488 thoughts on “SCOTUS case announced while I was doing my nails…”

  1. Affirmative action is over! Long live affirmative action by all other means possible! At least it is harder now, and they might have to let some poor Asian and White people in on the hand outs. Sacrilege in an anti-racist society. I’m guessing a lot of lawyers are thinking of a new sector of practice.
    .
    “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

  2. Copy / Pasted from old thread:
    .
    My expectation is the response will be to eliminate most meritocratic and measurable forms of admission policies. Dropping test scores will be the most extreme of these polices, leading to grade inflation on steroids.
    .
    My view is elite schools have been in practice threading a needle, allowing their preferred class in through a series of secret handshakes (holistic admissions, elite K-12 schools, and real merit from better schools), then giving priority of public school Asians and Whites to diversity candidates with lower scores.
    .
    They will now likely retrench to super opaque admissions in order to achieve their main goals. They * know * that if there are measurable and publicly available ways to gain admission, the very same highly driven parents and students will win that race, it doesn’t really matter what the criteria are. If it is clown ability, then we will see highly innovative and credentialed Asian clowns.
    .
    Which is all to say that academic institutions will put themselves in the position to deprioritizing measurable academic ability as an entrance to academic institutions. Most people see this already, but they at some point will have to admit to themselves what they are doing. This type of virtue signaling and clumsy social engineering is part of why there is a backlash against academia currently. They could have had class driven affirmative action all along.

  3. If anyone has a link to the opinion and ruling please post. (I’m looking. But news articles tend not to post that. )

  5. Twenty years have passed since Grutter, with no end to race-based college admissions in sight. But the Court has permitted race-based college admissions only within the confines of narrow re-strictions: such admissions programs must comply with strict scrutiny,
    may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and must—at some point—end. Respondents’ admissions systems fail each of these crite-ria and must therefore be invalidated under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 21–34.

    (1) Respondents fail to operate their race-based admissions pro-grams in a manner that is “sufficiently measurable to permit judicial [review]” under the rubric of strict scrutiny. Fisher v. University of Tex. at Austin, 579 U. S. 365, 381. First, the interests that respondents view as compelling cannot be subjected to meaningful judicial review. Those interests include training future leaders, acquiring new knowledge based on diverse outlooks, promoting a robust marketplace of ideas, and preparing engaged and productive citizens. While these are commendable goals, they are not sufficiently coherent for purposes of strict scrutiny. It is unclear how courts are supposed to measure any of these goals, or if they could, to know when they have been reached so that racial preferences can end. The elusiveness of respond-ents’ asserted goals is further illustrated by comparing them to recog-nized compelling interests. For example, courts can discern whether the temporary racial segregation of inmates will prevent harm to those in the prison, see Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 512–513, but the question whether a particular mix of minority students produces “engaged and productive citizens” or effectively “train[s] future lead-ers” is standardless.

    Second, respondents’ admissions programs fail to articulate a mean-ingful connection between the means they employ and the goals they pursue. To achieve the educational benefits of diversity, respondents measure the racial composition of their classes using racial categories that are plainly overbroad (expressing, for example, no concern whether South Asian or East Asian students are adequately repre-sented as “Asian”); arbitrary or undefined (the use of the category “His-panic”); or underinclusive (no category at all for Middle Eastern stu-dents). The unclear connection between the goals that respondents seek and the means they employ preclude courts from meaningfully scrutinizing respondents’ admissions programs.
    .
    The universities’ main response to these criticisms is “trust us.” […]

    (2) Respondents’ race-based admissions systems also fail to com-ply with the Equal Protection Clause’s twin commands that race may never be used as a “negative” and that it may not operate as a stereo- type. The First Circuit found that Harvard’s consideration of race has resulted in fewer admissions of Asian-American students. Respond-ents’ assertion that race is never a negative factor in their admissions programs cannot withstand scrutiny. College admissions are zero-sum, and a benefit provided to some applicants but not to others nec-essarily advantages the former at the expense of the latter.

    Respondents admissions programs are infirm for a second reason as well: They require stereotyping—the very thing Grutter foreswore.
    […]

    (3) Respondents’ admissions programs also lack a “logical end point” as Grutter required. 539 U. S., at 342. Respondents suggest that the end of race-based admissions programs will occur once mean-ingful representation and diversity are achieved on college campuses. Such measures of success amount to little more than comparing the racial breakdown of the incoming class and comparing it to some other metric, such as the racial makeup of the previous incoming class or the population in general, to see whether some proportional goal has been reached. The problem with this approach is well established: “[O]utright racial balancing” is “patently unconstitutional.” Fisher,

  6. (f) Because Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs lack suffi-ciently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereo-typing, and lack meaningful end points, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. At the same time, nothing prohibits universities from consid-ering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the uni-versity. Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice. Pp. 39–40

  7. Roberts:
    “(1) Respondents fail to operate their race-based admissions programs in a manner that is sufficiently measurable to permit judicial review under the rubric of strict scrutiny .”
    “Second , respondents admissions programs fail to articulate a meaningful connection between the means they employ and the goals they pursue.”
    “… for example, no concern whether South Asian or East Asian students are adequately represented as Asian ); arbitrary or undefined (the use of the category Hispanic); or underinclusive (no category at all for Middle Eastern students).”
    “The universities main response to these criticisms is “trust us””
    “Respondents assertion that race is never a negative factor in their admissions programs cannot withstand scrutiny.”
    “Because Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race,
    unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. At the same time, nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice. “

  8. Tom Scharf

    My expectation is the response will be to eliminate most meritocratic and measurable forms of admission policies. Dropping test scores will be the most extreme of these polices, leading to grade inflation on steroids.

    Many are making SAT/ACT “optional”. Of course it won’t take long before external ratings groups will report the fraction of those admitted who submitted test scores and continue to report the mean or median score.
    .
    Schools can bow out of rankings– to some extent. They still want to be ranked #1. MIT is still requiring SAT scores. I’m sure Cal Tech will. And state schoolls are going to have a heck of a time doing “holistic” scores without seriously ruining the level of their admitted students. I mean…. “holistic” requires more staff to fish out who is any good.
    .
    And… faculty will end up yapping when they have no SAT/ACT screen to pick out which of those in any racial group are better than the others. The problem is that it’s not a definitive screen– but it is useful information. (Even better information if students are required to turn in all scores– not just the best one, and if they are required to state whether they got an “accomodation”– which is often more time.)

  9. Roberts:
    “Most troubling of all is what the dissent must make these
    omissions to defend : a judiciary that picks winners and losers based on the color of their skin . While the dissent would certainly not permit university programs that discriminated against black and Latino applicants , it is perfectly willing to let the programs here continue . In its view , this Court is supposed to tell state actors when they have picked the right races to benefit . Separate but equal is inherently unequal said Brown . 347 U. S., at 495 (emphasis added). It depends, says the dissent.
    That is a remarkable view of the judicial role – remarkably wrong.”
    .
    Roberts is much more emotive in this decision. He calls out flawed logic in dissents repeatedly. He seems pretty upset.

  10. In other SCOTUS
    https://time.com/6291256/groff-dejoy-religious-freedom-supreme-court/

    Employers will have to meet a higher standard to deny religious accommodations in the workplace, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday.

    The court clarified a previous legal standard that only required employers demonstrate a de minimis (minimal) cost to deny a worker’s request for a religious accommodation; it now says that employers must “show that the burden of granting an accommodation” has “substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.”

    (The plaintiff’s particular case seems kicked back to a lower court.)

  11. Lucia,
    “MIT is still requiring SAT scores. I’m sure Cal Tech will. ”
    .
    Sure. MIT tried admitting students without standardized test scores…. they got a lot of weak students who couldn’t do the required academic work. They dropped the program.
    .
    The same will happen anywhere that standardized tests are eliminated. That won’t stop many universities like Harvard, the other Ivies, Stanford, etc from dropping standardized tests. They obviously care less about academic excellence that “social equity”.
    .
    One interesting fact was reported in one of the concurring opinions (Thomas, I think), where Harvard claimed their admissions policies WRT race are basically unchanged for over 50 years. I believe that is true, because when I was applying to universities in 1969 it was obvious that ‘minority’ students I went to high school with were favored by selective schools; they were accepted at multiple Ivies and given “full ride” scholarships, in spite of only fair grades and test scores.
    .
    I doubt the SC decision will actually eliminate racial discrimination in university admissions; the administration at these schools are far too dedicated to racial preferences to ever stop, unless threatened with loss of Federal funds, and Democrats in Washington will never let that happen.
    .
    Still, the SC decision is at least a small step away from racism.

  12. Tom Scharf,
    “Roberts is much more emotive in this decision. He calls out flawed logic in dissents repeatedly. He seems pretty upset.”
    .
    The dissents essentially claim anyone who is opposed to racial preferences is an idiot or a racist…. ya, he didn’t like the dissents at all. He was right to point out the flawed logic, but he was obviously still pissed.

  13. Roberts calling out dissents in footnotes:

    “For that reason, one dissent candidly advocates abandoning the demands of strict scrutiny. See post, at 24, 26-28 (opinion of JACKSON, J.)(arguing the Court must get out of the way, leav[e] well enough alone, and defer to universities and experts in determining who should be discriminated against). An opinion professing fidelity to history (to say nothing of the law) should surely see the folly in that approach.”
    .
    “Perhaps recognizing as much, the principal dissent at one point attempts to press a different remedial rationale altogether, stating that both respondents have sordid legacies of racial exclusion. Post, at 21 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). Such institutions should perhaps be the very last ones to be allowed to make race-based decisions, let alone be accorded deference in doing so.”

  14. Affirmative action is here to stay.
    “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
    Affirmative Action is deep-seated in our institutions… Justice Department, the Education system, the Entertainment industry, News Media, and even the Military and Healthcare. These people know deep in their souls that white people are racists and black people are victims and it’s been that way in the US since colonial times. They do not view this SCOTUS decision as legitimate. Even the President of the Country has undermined it. They view this as a political decision made by five white racists and one Uncle Tom.

  15. KyivPost: “The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation received the task of killing PMC #Wagner chief Yevgeny #Prigozhin, the Head of the Main Intelligence Service of the Ministry of Defense, Kyrylo #Budanov, reported.”
    The FSB may be the only bureau in Russia that is still effective. This should get interesting.
    https://twitter.com/KyivPost/status/1674697592137981952?s=20

  16. “Perhaps recognizing as much, the principal dissent at one point attempts to press a different remedial rationale altogether, stating that both respondents have sordid legacies of racial exclusion. Post, at 21 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). Such institutions should perhaps be the very last ones to be allowed to make race-based decisions, let alone be accorded deference in doing so.”

    I’m a bit distressed to think that anyone on the Court could write such a childish observation.

    How would an organization having past practice with one direction suggest that the present incarnation cannot reverse its policy? Or that it shuld not be allowed to? Allowed? Wow.

    What aboiut the court? Maybe it, too, should not be allowed to reverse course; as it so often does.

    Until I read this, I tbhought Roberts was an intelligent guy. Nuts.

    In 1993, our business lost a Navy contract to a firm which was being affirmatively encouraged, and in fact given the conract at a higher cost to the Navy than we had bid.

    These preferences were not limited to the education business.

  17. John Ferguson,

    I don’t think I understand your comment. Do you support or oppose the SC decision?

  18. Hi SteveF,
    .
    Whether I support the decision or not doesn’t bear on my criticism of Roberts’ goofy remark about an organizatrion’s historic practices invalidating their “permission” to reverse policy, something that the Supreme Court does itself, and recently fairly frequently.

    I’m somewhere between agnostic and support for this decision.

  19. As to the Navy Contract, the work was to be done at their facitlity at Andros island. We were in Miami. The Navy needed a Sun Microsystems installation which limited the competition to authorized VARS. We were.
    .
    And so apparently was the mimority firm in Arlington which got the contract. I remember that the way the “affirmative action” worked in this case was that they got a marginal edge in the bid amount. They could be some percentage higher than the lowest qualifying bid and get the work. I’m not sure what the percentage was and it probably varied by the order of magintude of the contract value.
    .
    In any case, they won the job, and promptly subbed it out to one of our local competitiors. It appears that the winner was not a Sun VAR aand there were ssome other irregularities – basically they were a PO Box broker.
    .
    We started to discuss objecting to the contracting officer but were told if we ever wanted to win a contract with the Navy, we should drop it. “We’d get our turn”.
    .
    So as far as I can see, one group cannot be favored without a cost to some other group, or groups.
    .
    I took particle physics freshman year in 1960. When I visited campus a couple of years ago, and since it was first ting in the morning, looked in on Physics 117 lecture hall. At least half the faces were Asian. Not surprising to me, this stuff is really hard for most people. I’d bet that a lot of those guys and the few gals can do a weekly problem set as fast as they can write. It took me 10 to 15 hours.

  20. The Bee on Twitter…..
    “ Harvard To Get Around Affirmative Action Ban By Asking You Whether You Prefer BBQ, Ranch, Or Soy Sauce ”

  21. john ferguson (Comment #222390)
    June 30th, 2023 at 5:17 am

    I think you might have missed Roberts’ point that the entities in question did not change in discriminating but rather who they discriminated against.

    Affirmative Action by government is a means of making racial distinctions and patronizingly keeping certain races and their votes dependent on government . As such there was never going to be a voluntary end to Affirmative Action. It is about politics and virtue signaling. As was pointed out in this decision there were no clearly stated and objective end results in mind for the actions taken.

    If a private party wanted for valid or nonvalid reasons to make choices based on what they thought remedying past discrimination choices could be, I see that as a basic right of an individual, but the Civil Rights act would not allow such actions. That is an unintended consequence of government attempting to control what most would consider bad decisions of individuals.

  22. John

    I’d bet that a lot of those guys and the few gals can do a weekly problem set as fast as they can write.

    Nah. I tutor these sorts of kids. They are smart but it will take them hours also. They don’t know things before they learn them. Same as everyone else.

    The thing is they are willing to do the work and have been doing it.

  23. Well, that seals it: “CNN Exclusive: Russian General Sergey Surovikin was secret VIP member of Wagner, …. The documents, obtained by the Russian investigative Dossier Center, showed that Surovikin had been assigned a personal VIP Wagner registration number in 2018.”
    It doesn’t mean Surovikin was part of the Wagner plot; It means the FSB is planting evidence in the media to hang him.
    https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/30/europe/russian-general-sergey-surovikin-wagner-vip-intl-hnk/index.html

  24. Ken,
    Your point is a good one, with which I agree, but in the Roberts quote I cannot see that he said it. I suppose he might have said that no-one should be making race-based decisions, which is your interpretation.

  25. Lucia,
    There were guys in my 117 class who could do the problem sets as fast as they could write. It was the freshman class for the Physics and Engine School majors.

    We never could figure out how they did it. I don’t think it was like the guy I used to ride into the loop with that did the crossword puzzle as fast as he could write. Someone knew him and said he was just showing off – he’d done the thing at home and we were just seeing him write the words he’d already figure out.

  26. I would agree that Robert’s statement was a bit harsh and a bit too personal, that’s why I posted it. He obviously feels very strongly about this, like others on the opposite side. I bet their internal discussions on this case were quite interesting.
    .
    However his point was that instead of allowing institutions to practice “correct” racism today, they should simply be banned from the practice altogether. The reversal of this policy is to stop the practice altogether, not putting a finger on the scales based on today’s fashionable viewpoints. This colorblind viewpoint is well known, and until recently allowed to be expressed in polite company. Everyone believes their personal prejudice is justified, just like Harvard et. al. believe open and hidden prejudice against Asians and others is justified today because of well known reasons X, Y, Z. I guarantee they also firmly believed their previous prejudice against Jews was also justified at that time. My prediction is this latest expression of racial prejudice will not age well either.

  27. This is the text leading up to the footnote in question. I’m not sure it clears things up or not:
    “The dissents here do not acknowledge any of this (referring to: the Court repeatedly held that ameliorating societal discrimination does not constitute a compelling interest that justifies race-based state action). They fail to cite Hunt. They fail to cite Croson. They fail to mention that the entirety of their analysis of the Equal Protection Clause the statistics, the cases, the history has been considered and rejected before. There is a reason the principal dissent must invoke Justice Marshall’s partial dissent in Bakke nearly a dozen times while mentioning Justice Powell’s controlling opinion barely once (JUSTICE JACKSON’s opinion ignores Justice Powell altogether). For what one dissent denigrates as rhetorical flourishes about colorblindness, post, at 14 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.), are in fact the proud pronouncements of cases like Loving and Yick like Shelley and Bolling they are defining statements of law. We understand the dissents want that law to be different. They are entitled to that desire. But they surely cannot claim the mantle of stare decisis while pursuing it”
    .
    I would suggest the “rhetorical flourishes about colorblindness” really set him off.

  28. John

    Someone knew him and said he was just showing off – he’d done the thing at home and we were just seeing him write the words he’d already figure out.

    Coming to group homework sessions. I’d say there’s a pretty good chance that was the case. ‘Cuz if you could just get it done, why even come to the group session? I couldn’t do stuff that fast, but I could do it faster by myself. So I did my homework in my room.

  29. Supreme Court Strikes Down Biden’s Student-Loan Forgiveness Plan
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-strikes-down-bidens-student-loan-forgiveness-plan-54a1ca7?st=dgnb4l9ygdoxzkf&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
    .
    This is not surprising at all, and I expect the run to the fainting couches will be short lived for this one. All these attempts to sidestep Congress’s budget authority (vaccine mandates through OSHA, gigantic climate programs based on Air and Water act, huge debt relief using ambiguous language in Heroes’ Act) are unlikely to be successful. I consider most of these just political statements.
    .
    What will no doubt be ignored in most media coverage is doing these things is not illegal, but the way in which they tried to do them was. Congress has to give explicit authority in society changing actions, aka the major questions doctrine.
    .
    It should also be noted that the Democrats couldn’t get these things through Congress even when they had control.

