Regular Fare:
53% of Canadians
on the brink of insolvency: MNP survey
Households may have tried to save more and spend less amid the pandemic,
and - to be fair - some have been very successful at doing just that. However,
there are others who have taken on more debt due to job loss, wage reductions
or desperately trying to keep small businesses afloat.
Don’t Overreact
to Inflation Data this Spring
If we focus on the rebound in prices since then without appreciating that
it was just partially returning prices to their prior level, it may seem like
inflation is rising out of control. …. One could look past the bumps in 2020 by
focusing instead on the annual rate of inflation over shorter horizons, but
these are often quite noisy. Another choice would be to compare prices to their
level two years ago. Doing so would highlight both the need for the Federal
Reserve to make up for low inflation last year and prevent odd base year
effects.
There are reasons to think inflation will rise, most notably recent fiscal
and monetary policy stimulus. There are more reasons to think it will not
likely get out of control over the next year, including a still very large gap
in employment (over 10 million fewer jobs than prior trend leaving extensive
slack in the economy now), a lack of inflation in recent decades anchoring
expectations, and a low responsiveness of prices to periods of strong
employment growth (limiting price pressure once employment has recovered more).
Given the competing narratives, there will be a temptation to overinterpret
each data release. Remembering which basket is the Fed’s target (PCE), avoiding
swings up or down from volatile prices (by looking at core inflation), and
avoiding odd base month effects (by looking over a longer horizon) will all
help cut through the noise of what will certainly be a loudly discussed topic.
U.S. Economy
Getting Better, But…
Although I expect to see fairly impressive rates-of-change
in economic variables over the coming months, levels matter as well.
Under normal circumstances, the economy is relatively close to its steady
state glide path, and the fixed income market is quite reasonably jittery with
respect to the latest growth rates. (I would argue too sensitive, but people
who are paid to stare at lines all day generally want to make the backstory
about those lines as exciting as possible.) The reality is that current
conditions are nowhere near normal. At the beginning of the last cycle, the
only labour market series that offered useful information was the
employment-to-population ratio. As the figure above shows, we are still below
the lows of the last cycle.
Dr. Lacy Hunt: First Quarter 2021 Quarterly Review and Outlook: The Case for Decelerating Inflation
The two main structural impediments to traditional U.S. and global
economic growth are massive debt overhang and deteriorating demographics both
having worsened as a consequence of 2020. These forces are disinflationary, and
they reinforce each other.
Why Some Traders
See A "Shock" Growth Hit Dead Ahead
"instead of strong growth and rising bond yields being the main
threat to equities, might it be the reverse" [Albert] Edwards asks
rhetorically and to prove his skepticism points not to the ISM but the Chicago
Fed National Activity which has shown a remarkable disconnect from some other
soaring high-frequency data indicators, to wit:
these blockbuster ISMs should be treated with
some caution – because if after an economy has been shut down every respondent
thought things were getting even a little better, then the ISMs would register
the 100% maximum. Indeed, other more methodical surveys of economic activity
tell an alternative story. For example, the highly regarded Chicago Fed National
Activity Index collates 85 US economic indicators into an aggregate measure. It
is calibrated so that zero represents trend GDP growth. As you can see below,
economic activity in February has fallen back to trend – only around 2% or
slightly below.
Stabilising the
economic outlook. Remarks by Philip R. Lane,
Member of the Executive Board of the ECB
… Third, the pandemic is also an uncertainty shock. Not only is there
uncertainty about the timing of the exit from the pandemic – due to the
opposing forces of vaccinations, other medical treatments and social
restrictions on the one side, versus the spread of the virus and the emergence
of mutations on the other side; but there is also a lively debate about the
implications of the pandemic for the future of various sectors. In particular,
the future balance between the office and the home as a workplace, as well as
the option to work remotely from any corner of the world, has widespread
implications for many sectors. It is also plausible that the accumulated
experience with online meeting and collaboration technologies will reshape how
international activities are organised, including a decline in the scale of
business travel.
