 pounds of rucks and continue in the race.

To no one's great surprise, Green wins going away.

After the race, Blue understandably complains. But the organizers dismiss his objection, saying that he finished the race in the same condition as Green. It was a fair race at the end.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the hypocrisy of the organizers. To segue to the RRW Supremes' ruling today, we can argue about how long the racial divide can be compensated for, but 50 odd years out of 400 seems a tad short. After all, white folk (cops and not) still seem to get their jollies from shooting Black folk just for the hell of it. Predominantly Black school districts are still widely underfunded compared to white. And so forth. I guess that's ok, since Jesus says, "The poor you will always have with you."

The aftermath of the decision is easy to predict: separate but equal will be Constitutional once again. Not that separate will ever really be equal. Disparities in public education between Black and white will revert to the 1940s and earlier; hell, antebellum would be so much better. White privilege will once again be in control.

Under Pressure

Just some spitballin today. With all the noise about the Titan fiasco, time to share some old thoughts and new on the general subject.

- Rush is described as being an aeronautical engineer
- Rush was working as such when the 787 was being born
- from the outset, I've been leary of the 787 plastic fuselage
- Rush decided, rather than going with the tried and true heavy metal sphere, he'd go with a cylinder
- Rush concluded, my biggest spitball, that carbon fiber was a good hull material because of the use in 787 fuselage
- maximum pressure differential seen by a 787 fuselage:

So if we assume a constant altitude of 43,000 (the 787's service ceiling), we would get a maximum differential of:
6,000 ft Cabin Altitude = 9.06 psi
8,000 ft Cabin Altitude = 8.11 psi

- pressure differential at 12,500 feet of ocean:

The water pressure at 12,500 feet (3,800 meters) below the surface at the site of the Titanic wreck is roughly 400 atmospheres or 6,000 pounds per square inch.

- note that the pressure vector in the 787 fuselage is outward, i.e. tensile, while in the Titan is inward i.e. compression and/or shear
- just another spitball: carbon fiber is strong in tensile strength, but not so much in compression or shear
- there has been lots of research on carbon fiber, and it's brittle and fatigue is nearly impossible to note
- so, what works in the air ain't close to what's needed in water
- Rush, just another spitball, decided that the carbon fiber cylinder would be strengthened by the titanium endcaps, in that the endcaps would push the cylinder along its major axis and keep the cylinder wall from failing; this is easily seen by standing on a soda can vs. squeezing it
- water pressure doesn't care about axis
- the pressure cylinder was replaced at least once after only a few dives -

You Can''t Make This Stuff Up - part the third

Some times the news reports beggar the imagnination.

Kellye SoRelle, the woman who claimed to be general counsel for the right-wing Oath Keepers militia, will be held in federal custody for mental health treatment after a judge ruled Tuesday that she was incompetent to stand trial.

OTOH, why would anyone be astonished?? These are a bunch of first-order wackos, so it follows that their mouthpieces are as well.

Mary Jane

Regular reader likely recalls some of these missives discussing the wisdom (mostly, lack of it) of public financing of sports arenas, lotteries, and the like. The issue, from a profitability point of view, is: who is the market? If the market is merely inhabitants of the jurisdiction paying for the McGuffin, odds are not good that profitability will ensue, simply because the inhabitants will have substituted buying sports tickets for buying movie tickets, or the like. The only way for such expenditures to be net-net positive is if the market is largely composed of 'aliens'. Well, guess what? The same is true of selling weed.

And so, we find the RRW in the Mountain West wringing their hands. Seems Oregon has legalized Mary Jane, but Idaho refuses, so all those proper Idahoans are running across the border to get them some weed. And the tax man in Salem is just saying, 'thank you very much'. Aliens make for a profitable market.

Stupid White People - part the first

As the saying goes, "ignorance is curable, stupid is forever".

Just met this interview from Barbara Kingsolver. The name is a bit familiar, but I've not read anything by her. Having read the piece, it's just about zero likely I ever will. Here's why

She is also surprisingly angry. "I understand why rural people are so mad they want to blow up the system," she says. "That contempt of urban culture for half the country. I feel like I'm an ambassador between these worlds, trying to explain that if you want to have a conversation you don't start it with the words, 'You idiot.'"