  30. Supreme Court Rules Web Designer Can Refuse Work on Same-Sex Wedding Announcements
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-rules-web-designer-can-refuse-work-on-same-sex-wedding-announcements-f1e55d02?st=k6pbmk62f7f897l&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
    “The Supreme Court sided with a Colorado web designer’s claim that the First Amendment entitles her to refuse commissions for same-sex wedding announcements”
    .
    This case is a much tougher call, a balancing of rights issue, first amendment, versus right to not be discriminated against, versus religious freedom. This was a tossup I think. Been a big week to say the least. Not sure there are any big cases left?

  31. speed in Physics 117. I think there were four or five of these guys in the class in 1960 which might have been 35-50 students. They could do the same thing on exams – usually strode out of the exam after 30 minutes.

    I’d love to know where they ended up.

  33. Tom
    I agree with the Web Designer ruling. Web design is pretty darn close to speech. Making posters, pamphelts and so on. And this involved the Web designer’s religion.
    .
    Also: As a practical matter there are tons of web designers and the prospective clients should have no difficulty finding another one. I know how easy it is to get the service isn’t an official factor, but it colors my notion of fairness. Being forced to find a different web designer isn’t like traveling on a lonely road through the desert, stopping for water and being refused. Or even being on a bus, stopping to sit down to eat or use the toilet and being refused. And it’s not going to be remotely difficult to find a perfectly good web designer. They don’t even need to live near you.
    .
    I know this is also not a factor– but it does color my view of fairness. We know the vast majority of web designers will take your business. So, this isn’t like a black person trying to find a near by toilet while traveling during the Jim Crow era.

  34. Tom,
    Yes. Congress could forgive every single penny of the loans. That would be the right way to do it — but to get agreement, they would certainly need to overhaul the entire program. After all: a program where all the loans are suddenly forgiven sort of ceases to be a loan program. Going forward, everyone would be well advised to take out ginormous loans, avoid repaying and just wait for the load to vanish.

    So the program would need to do something else. Perhaps require colleges to cover what the students didn’t repay? Or only allow loans to people is “approved” majors. Or….

  35. There’s a lot to potentially comment in this article:

    Can Colleges Be Racially Diverse Without Affirmative Action? Experience Suggests No

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-affirmative-action-college-admissions-e3de89d8?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1

    But the bit that strikes me is the part I’ve rarely read an article admit:

    Scarce resources complicate the effort. Some schools say they don’t have the financial-aid budgets to support a lot of low-income students. The most sought-after institutions are limited by campus size.

    So: diversity comes after bringing in money.
    .
    There are multiple problems with using low income as a proxy for race. But I think the main one is that schools want tuition paying students. Sure, they like to say they have scholarships– and do have them. But any plan that focuses giving students who can’t afford the school preferential treatment is not something the school will want to do.
    .
    And I think at “elite” places the problem is worse. The school not only would like to have more tuition coming in. They also would like to improve the odds of getting generous donations. Admitting students from very wealthy families is the way to do that.
    .
    In the system Harvard “liked” admitting the child of a Nigerian business person advanced “diversity”– and they paid tuition. Replacing the preference with “low income” means tuition is not paid (and of course, the low income student might be a white kid from Appalachia or Asian kid from Florida.)
    .
    And after all: we seen other preferences that are also sort of about money. Part of the motivation for legacy admits is also money. If the school is seen s “the family” school, the family is likely to be more generous. And while in principle the parent having gone to Harvard doesn’t mean they parent is rich, in practice, with respect to “elite” schools, people who went to the school do make more money. They can claim whatever they want, but graduates making more money is part of what makes the school “elite”.
    .
    So partial “solutions” to increasing “diversity” by admitting lower income students are simply not “solutions”. Because admitting students who will pay tuition and eventually line the pockets of the school is a much higher priority than “diversity” ever was or will be.

  36. I don’t know about the web designer case, but the gay wedding cake baker was specifically targeted. Activists searched for bakers who would refuse service in order to create the case and the precedent. This shouldn’t change the ruling but it does give insight to how some of these particular cases come to exist. Obviously the client could find another designer, and who wants to use a designer anyway who actively opposes your goal?
    .
    I think it was a close call, you clearly shouldn’t be allowed to say “no gay people allowed in my shopping mall” even if there are other malls. You also shouldn’t be forced to support Pride month either and have some amount of control on whether a store has drag shows in their stores or public hallways.
    .
    Alternately businesses have a right to refuse to work for people that is pretty vast, but cannot cross certain red lines. “They don’t pay their bills” or “I have to drive too far”, etc. So refusing to sell a standard product should be against the law, but refusing to use your creative artistic talent to support something you don’t approve of is different. I won’t do this for racial reasons is a red line, but I won’t do this for religious reasons is a gray area. The case here is effectively trying to tie sexual identity rights to the same level of discrimination as racial rights. This may already be true for their state law, but will not hold up under the Constitution because I assume sexual identity is not covered there as a basic right, where religion is. I didn’t follow this case very closely and I don’t really think it is that important in the grand scheme either way.

  37. Well, I think Bob Jones University was allowed to continue to discriminate, but they lost the tax preference afforded Universities.
    https://www.oyez.org/cases/1982/81-3

    In 1970, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) changed its formal policy to adopt a district court decision that prohibited the IRS from giving tax-exempt status to private schools engaging in racial discrimination. The IRS believed that the University’s policies amounted to racism and revoked its tax-exempt status. The University claimed that the IRS had abridged its religious liberty.

    These institutions did not meet the requirement by providing “beneficial and stabilizing influences in community life” to be supported by taxpayers with a special tax status. The schools could not meet this requirement due to their discriminatory policies. The Court declared that racial discrimination in education violated a “fundamental national public policy.” The government may justify a limitation on religious liberties by showing it is necessary to accomplish an “overriding governmental interest.” Prohibiting racial discrimination was such a governmental interest. Hence, the Court found that “not all burdens on religion are unconstitutional.”

    Notably though, the ruling didn’t force them to admit anyone.

  38. Perhaps the burden of taxes eventually affected their religious views:

    In 2000 BJU president Bob Jones III announced on Larry King Live that its ban on interracial dating had been dropped. The change was stimulated by a media uproar prompted by a visit of then-presidential candidate George W. Bush. In February 2017, BJU president Steve Pettit announced that Bob Jones University had regained its tax-exempt status.[4]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Jones_University_v._United_States

    Still, no one ever required them to not-discriminate on the basis of race.

  39. I read that 70% of Harvard’s minority admissions were above the median in household income. That’s not very surprising with the correlation between income and educational achievement. Certainly most schools would prefer full paying students and most schools are basically surviving paycheck to paycheck so don’t have the option of admitting a lot of needs based students … unless those students get loans.
    .
    The federal loan program has heavily subsidized academia and they are in no mood to break that link. One solution to student debt is making college cheaper (online should be very low cost for some students), or college should be optional for most jobs (many states are dropping college requirements for state jobs). We don’t hear much about those options.

  40. As a libertarian I can find some agreement with the recent Supreme Court decisions, but at the same time I find much about the courts interpretation of the Constitution and the Constitution that goes against the grain of my libertarian principles.

    The term compelling state interest to justify state actions that might otherwise be considered unconstitutional reeks of statism to me. It would appear to me that a state loving Supreme Court could conjure up just about any rationalization for letting stand some very statist laws.

    The Court has decided that forgiving $400,000,000,000 goes beyond what the original law allowed, but that forgiving over 3 years of loan payments is not because an emergency was invoked and with no time limits. I suspect a climate crisis/emergency could be invoked that could last generations – given how inept governments’ attempts to reach some arbitrary goal would be.

    Consider that the loan program is in effect a government subsidy for colleges, that was changed midstream from loans secured privately to one with fuller government involvement (it was going to be a money maker for the government), that favored those who would work in government, that allowed nonpayment during a government declared emergency and the not well disguised intent to buy votes by forgiving some of the loan amounts. One would have to ask that given some who considered the original law as written to be a bad idea, how many who originally favored it would have voted for it if the unintended consequences and freewheeling interpretation of it, that actually occurred, had been considered.

    I believe that 3 ladies who sit on the Supreme Court are just fine with the deceptions that I have listed above and would ignore the sham democracy involved.

  41. WashPost: “By afternoon, Biden announced his administration will create a temporary, 12-month “ramp” repayment program for student loan borrowers who will be forced to start paying back their loans again.”
    .
    They had 3.5 years with no payments. C’mon man. “Forced” to repay a loan? Isn’t that the standard contract? Yes. I’m just having a harder and harder time have empathy here with this kind of rhetoric. The people who worked in meat plants and grocery stores at the height of the pandemic are completely outside this thought bubble. Guess who is subsidizing all this? They are.
    .
    College students and graduates for the most part stayed home during the pandemic. This is just not a good look.

  42. I should make clear that much of the evolution of the original student loan was enacted by congress and signed into law by Democrat and Republican Presidents – always intended to fix problems of the preceding law and never to address the real problem.

  43. Tom Scharf,

    The Biden administration believes that education, like health care, should be free. Forgiving student load debt is a step toward that goal. Blatant unfairness for those who paid off their student loans in the past (including me!) doesn’t enter into the equation. The philosophy of the left does not allow consideration of such things. BTW, I agree that college should be much less expensive, and on-line courses seem a reasonable start. Seems to me if you can pass the final exam, it doesn’t matter much how you learned it.
    .
    It is interesting that in each of the controversial cases, when you read the dissents versus the majority opinions, it seems like the two groups are watching different movies, even thought we know they saw all the same evidence. I find the blatant demands for racial quotas to guarantee ‘socially just’ outcomes remarkably offensive, and contrary to both the Constitution and the Equal Rights Act. The left has IMO gone off the deep end.

  45. The reaction to the ruling is also another indication of how dysfunctional the politics of education have become. Nobody responded with “let’s make minority education better” or “we must make education dramatically more cost efficient”. They have completely, and I mean * completely * given up that route. You cannot wish hard work into existence with self professed good intentions.

  46. Tom Scharf,
    “They have completely, and I mean * completely * given up that route.”
    .
    I rather suspect that is due to two different factors: first, expensive interventions like Head Start have been a total failure, and second, the left refuses to consider the possibility of differences in academic capacity being due to anything other than racism. Racial quotas automatically follow. Trying to influence/reduce self-defeating cultural issues, something that might actually work, are rejected as ‘blaming the victim’.
    .
    Official racial preference is pernicious and long standing; it won’t go away any time soon. Just last year the Biden administration floated the idea of giving money to farmers in financial hardship….. but only if they were black. Pernicious.

  47. SteveF (Comment #222419): “I doubt using low family income as a “plus” in admissions will make much difference, since the gap between whites and blacks is almost constant across a wide range of incomes.”
    .
    That is truly astonishing data. But I would caution that one must be very careful when using averages in a multi-variable problem. For instance, the income sorted data shows gaps in the range of 140 to 180, but the average gap is 200 points. Also, the number above or below a threshold can be extremely sensitive to small shifts in the threshold, especially on the tail of the distribution. So I think that an income adjustment might actually have a significant effect on admissions.
    .
    I think that a good argument could be made that neighborhood income might be a more relevant variable than family income. That would correlate better with school quality and also average out year-to-year variations in family income. Such factors might explain the observation that

    some data suggests that black and white students with the same family net worth score about the same on the SAT

    https://www.unz.com/isteve/2008-sat-scores-by-race-by-income/

  48. Hi Mike,
    Neighborhood income looks very interesting. I assume it is collected somewhere and might be susceptible to correlation with performance of those members who make it to higher-ed, or I suppose to education at any level.

    It does seem problematic that where pigment can be tied to so many conditions (musrt be a better word) of life which smack of inequity, we cannot incorporate it in programs which might positively compensate.

  49. john ferguson (Comment #222423): “It does seem problematic that where pigment can be tied to so many conditions (musrt be a better word) of life which smack of inequity, we cannot incorporate it in programs which might positively compensate.”
    .
    I don’t see that as being at all problematic. What I see as problematic is a system that favors highly advantaged blacks over disadvantaged individuals of any race.
    .
    Racism is not the cure for racism.

  50. Mike M.
    That’s what makes the neighborrhood income such an interesting metric.

  51. New PSYOPs tactic from the Ukrainian army. They have a spokeswoman, Sargent Ashton-Cirillo, read news items in perfect American English. With my usual sources still keeping a voluntary blackout on news, this often breaks real news. While the slant is obviously pro-Ukraine, I have yet to find an outright lie. Full update report posts on YouTube:
    https://youtu.be/R5kv_uEtEIU
    Snippets posted on Twitter:
    https://twitter.com/SarahAshtonLV/status/1675130503920320516?s=20
    Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, @SarahAshtonLV, JSgt in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (??? / ZSU)Proud member of the Territorial Defense Forces.

  52. There have always been less offensive ways to try to solve this problem, offensive as in telling high performers they are responsible for low performers due to their invisible racism (unless they confess in struggle sessions and vote the correct way, in which case they are absolved, ha ha). They are also recently told their actual hard work in most cases should count for nothing. This just isn’t going to work, high performers will climb the ladder out of the education system in a capitalist society anyway.
    .
    Like crime, this is a multifactor problem with no simple solutions. The simple solutions have all been tried, and many were tried with straight up real effort. I imagine there was some real progress, but the relative performance has either been the same or worse because the high performers also up their game continuously. One might expect crazy things like “Defund Education” to be tried next.
    .
    At this point deprioritizing testing and merit is somehow in vogue. This would have been a joke even 10 years ago. They are serious. It’s an evolution of the Atlanta cheating scandal followed by making high school graduation have little to no requirements. Having given up, they just start hiding it, and now they are formally hiding it with policy and convincing each other this is progress somehow. Somehow.
    .
    Somehow is probably do-gooders who see a nearly impossible hill to climb, and wanting to make progress and be a hero, but likely know that this is a 1000 mile marathon, not a matter of blaming the right people or funding the right program. The quick fix charlatans somehow then get all the press. Somehow.
    .
    What we all know is that the same thing is going to continue to happen. High performers and people who value education will ensure their progeny live in the right areas, go the right schools, do the work, exchange the secret handshakes to get into the best schools, and will “fix” the economic system to value that commodity they worked so hard to get. Credentialism, etc.
    .
    This seems like a self serving elite managing the system for their own benefit. Because it is. However it is also simultaneously a very good system to promote education, it is clear that the US and western Europe got to the top of the global economic ladder in part by educating their populace, followed by wealth generating innovation. Lots of better life outcomes are correlated to education level. It’s a feedback loop.

  53. Governments are never going to admit to creating problems. Some examples are price inflation created by the Federal Reserve, minority under achievement in public schools and the high costs of college educations.

    The voting public becomes readily confused about the origin of blame and rather gets its attention turned to how the government will attempt to fix the problems it has created without ever realizing or fully understanding who actually created the problem. Government agents have putting the blame on others down to an art. They fool a wide range of the political spectrum.

    To further this process along with have the current intelligentsia that is geart at posing problems with the undebatable understanding that only government can solve these problems.

  54. Intelligence and skin colour again.
    When will people ever learn?
    Culture and the living and education standards are the only reason for differing results on intelligence tests and any metric of school entry.
    We can all conveniently place people into groups based on religion, country of origin and rave e and neglect this important underlying principle.
    All people share a pretty basic set of genes for being Homo sapiens and having functioning human type brains.
    Intermarriage does not provide a new group in between.
    –
    All that any test does is to show how much exposure to that particular set of knowledge a person was allowed to have useful exposure to in their particular world experience.
    Full stop.
    –
    Nothing to do with their innate intelligence.
    –
    Nothing wrong with splitting groups into 29 different coloured jelly beans and noting the differences in tastes.
    –
    A whole lot wrong in trying to ascribe the taste to the colour as they are two unrelated phenomena.
    –
    Which is basically what the Supreme Court has affirmed.
    –
    This argument will never end because people do have different skin colours, ethnicities, and beliefs.
    All I can do is point out that the argument on intelligence will always be attempted and is always wrong.

  55. Angech, I agree with you. Unfortunately I see governments being motivated to make racial and other distinctions in order to use those distinctions for making government dependencies and using those dependencies to garner votes. Those intentions can be disguised as being good ones but in my view they are anything but.

  56. angech (Comment #222429): “Culture and the living and education standards are the only reason for differing results on intelligence tests and any metric of school entry.”
    .
    We don’t actually know that. But we should always assume that.

  57. angech,
    Do you think individuals (of any race or nationality) vary significantly in the capacity to learn? I have known plenty of people who seem very slow learners; are you suggesting they are actually as intelligent as Bohr, Maxwell, and Einstein, but were never exposed to the correct experiences? The data are very clear: humans have a considerable range of intellectual capacity, even within a single family. Not everyone is intellectually capable of being to be a medical doctor, or even a lowly chemical engineer. But nobody on this thread wrote there are racial differences in average intelligence. I think you imagined that.
    .
    There are plenty of causes for poorer school performance among black Americans, with the most obvious being cultural issues that are not easy to change, widespread truancy, and schools which promote year-to-year in spite of failure to learn. In many large cities in the States, on the order of 50% of students graduate from high school without the ability to read/comprehend at a high school level, but among black students, it is closer to 80% who graduate without that reading level. That is a big problem, and nothing tried so far has made much difference.

  58. The US isn’t bad at cricket because Sri Lanka is oppressing us. We don’t deserve a cricket handicap as a nation. If we want to be better we need to prioritize it as a nation and do generational work to improve. We don’t really care, and that is OK.
    .
    Different cultures have different values. I personally think the Asian culture is too focused on education to the point of almost obsession. Do these kids ever have fun? Given that, why on earth should they be deprived of the results of that hard work? It’s not all upside, they make sacrifices.
    .
    What about parents who go full bore with athletics? Traveling teams, private leagues, summer camps, personal trainers? Is this wise? People get to make private choices and where they choose to try to excel is up to them. The obstacles to excellence are primarily economic, cultural, and raw talent. I guarantee you we have sacrificed a few cricket all-stars in this country for lack of training and competition.
    .
    In the US we consider education foundational to success as this culture defines it. If some cultures don’t prioritize it the same way, should it be imposed on them? Probably not, but we have chosen to enforce a base level of education and that is likely a wise choice. Some cultures embrace this, others do not. Maybe it just doesn’t need to be fixed and those who embrace it reap those rewards. However the tools should always be made available to those individuals who make that choice because of its general benefit to society as a whole.