While a substantial proportion of this uncertainty is inescapable, there
is a clear risk of self-fulfilling adverse dynamics taking hold through which
uncertain economic prospects induce households, firms and governments to hold
back on expenditure plans, leading to a decline in overall demand that
validates the loss in confidence about the future. This risk is compounded by
the danger of real financial amplification channels by which lenders (banks or
bond investors) become reluctant to lend and borrowers (households, firms or
governments) become reluctant to take on debt because they fear that lower
growth prospects would be amplified by declining creditworthiness and a tighter
credit supply.
China Credit
Impulse Set To Collapse As Beijing Orders Banks To Curtail Loan Growth For Rest
Of 2021
America’s
Population Growth Looks to Be the Slowest Since 1918
Mall vacancy
rate hits another record high
There’s a Lot of
Unused Oil Stored Up Around the World
OPEC+ is right to be cautious about increasing oil production.
Small Business
Closures Soar Back Near Pandemic Peak As "Financial Hopelessness"
Builds
Mortgage Credit
Availability Index
Bubble Fare:
Hussman: Always a Reckoning
Jesse Felder: Macro Risks To
The Stock Market Are Mounting
Financial
fiction part two: the new ones (SPACs, NFTs, cryptocurrencies)
Fungible
Chimaera Anyone? It’s Really Cheap
Wall Street
Finds New Way To Finance Unprofitable Tech Firms
Investors have
put more money into stocks in the last 5 months than the previous 12 years
combined
Spreads on U.S. junk bonds have fallen to the lowest since 2007: Bloomberg
Barclays US Corporate High Yield Average OAS
MMT[?] Fare:
Biden Just Can't
Hide His Neoliberalism
I know it's considered a faux pas in polite media and Democratic circles
to criticize Joe Biden, but a close reading of his latest speech, touting his
proposed infrastructure bill, does contain more than a few troubling
"tells." The first, as outlined by modern monetary theorist Stephanie Kelton in a New
York Times op-ed, is Biden's obsession with
"pay-fors" and his continued harping on debts and deficits. Rather
than just borrow money at zero or subzero interest rates, rather than minting a
trillion-dollar coin or two as allowed by the Constitution, Biden would tax
incomes of above $400,000, raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent and, in a
nod to economist Piketty, impose a global wealth tax to discourage the use of
offshore tax shelters.
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
Despite Pandemic
Shutdowns, CO2 Now at Levels Unseen in 3.6 Million Years
Revealed: The
Climate-Conflicted Directors Leading the World’s Top Banks
The true cost of
fossil fuel subsidies
Fossil fuel producers receive $62 billion in "indirect
subsidies" per year, a new study finds. But the cost of providing those
subsidies is far, far greater.
Record rise in
global methane emissions in 2020
Abrupt ice age
climate changes behaved like cascading dominoes
Japan Says
Dumping Fukushima Radioactive Water in Pacific Ocean is Now “Unavoidable”
Decision Rules
for Long-term Value Creation
Abstract: Future-oriented companies manage for long-term value creation
(LTVC) rather than merely for shareholder value or stakeholder value. Managing
for LTVC involves managing and balancing several types of value (financial,
social and environmental) at the same time, often involving trade-offs.
Companies need to have decision rules that help them make investment decisions
accordingly. This article derives such decision rules by starting from what is
needed for LTVC, and by showing to what extent it differs from shareholder
value maximisation only. It also outlines transition pathways for companies
that are currently value destructive on one of the dimensions. Finally, it
introduces a few simple models that allow for the prioritisation of specific
types of value, in line with a company’s purpose
COVID Fare:
No one is truly safe from COVID-19 until everyone is safe. We are in a
race against time to get global transmission rates low enough to prevent the
emergence and spread of new variants. The danger is that variants will arise
that can overcome the immunity conferred by vaccinations or prior infection.
Escaping
Catch-22 — Overcoming Covid Vaccine Hesitancy
A third of COVID
survivors suffer neurological or mental disorders: study
Other Fare:
Robert Mundell:
nothing optimal
Mulligan?
