Tuesday, January 30, 2024

From Jenna Orkin The Perverse Policies That Fuel Wildfires Strategies intended to safeguard forests and homes have instead increased the likelihood that they’ll burn. During the last Presidential election, Joe Biden won fewer than five hundred counties, but, according to one estimate, they together represented about seventy per cent of America’s economic activity; Donald Trump won five times as many counties, but they represented only about thirty per cent of the nation’s economic activity. Real-estate investors on tight budgets are using a creative strategy to buy homes with zero money down and lock in low interest rates in high-rate environments Beijing is unlikely to rescue Evergrande's offshore creditors because it could make things worse at home Toyota tells drivers of 50,000 cars to get immediate repairs because their airbag inflators could explode Sweden's Winter Drug Stockpiling Risks Backfiring WORLD NEWS Czech government signs a deal with the US to acquire 24 F-35 fighter jets Alabama Plans To Execute A Man With Nitrogen Gas Despite Jury’s Life Verdict . “Jalamneh planned to carry out a terror attack in the immediate future and used the hospital as a hiding place and therefore was neutralized,” the IDF said. It did not provide more detail. Hamas confirmed that Jalamneh was a member of the group. Another militant group, Islamic Jihad, said Mohamed and Basil Ghazawi were members and that Basil had been receiving treatment at the hospital. Musk’s Neuralink implants brain chip in its first human subject

Monday, January 29, 2024

From Jenna Orkin Ukraine’s Democracy in Darkness With elections postponed and no end to the war with Russia in sight, Volodymyr Zelensky and his political allies are becoming like the officials they once promised to root out: entrenched. Donald Trump is preparing for a massive new trade war with China One reason a Youth Cohort is needed, she explained, is that among the 15,000-plus patients currently enrolled in the Health Program, only about four percent (638 enrollees) were younger than 21 on September 11, 2001. Among this small group, however, there are some troubling preliminary indications, including elevated levels of serum dioxin, furan, and perfluoroalkyls. “We can tell you that most of the certifications for those less than 21 include airway diseases, such as asthma, rhinitis, and sinusitis,” she continued. “And, as in our whole population, an increased number of people are referring themselves in for cancer certifications.” In that subset, according to data provided by Dr. Reibman, there have been 18 cases of thyroid cancer, eight cases of breast cancer, six each of Hodgkin’s lymphoma and leukemia, and four each of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and cancers of the head or neck, as well as 14 other cases of various cancers. How Senate Democrats Are Divided on Israel Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley discusses Bernie Sanders’s failed resolution to condition U.S. military aid to Israel, and his visit to the Gaza border. New research challenges hunter-gatherer narrative Protesters hurl soup at the Mona Lisa painting in Paris Juvenile Crimes - Chapter 24 Plowing Though The Muck WESLEY T. MILLER Is an increase in penile length cause for concern? Dr Strangelove at 60: The mystery behind Kubrick's Cold War masterpiece The (Geo)Politics of Sweden’s NATO Ascension

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

From Jenna Orkin Occidental’s CEO Sees Oil Supply Crunch from 2025 China Looks to Take Advantage of the Recent Slide in Oil Prices Vivek Ramaswamy, an 'anti-woke' biotech millionaire and former Harvard rapper running against Trump, has dropped out of the 2024 GOP race Leaked German military documents laid out a doomsday scenario where Russia wins in Ukraine then invades Europe Grid Down Power Up - Documentary “Security lending” by your broker or other intermediary may include lending your stock to short sellers bent on bringing down the value of the stock against your own financial interests. Illegal naked short selling is also facilitated by the impenetrable shield of the DTCC, and so is lending to “shadow banks” for the re-use of collateral. As Caitlin Long, another Wall Street veteran, explains: [T]he shadow banking system’s lifeblood is collateral, and the issue is that market players re-use that same collateral over, and over, and over again, multiple times a day, to create credit. The process is called “rehypothecation.” Multiple parties’ financial statements therefore report that they own the very same asset at the same time. They have IOUs from each other to pay back that asset—hence, a chain of counterparty exposure that’s hard to track. Although improving, there’s still little visibility into how long these “collateral chains” are. 2023 was the hottest year on record by a long shot. Pipe freezes at Portland’s largest sewage pump station Ukraine is getting a new cache of Storm Shadow missiles from its allies I'm a California restaurant operator preparing for the $20-an-hour fast-food wage by trimming hours, eliminating employee vacation, and raising menu prices LiQiang Says China's Econony Grew an "Estimated" 5.2% in 2023

Tuesday, January 09, 2024

From Jenna Orkin Global heating will pass 1.5C threshold this year, top ex-Nasa scientist says In 2024, what’s the way forward? Bernie Sanders In the last few years, scientists have recorded rivers and streams in pristine regions of Alaska that are as acidic as vinegar and have levels of electrical conductivity, an indicator of dissolved metals or minerals, similar to industrial wastewater. Plus, the waterways are turning orange. Scientists agree that climate change is behind the changes, but aren’t yet sure precisely how. The first possible explanation is that thawing permafrost allows bacteria to reduce iron, which is soluble in water. Once in the water, that reduced iron can be oxidized, turning bright orange. The second possibility is that the permafrost thaw lets iron leach out of the bedrock for the first time in thousands of years. The metal gets oxidized in streams and rivers, turning the water orange. Why this matters: Iron in the water suffocates the invertebrates that fish feed on. A disregard of scientific research has bolstered the rampant approval in Brazil of hundreds of pesticides for agriculture in the last few years. Some estimates attribute 11,000 deaths annually to pesticides in developing countries. "The world’s food security cannot do without the health security of consumers and concern for the environment," writes Heslley Machado Silva, a professor and researcher at the University Center of Formiga/MG (UNIFOR/MG) and the State University of Minas Gerais (UEMG) in Brazil. Nikki Haley Seeks an Iowa Surge as the Last G.O.P. Moderate in the Race Letter from Texas Did an Abortion Ban Cost a Young Texas Woman Her Life? Co-defendant in Trump's Georgia election case seeks to disqualify DA, alleging romantic relationship with prosecutor Norway's state oil company has sold its stakes in Azerbaijani oil fields and pipelines to Azerbaijan's SOCAR. The Geopolitics of Gas: Turkmenistan's Westward Push Saudi Arabia Cuts Oil Prices for February

Saturday, January 06, 2024

From Jenna Orkin Houthis sent explosive drone boat towards Red Sea shipping lanes, Pentagon says 2023 marks Japan's hottest year on record, 1.29 C higher than average As Gazans return to destroyed homes, Israeli ministers push resettlement You might think that starfish bodies are five leg-like appendages coming off a central body with the head somewhere in that core. But a new study shows that, genetically speaking, starfish lack genes for a trunk or appendages and are all head. Just head. How this works: Most animals are bilaterally symmetrical, meaning their bodies can be divided into two identical halves. But starfish have radial symmetry, with five identical segments of their body radiating out from a central point. Researchers determined that head-coding genes are active across the starfish’s entire body, with high concentrations in the center of each appendage. (Check out this delightful video about starfish, made by our colleagues at Nature.) Weathered rocks can pull carbon out of the air more inexpensively than machines. What’s Behind Israel’s Crackdown in the West Bank? The Palestinian political analyst Ibrahim Dalalsha on the politics behind the violence and settlement expansion since October 7th. David Graeber vs Yuval Harari: Exploding the myth of how civilisation began What We Lost When Twitter Became X Bill Ackman says he'll review all MIT professors for plagiarism Academic celebrity Neri Oxman plagiarized from Wikipedia, scholars, a textbook, and other sources without any attribution