  60. Where society should have a burden, it should be to make sure people are making * informed * life choices.

  61. Tom,

    . I personally think the Asian culture is too focused on education to the point of almost obsession. Do these kids ever have fun?

    They have fun. They don’t study all the time.

  62. Tom Scharf
    “Where society should have a burden, it should be to make sure people are making * informed * life choices.”

    A lot of these choices are made by 16 year olds – I suspect maybe more than a few of us here. Hopefully not too msny of us fell afoul ot the “guidance counselor”

  63. On the do Asian kids have fun: Most Asian kids I tutor also have extra-curriculars. Everyone has been emphasizing those for admissions, and so these kids join sports teams, bands etc. They might have anyway. But with a college counselor advocating for that, they don’t skip it.
    .
    No one has been emphasizing after-school jobs, so few have those. One this year worked at his parents family business. Otherwise, I’ve never had an Asian kid mention a job. These are after all families with enough money to hire a tutor. But if college admission counselors noticed prestigious universities decided having an after-school job was a “good thing” I’m sure they would all quickly get jobs flipping burgers for some number of hours a week. And if babysitting your siblings or cousins was “good”, they’d suddenly all babysit for some number of hours a week.
    .
    If colleges pick some sort of behavior that someone can do intentionally, and college counselors advise that, the kids whose parents hire college admissions counselors will tend to do that.

  64. I may have the proportions wrong, but Asians at Washington U in 2017 were split evenly between domestic and Chinese. A classmate who lives in St Louis and I toured the place noting the fancy cars in the parking lots, the new student union redolent with Hogwarts notes, and that our old dorm room was now an office in the Psych Department.
    .
    The Psych office is where we got the breakdown of Asians and learned that the Chinese all paid full tuition and were the drivers of the upscale cars. And most returned to China whenever they finshed whatever they were there for. I think if I was Chinese, I would too.
    .
    The scent (odor?) of Hogwarts was there because the students expected it.
    .
    I shared my dismay that despite having what had once been a top US architecture school, rather than commission contemporary designs, the institution had reverted to Tudor Gothic much like what was built during the greart expansion in 1903, even the new enginering school labs. AKKK.

    I have no idea whether the university is trying to throttle Asian admissions. It doesn’t look like it.

  65. SteveF,
    I also don’t think using “low income” to improve diversity could result in a lot of diversity for the reason you state. But what I’m pointing out is that even if it could colleges would be averse to that method. Because colleges want (and to a large extent need) a lot of tuition paying students.
    .
    Changing to “low income neighborhoods” isn’t going to help them increase diversity either. That method is still trying to work by using the correlation of “low income” with “diversity”. That means they admit more students who don’t pay full tuition and whose families will not contribute to endowments.
    .
    Worse, any solution that is by “neighborhood” or “zip code” is likely to get gamed. Some people already rent cheap apartments in one zip code to get into a better school. Or they pretend the kids live with an grandparent, aunt or uncle. It may not be legal you are generally supposed to go to the school based on where you live– but they do it.
    .
    If all you need is a different zip code, people will rent an apartment in a key zip code during key years. This will likely even spring up as a “business”. I have a neighbor who honestly has tenants who live with her. I don’t know if it violates zoning– and I don’t care. But I know that *if* having a particular “zip code” became important, people would find ways to have a mailing address in a “good for college admissions” zip code.
    .
    Colleges already do look at high schools. Generally, it’s for more academically rigorous ones. So presumably, they can look for some with more minority students. But they’ll still have the problem that the ideal minority candidate should (a) be able to pay tuition and (b) be academically prepared. Some academically rigorous high schools have more minority students than others. But all academically rigorous high schools are going to have non-negligible numbers of Asians and White kids. And in most, these are going to dominate the top 20% of the class in terms of academic achievement.
    .
    It’s hard to have a proxy for blacks and hispanics that admits enough blacks and hispanics if schools also want the students to (a) pay tuition and (b) be academically prepared. (a) Can’t be fixed anytime quickly and (b) can’t be fixed until somehow mostly urban schools with large minority populations somehow figure out how to get them achieve. And no matter what the problem is– whether social or genetic– the urban schools have not figured out how to do it. (Chicago public schools are pretty dreadful.)

  66. john ferguson

    I have no idea whether the university is trying to throttle Asian admissions. It doesn’t look like it.

    They probably weren’t trying to hard to throttle tuition paying Chinese students. At best, they would try to figure out the maximum number they could admit and still be attractive to tuition paying students from China. There is a certain level of Chinese from China student body where the Chinese form China would pick a different school. Also: there is a certain level at a state university where the state says: “Why give you state funding?” And there is a certain level where American students say “I don’t like the atmosphere.” and go elsewhere.

  67. At her graduation, Daughter Jane pointed to two parking lots and asked which was the faculty lot and which was for students. I guessed wrong. The lot with the BMW’s, Lexi, etc was the student lot.

  68. My daughter’s high school required volunteer hours as part of their program. Amazingly paid jobs did not count, it had to be volunteer. Not everyone is in the place where that is the best choice for their life circumstances. Similarly unpaid internships is the foot in the door for many DC government jobs. What class of people can do that?

  69. I think the throttling of Asians is basically only at very selective schools, maybe just the top 5%. Pretty much 80% of all schools will happily accept any full paying student (and why wouldn’t they?). Most schools really like out of state students.
    .
    One partial solution to this problem is to stop giving these few select schools an inordinate amount of respect for their slight advantage in student bodies. In literature and the legacy media it seems there are only about 5 universities in the entire US.

  70. Tom,
    That is a ridiculous requirement for high school graduation. Besides that: unpaid work should not be promoted by schools. Kids– especially poor ones– should be encouraged to find work that someone values enough to pay for.

  71. Tom–
    Yes. Many schools admit almost everyone. That’s actually a problem for the student loan program. And it’s one of the reasons some people develop the perception that college is not “worth it”. Well, some colleges aren’t worth it. College cannot be “worth it” if large fractions of their student bodies aren’t “college worthy” and if their programs have no rigor of any sort.

  72. The education system has become too used to doing the same things over and over again even when they do not work or even are expected to work.

    Obviously much money is wasted for students and teachers going through the motions whereby many students are not educated by any measure. Mandatory education does not make sense to me given the cost of going through the motions and the lack of a payoff.

    Parents and family should have a large portion of the responsibility for their children’s education, but somebody has to shout that out loud and clear. Quivering and cowardly politicians fearful of losing votes are not going to do. On the other side of this issue is the fact that plenty of state actors are more than willing to follow the Marxist idea of schools taking over the duties and responsibilities of the family.

    Parents and families will have to get more directly involved in education if the education system is expected to get out of its rut. I see some faint hope in parents recently realizing they did not agree with the school curriculum and getting more involved in the process. School choice is another good development even if it does not miraculously make huge differences in performance. The main thing is that parents are involved and making decisions about education. Unfortunately their are many politicians in bed with the teachers unions who could care less about parents’ involvement when it comes to garnering votes and campaign donations.

  73. Ken,
    10 Years ago, I spent an afternoon with a fellow freshly retired from running the special education office for the state of Massachusetts.
    .
    For some reason it didn’t look like it would be productive to dig into the details of what this office actually did, although i was really interested. I asked about the age range covered and it was 1 through 12.
    .
    Then i asked if he knew what became of these kids after 12th grade assuming they got that far. He had no idea. So I asked if anyone knew. He didn’t think so because once they left school his office had no more interest in them. He supposed that they wound up washing dishes, mowing lawns, bagging groceries, or in jail.
    .
    As far as he knew the question had never been raised. I was wondering how they could develop their programs if they had nop idea what the results were. He looked on it more like running a parking lot for cars which didn;t quite fit in the usual spaces.
    ????????
    .
    Another exposure to this sort of thing was lunch with a guy who’d taught robotics in the Rhode Island Junior College System (name probably not correct). This was and is, an area close to my heart so I asked a lot of questions about what they did, was there more than one semester, how far did they get? Did they design anything, That sort of thing.

    I thnk I would have loved the classes so asked if any of the students had ever lit up with excitement. The answer was no. He’d done this for 20 years and never had one student develop any enthusiasm for the subject.
    .
    He thought the students were mostly low lifes who would never amount to anything. The dents in my tongue from biting it have finally grown out. But when I got back to our place I went into a tirade about how this guy could have been left in place all those years with the sort of results he seemed comfortable with.

  74. john ferguson (Comment #222449): “I went into a tirade about how this guy could have been left in place all those years with the sort of results he seemed comfortable with.”
    .
    The system worked out fine for me, therefore there is nothing wrong with the system, the problem is with the students.
    .
    Was a sarc tag needed?

  75. John Ferguson,
    There are teachers who very much care about their students and what happens after they finish high school. My wife was one of those teachers. Of course, she taught advanced chemistry to mostly very motivated students, so the comparison with those you describe may not be completely fair. There is nothing that pleases her more than finding a former student became a researcher, medical professional, college professor, etc. Many teachers care a lot.
    .
    The failure of public schools to teach many (most?!?) students the very basics is a complicated problem with many separate issues; improving the outcomes will require each of those issues be addressed. I doubt there is the political will on the left to address those issues, since the teachers unions (through Democrat politicians) will block most any reform focused on better outcomes. Ultimately only the public, at the ballot box, can resolve the problem, by electing politicians who will thwart the teachers unions. But I doubt that will happen for multiple decades, if ever.

  76. Hi SteveF,
    I too had teachers, particularly my 6th grade teacher, who checked on me every couple of years. Before Email this requied a note to my parents who lived not far from her.
    .
    I’m still puzzled by each of my examples being unconcerned abouot the products of their occupations.
    .
    Do you check on how your machines are doing over the long haul, assuming they are not retired due to obsolescence?
    .
    I know I visit my projects if I’m in the area, mostly to see what worked and what didn’t, and especially those which had things I’d done without reallu understanding what I was doing.
    .
    But maybe the relentlessly curious couldn’t stand it in today’s educational systems.
    .
    My sister-in-law taught in the Los Angeles school system for 30 years. She said by far what made teaching difficult was delaing with the people above her, few of whom had actually taught themselves. She use to fund materials for her classes because the system couldn’t do it. She got into trouble for this because she apparently was making the teachers who didn’t do it look bad.

  77. John

    She said by far what made teaching difficult was delaing with the people above her, few of whom had actually taught themselves. She use to fund materials for her classes because the system couldn’t do it. She got into trouble for this because she apparently was making the teachers who didn’t do it look bad.

    These are complaints by lots of teachers on /r/teachers on redit. Others complain kids get passed along so they have way too many kids who are years behind mixed in with other kids who are on level.
    .
    Many complain the work of “differentiating” is overwhelming– and anyway, in some subjects it’s just not possible. (A few laud themselves about their ability to differentiate. But sometimes some things they say are laughable. I read one– who claimed she taught in Chicago Public Schools– say that kids in algebra don’t need to know how to add fractions because they can do it with a fancy calculator that does some amount of algebra and so on. So she can get them to “meet” the official learning objectives. And that might be so. And she patted herself on the back for making the “feel” they could finally do math. And feeling good is certainly nice.
    .
    But you know…. kids in CPS then go on to fail all their “achievement” tests leaving high school. (Part of the reason is the type of calculator she likes isn’t allowed on the SAT or ACT. When this was pointed out she pretty much said that’s because the people who write those tests are clueless idiots….)
    .
    And of course, those of us who USE algebra to do any modeling know these kids aren’t going to then make it through any quantitative course that requires some facility with algebra. Because you have to know how to deal with (a/b + c/d) = (a*d + b*c)/(b*d) when it turns out (b*d) ends up canceling something in the numerators and….. You can eventually get a nice usable formula and so on. You just can’t do any mathematical modeling of anything if you *have* to use your calculator for every single freakin’ thing! (And that’s why the SAT and ACT are going to continue to have tests that forbid the sort of calculator she “likes”. They may eventually allow them when AI really takes off. But for now….? No.)

  78. in 1970, friend who taught art to juniors in Chicago school system had first to teach them how to read rulers.
    .
    more recently, I found myself being checked out at Home Depot by a local high-school teacher (Florida) and related this to her. She said it wasn’t taught to the kids in her system – something like “not in the sylabus”

  79. I have had first hand anecdotal evidence that public school administrators can be clueless bureaucrats while at the same time some who are dedicated and responsible administrators. The system does not make distinctions for good and bad administrators or teachers, and therein lies the rub.

  80. Lucia,
    This is a personal request. Could you help me … My 10 year old granddaughter is coming to visit. She is an avid reader and I am going to load up a Kindle Fire with books. Do you have any suggested titles? Is anything by Mark Twain acceptable nowadays? Jack London? How about Sherlock Holmes or Poe? (She is literally a straight A student)
    Thanks

  81. Everyone knows the only thing that makes you good at understanding algebra is your family’s income level, ha ha.
    .
    My wife’s brief foray into teaching was shocking. She taught algebra and was very explicitly told to give kids who could not do fractions or pass tests passing grades and move them along. She also taught advanced algebra and that was an entirely different experience with motivated kids.
    .
    The “system” is broken here, this was the accepted practice, an open secret. Once they were that far behind you only had the choice to fail them or pass them along. At least half those kids would fail. You could not possibly get them caught up. Then of course the usual stories like getting berated by parents because a D in Algebra would not allow their son to be on the golf team after he was making zero effort.
    .
    It’s still a bit baffling that teacher’s unions are an obstacle here. You know that many individual teachers are appalled at this situation, but allow their union to give them all a bad name. The union seems extremely self centered, which I guess is to be expected.
    .
    All this should be offset by stating just how hard teaching in public school really is. Standing in front of 100’s of kids every day, and trying not to ever lose it. Not.for.me.

  82. Harry Potter. Hardback. The real experience. We still have all those books. My kids grew up as they came out and read them on the bus.
    .
    And … uhhhh … we read them too and loved them.

  84. John Ferguson,
    “Do you check on how your machines are doing over the long haul, assuming they are not retired due to obsolescence?”
    .
    It is complicated. Often an instrument is purchased for a specific problem/project, and when that is resolved, the instrument is little used after that. Happens all the time with big pharma companies. When that happens, everyone who is familiar with the instrument and how to use it moves on to other things (often at other companies), and we only get a call when they want to use the instrument again and have nobody with a clue of how it works, how to do method development, etc….. and we end up retraining a new group (for a fee, of course).
    .
    Most often we don’t hear much of anything beyond published papers using the instrument for measurements, unless there is a maintenance issue (failed component, computer, etc). When a company relies on the instrument for normal operation QC, any maintenance issue leads to an immediate (urgent) contact for help. Fortunately, this usually only happens multiple years after the instrument is put in service, and our international distributors are (theoretically) responsible for resolving most problems outside the States.
    .
    There is really no obsolescence unless there is a component failure and a replacement part is no longer available. We have maintained backward compatibility of data files since the mid 1990’s, so customers don’t have much motivation to buy a new instrument unless there is a failure and repair is impossible. All that said, it is very common for an instrument to be in service 15+ years without problems.

  85. Russell,
    I have no recommendations for 10 year olds. I think I read The Hobbit then? Because my sister did? I think I went to the library and picked a bunch of “biographies” from the kids section? Grade school book lists are a very dim memory.

  86. I don’t really follow up my products that closely in the long term after I’m done with them. I do watch them very closely at the end of the development process looking for problems. My customers tend to let me know when things are not working, ha ha. Most products last less than 5 years for business reasons, but some last decades.
    .
    There is a difference between a profession and a lifetime hobby I think. Online communities tend to have a lot of curious hobbyists on them, while the professionals don’t bother at all because they find it uninteresting or more likely want to spend their free time on their own hobbies. Although my profession may have grown out of a youthful hobby, I have no real drive to explore the intricacies of this profession in my free time. I don’t think professional golfers watch YouTube videos on golf either for example.

  87. Tom

    All this should be offset by stating just how hard teaching in public school really is. Standing in front of 100’s of kids every day, and trying not to ever lose it. Not.for.me.

    True. Though few teachers stand in front of 100 at a time. It’s 20 in class 1, then 20 more in class 2 etc.. (Some schools have more in an individual class , but it’s never 100s. But also, since we started thinking Special Ed should be main streamed with “least restrictive environment” there is often an aid or Special Ed teacher in the room also. That was rare when I was a kid. But without the aid or other teacher no one can deal with the spread of kids– and it’s not clear you can even with them there.)
    .
    From what I can tell based on the bitching about criticism of school policies on /r/teachers there are also quite a few admin “great ideas ™” that get introduced with no thought about how time consuming they are. Of course lots of things sound like great ideas™ in teaching, other work places and in the home. But there are so many work hours in a contract and so many home hours in a day. You really have to think about which things are priorities and stop adding more and more great ideas™!
    .
    (I have a friend who once looked at my Tudor style house and oohh and aahhedds… and suggested it would look “so nice” with flower baskets under all 16 front windows. I was like… lets see. They aren’t near a water source. So trot to bathroom… fill watering can…. open window…. water…. close window…. (2 minutes) * 16 windows….32 minutes a day. Ok… maybe I could trim time, but really …. I have cranks on the windows. And screens on the windows, which I have to remove to pour the water. So it might take more time. (And if you have small pots with lots of surface area, you know they dry out. So it really is every day. Plus… what if I”m away for the weekend?)
    .
    And this doesn’t count any work to fix wear and tear on the pots due to things like near tornado level winds or planting the flowers in the first place.)
    .
    Yes. The flowers would look lovely. Not gonna happen. Not even if I can “fit it in” while the washing machine is doing a cycle. (I do have larger pots on the patio where I can see them when sipping my wine and congratulating myself on NOT putting any on the front windows to make it pretty for the dog walkers to see when they walk by.)
    .
    Similarly, my mom not only would suggest certain plants would be really pretty but wouldn’t it be cute to get garden labels and label each one? So people who walk through the garden can see which are called what? Her friend so and so did this. My reaction: Nah…. I’m not the botanical garden. I’d rather sit on the patio and drink a glass of wine.
    .
    Each of these ideas can sound like a “good one” to people who don’t have add them to the list of other things (e.g. brushing teeth. Making dinner. Doing laundry….) tend to overlook the fact that they take time.
    .
    One of the “popular” ideas is evidently every teacher should communicate with every parent individually on a weekly basis. Individually as in a message that says something *about that kid*.