Proving just how stupid you are. It's The System that sends billions of dollars from Uncle Sugar to ameliorate the conditions of poverty, bad health, and lousy education that the bidnezz friendly corrupt politicians you idiots continue to elect. Said politicians have no interest in lifting your populations out of poverty, ill health, and lousy education. Kind of the plantation society that supposedly ended a hundred or so years ago. By the way, the Loving decision wasn't until 1967. I'll bet you folks are still angry at such dictatorial wokeness. May be you all can get this new and improved Supremes to re-instate the law? The decision was, after all, based on the egregious fig leaf of 14th Amendment protection. We all know there is no such a thing. Thomas is out to undo all 14th Amendment decisions which grant more freedom to citizens. I'll bet you can't wait.

But what you clearly doesn't understand is that people from shithole states are in such bad shape just because you continue to elect fascists who are intent on keeping your populations poor, sick, and stupid. So you morons blame city folk for being smarter, and not electing such fascists. I've mentioned this before: there was a time when lower class working poor parents were proud and happy when their children got a proper education and moved up in life. Not anymore. Now you morons see to it that your children remain poor, sick and just as stupid as Ma and Pa while blaming your lot on folks who've done the right thing. This is a lousy way to run a country.

She just doesn't get it.

"We are the last demographic that progressive people still mock with impunity."

Blacks, Jews, Hispanics, wimins, LGBTQ, and similar are born that way; they don't have the option to become an old, white, grievence ridden, sub-GED, rural guy. If it weren't for progressive people's alms to you poor, uneducated, hillbillies, as bad as you feel about the quality of your lives (and who to blame) it'd be a whole lot worse.

And why not? The Red states are welfare queens, living better on the benefits of Uncle Sugar (Blue state taxpayers), and blaming the progressives for your lot. It would be a lot worse if you had to support yourselves on your own. You buy Batshit J. Moron's bullshit about the evils of the Coastal states, of course. Your plight can't possibly be the result of continually electing bidnezz friendly corrupt politicians, now can it? If there had never been FDR, you'd still be without piped water, sewers, roads, and the other amenities of modern life. You're the worst kind of ingrates.

Your people have earned the mockery. Your people aggressively mock education, expertise, and anything else intellectual. I'll bet that you, and your people, still believe that Scopes was properly found guilty. You want to return to the wonderful days of the 19th (may be, 18th) century. Slavery made a better life for Black folks, after all.

For years she had been thinking of this big story she wanted to write "but that nobody wanted to hear", not just about the prescription drugs crisis, but the generations of exploitation and institutional poverty, the plundering of the region for timber, coal and tobacco leading up to it.

Here's a pile of data on education by county (and other) in Virginia. It's not a pretty picture. The innterTubes says Kingsolver lives in Washington County, which is the 11th uneducated (No H.S. Diploma) county in the state; if you cursor over the map of southwestern Virginia, you see that Washington County is the over-achiever in it's corner of the state. It ain't Northern Virginia. And every reason to conclude that rural Virginians are quite happy being stupid. In the interview, she makes a, hopefully, sarcastic remark that someone in a Trump truck will just shoot them. I'd bet on it.

And what of the Compassionate Republican Youngkin?? Not so much.

How did all that happen? Because you imbeciles elected corrupt bidnezz friendly politicians who exploited your hidebound view of life. And you keep doing it. And you keep bitching about your lot in life. And having your abject stupidity made fun of. The situation will only change when you make sure your kids are properly educated, and vote for folks who will see to it. If you don't, nothing will change. You'll still live off the generosity of Uncle Sugar, and cast blame on the Blue state taxpayers.

There's a reason the Blue coastal states are better places to live. Get with the program. You're at least a century late, but you've got to start some time.

Where are you now? The wiki says you're properly educated, and you claim to be a non-Republican, yet you've produced a screed that's aimed at inflaming the persecuted, grievence laden, uneducated, shithole county White people who largely live off the good graces of the Damn Gummint. The Orange Traitor couldn't do better.

Call For Gov. DeMented© - part the third

Well, one might easily bet that this guy will be getting fired, just like the girl who blew the whistle on Gov. DeMented's Covid lies.

In a widely shared tweet, Brian McNoldy, senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science, called rising ocean and air temperatures "totally bonkers."

How dare a mere bureaucrat contradict Gov. DeMented?