Golfers consult rule book after ball lands on alligator’s back at SC course
April 11 was National Poutine Day
Quotes of the Week:
Deutsche Bank credit strategist, Stuart Sparks: History teaches us that although investments in productive capacity can in principle raise potential growth and r* in such a way that the debt incurred to finance fiscal stimulus is paid down over time (r-g<0), it turns out that there is little evidence that it has ever been achieved in the past. .. a rising federal debt as a percentage of GDP has historically been associated with declines in estimates of r* – the need to save to service debt depresses potential growth. The broad point is that aggressive spending is necessary, but not sufficient. Spending must be designed to raise productive capacity, potential growth, and r*. Absent true investment, public spending can lower r*, passively tightening for a fixed monetary stance.”
Photos of the Week:
The New York Times reports today that an abstract art work being displayed at a mall in Seoul was “vandalized” by two passerby. As part of the art work, brushes and open cans of paint were displayed in front of it. The couple assumed it was a participatory display, and joined in.
Hikers Evacuated As Iceland Volcano Unleashes New Lava Stream
Brazil building
new giant Christ statue, taller than Rio's
EXTRA [controversial
or non-market-related] FARE:
Regular Fare:
Stephanie Kelton
Trying To “Out-Right-Wing” Joe Biden ‼
Joe Biden has been a neoliberal ghoul all his life and has helped
oligarchs from a position of power. In recent times—perhaps due to pressure and
threat from populists—he has adopted policies such as the recent large
stimulus.
Biden is also talking of raising taxes on corporations and Janet Yellen,
the US Treasury Secretary has proposed a minimum tax on corporations across
countries, to prevent a race to the bottom policies.
Of course none of this means that they’re ditching neoliberalism. It is
just a change to maintain the status quo. Elite preservation, basically.
ESG Fare:
The purpose of taking readers into this dark place is to highlight how
completely misguided our values have become. Earth, and the life inhabiting a
thin shell surrounding it, is of incalculable value. Yet we make almost all of
our decisions, collectively, based on a dollar amount that does not come close
to capturing the value of nature. It is
juvenile folly.
…
Currently, our economy is structured backwards: there’s no money
(financial profit/gain) in restoring resources and wild spaces: just in hacking
them down and exploiting the great inheritance.
Perhaps more troublesome is the inherent human desire to acquire
personal stuff, so that the only reason to make money in the first place is to
be able to afford personal gain at the expense of some unseen parcel of
nature. Maybe prioritizing nature over
ourselves will always be hard, and against our core programming.
A newsletter about food systems, climate change and everything connected
to them
Japan's Cherry
Blossoms Hit Earliest Peak Bloom in 1,200 Years
First-Ever
Observations From Under Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Are Bad News
COVID Fare:
“I’m talking about a proper lockdown, where you do what Ontario has done,”
Uhm…
Here's why COVID cases are surging in Toronto despite early lockdown
Tverberg: We can’t expect COVID-19 to go away; we should plan accordingly
More contagious
COVID variant - B.1.1.7. - now dominant strain in U.S., CDC says
A highly infectious variant
of COVID-19 is now the dominant strain of the virus in the U.S., according to
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The variant, B.1.1.7, began
surging in the United Kingdom in December has since spread through Europe and
to the United States, the federal agency said Wednesday. “Based on our most
recent estimates from CDC surveillance, the B.1.1.7 variant is now the most
common lineage circulating in the United States,” agency Director Dr. Rochelle
Walensky said at the White House briefing.
Studies found the virus is 60
times more contagious than the current strain and 67 percent more deadly,
according to the New York Times
Conclusions – All systematic
evaluations of seroprevalence data converge that SARS CoV 2 infection is widely
spread globally. Acknowledging residual uncertainties, the available evidence
suggests average global IFR of ~0.15% and ~1.5-2.0 billion infections by
February 2021 with substantial differences in IFR and in infection spread
across continents, countries, and locations.