    Uhmm… it would be one things if they only meant communicate with parents for kids in your homeroom. Of if it was just some mass email about what the whole class did. But they mean every student and tailored. If a teacher is going to have to think and really tailor this, my estimate is 3 minutes a kid. So: 100 students * 3 minutes/email = 300 minutes = 5 hours a week. That’s a HUGE fraction of 40 hours a week.
    .
    And that time estimate doesn’t even include the possibility the parent reads it and wants more information. The fact that one email is “quick” doesn’t mean that this task is quick.
    .
    Not to mention that parents who receive a routine email from 5 different teachers every week may not read them all. Schools managed without this level of reporting back in the 60s, and they can today. (And honestly, the parents who care can generally look online to see the kids current grades.)
    .
    And of course, some “good ideas™” are actually bad ideas even if they took zero time.

  88. Mom had a cousin whose house was on Illinois 5, not far from you. She used to plant plastic tulips in late March around the front door. People would stop and knock on the door to ask how she’d managed to get them to come up so early.

  89. Prince Harry and Meghan are having a very bad day. News stories worldwide are suddenly dumping on them. This is a sample from just the last 24 hours….
    Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Are in Their Flop Era
    https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/meghan-markle-prince-harry-flop-era-spotify-netflix-british-royals-1234779819/
    Prince Harry and Meghan Markle complain they’ve been ‘unlucky’ since quitting royal duties
    https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-complain-theyve-been-unlucky-since-quitting-royal-duties/news-story/af3dd6dc5dea7694ebfbbe63abdf965c
    Harry and Meghan Join the Graveyard of Failed Celeb Podcasts
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/harry-and-meghan-join-the-graveyard-of-failed-celeb-podcasts
    Markle, 41, and Harry, 38, have had a string of failed deals recently, such as losing out on their $20 million Spotify contract.
    https://nypost.com/2023/07/03/meghan-markle-prince-harrys-flop-era-its-overkill-rolling-stone-says/
    Do Prince Harry and Meghan Markle not have anyone to defend them anymore?
    https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/do-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-not-have-anyone-to-defend-them-anymore-royal-expert-comments-101688392688616.html
    Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s Hollywood future is in a precarious state right now
    https://www.tmz.com/2023/07/02/meghan-markle-prince-harry-all-smiles-uncertain-future-hollywood/

  90. Thanks for the warning Russell. That is 6 links that I do not have to click on. I am sure the media will find something equally uninteresting to write about.

  91. I was unable to understand what they thought their attraction might be once they bombed on the prince and princdess circuit.

  92. My grandson of whom I am a guardian is autistic and attended a school for the developmentally disabled with about 50 students total in the school and probably less than 10 in the class. I communicated with his teachers and principal once a week or more frequently if required. That was a very important part of me fulfilling my responsility for him and I appreciated the school staff not sugar coating their messages. I had similar communications with the staff where he was an resident. I preferred emails but often the communications with the residence were by phone.

    With most things in life communications are critical.

  93. john ferguson (Comment #222465

    Is the route 5 you referred to here and previously that which is now called I-88? If so, in Chicago it is now called I-290 and the Eisenhower Expressway. Route 5 remains in the Quad cities on the Illinois/Iowa border. Route 5 east of there was gone, I believe, over 30 years ago.

  95. Ken Fritsch,
    I think a parent or guardian reaching out to communicate once a week for an autistic child makes sense. They have special needs, and having their parent or guardian be aware of them is useful.

    But a principle decreeing weekly personalized emails for each and every student in high school where each student has 5-6 classes and no particular special need is making busy work. I know my teachers didn’t all send notes home once a week.

  96. Ken,
    It was 5 when I lived there in the ’70s and early ’80s. I think it also had a name other than “the single nickel.”

    “something or other Road.”

  97. I don’t really remember what I read at 10. I think I might have picked up The Hobbit around then. Harry Potter would seem a good choice. Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O’Shea, based on celtic mythology, was a favorite when I was younger, but not on kindle. Animal farm? Interesting story for kids even without the relevant political message. The Percy Jackson series (also turned into some movies) seems like another popular series that’s in the elementary school library, but I haven’t read those. Terry Pratchett has a huge number of witty fantasy books. Not sure whether 10 isn’t just a little too young to appreciate though.

  98. If you’re not afraid of the religious association, I probably first read the Chronicles of Narnia around that age. Maybe a little younger, but something like 9 or 10. [Oh yeah. And the Black Cauldron books, uhm hang on.. Yeah. Chronicles of Pyrdain. Lots of Chronicles back then apparently.]

  100. Steve,
    9 year old me would be crushed.
    50 something year old me shrugs at you. Look:
    Shrug.

  101. 20,000 Leagues under the sea caught my interest around 5th grade if memory serves, that was 10 ish.

  103. I read all the Chronicles of Narnia, I just don’t know when I first read them. I have a set on the book shelf. Reading them did not cause me to be religious.
    I also read Screwtape Letters and Lewis’s Sci-Fi series. Also… Great Divorce. None turned me Christian. But I love them.
    Screwtape Letters is readable, but I think older might appreciate it more than younger.

  104. Agree with Mark on those choices. I think 10 yo are unlikely to grasp any religious significance from Narnia. I certainly didn’t. My wife enjoyed a collection of books about tribes of cats. The Warrior series by Erin Hunter.

  105. DaveJR,
    I didn’t grasp the religious significance in Narnia at the time. I did grasp it when I reread later. And I did grasp it in the Scifi and other books I read later. I don’t mind books having religious significance.
    .
    Whether a kid likes Narnia probably depends on whether they like “fairy stories” since that’s how that comes off. Many young ones do; others don’t.
    .
    I liked Heinlien’s youngster series of books too. Definitely NOT Christian!

  106. This discussion made me think about what I read when I was around 10 years old, and I sort of drew a blank on books. I read the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times every day and lots of magazines. I do recall some books that were something like 4 inches tall and 3 inches wide and 1 and1/2 inches thick. I think they were called Big Little Books and the topics were from characters in the comics or radio or movies with no serious reading. I was probably younger than 10.

    I do not think I did much serious book reading until I was in high school and my English teacher told me I would get nowhere reading books about sports heroes.

  107. I guess Mad magazine or Sgt. Rock doesn’t count as reading.
    .
    The first book I strongly remember reading was 2001 A Space Odyssey. I read this before I saw the movie because there used to be a time where if you didn’t see a movie when it was in the theater for a brief period, you just never got to see it, ever.

  108. Possibly Rudyard Kipling, Jungle book, Kim and Just so stories.
    A very underrated writer.
    Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
    Little Women Louisa May Alcott.
    Showing my age.
    –
    Wind in the Willows.
    A series of Unfortunate events.
    Charlotte’s web.
    Matilda. Roald Dahl
    –
    A lot of the current children’s books are very inane.
    Twilight series Steph Myer when she is a few years older along with Jack Reacher, not now.
    –
    Fantasy fiction is an amazing field but a lot of my age group read autobiographies and Travel and non fictional work and find fiction irritating.
    Personally I loved comics more than books at that age.

  109. At 10, yes to The Hobbit. Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany series (and Maurice). I am David made a profound impression on me at 10 for something a whole lot more serious. My kids loved Narnia and absolutely adored Chronicles of Pyrdain. The Great Bow for something more serious too, but good luck finding it.

  110. I can’t endorse little women. That was the first book I found too boring to read.
    Look for the original versions of the Roald Dahl books. They are getting “woked up” by editors.

  111. Is ten too young for the Patrick O’Brian series commencing with Master and Commander? It hadn’t been written when I was ten, but I think I would have liked it if it had.

  113. Some of the virtue signaling in recent fiction is irritating. They are employing “sensitivity readers” at many publishing houses now, a real thing. Basically ideological screening, madness for an art field. Some books have been cancelled before they were published.
    .
    The Wager had about 3 or 4 short lectures on colonialism that just seemed out of place and added nothing.

  114. “Sensitivity readers” AKKKK.

    The Howard Pyle version of Robin Hood was read to me at an early age. I did the same thing for our daughter when she was little. The book includes reference to a truly astonishing number and variety of alcoholic drinks; stout, ale, sack, various wines etc.

    These guys must have been lunched a lot of the time.

    I had to explain each of these potions to Jane who wanted to know if Eileen and I drank all of these things. “Not all.”

    I wonder how they would wash with the “sensitivity patrol”

  115. The first book I remember I was about 6. My grandmother read Ivanhoe to me in the evenings.

  116. At 10, I was probably reading the Hardy Boys books. Probably too dated nowadays; for example, no kid today would understand the concept of someone being unreachable because they were on a trip. Tom Swift, too.

    Also, I recall reading a series about a high school sports star named “Bronc Burnett” (or something like that). It was set somewhere in the Southwest US, which was fascinating to me, growing up in the Northeast and not having traveled.

    I probably didn’t get into anything worthwhile until I started reading science fiction (Asimov, Heinlein in particular) in junior high & high school. [A lot of crappy scifi in the library, too — I pretty much read the entire section.]

    …and happy 4th of July to all!!

  117. Hi HaroldW,
    Until you mentioned it I forgot that about that age i was reading Science Fiction short stories in a couple of compendiums that Dad had. There was the one which involved mechanical mice, another that involved a plante which our heros were strande on that had “friendly trees” These were the ones which took 24 hours to get a good enough grip on you that they could ingest you. The other trees were worse and you didn’t want to sleep on the ground.

    The best was a recruitment system for “gunners’ for spaceship service. Because of the speeds involved you couldn’t aim at anything, you had to guess. I can’t remember how good guessers were discovered but it was probably the bulk of the story.

    I think most of these stories had appeared in sci-fi monthlies and likely in the late ’30s.

  119. Bingo.
    The memory of the “guesser” story led me try to populate my various offices with “first guessers.” They have to be out there somewhere.

    I think I was always a bit disappointed when someone didn’t get it.

  120. Much as I love Patrick O’Brian, I dont think it is 10 year old country, not by a long chalk really.

    My daughter is staying and reminds me how much she loved Tamora Pierce series starting with First Test at 10 year old. She was also avid reader. It kind of goes with saying too that at 10, she is reading Harry Potter?

  121. Lots of good book suggestions all! We had messages back and forth and she had no knowledge of Mark Twain, so I loaded the Kindle Fire with ‘The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County’, and ‘Tom Sawyer’ to get started. We have Kindle Unlimited so she can do a ‘Tweens’ search and pick her own once she gets started. [Had to also load the original ‘Angry Birds’ ….. We go way back with that one.]

  122. A tale of two Princesses and two Wimbledons.
    Princess Catherine made a well-received visit to the tennis match yesterday. The press heaped praises. A few years back Meghan Markle attended and it was a press fiasco.
    Images:
    https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1676433934412836865?s=20
    Markle ordered a buffer zone around her and her security team WHILE SITTING IN THE ROYAL BOX!
    “The Duchess of Sussex sat in the middle of a large number of empty seats and fellow tennis fans sitting near her were banned from taking photos of her – even if they weren’t trying to”
    Kate was pictured sitting among regular fans in the bleachers holding an umbrella during a rain shower. “Princess Kate breaks from royal custom at Wimbledon to show support for a young British tennis player. Princess Kate has stepped out of the royal box to go pitchside on Wimbledon’s more intimate Court 18, in a show of support to British number one Katie Boulter.”
    Then shown welcoming Roger Federer to Center Court:
    “Princess Kate gives Wimbledon champion Roger Federer a lengthy standing ovation at the All-England Club”
    Even got glowing fashion props from Vogue:
    “Kate’s ’80s-Inspired Wimbledon Outfit Is Perfectly On Theme”
    Links:
    https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/meghan-markle-nightmare-wimbledon-made-17794497
    https://www.gbnews.com/royal/kate-kiddleton-wimbledon-royal-british-tennis-support-william
    https://www.gbnews.com/royal/kate-kiddleton-wimbledon-royal-british-tennis-support-william
    https://www.foxnews.com/sports/princess-kate-gives-8-time-wimbledon-champion-roger-federer-lengthy-standing-ovation-at-all-england-club
    https://www.vogue.com/article/princess-of-wales-80s-inspired-wimbledon

  123. Some smart people I follow on Twitter are ecstatic about yesterday’s injunction, for example:
    “Jay Bhattacharya, @DrJBhattacharya,
    It is entirely appropriate that the judge in Missouri v. Biden issued an injunction against the Biden Administration’s “Ministry of Truth” on July 4th. The capacity of the American experiment to renew itself will never stop astonishing me. Happy independence day!”
    Some excerpts:
    “V. CONCLUSION Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one place to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. Harry S. Truman”
    “Government cannot communicate with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
    “Although this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the Court is only examining it in terms of Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.”721 The Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign. This court finds that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment free speech claim against the Defendants. Therefore, a preliminary injunction should issue immediately against the Defendants as set out.”
    Judgement: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.294.0.pdf
    Memo:
    https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.293.0_1.pdf

  125. This leftist supporter of Biden and his administration is also happy to see this ruling in support of free speech. Wasn’t so long ago we understood that the best defense against wrong/hateful/propagandist speech was correct/loving/truthful speech.

    Sorry–still a leftist supporter of Biden and his administration. More so if they accept this ruling without protest (not likely), learn from their mistake and move on.

  126. Tom

    More so if they accept this ruling without protest (not likely), learn from their mistake and move on.

    Pretty sure that’s sooooooo not happening. This will almost certainly travel up to SCOTUS. The question is: Do they file an appeal first? Or do they violate it first?

  127. Tom,
    I appreciate your sentiment about free speech. Wasn’t so long ago that most folks in this country felt that way, regardless of party affiliation. Wish more Dems agreed with you on the topic, but I think the majority is happy to go along with the party leaders.

    [Just as I imagine that you wish more Republicans were willing to disavow the more extreme positions taken by some leaders/regions, e.g. total abortion bans.]

    We traveled recently with some friends who are definitely in the Democratic camp, and one of them suggested that it would be wonderful if 2024 had a ticket of two centrist candidates. (Perhaps one D & one R, who would agree to swap positions if elected & re-elected.) I think that would be a great idea, but far too many people blindly vote straight R or straight D to make it likely.

  128. Re: the injuction,
    Does anyone know why the “Disinformation Governance Board” (DGB) was not included in the injunction? It would seem, just from its name, that it would be a likely participant in the prohibited activities.

    [Edited, just read the memo as well…It is asserted that the DGB has been disbanded, hence they’re not included in the list of agencies prohibited from leaning on social media companies.]

  129. Harold,
    I think DGB isn’t mentioned specifically because it is under the umbrella of Homeland Security, which is.

  131. Hold on! Page two of the order adds some weasel words that gives the Liberals wiggle room:
    “IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the following actions are NOT prohibited by this Preliminary Injunction:
    (4) informing social-media companies of threats that threaten the public safety or security of the United States;
    (8) communicating with social-media companies about deleting, removing, suppressing, or reducing posts on social-media platforms that are not protected free speech by the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

  132. “… not protected free speech by the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
    .
    Is there anywhere descritions of what “not protected free speech” is or is it another one of those “I know it when I see it.” ?

  133. The government is also allowed to have an opinion, and is allowed to state their opinion. They also already have a massive bully pulpit they can use.
    .
    Where I think this event clearly crossed the line was the government having non-public meetings to pressure social media companies to spread the government sanctioned message and specifically eliminate dissent, this all came out in the Twitter Files to much (non) fanfare. There was also an implied threat to punish these companies if they didn’t comply (that threat was much more direct from individual congressman).
    .
    At the very least, all messaging to social media and media companies should be transparent and public in my view. All.of.it. Including the now standard practice of leaking misleading info to shape a narrative.
    .
    I think this case may be closer than many think, but certain practices are indefensible, even under the guise of national security and emergencies.
    .
    The entire push for a Ministry of Truth has been ill advised, both because it is likely illegal in our country, and because it was never going to work anyway.

  135. HaroldW (Comment #222506): “Wish more Dems agreed with you on the topic, but I think the majority is happy to go along with the party leaders.”
    .
    I suspect that most Dems have bought the lie that the government is not censoring speech, they are only battling “dangerous disinformation”.
    .
    HaroldW: “[Just as I imagine that you wish more Republicans were willing to disavow the more extreme positions taken by some leaders/regions, e.g. total abortion bans.]”
    .
    The two are not comparable. Free speech is fundamental to the existence of the Republic; abortion is merely a policy issue.
    .
    HaroldW: “it would be wonderful if 2024 had a ticket of two centrist candidates. (Perhaps one D & one R”.
    .
    The Dems ran a “centrist” in 2020. It sounds like you are not pleased with the result. There is no reason to believe that future “centrists” of either party will be different in the ways that matter most.
    .
    The center has vanished because the center is no longer meaningful. Just as there was no meaningful center during the Civil War. The battle is now between the Establishment and those who appose it. Between normal and crazy. There is no center on trans ideology, identity politics, the validity of the Constitution, open borders, sexual grooming of grade schoolers, etc.

  136. I would also add that you don’t need to have a PhD from Harvard to know when somebody or an organization is trying to suppress information. It usually isn’t subtle. “You are a loser bigot mega-MAGA if you believe that” is kind of the level our best and brightest were operating on for a while.
    .
    The CDC has a Twitter account, it’s up to them to communicate effectively and garner trust. Their failure to do so is exactly that, their failure. There was much to learn here, and they will likely do better next time.
    .
    Personally I thought the CDC website was top notch. Their public messaging, and more specifically all the mini-authoritarians out there telling me what the CDC and “science said” were most of the problem.

  137. Now that the Judge has issued his order, I’m sure the DOJ will file criminal charges against the ‘Defendants’ named in ‘The Complaint’, some of whom are:
    Surgeon General Murthy
    Mayorkas
    Dr. Fauci
    As well as these Co-conspirators named in the memo, some of whom are:
    White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki
    White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy
    President Biden
    Alyssa Milano
    Elvis Chan[ Assistant Special Agent FBI]
    [for any Luddites who don’t recognize sarcasm, this is an example]

  138. “DealBook: A setback for policing social media”

    Title of today’s post from Andrew Ross Sorkin – NYT.