About the wisest bit from Dr. McElhone: "the world is not linear." Not only is it not linear, but it's very close to exponential in many of the phenomena we live with. Don't believe that? Go look at the Covid-19 curves, from the beginning. Each segment (variant) starts quite small, and appears to grow along a straight line at first, aka, linearly. But then it takes off like a 777, or worse (Covid-Ο) a rocket ship.

Climate change is no different, just on a bit longer timeframe than a virus. [Aside: the choice of XBB.1.5 for the next single-variant jab is foolish; just look at the way XBB.1.16 is going non-linear! By the fall season, XBB.1.5 will be a distant memory.] To the extent that apologists try to minimize the threat, and keep the RRW faction from assaulting them, projections are dumbed down to, or nearly so, linear growth.

The RRW are quite content to burn the planet to a dead cinder (with catastrophic floods as an appetizer) for their kids and grandkids, just so they can continue their profligacy. A new version of Conservative.

By The Numbers - part the thirty third

So, what's up with the GOP? We know have 10 (as I type, more to come) fools trying, or so they would have us believe, to knock off Batshit J. Moron for the party nomination.

Really? They're all in it for the Cabinet seat or Ambassadorship when wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 gets elected again. They're all in it to create chaos and syphon off votes bit by bit, ensuring that oughtaBePresident Nicolae Ceauşescu has the plurality at the convention, and thus the nomination. Of course, he could well be in The Slammer by then. Or dead of a heart attack; his obsession with bad food makes that ever more likely.

Bank Shot

Well, one the regulars at my local greasy spoon complained the other day that it was so cold that she had to turn on the heat in her house. And this should be a surprise? Smoke ain't clouds, and really does block the sun. So, in Tinkers to Evers to Chance style, climate change leads to higher temperatures, which leads to deeper evaporation, which leads to more flammable undergrowth, which leads to more intense wildfire, which leads to dense smoke, which leads to lower sun power, which leads to colder temperatures. It's not as if it hasn't happened before.

One of the more well known instances was "The Year Without Summer", back in the early 1800's, and also happened here in the shithole states of New England. That event caused significant harm. Again, particulates blocked the sun, in the 1816 case, from vulcanism. The Canadian wildfire situation isn't likely to have as widespread impact. Gov. DeMented will likely boast that such would never happen if he were President.

Then, of course, there's Snowball Earth. Something to look forward to:

Many possible triggering mechanisms could account for the beginning of a snowball Earth, such as the eruption of a supervolcano

1816 demonstrated that such an event is possible.

Skill Killer

According to accounts, Apple's AR/VR headset supports an interactive mode, wherein a 'tracing paper' type of image interposes between the viewer's eyes and the area in which he's looking.

Imagine wearing a headset to assemble furniture while the instructions are digitally projected onto the parts, for instance, or cooking a meal while a recipe is displayed in the corner of your eye.

So, instead of assembling your chest of drawers, you're some sub-GED chucklehead who'll be taken through some simple surgery, like fixing a hernia. One surgeon for the whole world (paid a preformance fee, no residuals for each in the real world hernia repair), and all the real world work done by sub-GED chuckleheads for less than minimum wage. Not that your bill for the hernia repair will be any lower.

Folks worry about AI killing jobs. This is the Ghost of Jobs destroying employment.

It's not so far fetched, either. Well, in the world of teeVee fiction anyway. There's an episode of L&O:CI in which a surgeon suffers from myasthenia gravis and directs her orderly (or some such) to do eye surgerys. Kind of the same idea. Of course, it eventually blows up, being a Murder Show and all. HAL 9000 has arrived.

Dark Star

Those pushing the current version of AI are repeating the justification for replacing people with machines the same way as they always have: 'yes, AI will kill jobs, but will create new ones.' But the Pollyanna Pumpers never address the crux of the issue (Luddites before them, too): does the switch to more capitalist production yield a net increase in employment? There's little evidence that more capital intensive production has worked out that way.

First, of course, is that the jobs destroyed are most often done by the less educated, i.e. tasks that an automaton can accomplish with a bit of programming, be that a Jacquard loom or an HPC LLM AI module. Even the Pollyanna Pumpers admit that the new jobs nearly always require more skills, education, and experience (often all three) than the work destroyed. I'd wager that the Pollyanna Pumpers still live in the world of Henry Ford, who used the assembly ine method (which he didn't invent, of course) to increase productivity in making his automobiles.