Dr. Cole begins by showing
statistics that prove Idaho is no longer in a “pandemic,” but an “endemic.” He
states that the highest risk factors for contracting COVID are advanced age,
obesity, and low Vitamin D levels. He also explains that coronaviruses have
historically always followed a 6-9 month life cycle. He gives previous examples
such as SARS-1, MERS, etc. One very interesting statistic that he pointed out
is that in the U.S. the average annual age of death is 78.6 years old, and the
average age of death during COVID has also been 78.6 years old. Dr. Cole is
very adamant that proper levels of Vitamin D are essential to fight
coronaviruses. He states: There is no such thing as “flu and cold season,” only
low Vitamin D season.
Dr. Cole then goes on to
explain that by law, the government cannot use experimental vaccines on the
population if there are already effective treatments. So all of the current
experimental COVID “vaccines,” which Dr. Cole himself admits do NOT meet the
legal definition of a “vaccine” to begin with, are all illegal because there
are therapies, such as Vitamin D, that are effective in treating COVID
patients, as well as older already FDA-approved drugs like Ivermectin.
Facemasks in the
COVID-19 era: A health hypothesis
Many countries across the
globe utilized medical and non-medical facemasks as non-pharmaceutical
intervention for reducing the transmission and infectivity of coronavirus
disease-2019 (COVID-19). Although, scientific evidence supporting facemasks’
efficacy is lacking, adverse physiological, psychological and health effects
are established. Is has been hypothesized that facemasks have compromised
safety and efficacy profile and should be avoided from use. The current article
comprehensively summarizes scientific evidences with respect to wearing
facemasks in the COVID-19 era, providing proper information for public health
and decisions making.
Data substantiating wide asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 remains elusive
Fear of symptom-free
transmission was a major driver of the highly restrictive mitigation measures
imposed over the past year.
Family member
confirms DMX given Covid vaccine days before lethal heart attack
A source has reported a family member of Earl Simmons, better known as the rapper DMX, said the heart attack that led to his death was not from a drug overdose but from a Covid injection.
SP-I-MO stands for Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling. It reports into the SAGE/Secretary of State Number Ten Group. Almost nobody in the UK has ever heard of it, and its pronouncements online are stored in an unexpected place under the “assets publishing service”. What follows aren’t leaks; they’re representative extracts from the latest SPIMO report, issued on March 31st
‘immunisation failures account for more serious illness than unvaccinated individuals’
It appears that the
vaccinated are at high risk of dying.
COVID Conspiracy Fare:
Stimulus And Covid-19 Attitudes Reflect Poor Math Skills
For all the noise made over Covid-19, many people might be surprised to find out that it was not the leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020. It came in third, behind heart disease and cancer, according to a new CDC study. COVID-19 was listed as the underlying cause of 345,323 deaths during 2020 and was the third leading underlying cause of death, after heart disease (690,882 deaths) and cancer (598,932) That is reality in a nutshell.
This data kinda puts into focus how warped we have become by the fear-mongering fostered upon us. it is difficult to argue with this data. It was lifted from the Provisional Mortality Data — United States, 2020 | MMWR report.
...
Total deaths in America in 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) came in at 2,913,144. Considering that there were 2,845,793 deaths in 2019 and 2,831,836 deaths in 2018, this is not surprising. If you ballpark America's population at 333 million, 1% of that number is 3.3 million people
...
While many so-called experts
say follow the science, I say, follow the math. Using math as a tool we can
shed some logic upon the rather chaotic situation we find ourselves in. It
appears much of the world has been blinded by those seeking to implement a
"Great Reset" of the global economy, our social structure, and our
culture. Entering into this is the squelching of free speech and censorship.
All this has gone full tilt and we are under a full-court press to halt any
comeback on the part of rational human beings to exert real influence on our
future.
Michael
Yeadon Interview - Former Pfizer VP Speaks Out On Dangers Of mRNA Vaccines
& COVID Illusion
(and for his explanation of difference between mRNA "vaccines" and traditional vaccines, see the 21min mark)
COVID Tweet and Quote of the Week:
Politicians told us
repeatedly that lockdowns were causing increased numbers of deaths by suicide. We kept asking to see the data. Now, we have
it, and apparently, this was not true. In 2020, deaths by suicide were lower
than in the previous three years. (see data table at: The Leading
Causes of Death in the US for 2020)
Ian Welsh: “I suspect this means is that American
bosses are so shitty that a pandemic combined with massive economic problems is
preferable to working with them in close quarters.”