    This from the same folks who hemorhage at the prospect that they might be subject to the same “policing.”

  139. Lucia,
    “Do they file an appeal first? Or do they violate it first?”
    .
    I am thinking they will violate it as if it never was issued. Another reason the SC relies on the shadow docket: Democrats ignore court lower court orders. I expect a confirmation of the injunction will issue long before any SC oral argument could be held; heck, Biden could well be out of office before a formal SC judgement could be issued.

  140. Tom Scharf,
    “Personally I thought the CDC website was top notch.”
    .
    Say what?!? They refused to accept that natural immunity from infection was more protective than vaccines, even in the face of overwhelming data (and simple logic)! There is nothing about the CDC that I would call ‘top notch’ except maybe the diligence with which they hewed to the party line on covid vaccines. IMO, they should be ashamed of themselves.

  141. I got some of the natural immunity info from that website. although I did have to dig. The website design is actually pretty good. Concise and written at a low enough education level to communicate well, and well organized.
    https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
    .
    My point is the people who did the website are a different set than the political actors who try to manipulate behavior. It is certainly not devoid of slippery language. Here is what it says today:
    .
    https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html
    MYTH: The natural immunity I get from being sick with COVID-19 is better than the immunity I get from COVID-19 vaccination.
    FACT: Getting a COVID-19 vaccination is a safer and more dependable way to build immunity to COVID-19 than getting sick with COVID-19.
    .
    Note the not subtle sleight of hand? Answering a different question. This is the ongoing official response, total blackout on direct comparisons of immunity, then state hybrid immunity is better. This is a case of lying without lying.
    .
    But this is what I mean when it isn’t that hard to tell when information is being suppressed. If they KNOW vaccines are effective and they KNOW unvaccinated/uninfected are at higher risk then obviously they also must KNOW and * had to have collected * the relative immunity information on vaccines and infection. If they KNOW this, and then answer that question in that manner, red flag. They will bury you neck deep in vaccine effectiveness studies, but natural immunity … look, squirrel!

  142. Tom Scharf,
    It is a willful lie: they know natural immunity from infection is more protective, but refuse to EVER state that. It is not a small thing: thousands of people lost their jobs because they had already survived infection and refused the vaccine on the reasonable grounds that they were already more immune than people who got only the vaccine. Everything they did (and do!) at CDC about natural immunity was dishonest, destructive, and pointless. They should be ashamed of themselves. Bad people doing bad things to innocent victims.

  143. For the purposes of argument, assume Facebook and Twitter do not want to be conveyors for foreign actors trying to interfere in elections or who try to manufacture dissent in the US. How do they figure out who the bad actors are, and who are just the usual loonies in the US entitled to free speech?
    .
    In steps the DHS and FBI who have access to very real and vast surveillance capabilities telling them who the bad actors are. They need to shut down some communication and these companies are unable to verify sources and methods. Why should these commercial organizations not listen to them and act on that information?
    .
    Answer in 2023: Because we cannot trust the DHS and FBI to not act in a politically biased manner. 3 reasons to think this: Trump, Russia, Collusion. We are just going to need to live with foreign interference rather than let these guys make those decisions out of sight.

  144. This entire affair with the government becoming involved with filtering communications to promote what they think is the truth has to do with government considering the general public not being able to judge information (and misinformation) on their own. It is not only social media where this tendency shows but in public schools where more emphasis is being placed on telling students what to think than how to think.

    Politicians who run governments are probably the most dishonest group of individuals in the entire world.

  145. Re Tom Scharf (Comment #222521)

    https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html
    MYTH: The natural immunity I get from being sick with COVID-19 is better than the immunity I get from COVID-19 vaccination.
    FACT: Getting a COVID-19 vaccination is a safer and more dependable way to build immunity to COVID-19 than getting sick with COVID-19.

    Note the not subtle sleight of hand? Answering a different question. This is the ongoing official response, total blackout on direct comparisons of immunity, then state hybrid immunity is better. This is a case of lying without lying.
    _______

    I don’t see anything subtle about this. It obviously doesn’t
    reply directly to the first statement. So what?

    The question is what’s preferable, natural immunity or vaccine immunity. For me the three vaccines was preferable to a stronger natural immunity from a covid infection. Preferable, because I don’t want to be infected. If I had been infected, I would still get the vaccine for added protection.

  146. The natural immunity doesn’t seem to be a sure thing although this doesn’t mean it isn’t more effective. Dr. friend has contracted covid thrice, first before the vaccines became available, treated with monoclonal antibody (remdesevir?), then vaccine when it issued forth, and another infection, two more vaccines and finally the latest infection. First infection was from family, second invection unknown oprigin, and last one was contracted on Viking cruise ship out of Sydney, probably in dining room.

    We each had a bout last June, she in Italy and me in London despite the first two rounds of Pfizer. I was exhausted for about 10 days and in September had a really ugly outbreak of Shingles – which I’d had off and on since 94 but never like this time. At least it confined itself to all the old familiar places. And finally after 9 months, it seems to be gone.

  147. Is there any chance that the flavor of covid your previous infection immunizes you from is sufficiently different from the one you confront two years later to make it ineffective?
    .
    If the vaccines need to be recompiled one might suspect immunity derived form a specific version of the virus might not have legs.

  148. John Ferguson,
    Everyone acknowledges immunity from either vaccines or from infection is much less than perfect. But multiple studies have shown clearly that immunity from previous infection is greater and longer lasting than from the mRNA vaccines. My objection to the CDC (and the remainder of the Federal health-care bureaucracy) is that they were forcing people who already had covid to get vaccinated….. in spite of the fact that they were likely better protected from previous infection.
    .
    I caught covid last July at a baseball game (very crowded stands, lots of screaming). It sucked for 36 hours, until I got Paxlovid, which knocked my fever down from 102F to 99F in 12 hours; I was symptom free after 3 doses (36hours). Odd metallic taste in my mouth, but worth it.

  149. John Ferguson,
    The only studies I have seen show no added benefit from an updated vaccine after getting previous doses of the original vaccine. Protection was the same for an additional dose of the original vaccine as for an additional dose of the modified vaccine.
    .
    What is known for certain is that the first strain of flu you encounter “patterns” your immune response, and your protection against that first strain (if re-infected) over your lifetime is far better than against other flu strains. Covid could be similar, but I haven’t seen any studies showing that.

  150. SteveF (Comment #222529)
    ” My objection to the CDC (and the remainder of the Federal health-care bureaucracy) is that they were forcing people who already had covid to get vaccinated….. in spite of the fact that they were likely better protected from previous infection.”
    _______________

    A Kentucky study showed that people who had been infected with Covid got added protection from vaccines.

  151. SteveF,
    I remember that early on in the pandemic you identified a population who might have useful experience which might have informed the plans for dealing with this one. I apologize for having forgotten the details, but if you can recgonize what I’m alluding to, could you share with us what was done?

  152. Re John ferguson (Comment #222528)

    ” Is there any chance that the flavor of covid your previous infection immunizes you from is sufficiently different from the one you confront two years later to make it ineffective? ”
    ________

    I don’t know. It may not be totally ineffective, and somewhat effective is better than nothing.

  153. Tom

    https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html
    MYTH: The natural immunity I get from being sick with COVID-19 is better than the immunity I get from COVID-19 vaccination.
    FACT: Getting a COVID-19 vaccination is a safer and more dependable way to build immunity to COVID-19 than getting sick with COVID-19.
    .
    Note the not subtle sleight of hand? Answering a different question. This is the ongoing official response, total blackout on direct comparisons of immunity, then state hybrid immunity is better. This is a case of lying without lying.

    Yeah. The tendency to resort to equivocation makes me lose respect for public health officials.
    .
    After all: the “Myth” isn’t that “the best way to become immune to Covid is to get Covid”. I mean…. yeah…. if vaccines fully work or merely reduce the severity of Covid, the “best” way is quitely to get a vaccine. That way you reduce the risk of dying.
    .
    But that’s not what the “Myth” is claiming. It is asking something about the level of immunity of people who– for whatever reason– got Covid and recovered. It’s more likely claiming: “The natural immunity I get from being sick (and recovering from) small pox is just as good as the immunity from the vaccine.” That claim is not a “myth”. Though it is also true that getting the vaccine is a “better” way to get immunity since your risk of dying is much, much, much smaller.
    .
    A fair amount of “fact checking” going does stuff like that. When I detect it I lose respect for that “fact checker”.

  154. OK_Max (Comment #222531): “A Kentucky study showed that people who had been infected with Covid got added protection from vaccines.”
    .
    That was a bogus study.

  155. OK_Max,
    “A Kentucky study showed that people who had been infected with Covid got added protection from vaccines.”
    You could work in propaganda for the CDC.
    Yes, there was a slight improvement if a previously infected person got a vaccine dose in addition. But that was not this issue. People were allowed to continue working in many jobs when they had 2 doses of vaccine, but not if they had already had covid and had more protection than 2 doses of vaccine. It was a crazy, irrational rule.

  156. John Ferguson,
    Early on (the original strain) there were many people with confirmed exposure (eg spouses sharing a small cabin on a cruise ship, one with covid) who never became sick at all. Suggesting to me some people had some natural resistance… perhaps from having suffered one of more of the several coronavirus common colds. That seemed to mostly disappear with later, much more infective strains of the virus; those strains are also the ones most likely to cause multiple infections in the same person.

  157. OK_Max,
    “The question is what’s preferable”
    They should ask and answer that question if that’s what you think it is about. This isn’t something somebody just wrote a blog entry on in two minutes, it is very carefully worded. The legitimate questions are twofold:
    1. Do I have sufficient or equivalent protection as a vaccine if I have already been infected?
    2. (My point) Should people who have a previous infection be mandated to get a vaccine and lose their job if they choose not to?
    .
    The “Look, squirrel!” part is the answer “getting a vaccine is safer”. Duh, duh, triple duh. In the entirety of this messaging catastrophe I have never seen somebody ask the question that way, is it safer to get infected or get a vaccine?
    .
    If it’s been a long time since you were infected, it might make sense to get vaccinated anyway for extra infection protection (before omicron), or if you want the extra 20% or so protection get vaccinated on top of infection.
    .
    However if people want to know if being infected is enough to provide equivalent long term protection against severe illness as a vaccine, then the CDC owes them an honest straight forward answer, they can then make their own decision.

  158. OK_Max,
    I have seen and read the Kentucky study. It is one of the first and it was small. As I have stated before, the vaccine did outperform against infection and severe illness against the original strain. Since then there have been much larger studies which I have referred to previously. Infection is “at least as good” (read: better) to the vaccines since delta on both infection and severe illness. They both provide good protection against severe illness, and both are now sh** against infection. It just so happens infection is doing a bit better.
    .
    I only think this is mildly interesting, am baffled that people apparently think the messaging needs to be so manipulated, and really, why would people be so surprised? Humans have been evolving for millennia against a wide array of viruses, our immune systems work. The new biotech is just getting started. Why are people defensive about this?

  159. The vaccination versus natural immunity debate should in my view involve several considerations for an individual and government based decisions.

    1. Natural immunity is a better than vaccination in preventing Covid infection.
    2. Natural immunity plus infection is the best protection against infection.
    3. There are some lasting effects of infection that are not apparent with vaccination that should be recognized when an individual makes a decision about vaccination.
    4. Governments should recognize that infection is a safe guard against infections when mandating vaccinations.
    5. The important issue with the current variants of Covid should be how much vaccinations prevent the spread of Covid.
    6. That younger people as a group have considerably less negative effects from Covid and that vaccinations have some small but finite negative issues, vaccinations to that group should consider the trade off of risks.
    7. The concentration of effort with vaccinations (and other precautions) should have always been aimed at the elderly and infirmed with existing conditions as opposed to a typical government reaction of one shoe fits all.

  160. From the 5 mile level what seemed to happen is your chances of reinfection were greater with a new variant if you were infected with an old variant, but your base protection against covid severe illness was maintained. This severe illness protection was more dependent on that specific variant’s base mortality. Omicron was less lethal, that either is the way things tend to go, or we got lucky.
    .
    In my view what we now know for sure is we don’t know as much as I thought we did about virus evolution.

  161. SteveF,
    I was exposed for 2 days of potential contagion via my spouse in a ship’s cabin. We were PCR tested every morning and the samples run through Viking’s onboard lab.
    .
    She was notified one evening of her postive test. She was imediately quarantined as was i but seperately.

    I suspect she was contagious night before test maybe longer, but I did not contract covid until 10 days later in London. This suggests but certainly doesn’t prove that I might have been immune to the variety she had but not what I encountered in London. We had each had two of the Pfizer shots befofre boarding in Athens.
    .
    The kicker is that because we are 80, we fall into the group that should expect real problems if we become infected, and that is from age alone even if we have no other medical issues. I wonder if that is government bs.
    ‘
    We have no idea what turned my shingles loose a couple of months later. I first got shinglw in 1994, then no worse than a bad sunburn. but it never went away completely, came and went, possibly provoked by stress, the kind I used to get when I was expected to solve something had no idea how to go about it, at least initially. As an aside I never pretended to be any kind of wizard, but somehow I always got the hard ones.

    It’s good to be retired.

  162. My Twitter sources are still under a voluntary blackout of reporting Ukrainian army positions. So they spend their time reporting on the effects of Ukraine’s precision artillery and rocket attacks. From last night:
    “AVDIIVKA AXIS /0200 UTC 6 JUL/ During the night of 4 JUL, UKR missile/artillery units conducted a precision strike on a RU ammo depot at Malivka. A large explosion was followed by scores of secondary blasts which lasted until daylight. This success was followed on 5 JUL, with a second UKR strike that targeted a Petroleum, Oil and Lubricants (POL) depot near Yasynuvata.”
    I verified these strikes using NASA FIRMS fire satellite data and Google Maps. Screenshots:
    https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1676863407423668225?s=20
    In that 24-hour period, there were five fire clusters in this area. Two of the fire clusters were large. One was 1041 acres and one was 144 acres
    You can see the raw satellite images here:
    https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2023-07-05..2023-07-06,2023-07-05;@37.9,48.1,12z

  163. I find that I have posted incorrect information describing a prohibition in Florida’s recently enacted SB 1718 which appeared, at least to me, to make it illegal to drive in Florida using a driver’s license issued by a state which issued licenses to illegal immigrants.

    There are 5 such states including Connecticut. My source had neglected to point out that these states issue two kinds of driver’s licenses, the usual kinds which have all sorts of security devices and require that you document your self with birth certificate, passports, etc. AND another kind which requires no proof of who you are and clearly states that this license cannot be used as a form of identification.

    It is this second type which no longer will be sufficient in Florida.

    I can’t see anything wrong with this. Can you?

  164. john ferguson –
    According to this,

    The law [Florida SB 1718] invalidates licenses that are issued to undocumented people in other States. This includes licenses issued exclusively to undocumented immigrants and licenses that have markings indicating a person did not exercise the option of providing proof of lawful presence in the United States. Law enforcement who stops a person in Florida who has such a license is required to issue them a criminal traffic citation, which could result in a written notice to appear in court or an arrest. At some point, the State will publish a list of out of state licenses that are now invalid in Florida.

  165. In my view what we now know for sure is we don’t know as much as I thought we did about virus evolution.

    Tom, do you think the models broke down because of the changing variants, how much difference there was between variants and the lack of understanding on how Covid was transmitted.

    Some models appeared to “work” initially but failed miserably later. I read papers that made claims for their models with early data that when applied to later data failed. I never saw any follow up or explanation for failures. Some of those papers were referenced later without admitting to later failures. As I saw it there was a shift fairly early that mostly gave up on modeling and instead shifted to making vague statements about the infection susceptibility. The number of actual infections was not well estimated and the death rate was probably not reported consistently under the same definition vis a vis died with/from Covid.

    I think part of the problem was due to scientists wanting to get on the government band wagon, but that contarians also got it wrong gives credence to your quoted comment above.

  166. An 8th point in my post above should have been consideration that vaccination and infection lessen the severity of a subsequent infection.

    Anecdotally almost all my relatives, including distant ones, in-laws families and acquaintances both close and distant have had Covid with probably 1/2 with the omicron variants and the other half with the more virulent variants. There has been one death of an 88 year old who had Covid very early in the pandemic and had existing conditions going against him. The older portion mostly avoided infections until omicron. All the older portion were vaccinated and none were severally affected by the infection. Only my sister , my niece and I, of this group, have not been infected that we are aware. My niece owns and works in her a beauty salon. My sister and I have not taken any special precautions since the omicron variants have been on the scene. We were all vaccinated.

    I do think it is just a matter time until the three of us will be infected as I noticed that the later infected appear to get picked off one at a time over an extended period of time and when a wife or husband is first infected it follows that their mate will be infected. My sister and I live alone, but my niece lives with her husband who was infected.

  167. I should add that doctror friend (67 years old) who suffered 3 infections said the first – pre-vaccine – was the worst and the second post vaccine not bad at all, and the only way she knew she had the third was slight fever and it showed up on the DIY test kit.