According to Domm, the implementation of mass production of an automobile via an assembly line may be credited to Ransom Olds, who used it to build the first mass-produced automobile, the Oldsmobile Curved Dash. Olds patented the assembly line concept, which he put to work in his Olds Motor Vehicle Company factory in 1901.

But what is routinely forgotten, or buried more likely, is that the rise in employment attributed to Ford, et al, was the result of factors not necessarily available today.

- the skill level of the new workers was largely lower than the displaced
- the reduced cost led to reduced price
- the reduced price led to increased demand
- and the increased demand was met with increased output
- at the time of Ford's assembly line, oligopoly in autos didn't exist

So, in other words, there was ample demand to be satisfied by the large increase in output made possible by industrial progress.

What do we have today? Conventional manufacturing has moved to low wage sites on the presumed basis that labor is a large enough bite of the BoM to offset the fixed costs of automation. On the other hand, as capital gains an increasing share of the BoM, capital's financial gain falls as there's a decreasing amount of labor (of ever lower value in shithole countries, run by capital friendly dictators) to replace. The capitalist's dilemma. How much more of the BoM does capital have to suck up until it no longer can find labor to eat? Only The Shadow knows.

But we do know, sort of, what is likely to happen:
- as labor shifts to ever more educated, and ever more changeable, skills (how soon will AI engines replace accountants?)
- what happens to income distribution as capital eats more of the BoM?
- it is more likely than not that, in the near term (relatively), income will become more concentrated
- with income more concentrated, where will increasing demand come from to absorb more productive output?

In summary then, the real problem with automation generally, and now with primitive AI making folks nuts, is how to keep the macro-economy humming along when fewer folks have incomes to buy the widgets that factories spit out?

The scenario isn't original to my little grey cells, because I recall encountering it in a movie or writing a long time ago, but I don't recall the specifics. It goes like this - The Factory of the Future^© will have but one human, who turns on the power at the start of production, and turns it off when production is complete. He then discovers that his job is replaced by a robot.

The moral of the story? While labor transition has been a problem from the start of the Industrial Revolution, kicking the can down the road will, soon enough, no longer work. The near term answer is likely to be industrial dictatorship, where the .1% seek to be ever richer while the poor eat cake. The United States of Florida; I can't wait. Alas, that solution isn't sustainable, either. When the macro-BoM reaches its Tipping Point (I sure do wish I knew that value!), there will no longer be enough moolah in the hands of the masses to absorb the largess from automated production, and the capitalists will no longer be getting sufficient revenue to pay for the automation, since there's essentially no labor to remove from the macro-BoM and way too few consumers to buy the widgets.

The solution to the problem, as one might expect, is a new Theory of Distribution. Not that the Industrial Dictatorship will ponder the problem. They already have an existential threat staring them in the face, but choose to ignore it. All together now - climate change. -

Regression - part the second

At some points in the past, I found graphs of 19th century American economic status. Alas, now that I really, really want to put that one in this post, and leave it at that my search fails. But, I have found a text version of that history. The reason? Because the RRW want to drag all of us, not just the sub-GED morons that cleave to MAGA convinced that Gov. DeMented^© (newly self-minted better Batshit J. Moron) and such want to better their lives, back to the future. Not just crush the woke, but actually make the life of the sub-GED knuckleheads at least as good as highly educated Blues. You know, it just ain't fair that a job that takes a few weeks to learn doesn't pay what a college trained engineer gets; or, heaven forbid, a teacher. It just ain't fair.

So, by count the 19th century USofA endured 25 recessions or depressions. Number of years in trouble (some durations from the wiki): 71 years, more or less. Such a wonderful time. I just can not wait. How about you?

What made the graph more useful, is that it shows the depth of each event. Admittedly, macro data from the 19th century isn't up to present day standards.

Regression - part the first

Is it just me? Or are you, dear reader, as blitzed by this arrogance of the sub-GED cabal demanding that they, and no one else, has the authority over the nature and structure of their kid's education?

There was time, certainly in my lifetime, when the poorly educated, often immigrants working in sweatshops or worse, were proud when their kids got a strong education. But I don't recall all that many stories coming from the poor white community. They've always seemed to assert that they were better, just because.

Now we have the Jolly Greene Giant and DeMented and such taking the superiority of white stupidity and racism as normalcy. The end of civilization.

If I say the earth is flat, Black folks belong on the plantation, and vaccines are fatal; then so will my kids God damn it!!