Orwellian Fare:
Canada to censor
political taunts. Implement internet kill switch.
Geo-Political Fare:
DIANA JOHNSTONE: The Imperialism
of Foolery
Pro-Western Syrian exiles
have issued a diatribe against the most informative critics of U.S. war policy
at a time when Washington’s aggressiveness is reaching new levels of intensity.
Escobar: Ukraine redux:
war, Russophobia and Pipelineistan
The deep state/NATO combo's
using Kiev to start a war to bury Nord Stream 2 and German-Russian relations
Gilbert Doctorow: Cold War Fever
in Brussels
The prevailing assumption
among the tiny minority of public critics of US foreign policy is that the
United States calls all the shots, that the positions on any given
international issue taken by our European allies, for example, are dictated
from Washington or, if developed on their own, serve the single purpose of
gaining favor with Washington and bolstering the “special relationship” held by
London or Paris or Berlin.
If only things were that
simple. In this essay I argue why they
are not. Nor have they been that simple for many years now. As I look over my
writings going back a decade that I published in a succession of
“non-conformist” books, I was calling out the home grown nature of
Neoconservatism in Europe which arose in parallel with but independent from the
movement in States that gave us the horrors of the Iraqi invasion and the
viciously anti-Russian policies culminating in the Maidan in Ukraine, with the
change of geopolitical course in Kiev as wished by the US, namely inimical to
Russia.
Intellectual leaders like
Sweden’s Carl Bildt and Belgium’s Guy Verhofstadt were the equals of their
buddy Robert Kagan in Washington as creators of Neocon ideology and they were
its implementers from positions of power within Europe.
Today I see a similar
parallelism in the roll-out of Cold War policies in the USA under Biden and in
Europe under von der Leyen.
Why is this relevant to
day-to-day developments? Because the
latest appeals by my fellow thinkers in the USA addressed to Joe Biden and
urging him to step back and reflect on the possible consequences of aiding and abetting
a military strike by Kiev against the Donbas at present will not achieve much
if Brussels continues on its merry way as arsonist. You may have no doubts that today Brussels is
lighting delusional fires of revenge in Zelensky and his entourage, encouraging
what would be a suicidal strike against Russia’s vital national interests in
the belief that NATO will come to his rescue. It won’t.
Now why would von der Leyen
espouse Cold War ideology and present Russia as Europe’s enemy number one?..
Ukraine, Taiwan…
Two-Prong U.S. Aggression Toward Russia, China
There is a close parallel in
the way the Biden administration is riling up dangerous tensions with Russia
and China. The proxy in both cases are the Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively
Washington is citing claims
that Russia and China are threatening its allies which, in turn, provides a
pretext for the United States to step up its own provocative actions. It’s a
vicious cycle that is at grave risk of spinning out of control into an all-out
war between nuclear powers.
In just three months after
his inauguration as the 46th U.S. president, Joe Biden’s administration has
embarked on a reckless course of belligerence toward Russia and China.
However, this systematic
hostility from the United States has been underway from several past
administrations, including the previous Trump White House and before that the
Obama administrations in which Biden served as vice president. Now as
president, Biden is taking up a continuous policy of aggression with even more
gusto. This invariable direction of belligerence tends to prove the real nature
of U.S. politics. Presidents come and go, elections take place periodically,
but the power and policymaking resides with deep state planners whose loyalty
is not to any particular party but rather to the furtherance of imperial
objectives regarding America’s presumed global position and privileges.
The press is building an
image of a "radical" progressive hero, while reality looks like the
same corporate Democrat
…
Obama in other words won a contentious
primary against Hillary Clinton by snowing reporters like me into hyping him as
the clean hands guy who’d push aside Clintonian transactional politics. Then he
turned around a year later and passed his signature program with help from the
worst industry actors, paying for it by killing the progressive parts of the
plan. This history — important history — is now being rewritten by people like
Klein as an “ideological compromise” inspired by the Obama/Biden White House’s
misguided desire to govern with Republican votes.
….