  168. Re Tom Scharf (Comment #222539) ?July 5th, 2023 at 4:54 pm

    OK_Max,?“I have seen and read the Kentucky study. It is one of the first and it was small. As I have stated before, the vaccine did outperform against infection and severe illness against the original strain. Since then there have been much larger studies which I have referred to previously. Infection is “at least as good” (read: better) to the vaccines since delta on both infection and severe illness.”
    ________

    Tom, you may be interested in the following from Stanford:

    “The Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine directed at COVID-19 is much better than natural infection at revving up key immune cells called killer T cells to fight future infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, Stanford Medicine investigators have found.
    The scientists also showed, in a study published online in Immunity, that getting infected by SARS-CoV-2 before getting vaccinated lowers the vaccine’s otherwise exceptional ability to spur proliferation and activation of killer T cells directed at SARS-CoV-2. Their finding suggests that those hoping to avoid the manifold health risks associated with COVID-19 would do well to get vaccinated before they contract the disease.”
    https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/03/vaccine-covid-infection.html

  169. Certainly the model failures and inability to predict the course of the virus demonstrate a lack of understanding. Lock down for 3 weeks and this will be over! One could say they can’t predict specific random evolutionary steps, which is fine, transmissibility changed a lot. But they also made claims with much more certainty than was warranted. Modeling exponential growth processes need to be judged with a lot of latitude. Being wrong by a week or two was getting cases wrong by 2X.
    .
    There was very little scientific humility at the beginning, there is now. Nobody looks at covid models now for a reason. It was never adequately explained why covid came and went in waves instead of just burning all the way through the population in one surge. Maybe it is just exponential growth randomness but there was no real science measurement in place to figure this out, even now. They are having a hard time understanding what happened, much less predicting the future.
    .
    The inability to even determine if this virus was airborne after millions of cases was shocking. Everyone thought herd immunity was going to be a thing, until it never happened.
    .
    Why did the variant waves basically end after omicron? They don’t really understand lots of things.
    .
    How well do masks work? Ha ha.
    .
    Sometime around delta, and definitely at the beginning of omicron it should have been clear everyone was going to get infected eventually, and there they were, pressing for vaccine mandates anyway.
    .
    The vaccines were a partial win, but I still view covid as having kicked science’s a** in this skirmish. I think they will accept that eventually. Most of the population infected, millions have died, failure to isolate the original breakout, failure to come up with an effective treatment early, the pandemic possibly even * started * by science. It’s not like they know nothing, or aren’t getting better, they just can’t stop a pandemic yet.
    .
    What’s the biggest lesson? Slow down the initial breakout of an exponentially growing virus at all costs. Time is very important.
    The people who fared the best are those who got it last. It might be just lucky that later variants weren’t more lethal. They don’t really understand that either.

  170. Re Ken Fritsch (Comment #222548)
    July 6th, 2023 at 11:48 am

    “I do think it is just a matter time until the three of us will be infected …”
    _______________

    Hopefully not, but if you are infected I hope it’s mild.
    Keeping up with the vaccinations can prevent infection
    or at least reduce severity.

  171. OK_Max,
    That study is interesting but is measuring internal parameters such as t-cell counts rather than clinical outcomes which is more meaningful. It was also testing against the original strain for some reason instead of omicron et. al.
    .
    Remember that the vaccine is using the exact same toolset to fight the disease, the body’s immune system. The mRNA vaccine essentially has the body manufacture a bunch of covid spikes and the immune system does the exact same thing to fight the infection without an active disease. One would not expect the vaccine to be “better” using only spikes, all things considered. It’s main benefit is generating immunity without disease.
    .
    Infection based immunity exposes the immune system to the entire virus, perhaps there is some advantage to that … if the patient survives. Infections allegedly generate more variable immune system reactions (light vs heavy infection) so the thinking goes, where vaccines have a more tightly controlled dose. This study may be saying that the vaccine is generating a more robust response on average than an average infection. However, the better measurement is clinical outcomes.

  172. Tom Scharf

    Why did the variant waves basically end after omicron? They don’t really understand lots of things.

    We may some day know. But for now, this can be added to “What caused the English Sweating Sickness?” and “Why did it go away?”

  173. Tom Scharf,
    “What’s the biggest lesson? ”
    .
    The biggest lesson is that research on gain of function in pathogenic (or potentially pathogenic) viruses must be legally prohibited, with penalties of life-in-prison or worse for violations. The catastrophe was almost certainly a 100% human caused catastrophe, and should never be allowed to happen again. Sadly, the evil, stupid Faucis of the world will inevitably bring on another, if not worse, catastrophe. .
    May he burn in Hell.

  174. Team Science does seem to curiously uncurious abut the origins of the virus.

  176. The best-laid plans…
    The Tom Sawyer idea for my grandaughter didn’t work. She told me she is in the midst of a mystery series…. Treasure Hunters by James Patterson. Yes, THE James Patterson of Alex Cross fame. Turns out the great mystery writer has a series for young readers.
    She and my wife made a quick trip to Barnes and Noble. It was a tome of impressive size. The plot:
    “The Kidds—treasure-hunting family extraordinaire—are heading to China, on a journey that will lead them beyond the Great Wall and into the underbelly of Berlin.
    Bick and Beck Kidd are desperately trying to secure the ancient Chinese artifact that will buy their mother’s freedom from renegade pirates. But when the kidnappers force them to locate an even greater treasure-priceless paintings stolen by Nazis-the Kidds must rely on their own cunning and experience to outwit the criminals, all while their mom’s life is on the line.”
    I recommend the series if you are looking for a gift for this age group.
    https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/secret-of-the-forbidden-city-james-patterson/1121874032?ean=9780316284806

  178. Right now…. Our young flyboys and flygirls learning how. A flight of Northrup T-38 Talon jet trainers and a flight of Beech T-6S Texan II prop trainers in the air near Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi.
    Screenshot:
    https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1677311146620071937?s=61&t=q3_InP1nXWdPIXqj8656mQ
    The jets appear to be dog-fighting. Some of the prop plans are doing ‘touch and goes’ at nearby airstrips.
    Air base web site:
    https://www.columbus.af.mil/

  179. Russell,
    Let’s face it, lots of things have been written since we were kids. I never read Harry Potter. It was written after I was a kid.

  180. Lucia,
    This thread has me reminiscing about my reading at this age. It was my macabre period; Edgar Allen Poe [The Pit and the Pendulum] and Sherlock Holmes [The Hound of the Baskervilles]. We lived a streetcar ride from the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, so I had a good source for both those authors.

  181. The positive parts of the infection waves for the US, as I recall, could be correlated with seasonal changes that drew people indoors, i.e. winter in the north and summer in the south. I thought that there was a very large positive amplitude spike with the initial omicron outbreak.

    I have not been following the infection occurences lately and should go back and refresh my memory and look at the updated findings.

  184. Latest Covid peak for the US was in Dec of 2022. Are we going to miss a summer peak and if so what might that mean about the evolution of Covid? My informative and astute answer: Dunno.

  185. Worldometer shows a flatline for total new cases in IL from May 15 to present and daily new cases of zero from May 5. Before May 5 the cases were 570 on May 4.

  186. Today’s humorous article:
    .
    Uncensored Chatbots Provoke a Fracas Over Free Speech
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/02/technology/ai-chatbots-misinformation-free-speech.html
    “To mitigate the tools’ most obvious dangers, companies like Google and OpenAI have carefully added controls that limit what the tools can say.

    Now a new wave of chatbots, developed far from the epicenter of the A.I. boom, are coming online without many of those guardrails — setting off a polarizing free-speech debate over whether chatbots should be moderated, and who should decide.”
    “But the risks appear just as numerous — and some say they present dangers that must be addressed. Misinformation watchdogs, already wary of how mainstream chatbots can spew falsehoods, have raised alarms about how unmoderated chatbots will supercharge the threat.”
    .
    Who would have guessed that fans of the Ministry of Truth think that “unmoderated” AI represents a threat? They are just here to help, mind you. How can I become a misinformation watchdog? Do I need credentials? Who controls that? What …. the same people you say!

  188. The NYT editorial is paywalled. I did find this article:

    https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ai-chatbot-misinformation-2024-elections-rcna92378

    The do admit the choices for “guardrails” chatbots were already political

    Now, more advanced users have figured out ways to trick these chatbots into saying things they’re not supposed to, and it’s naive to think that political values don’t shape the range of responses that these chatbots issue to users. (The language chatbots are and aren’t allowed to utter is in and of itself political, and these companies have not revealed exactly what kind of information the chatbots were trained on, which shapes their range of responses.) But still they reflect an aspiration for a product with mass appeal across age groups that adheres to strict limitations on abuse and minimizes liability and controversy for itself.

    .
    The issue is really who decides what the “guardrails” “should be”?

  189. Lucia,
    If your browser allows you to temporarily disable/block scripts (like Brave), then you can read the NY Times articles; the paywall block that hides the article is just a script. Same thing works for some other paywalled news sites, but not all. You have to re-enable scripts to make web searches work again. Of course, I seldom find anything in the NYTs that is worth reading: pretty much everything is either outright false or a willful misrepresentation of the truth.

  190. The people most interested in deciding what the guardrails should be are the last people I want deciding it. They just want their “correct” worldview to be the one and only standard.
    .
    Election campaigns are almost 100% misinformation, It’s hilarious that this is the example they keep worrying about. What they want is one-sided misinformation, and they can’t spend 12 seconds of introspection to figure that out, or to understand why that is a bigger problem.

  191. Twitter amuses me. I follow a few accounts that raise money to crowd source war materials for the Ukrainians. Medical kits, drones and Toyotas are popular causes. This one really cracked me up. They are buying drones for the Ukrainians. If you donate US $100.00 they will write your message on an mortar shell to be fired at the Ruskies. You write them a message and they transcribe it onto the shell. They will send you a picture of your shell.
    Example:
    https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1677714736941768704?s=61&t=q3_InP1nXWdPIXqj8656mQ
    (Caution, some of these are scams)
    Copy of Tweet:
    Dear friends,
    Good evening. I’m happy to announce that we can now accept requests for your Russian mortar round!
    The donation for the shell is 100 USD / 100 EUR.
    The inscription can be absolutely any, without restrictions, in English, Ukrainian or Russian. It is desirable not too much text so that everything fits.
    The money will go towards these guys buying a drone. Roman will personally present the check, and each donor will receive a photo.
    Please email me to place your order!
    Twitter
    Telegram : Roman
    @Romahaa1997
    Together to victory! ????????

  192. Tom,

    Election campaigns are almost 100% misinformation, It’s hilarious that this is the example they keep worrying about. What they want is one-sided misinformation, and they can’t spend 12 seconds of introspection to figure that out, or to understand why that is a bigger problem.

    I’m not sure anyone is unaware. It might be merely that the philosophical foundations that your (and my for that matter) ideas rest on are different from what has become more popular today:

    Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse[1][2] which challenges worldviews associated with Enlightenment rationality dating back to the 17th century.[4] Postmodernism is associated with relativism and a focus on the role of ideology in the maintenance of economic and political power.[4] Postmodernists are “skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person”.[14] It considers “reality” to be a mental construct.[14] Postmodernism rejects the possibility of unmediated reality or objectively-rational knowledge, asserting that all interpretations are contingent on the perspective from which they are made;[5] claims to objective fact are dismissed as naive realism.[4]

    I mean, what else would we expect in this day and age given the abject failure and abdication of responsibility of philosophy in the 20’th century.

  193. The true irony being that post-modernism claims for itself the mantle of objective truth. Post-modernism is the ideology of the mentally fragile. So terrified of being called frauds and charlatans, they created an entire philosophy on the childish notion that the only people that could possibly be incorrect are those who contradict them.

  194. “Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse[1][2] which challenges worldviews associated with Enlightenment rationality dating back to the 17th century.[4] Postmodernism is associated with relativism and a focus on the role of ideology in the maintenance of economic and political power.”
    .
    Which is the best argument that these idiots should be ignored…. or worse. Postmodernism is pure crap masquerading as thinking; wildly disconnected from reality and disconnected from any plausible understanding of reality. ‘Nutty’, is too kind.

  195. Steve,
    I largely agree with your sentiment, possibly except for the part about ignoring them. I mentioned them [post-modernist philosophers and adherents] to Tom because I think we do tend to forget anyone takes this junk seriously, but I strongly suspect that there are indeed people who do. More specifically, I think postmodernism has at least influenced or colored the views of large number of younger people. It might be advantageous not to lose sight of this, in order to understand how people make the apparently imbecilic mistakes Tom noted earlier. I don’t think the people Tom was referring to are in fact imbeciles (re: misinformation), I think they (at least some) are simply philosophically misguided.

  196. “Postmodernists are “skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person”
    .
    Well, they seem quite intolerant of anything they consider “harmful”, which is pretty much anything they disagree with. As the saying goes, they can tolerate everything except their outgroup. In theory they should be quite tolerant of many alternate AI’s with their relative truths. I think this is just much more basic, just the usual control freaks wanting to control information flow under the mistaken idea this will prevent stupidity.

  198. I have found a practical use for Artificial Intelligence.
    Because AI has become ubiquitous, I now ignore spurious eggheads spouting pretentious abstract concepts on the interweb without feeling guilty. My default position now is that pretentious abstract concepts on the interweb are generated by AI. Mind you, I have always ignored spurious eggheads spouting pretentious abstract concepts; it’s just now I don’t feel guilty about it.

  199. I’m seeing long-range forecasts of dust from the Sahara desert coming to Florida. The current satellite image shows it still being in the Eastern Atlantic but is being driven West by winds from high pressure over the middle of the Atlantic.
    Current screenshot of the satellite image of PM10 in the air:
    https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1677863210165100544?s=20
    A side benefit of the Saharara dust is it tends to suppress tropical storm activity for us.
    News Link:
    “Plumes of Saharan dust could impact air quality, sunsets over Florida”
    https://nypost.com/2023/07/08/plumes-of-saharan-dust-could-impact-air-quality-sunsets-over-florida/

  200. Putin was betrayed by Erdogan…..
    And I think this shows a significant change in posture by Turkey:
    “On July 8, five commanders of the notorious Ukrainian Azov battalion returned to Ukraine from Turkey. They were supposed to stay in Turkey until the end of hostilities “under the personal guarantees of the Turkish president”. However, it seems that the Turkish President changed his mind.”
    “Turkey violated existing agreements after it returned five commanders of the Azov regiment to Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti.”
    “The return of the leaders of the ‘Azov’ from Turkey to Ukraine is nothing more than a direct violation of the terms of the existing agreements,” Peskov told RIA Novosti. “Moreover, in this case, both the Ukrainian side and the Turkish side violated the conditions.”
    Also, Erdogan once again claimed that Ukraine deserves membership in NATO.
    Link:
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-08/kremlin-says-turkey-s-return-of-azov-defenders-violates-accord

  201. This happened at 4 AM last night. I was barely awake and if I didn’t have a screenshot I would be thinking I dreamt it up. A U-2 spy plane suddenly popped up on my screen. It was 60,000 feet over the Yellow Sea flying at 550 MPH. It was coming from the direction of China and heading toward South Korea. It rapidly descended over central Korea and disappeared again at about 9,000 feet.
    Screenshot:
    https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1678061879032201216?s=20

  202. Election campaigns are almost 100% misinformation, It’s hilarious that this is the example they keep worrying about. What they want is one-sided misinformation, and they can’t spend 12 seconds of introspection to figure that out, or to understand why that is a bigger problem.

    What Tom says above is what I find very wrong with journalism. It shows partisanship when it correctly reports misinformation and other errors and misdeeds for one party but ignores the same for the obvious party of their choice. One could hope that competing sources of journalism could be used to even up the information gaps. That becomes problematic when the sources of information are primarily those with a partisan bias for one of the parties or politicians of a single philosophical bent.

    I see the same problem in a number of sciences and the reporting on those sciences where evidence for conclusions are a one way street fitting a given agenda and counter evidence is mostly ignored.

    If those looking at misinformation or evidence are not aware of what is ignored, they are being, in effect, misinformed. Those who misinform in this way can always fall back on the proposition that what they say or write is totally honest.

  203. I think I witnessed an international incident, from TASS:
    “From around 5 am today a strategic reconnaissance plane of the US Air Force again conducted aerial reconnaissance of the eastern part of the DPRK while intruding into the sky above the economic water zone beyond the military demarcation line in sea waters of the DPRK side in the sky over the waters more than 270 km east of Uljin and 430 km east of Thongchon,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement, KCNA reported.
    In Comment #222584 yesterday I described seeing a USAF U-2 spy plane in this area.
    DPRK is not happy. https://tass.com/world/1644889

  204. NATO is giving Putin a poke in the eye. Today’s NATO summit is being held in Vilnius. Vilnius is located 17 miles West of Belarus and 104 miles East of Kaliningrad. There are 63,000 ethnic Russians living in Vilnius, or 12% of the population. Russia first conquered Vilnius in 1655.
    With all the VIPs in attendance, NATO has ramped up the armaments. Currently, a spy plane and tanker are visible overhead. I assume fighters are also lurking in dark mode.
    Screenshots:
    https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1678453656444706829?s=20
    And a lot of stuff on the ground too:
    https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2031229/lithuanian-military-allies-ready-to-ensure-24-7-security-of-vilnius-nato-summit

  205. The decision to supply cluster munitions is quite interesting. These were seen to be an inhumane weapon of war (oxymoron) according to those who worry about such things. It is true that all the bomblets do not explode (sometimes intentionally) and can kill later. This problem is worse for landmines though. I wouldn’t plan any scenic hikes through Ukraine battlefields over the next 50 years if I were you.

  206. Tom Scharf,
    The “immorality” of cluster munitions (with known high failure rates) is widely recognized. Ukrainian (or maybe Russian?) kids will be maimed or killed long after Joe Biden is in the grave. Seems appropriate for a super-moral leader like Biden.
    .
    But honestly, if you are looking to Biden for moral guidance, you are looking into the abyss: the guy even refuses to acknowledge his own granddaughter. He is as devoid of morality as the clams I dug from the ocean floor two days ago.
    .
    Children are born without guilt, and have no responsibility for what brought them into the world. OTOH, Biden is full of guilt up to his eyeballs… and is demented to boot. At least he has the excuse of obvious dementia. The rest of the Biden clan does not.
    .
    Shame on them all.

  207. Are cluster munitions in place of regular munitions which Biden claims are in short supply or are the use of those munitions a somewhat desperate move in light of the failure of the Ukrainian offensive to get traction? That failure is now being reported in the Western press.

    It appears to me that a stalemate exists that could go on for years. Lots of innocent people will suffer dearly in the meantime unless the West gets involved in bringing the war to a peaceful end.

  208. Woohoo! From Twitter:
    Jens Stoltenberg, @jensstoltenberg, “Glad to announce that after the meeting I hosted with @RTErdogan & @SwedishPM, President Erdogan has agreed to forward #Sweden’s accession protocol to the Grand National Assembly ASAP & ensure ratification. This is an historic step which makes all #NATO Allies stronger & safer.”

    The noose tightens around Russia. Putin’s screwup has to rank right up there with the biggest screwups of all time.