And, naturally, these folks breed like cockroaches. The United States of Appalachia. Swell.

Surprise, Surprise

For those out there in the Real World who wonder how SVB and the rest came a cropper as Jerry went all Volkerkrieg 2.0, here's the proof from 2 years ago. At least; could be the experts knew even earlier, which has been my sense of the world.

Banks are awash in deposits, and their customers are taking out fewer loans. So they have little choice but to buy up government debt, even if it means skimpy profits.

What could possibly go wrong? It would have helped, clearly, if Jerry knew what the fuck he was doing. The post-Covid inflation was predicted (trillions of Bongo Bucks horded during the Pandemic, just waiting to be spent), USofA bidnezzmen depending on Xi to be rational with 'our' supply chain, and such. The lack of American superiority in capital deployment has been obvious for years. So, the bankers went to Uncle Sugar for sustenance. And the Fed professionals knew it. But Jerry? Not so much. Helps (or hurts depending on one's definitions) that Jerry is just a lawyer, (neither an econ (yay!) or MBA (boo!)) big boo!! I can't prove, but would be willing to bet, that he wouldn't recognize a macro economic model if it bit him in the ass. We deserve better.

The US of Mississippi - part the second

Yet another attempt to re-create the USofA into the Fascist States Like Mississippi. Do you really want to live here? Already there are reports of doctors fleeing Idaho. More will go. Only sub-GED morons will live in Red states, and they'll demand to live like the skilled and educated of the Blue states. Yeah, right.

Now we have an even more Byzantine assault on intelligence: leveraging an animal welfare CA law to motivate wholesale nullification of most any Federal statute.

If Ross is the law, there appear to be few limits on the kind of moral and policy choices states can make in restricting goods sold within their borders, even if they are made elsewhere. Here's how that might look if applied to reproductive rights: If California can ban in-state sales of pork if it originated from a cruelly confined sow, can it ban products made by companies that refuse to pay for employees' birth control or abortions? Can Texas ban the sales of products if produced by companies that pay for employees' birth control or abortions?

Do you really think the current half-dozen RRW in Robes will consider the nuances of the situation?? Or just take the ball and run with it?? The USofA devolves, rather quickly, into the Fascist States Like Mississippi. Governor DeMented is an even more obvious test case. From leader of the first, free world to just another tin pot dictatorship. If you value the lives of your kids and grandkids, don't vote for any RRW; from the lowest level municipal post to El Presidente.

I Told You So - 13 May 2023

What was it Newton (not the fig guy) taught us?

Whenever one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite on the first.

In conventional language, for every action there is an equal reaction.

And so it goes.

Back in Idaho, Miller says five of the nine remaining full-time maternal-fetal medicine physicians in the state will have left by the end of this year.

And that's just those immediately affected by the Back to the Middle Ages cabal. In due time, anyone with an education is going to flee the Red Menace.

The Damn Gummint - part the second

The RRW are always condemning any attempts to perform social activity. It's been about a year since there's been an essay on the Walter Reed "universal" Covid vaccine. Given the reports today about the disassembly of the Covid tracking infrastructure, some updating is appropriate.

First, we have the report that experts (stupid Liberals all) have reached a consensus (more or less) that an Omicron-level variant in the next two years is about 20%. Interestingly, this report doesn't make clear that Covid-δ was a transmission for lethality trade. Should the next variant be a Covid-δ category virus, we're in deep shit.

"40% feels intuitively high. The main reason that 40% number could be off is if in today's world Omicron-like events are now much less likely than in the world of 2020-2021. However, I don't see an obvious reason for this to be the case," Bedford wrote in an email, noting that scientists are tracking highly mutated cryptic lineages in people who have been infected for long periods of time.

Which brings us to the Walter Reed universal Covid vaccine. The most recent report that search brings up is about a year old. This is not truly a universal vaccine, in the sense of targeting a low- to no-mutation portion of Covid, rather it carries multiple spikes. The description reads very like the Novavax approach.

The SpFN vaccine is a protein subunit nanoparticle vaccine platform, meaning it presents a fragment of a virus to the immune system to elicit a protective response. SpFN comprises multiple coronavirus Spike proteins linked to the surface of a multifaceted ferritin nanoparticle.

As my Pappy used to say, "when you let your guard down, that's when the other guy puts your lights out with a haymaker".