This has so much been the
story of Biden’s presidency, which is certainly less chaotic than Trump’s and
does have some clearly different ambitions, but in many ways represents
continuity with both his predecessor and his predecessor’s predecessor.
Daily Mail
Exposes Hunter Biden Bombshells After 'Tell-All' Book Holds Back
Big Thoughts:
More from Welsh at: American Suicide
Numbers Dropped Last Year
Capitalism, for most of its history, has required not paying either cost
of its labor practices (the human damage it does) or the cost of the resources
it is permanently destroying (most recently, we are on track to kill about 50%
of all known living species, which have both monetary and non-monetary value.)
A system which throws off that much damage is obviously deranged and its
“gains” are obviously unsustainable. Humanity has a limited set of resources it
has to live off of (including an ecosphere) and no, “technology” cannot replace
them all. We don’t even understand the interactions of a properly functioning
ecology enough to create a simple one in a biosphere: we can’t fix, or heal,
what we break, any more than companies who cause employees to suicide can bring
them back.
None of this is particularly necessary. Our problem is that we are
STUPID. Capitalism has obvious problems that we refuse to acknowledge or deal
with. We need a new way of managing our economy, one which also manages ecology
and resources like, oh, the Amazon.
This is not going to be possible if we base economic decision making on
supply and demand as we currently understand them. Nor is it going to be
possible with the version of democracy or one party states we have been running
our society with. (Nor is green fascism a solution, since fascism bottlenecks
decision making.)
Money, based on debt, which we have run huge chunks of our society around
for almost all of our history will also have to be completely re-thought
because money has a strong tendency to reward people who abuse at scale, and
always has.
None of this is impossible, though we’ve left it too late, so we’re going
to eat the bitter fruits of our actions. I suggest, among other things, working
to be sure that those with the most power, rather than using that power (money
is power) to avoid the consequences of their action, are forced to gorge on
what they have done.
Letting bygones be bygones is a very large mistake when the bygone is
multi-species genocide.
Lewis H. Lapham: Globalization
Following the money across the globe and back in time.
China and Russia
Launch a ‘Global Resistance Economy’
The scope of the Iran pact by far transcends trade and investment, as one
commentator in the Chinese state media made plain: “As it stands, this deal
(the Iran pact) will totally upend the prevailing geopolitical landscape in the
West Asian region that has for so long been subject to U.S. hegemony”.
So here is the essence to ‘a clever combatant moving to impose his will’
– there is no need for China or Russia or Iran to go to war to do this; they
just implement ‘it’. They can do ‘it’ – quite simply. They don’t need a
revolution to do it, because they have no vested interest in fighting America.
What is ‘it’? It is not just a trade and investment pact with Tehran;
neither is it simply allies helping each other. The ‘resistance’ lies precisely
with the way they’re trying to help each other. It is a mode of economic
development. It represents the notion that any rent-yielding resource –
banking, land, natural resources and natural infrastructure monopolies – should
be in the public domain to provide basic needs to everybody – freely.
The alternative way simply is to privatise these ‘public goods’ (as in
the West), where they are provided at a financialized maximum cost – including
interest rates, dividends, management fees, and corporate manipulations for
financial gain.
‘It’ is then a truly different economic approach.
…
At one level therefore, this ‘it’ is a strategic challenge to the western
eco-system. In one corner, the debt-driven, hyper-financialised, yet stagnant
economies of Europe and the EU – in which strategic direction and economic
‘winners and losers’ are set by the Big Oligarchs, and in which the 60%
struggle, and 0.1% thrive. And, in the far corner, a very mixed economy in
which the Party sets a strategic course for state enterprises, whilst others
are encouraged to innovate, and to be entrepreneurial in the mould of a state-directed
economy (albeit, with Taoist and Confucian characteristics).
Socialism versus capitalism? No, it is a long time since the U.S. was a
capitalist economy; it’s hardly even a market economy today. It has become,
more and more, a rentier economy since leaving the gold standard (in 1971).
….
The point is that – at the economic plane – the U.S., hyper-financialised
sphere is fast shrinking, as China, Russia and much of the ‘World Island’ turn
to trading in their own currencies (and do not buy U.S. Treasuries). In a ‘war’
of economic systems, America therefore starts on the back foot.