  209. Reading between the lines, cluster munitions are being delivered because they are already scheduled for destruction here (and are thus “free”) and the US is running low on other munitions.
    .
    A reported Russian objective is to make the west run out of artillery. I don’t think that will really happen but getting new supply on-line is supposedly a 2024 production thing.

  210. NATO ( the US ) is not now, or in the next several years, going to be able to produce 155mm shells in anything’s close to the amount Ukraine needs to hold back Russia. The cubby is bare and the US has a choice of having Ukraine run out of 155mm shells or supplying 155mm cluster shells. What does a war crime among friends mean anyway in the grand scheme of things.
    .
    Ukraine in this current offensive is said to be using about 5k 150mm size shells ( US or old Soviet) per day, or 150k per month.
    .
    The US produces about 20k of these a month.
    .
    Russia is using between 20k and 60k of 152mm and 120mm size shells per DAY with massive stockpiles and large production runs
    .
    This war will not last forever as the west cannot supply the needed artillery in a fixed war of attrition. I give it no more than another 12 to 18 months. Once Ukraine is ground down and low on ammunition, the Ukraine army will collapse, similar to what happened to the Germans in WWI.

  211. Ken,
    “It appears to me that a stalemate exists that could go on for years. ”
    .
    As many have predicted for many months.
    .
    It will take a change of leadership in either Washington or Moscow to start negotiations. The Biden administration’s refusal to acknowledge reality and deal with it constructively have cost hundreds of billions of dollars and a hundred thousand+ lives, with little to show for it and with no end of war in sight; pure FUBAR. IMHO, Biden is the least competent president ever. Or as Obama accurately noted: “never underestimate Joe’s ability to fu*k things up”.

  212. Ed Forbes,
    The Ukrainians are not going to ‘collapse’, nor are the Russians. You are like a very irritating broken record, skipping back to play the same line over-and-over….. with the off switch just out of reach. Give it a rest.

  213. Russell,
    Are these flights you are tracking trackable because these guys are running their transponders? If they are, why? Doesn’t sound so spooky to me.

  215. “I give it no more than another 12 to 18 months”
    .
    Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Last prediction Ed made was this was going to be over in … July. I’ll grant he didn’t specify what year.

  216. Steve
    The steady losses Ukraine suffers each day under steady artillery fire and air attack is causing large monthly totals. Ukraine cannot sustain such losses indefinitely. As it is an artillery war, and Russia outclasses Ukraine in artillery, drones, cruise missiles, tanks, IFV’s, and air by a minimum of 10 times, Ukraine is losing many times more troops than Russia.
    .
    At only 100 dead per day, with 4 seriously wounded per killed, this would be extremely light daily losses for an active front over 600 km long.
    .
    500 per day dead & wounded x 30 days per month x 12 months per year x 3 years of war = 540,000 casualties
    .
    In actuality, it will likely be much worse than above as the average daily losses are much greater than 100 dead per day in periods of intense combat.
    .
    The math on this is simple and Ukraine cannot continue to sustain such losses over time.
    .
    .

  217. Tom

    Agreed that I expected Russia to quickly mobilize to end this. Russia didn’t do so.
    .
    Russia decided to dig in and go for an attrition war that would put pressure on both NATO and Ukraine and maximize Russian superiority in artillery, air, armor, and ammunition stockpiles and production.
    .

  218. As to why Russia is now going for a long war instead of pressing for a short war, I expect that it’s because Russia is planning for the possible direct military intervention into the conflict by NATO.
    ..
    Going slow allows Russia time to mobilize and build up fully trained reserves and increase production to counter NATO if NATO decides to enter the conflict.
    .
    Rotation of the reserves through the combat lines gives combat experience to the majority of the Russian army which is a huge advantage over NATO. Similar to the German experience in supplying combat forces into Spain before WWII.

  219. Ken Fritsch (Comment #222590)
    “or are the use of those munitions a somewhat desperate move in light of the failure of the Ukrainian offensive to get traction?” I too think it is a desperate move because the offensive has stalled.
    But, I have no military expertise and there is another side of this argument, ISW July 4:
    “ISW continues to assess that the current pace of Ukrainian counteroffensives is reflective of the deliberate and strategic effort to create an asymmetrical attrition gradient to conserve Ukrainian combat power and attrit Russian manpower and equipment at the cost of slower territorial advances”
    https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-4-2023
    Also, Wall Street Journal 2 days ago —
    “Why the Ukraine Counteroffensive Is Such Slow Going
    Military analysts believe Ukraine is still probing for weak spots before committing the bulk of its Western weaponry.”
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-war-counteroffensive-frontlines-russia-add3e4e4
    The official US position:
    ‘US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl noted on July 7 that current Ukrainian operations across the front are the “beginning of the middle” of the wider counteroffensive and that it is therefore “too early to judge” how the counteroffensive is going”
    https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/3452000/under-secretary-of-defense-for-policy-dr-colin-kahl-holds-press-briefing/
    The Ukrainian people seem to be united and confident in their fight.
    It’s anecdotal, but I was excoriated on another forum by Ukrainian nationals when I posted it would take 100 years to kick the Russians out at this pace.

  220. “Gal Luft, a 57-year-old dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, is charged with acting as an unregistered agent of China and seeking to broker the sale of Iranian oil in violation of sanctions,”
    –
    Getting desperate now?
    Weiss is a disappointment as well.
    –
    If Nixon did this he would be impeached.

  221. angech,
    While mentally diminished considerably, Biden obviously remains both immoral and profoundly corrupt. That doesn’t matter to the many people who support his policies nor to people who desperately do not want Trump re-elected (overlapping groups, of course). Biden will continue to be protected by a combination of the DOJ, the Federal bureaucracy, the MSM, and left-leaning ‘intellectuals’. I very much doubt he will ever be held to account. I once believed a president dumber and less competent than Jimmy Carter could never be elected; I was mistaken. At least Carter wasn’t personally corrupt.

  222. SteveF,
    I share your feelings on this topic and I think it is important to put out information about some of the corruptness while it is still both legitimate and safe to do so.
    One small blog but with a wide readership might just help push Democracy back over the line.
    And the P76’s might win a basketball match championship.
    This last cover up is stretching the law to the limits.

  223. Hooray.
    .
    Republican Eyes Sweet Home for New FBI Headquarters in Alabama
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/republican-eyes-sweet-home-for-new-fbi-headquarters-in-alabama-479b19d8?st=odqjmafnx9d3zui&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
    “Republicans have a new idea for how to take Washington politics out of the FBI: Take the FBI out of Washington and send it to Huntsville, Ala.”
    .
    I think this should be done for the bulk of DC agencies. Not just because of the impenetrable political bubble that has formed, but also because the DC suburbs have some of the highest value and the highest rates of income. Spread it out.
    .
    Do I think it will change things a lot? Probably not, but it is a start, and I really don’t see much downside. Chances of this happening now are still pretty low, but Republicans should make this a campaign issue.

  224. I would have said two years ago that Ukraine attacking entrenched Russian positions would have been a pretty bad idea. I don’t think that has changed. A lot of unnecessary death, The goal of weakening Russia is still being served, but I think any grandiose ideas of Russia taking back the former Soviet Union are pretty much over.

  225. Stealth dementia:
    .
    We had a local experience with a retired Psychiatrist which suggested that dementia could be very “notchy”
    .
    If you were to compare the range of mental behaviors to a frequency spectrum, there might be coniditions where there is significant decline in a very narrow area without symptoms in other parts of the spectrum. This would be a notch.
    .
    The guy du jour shows no evidence of nominal aphasia nor any decline in competence in any other area than judgement.
    .
    We had a local situation blow up and his analysis of what was happening seemed accurate, but his recommendation on how to proceed was so far in left field that no-one privy thought it within the boundaries of the practical, let alone the ethical.
    .
    I pose this as a possibility when bizarre decisions are being made by someone who, as far as we can tell, seems to have his act together otherwise.
    .
    Despite being 80 myself, I suspect that if there is anything to the idea of stealth dementia, the best protection from suffering the misdeeds of someone with this condition who has reached high office is to prevent it.
    .
    And of course we have an almost daily display of someone who does have additional symptoms.

  226. Cluster munitions are very effective against … uhhhh … soft targets. Air burst artillery with a lot of shrapnel kind of serves the same purpose but isn’t as effective. If there are a bunch of people on foot you can use cluster munitions that cover a wider area so you don’t have to be as accurate. Sometimes they call these type of things “area denial weapons”.
    .
    I don’t really know how useful that would be now. Armies are dug in underground. Stay in bunkers, and make sure to spread out when moving in groups to limit casualties. Armies adapt, tactics change. I doubt this change will be very meaningful, but it wouldn’t make walking around any less stressful in you are in the infantry.

  227. Tom Scharf (Comment #222609)
    You posted: “If there are a bunch of people on foot you can use cluster munitions that cover a wider area so you don’t have to be as accurate.”
    That is exactly what Ukraine is facing these days. The Russian infantrymen derisively call them “Meat Assaults”.
    Here is a drone video of one from just this morning:
    https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1678714839391150082?s=20
    Russia has lost so much of its armor the infantry attacks on foot, in the open.
    Also, you posted “Armies are dug in underground”. Most of the Russian trenches I have seen are open with only rudimentary makeshift covering. The Ukrainians sneak up and lob in grenades.
    Here is a drone video of one from July 9th:
    https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1677950301695778816?s=20
    I think cluster munitions might work wonders.

  228. John
    “Despite being 80 myself, I suspect that if there is anything to the idea of stealth dementia, the best protection from suffering the misdeeds of someone with this condition who has reached high office is to prevent it.”
    .
    I have talked with you a couple of times for well over an hour each time…. you have no signs of dementia. Joe Biden? Plenty of signs. I think he is a real hazard to the country, because his thinking and judgement are bizarre. (“God save the Queen.” Say what?!?) I suspect he is mostly controlled by his handlers, but based on who those people are and what they think, that is small comfort.

  229. More on the FBI and censorship
    .

    “ The FBI cooperated with Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) to clamp down on social media accounts disseminating alleged “Russian disinformation,” but ended up flagging pages run by the US State Department and American journalists, a report by the House Judiciary Committee has revealed. ”
    .
    “ As a result, the two agencies “flagged for social media companies the authentic accounts of Americans, including a verified US State Department account and those belonging to American journalists,” and requested that those pages be deleted, the document read.
    .
    On some occasions, the FBI followed up to ensure that “these accounts were taken down,” according to the report, which was based on documents subpoenaed from Meta and Alphabet in February.”
    .
    .
    https://www.infowars.com/posts/fbi-colluded-with-ukraine-in-social-media-crackdown-lawmakers/

  230. SteveF,
    Thanks for your confidence in me..
    .
    The thing I was trying to get at was if there was any chance that dementia could exhibit in a vary narrow band of behavior such that a person who otherwise seemed complete might actually be dangerous because of the effects of this single narrow thread of dementia.
    .
    I’m sure a lot of Biden’s support is based on the belief that only he can beat Trump in 2024.
    .
    Aside from Biden’s conspicuous decline, and he was never that sharp*, there is the possibility that few Dems have consdidered that he could die sometime late in the campaign and they’d be stuck with Kamala who could lose to anyone. While we’re at it, the Repubs might campaign on the possibility that if Biden won, and then crashed, we’d have Kamala running the place which I think a lot of people would find pretty scary.
    .
    *During my brief stint as Chief Architect at Amtrak, design for new station in Springfield Mass was nearing completion. We got a call from then Senator Biden’s office seeking samples of the paint colors for the exterior. One of the guys put together a board with paint chips (little painted squares) of each of the colors for the station itself, and the trim.
    .
    This was sent down to DC from Philadelphia and almost immediately word came back that this was not what was wanted. Someone (Biden?) wanted a bigger sample.
    .
    A bigger board was made up and this time painted to look like one exteririor wall of the station with big area of wall and window and door of correct colors.
    .
    “Not what we want”
    .
    What they wanted was a mock-up including the concrete block and door and window frames. Philadelphia AMTRAK office was able to get a contractor doing one of our local projects to make this up. It was about 5 feet high and 8 feet long, weighed a whole lot and was attached to a steel frame with casters so it could be moved around.
    .
    That was what “He” wanted. Apparently our color selection was ok because we never heard about it again.
    .
    Obama was right about him.

  231. Biden has never been that bright and has been known to often make silly statements. He has no doubt declined but sometimes if he were just being the former Biden it might be difficult to tell.

    I disagree with nearly all of what has come out of the Biden administration, but I think Biden’s handlers have done a great job of controlling his progressive agenda. Biden has always been a follower and certainly that helps the handling part. When he goes off the party line his handlers make a correction and Biden does not quibble about it.

    Trump was handled well by his conservative handlers for the most part. Their problem was Trump’s ego that had to show through on all his public utterances. Maybe a more demented Trump would work better for all concerned.

    I suspect a Republican candidate with Biden’s mental deficiencies and following tendencies would work well for the conservative agenda.

    The poor stroke victim and PA Senator votes the party line and no one expects him to make sense or would criticize his ramblings. We could be embarking on the political age of electing door knobs as a proxy for a political philosophy left to the handlers.

  232. Ed Forbes (Comment #222612)
    July 11th, 2023 at 1:19 pm

    I think these censorships you note in your post are another example of the horrors of war where free speech is no longer free. The Russians have thrown a WSJ reporter in jail for publishing comments from Russian citizens.

    I see too much discussion of war from some people who would rather talk about strategies of war and ignore the horrors of it or worse attribute the horrors to only one side.

  233. Ken
    One of my favorite generals on the topic of war. He was shuffled aside at the start of the war and told he was crazy when he said the war between the states would take lives in the thousands.
    .
    William Tecumseh Sherman
    “ I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”
    .
    “ War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”
    .
    “ Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.”
    .
    “ We have good corporals and good sergeants and some good lieutenants and captains, and those are far more important than good generals.”
    .

  234. For sure Sherman’s march to the sea was the epitome of the horrors of war.

  235. Ken Fritsch (Comment #222615)
    You Posted: “I see too much discussion of war from some people who would rather talk about strategies of war and ignore the horrors of it or worse attribute the horrors to only one side.”
    I say there is independent documentation for only one side committing war crimes.
    From the International Criminal Court:
    “ICC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin”
    https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin-and

    From Human Rights Watch:
    “Apparent War Crimes in Russia-Controlled Areas
    Summary Executions, Other Grave Abuses by Russian Forces”
    “The cases we documented amount to unspeakable, deliberate cruelty and violence against Ukrainian civilians,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
    https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/03/ukraine-apparent-war-crimes-russia-controlled-areas

    From the UN:
    “War crimes, indiscriminate attacks on infrastructure, systematic and widespread torture show disregard for civilians, says UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine
    The war crimes include attacks on civilians and energy-related infrastructure, wilful killings, unlawful confinement, torture, rape and other sexual violence, as well as unlawful transfers and deportations of children.”
    https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2023/03/war-crimes-indiscriminate-attacks-infrastructure-systematic-and-widespread

  236. Russell “ I say there is independent documentation for only one side committing war crimes.”
    .
    Now that’s funny.
    A search of “Ukraine shoots POW” returns a long list of articles, such as:
    .
    A top U.N. official in Ukraine is calling for a probe into Ukrainian and Russian forces mistreating prisoners of war. One widely circulated video appears to show Ukrainian soldiers shooting three hooded Russians in their legs. The video also shows Ukrainian soldiers kicking and hitting the captive Russians, some of whom are bleeding.
    .
    Lviv, Ukraine
    CNN
    —
    CNN has geolocated a recent video that appears to show the execution of a Russian prisoner by Ukrainian forces following recent fighting in the Kyiv region.
    .
    Ukraine to investigate video appearing to show soldiers shooting …
    Mar 28, 2022Jon Swaine and Miriam Berger March 28, 2022 at 7:45 p.m. EDT Still frames from a video posted online show Ukrainian forces shooting Russian prisoners of war. (Telegram) 5 min Gift Article
    .
    Ukraine forces appear to kill captured Russians in video: Report
    A video posted online and verified by the New York Times appears to show troops fighting under a Ukrainian banner shooting what is believed to be a captured Russian soldier outside of a village …

  237. FBI getting a grilling.
    The Director sounds like Biden’s spokeswoman.
    Refuses to answer any questions of substance directly.
    Very Partisan.

  242. john ferguson (Comment #222621): “And he’s a Republican too. I suppose that’s partisan.”
    .
    I very much doubt that Wray is a Republican. Maybe he used to be a one back when the Republicans were one of the two Establishment parties. Wray is clearly pro-establishment, pro-government, and part of the Deep State. That makes him a Democrat.

  243. Yet appointed by Trump.
    I agree on pro-establishment, pro-government, and part of the Deep State, but not that that makes him a Democrat. Obviously it would deny him admittance to the Freedom Caucus.

    As to the “pro”s you list above wouldn’t you think it unlikely that anyone who has made a career in government would be otherwise?

    I continue to believe that FBI personnel are predominantly Republican although maybe not as Libertarian as I think you’d prefer. I get this on good authority from a very senior career FBI executive. If it isn’t true, at least he thinks it is.

    unfortunatley cannot share his name.

  244. John Ferguson, Mike M,
    Wray speaks so little about things of substance that it is impossible to evaluate him very easily. He clearly cares very much about protecting the FBI. Since the FBI seems to me a big part of Federal government over-teach, that makes Wray not a good choice to run the FBI. If a Republican wins the presidency in 2024, I expect Wray will resign before he is fired.

  245. SteveF,
    It probably makes a whole lot of difference “Which” Republican, although I feel this guy isn’t the strongest possibility.

  246. john ferguson (Comment #222627): “Yet appointed by Trump.
    I agree on pro-establishment, pro-government, and part of the Deep State, but not that that makes him a Democrat.”
    .
    OK, but that makes Wray’s party, or who appointed him, irrelevant with regard to angech’s Comment #222620.

    On the issues on which he was being questioned, Wray’s positions are indistinguishable from Biden’s.
    ——–

    john ferguson: “As to the “pro”s you list above wouldn’t you think it unlikely that anyone who has made a career in government would be otherwise?”
    .
    Sadly true. Which is why we need someone to take a wrecking ball to (at least) the upper levels of government administration. Otherwise, our Republic is lost.