Must Read Watch:
Chris Hedges tells Extinction Rebellion that the configurations of global power mean that only mass civil disobedience, with the aim of overthrowing the ruling elites, can save us from extinction.
Quotes of the Week:
Johnstone: I hate the mainstream
scoff. Do you know the mainstream scoff? It’s the scoff people who’ve been indoctrinated
into the mainstream worldview make when you say something which falls outside
that worldview. Something like “Nothing of substance has changed since the
Trump administration.” Or “The west sided with al Qaeda in Syria.” Or “Check
out this link to an article from an alternative media outlet.” It’s any kind of swift, vapid dismissal someone makes when you offer
a perspective that isn’t a part of the mainstream perspective, solely on the
basis that it is not part of the mainstream perspective. A laugh. A “Pfft!”. A
“LOL”. A laugh-cry emoji. Whatever form it takes, the dismissal can be summed
up as “That’s a fringe position, so I’m dismissing it.” Which is really just
saying “That’s not how they told me it works on CNN, therefore it’s not real.”.
Kunstler: If you want to understand
the complete failure of moral authority in America, seek no further than the
gothic doings of the Biden family … The moral darkness of the family is beyond
Shakespearean. It ranges from fantastically sordid personal indecencies like
Hunter posting drug-fueled selfie sex videos with whores on the PornHub
website, to intimations of lewd consort with his teenage niece, to the admitted
fact of him bird-dogging his dead brother’s wife, Hallie… and into financial
misdeeds that suggest Hunter sold out his country by peddling Joe Biden’s favor
to agents of the Chinese communist party and other foreign nations. This body
of unresolved allegations haunts the House of Biden like some stinking dead
animal decaying under the Oval Office floorboards that everyone pretends not to
notice.
Richard Medhurst: It's astounding to me that
a journalist who exposes war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan is sitting in jail
while the monsters who started these wars like Tony Blair and George Bush are
walking free. This is the "justice system" of the West. This is how
much the press is valued.
The word of the quarter will be “trillion”. Since so many big numbers
sound alike in English it’s easy to forget the relative scale of each. Here’s
one way to think about that:
·
A million seconds = 12 days
·
A billion seconds = 32 years
·
A trillion seconds = 31,710 years
Other Fare:
Breaking
Fermilab Results Prove Something Strange Is Happening to Reality.
Particle physics is constantly evolving. But describing the profoundly
tiny world of muons and electrons with statistically-vetted probabilities also
makes our grasp of it a slow, methodical process. We've reached a level of the
universe where empirical study is just as difficult as working the math — with
the former requiring expensive machinery like CERN and Fermilab and the latter
pushing into the realm of supercomputers. And the coming years will see us push
even further beyond the ordinary world of human senses than most can imagine.
The Economic
Consequences of Increasing Sleep among the Urban Poor
Contrary to expert predictions and a large body of sleep research,
increased nighttime sleep had no detectable effects on cognition, productivity,
decision-making, or well-being… In contrast, short afternoon naps improved an
overall index of outcomes…
Humans were apex
predators for two million years
Only the extinction of larger animals (megafauna) in various parts of the
world, and the decline of animal food sources toward the end of the stone age,
led humans to gradually increase the vegetable element in their nutrition,
until finally they had no choice but to domesticate both plants and animals—and
became farmers.
Tweets of the Week:
Glenn Greenwald: This is exactly my
experience. I've been a critic of corporate media outlets for 15 years but
always assumed one could get basic facts (even if flawed) by reading them. I
now no longer think this. Their journalistic and business model makes me
distrust everything I read there.
Rather jaw-dropping report into the secret lockdown-busting dinner
clubs currently operating for the Paris elite. Lobster, champagne and
foie gras on the menu for up to €490. No masks. "Once you pass through the
door there's no more Covid," explains the maître d'
No jab; no evac. It’s science.
Pics of the Week:
Countless Starlings Flock Together in a Miraculous Bird-Shaped Murmuration Over Lough Ennell
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