  247. Mike M.
    I view Deep State as an inevitable consequence of having a government bureaucracy. And I can’t imagine any form of government that isn’t going to evolve into a bureaucracy.

    Youmay have figured it out. How do you think we should solve this conundrum – needing some form of government but without a bureaucracy??
    .

  248. Yeah, a bureaucracy is inevitable. That is a big reason why government should be kept as small as possible and as local as possible. But the bureaucracy should not be setting policy and should be answerable to the people’s elected representatives.

  249. John Ferguson,
    “I get this on good authority from a very senior career FBI executive. If it isn’t true, at least he thinks it is.

    unfortunatley cannot share his name.”
    .
    Fair enough. Is the person at FBI headquarters (Washington) or a field office?

  251. Career in Washgton and some overseas with another agency. Retired 10 years ago but still consults in his area.

    I doubt anyone would recognize the name.

  252. John Ferguson,
    A lot of water has flowed over the dam in 10 years, with the big change starting in 2016.
    .
    Wray certainly knows there were plenty of bad actors involved in the ‘Russiagate’ fiasco, the carefully planned entrapment of Michael Flynn, the FBI’s deception of the FISA court in monitoring the Trump campaign (two hops can go a long way!), and more. A few have been fired or demoted, but the FBI has never honestly fessed up to politically motivated malfeasance. Wray refusing to answer most every important question tells me the FBI is very far from reformed. Wray should just answer the damned questions!
    .
    I absolutely do not trust the FBI and would be pleased if congress made the agency considerably smaller and their jobs a lot more difficult.

  253. SteveF,
    I worry more that the FBI is so bureaucratized that information is lost and cannot be acted on because the people who could act never get it.
    .
    I don’t have any real grasp of how efficient they are. I suspect, not very.

  254. SteveF (Comment #222637): “…with the big change starting in 2016.”
    .
    The big change started with Robert Mueller, who centralized the agency, brought in outside “experts” to run things from Washington, and made the FBI an arm of the intelligence community. His “reforms” really bore fruit in 2016 under his hand-picked successor, James Comey.

    Details here: https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/24/how-robert-mueller-empowered-the-fbi-to-take-out-presidents-protesters-and-pro-life-dads/

  255. Mike M,
    Interesting article. Don’t see how the culture get changed to decentralize the FBI. The simplest would be to prohibit by law cases being run by anyone at FBI headquarters.

  256. If I remember, the flap du jour, was the failure of the FBI to correctly reognize the range of meanings implied by an Arab in Minnesota desiring flying lessons without any interest in take-offs and landings.
    .
    I had supposed that although this interesting bit circulated to some degree within the agency, it never found it’s way to anyone who could infer what it might mean. I’d say in support of our mutual suspicion of bureaucracies that this isn’t at all surprising.

    And then there was the problem of the “Intelligence” agencies not sharing information – which I suspect hasn’t changed.

    I found the Federalist article a bit silly. How could anyone with any experience in any dispersed organization believe that Mueller was unable to grasp how it worked?
    .
    I think the term which reflected Mueller’s view of the field office was that they were run like Duchies which I suppose would imply that there was a Duke in charge.
    .
    Pro-life dads? Really.

  257. John Ferguson,
    The intelligence and security failures associated with 9/11 were widespread, starting with the decision to allow potentially lethal weapons like boxcutters to be carried onto planes.
    .
    I think a big part of the failure was that up ’till then, it was almost incomprehensible for most Americans that a large group of religious zealots would conspire to commit joint suicide (and meet their 30 virgins in heaven!) by crashing airplanes into buildings.
    .
    I doubt that the organizational and communication structures were as much at fault as the shear, unbelievable, suicidal craziness that generated the 9/11 attacks. That has changed, of course: lots of people now understand just how crazy Islamic zealots are, meaning the recognized window of potential threats is now much, much wider than pre 9/11. Nobody is going to ignore bizarre behaviors… like learning to fly jets but not land them…. by a bunch of Saudi nationals. No more boxcutters (or sometimes nail clippers) allowed on commercial airliners, etc.
    .
    The downside is a simple over-reaction: the expansion of Federal surveillance of US citizens under FISA and the “two hop rule”…. meaning most anyone is likely subject to surveillance. I will not mourn if the FISA provisions allowing spying on US citizens expires at the end of this year.

  258. john ferguson (Comment #222641): “I had supposed that although this interesting bit circulated to some degree within the agency, it never found it’s way to anyone who could infer what it might mean.”
    .
    FBI agents in the Minnesota field office were alarmed and sought a warrant to search the would-be hijacker’s laptop. That was denied by higher ups in the FBI.
    .
    The FBI field office in Phoenix also heard about strange stuff at flight schools and decided that somebody might be planning to turn planes into weapons. They sent that up the line of command, into oblivion.
    .
    Could such things have been bureaucratic incompetence? Quite possibly; bureaucracies have a pretty much unlimited capacity to screw things up. But it was surely much more than the normal level of incompetence.

  259. Mike M. You probably have no idea how delighted I am to read something you’ve written with which I completely agree.
    .
    One might wonder how many people up the line at FBI had never been special agents. maybe like school systems where no-one above level of teacher has ever faced a classroom.
    .

  260. Conspiracy theory…
    I was tracking a USAF KC-135 Stratotanker that had no call sign. It was flying NE over Nova Scotia at 25,000 feet and it suddenly went dark.
    I suspect it was part of an armada of fighter jets [already flying dark] on their way to escort Airforce One. Biden is scheduled to leave Helsinki at 12:45 PM Florida time.
    Screenshot moments before it went dark:
    https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1679518636296249348?s=20

  261. The FBI is forwarding Ukraine requests for social media censoring.
    https://www.racket.news/p/where-have-all-the-liberals-gone
    “The documents not only contain incontrovertible evidence that our own FBI pressures tech companies to censor material, but that the Bureau is outsourcing such work to a foreign government, in this case Ukraine. This passage below for instance reads “The SBU requested for your review and if appropriate deletion/suspension of these accounts.””

  262. Wray is never going to reform the FBI for several reasons. First he does not have to. The Democrats are now in love with the FBI and the Republicans not so much anymore which means the MSM is now in love with the FBI. Secondly Wray sees his job at the FBI as a publicity agent and/or head of marketing that wants to sell a brand. Third he uses praise of the working agents in the FBI to deflect from systemic problems. Fourth he uses claims of foreign dangers in an attempt to amplify the importance of the FBI.

    Foreign disinformation is a phony issue and becomes clear when one considers that the US public is left to extract the truth from all the lies and misinformation coming out of our own politicians mouths and worse figuring out what misinformation is ignored by US truth squads.

    For those still worried about an authoritative government, an opaque FBI would be a necessary tool for getting there. Wray’s testimony epitomized opaqueness.

  263. Ukraine wanting to join NATO under the cover of war and overlooking the corruption issues in Ukraine is another problem that comes out of wars with all the emergency exceptions to normal governance that are made.

  264. Ken Fritsch,
    “Ukraine wanting to join NATO under the cover of war and overlooking the corruption issues in Ukraine is another problem that comes out of wars with all the emergency exceptions to normal governance that are made.”
    .
    Sure. Ukraine was a typically corrupt former Soviet state; that is not going to change overnight (see Hunter Biden’s $million+ payoff from a Ukrainian company based on his father’s influence). To bring Ukraine into NATO would be a) contrary to all previous NATO policies on governance and corruption, b) invite a nuclear war with Russia, c) immediately start a ground war with USA soldiers fighting against Russia in Ukraine, and d) likely lead to the breakup of NATO itself. The utter stupidity, it burns.

  265. Ken Fritsch,
    Even the terribly demented Biden can probably see that inviting Ukraine to join NATO is a non-starter. First thing he has gotten right in his whole presidency.

  266. “Third he (Wray) uses praise of the working agents in the FBI to deflect from systemic problems.”
    .
    The last refuge of a scoundrel is patriotism. The next to last refuge of a scoundrel is cloaking himself in the valor of front-line law enforcement officers. Wray is as far from a front line law enforcement officer as anyone could be. He flies private on the taxpayer dime and risks absolutely nothing. Shame on him.

  267. The Burisma payouts to the Bidens are not an example of a corrupt Ukrainian government. They are an example of a corrupt American government.

  268. Mike M,
    They are an example of both. The Ukrainians could have thumbed their noses (with much fan fair) about Biden’s corrupt influence in the Ukraine. They didn’t.

  269. The similarities between the current Ukraine offensive and Germany in the 1943 battle of Kurst is fascinating. Both fought in the same general area.
    1943 map of Kurst
    https://images.beastsofwar.com/2018/07/Kursk_01C.jpg

    .
    These battles for both Ukraine and Germany were a last chance to turn the strategic situation around from facing inevitable defeat to a possibly of victory. Germany failed and by all accounts Ukraine has failed in its offensive also.
    .
    NATO promised a blank check to Ukraine in March of last year to not come to terms with Russia and continue fighting. At the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania this week, Ukraine was told they couldn’t cash the check.
    .
    As resupply issues for Ukraine will now become increasingly desperate over time due to NATO not being able to give unlimited support as promised, Ukraine faces some hard choices in the coming months. Reports are saying that NATO has given Ukraine until the end of the year to take back Crimea or face even greater reductions in support.

  270. I am re-evaluating my support for significant arms shipments to Ukraine. My previous approval was based on two conditions: First, Ukraine was willing to take the fight to the Russians and second, they were effectively using the arms to degrade the Russian armed forces. I am no longer certain the second condition is being met.

  272. With football and hockey seasons starting up soon we are reshuffling our streaming services. We started discussing the options and both blurted out simultaneously “I don’t want to go back to cable!” One of the serendipitous benefits of cord-cutting for us is that we rediscovered TV dramas. We [mostly me] stopped watching tv dramas decades ago. The commercials became overbearing and I couldn’t follow the story. Now we watch all the on-demand stuff with no commercials. Hulu alone claims to have 2,500 show series titles. Some of these old shows are quite entertaining. We watched the whole series of some of them. Some are binge-worthy. Our history so far, in descending order of preference: Castle, Columbo, Veronica Mars, Chuck, Munk, Alias, Magnum P.I., Murder She Wrote, Psyche. We currently are into White Collar, The Rookie, and Covert Affairs. [Probably gonna drop Covert Affairs]
    We are open to suggestions.

  273. Russell,
    Are there not additional fees to stream these things on top of the hulu subscription? That’s what we found with Roku.

    We have cable, watch Tampa Bay Rays ball games, Some PBS (tongue-biting) , some MSNBC (more tongue-biting-no shouting permitted in this house), and then some PBS Passport Shows, Netflix and Amazon Video – a lot of movies especially Bollywood.

    The Spectrum cable comes with our internet feed, which is very good (500 mbs incoming) although they seem to change DNS addresses without warning and our router doesn’t follow the change without a reboot.

    I suppose if you are a news junky, cutting the cord may not work. but ???

  274. Live sports are cable TV’s last gasp. ESPN is likely going to go to subscription, but who wants to pay 6 services for 6 different sports? It’ a mess.
    .
    There is something called DDNS (Dynamic DNS) that gets around changing IP addresses, but it’s a bit of a pain as all things networking are.
    .
    Some cable companies intentionally changed your IP address because they want to upcharge you to a static IP plan. They don’t want you to run servers at home because their uplink bandwidth is not as high as their downlink. Mostly they just want to charge you more money though. Cable companies are near criminal enterprises in some areas, fortunately for me I have two providers to my house which keeps them well behaved.

  275. john ferguson (Comment #222659)
    You asked: “Are there not additional fees to stream these things on top of the hulu subscription?”
    Hulu has a lot of options, we have tried three of them. Our current plan is $16.00 /month [no contract]. We get access to the entire on-demand TV and movie library with no commercials and no additional fees.
    View library: https://www.hulu.com/hub/home
    You also asked: “I suppose if you are a news junky, cutting the cord may not work. but ???”
    We do not have access to any live programming on Hulu [that costs about $60 more]. For football season again this year we are adding YouTubeTV. It has 100+ live stations, including every news station you can imagine and all the local [Tampa] area stations. It costs $74/month [no contract].
    View Live Channels:
    https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-tv-channels-1014013/
    I had it last year and watched every college football game I wanted. It even covered the ACC and SEC channels.
    For hockey last year I had ESPN+ $9.99/month [no contract] and could watch almost every out-of-market game from the NHL. The Tampa Bay Lightning games were blacked out. I’m not sure what I am doing for hockey this year.

  276. John wrote: “although they seem to change DNS addresses without warning and our router doesn’t follow the change without a reboot.”
    .
    This is pretty standard behavior for ISPs that don’t give fixed IPs but should not be causing an issue. I suspect that DHCP isn’t enabled somewhere it should be.

  277. The Spectrum cable comes with our internet feed, which is very good (500 mbs incoming) although they seem to change DNS addresses without warning and our router doesn’t follow the change without a reboot.

    Set your router to use google’s or another open DNS resolvers. That should stop requiring a reboot. Only issue is that might cause issues for your IPTV boxes if they are using private IP addresses for the servers.
    8.8.8.8
    8.8.4.4
    2001:4860:4860::8888
    2001:4860:4860::8844
    or
    2001:4860:4860:0:0:0:0:8888
    2001:4860:4860:0:0:0:0:8844
    Those are google’s open resolvers. There are other dns resolver providers (Opendns?) that claim to help identify and filter out malware lookups. I don’t have any experience with them, as there is a cost associated and side-effects such as erroneous blocks.

  278. I used to use 75.75.75.75 and 75.75.75.76. I see they still work. .
    .
    symptom of the problem is that it gets to take a bunch fo time to locate and load a particular site, then any site.
    .
    No error messages. I try pinging dns servers i know and they work. I think Linux has an option that it willuse systems DNS addresses but if they get sluggish, load from your list. Mind you, I haven’t gotten deeply into this because it is an infrequent problem.

  280. Those DNS servers belong to comcast. I note some complaints about connectivity to them over the years. It would be worth trying a different DNS to see if the problem disappears.

  283. The current (or initial?) estimate of covid relief that was fraudulent:
    https://www.sba.gov/document/report-23-09-covid-19-pandemic-eidl-ppp-loan-fraud-landscape
    “We estimate that SBA disbursed over $200 billion in potentially fraudulent COVID-19 EIDLs, EIDL Targeted Advances, Supplemental Targeted Advances, and PPP loans. This means at least 17 percent of all COVID-19 EIDL and PPP funds were disbursed to potentially fraudulent actors.”
    .
    That ~ $1800 of fraud for every US taxpayer.

  285. Thanks Russell.
    .
    It worked for me. It appears that a lot of this content is available through Amazon Prime usually at a cost of $4-$6 per film.
    .
    We are working our way through a older films now, Metropolis for example and find that many of them are part of Criterion’s library and have been restored – some early postwar Japanese films so well that it’s like watching a print which has never before been run through a projector.
    .
    I’d be very interested in readin what anyone has to say about the choices in your CR report. I don’t see any reason to change what we’re doing now which is Cable TV, Netflix, and Amazon Prime.

  286. Well…. fun drive. Sirens started blowing. (On further consultation, it’s only “rotation sighted”. No actual tornados yet. Watch is still on.)

  287. Lucia,
    The good news: all pretty weak… EF1 and EF0.
    We get a fair number of those in Florida as well.

  288. Yeah… it’s just weird getting in the car and hearing sirens. We stopped at a Walgreens and Jim looked at a weather site. It said that it was just rotation sighted– no actual tornados. So we figured we’d drive instead of sitting in the Walgreens for 45 minutes until the alert was over.

    When we left there was no wind. Then rain, lightening and gusts started. The erratic gusts are a bit unsettling.

    But this is Illinois.

    Of course we didn’t know what the winds were like at home while we were away. But they couldn’t have been too bad on our block. Some leaves torn off trees, but no major limbs.

    Usually, I’m in a building when the sirens go off. Just never happened to be in the car during a siren event.

  289. From the Atlantic:
    “The Instant Pot Failed Because It Was a Good Product”
    I am one of the millions of Instant Pot’s loyal fans…. It works, and it keeps on working. Its parent company filed for bankruptcy. The current rage in the news media is that there was no planned obsolescence built into it, so it failed in today’s corporate environment. We’re not buying new ones because the old ones keep working, and that is bad for business. I agree.
    The New Yorker
    ‘Business schools may someday make a case study of one of Instant Pot’s vulnerabilities, namely, that it was simply too well made. Once you slapped down your ninety dollars for the Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1, you were set for life: it didn’t break, it didn’t wear out, and the company hasn’t introduced major innovations that make you want to level up. As a customer, you were one-and-done, which might make you a happy customer, but is hell on profit-and-growth performance metrics.’
    The Verge
    In the bid to grow at all costs, Instant Pot is cooking itself / Instant Pot has kept me in perfectly cooked beans for years, but its desire to mimic Big Tech seems to have led to a bankruptcy filing today.
    https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/12/23758602/instant-pot-bankruptcy-new-products-2023-decline
    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/06/instant-pot-bankrupt-private-equity/674414/#:~:text=It doesn’t appear to,the Instant Pot a problem.
    https://www.newyorker.com/news/afterword/the-instant-pot-and-the-miracle-kitchen-devices-of-yesteryear

  291. Russell…
    I have a perfectly good slow cooker. I bought it before I was aware of Instant Pot, which looks great. It does about 1/2 of what Instant Pot does, but I hit my limit of gadgets.

    I did like this from your link

    It’s not the first company that’s had this happen to it. Too often, a tech-adjacent company gets saddled with the expectations of the tech space. You’ve got to have infinite growth and constantly be finding new categories to wade into rather than simply being just extremely good at a specific thing.

    Yeah…. some investors don’t quite grasp having something that just generates a stable level of profits forever. There is a need for a fair number of useful kitchen things. But you don’t repeat constantly….

  292. Russell: Re: putting yourself out of business.
    .
    Two stories. High School classmate found himself unable to excape taking over family business, oriental carpets.
    .
    We had dinner with him a few years ago and he was going crazy. He’s in Northern Chicago Suburbs.
    .
    “The trouble with the goddamned rugs is they never wear out. Once a customer has one in each of the rooms she thinks suitable, that’s the end of any business opportunity with her unless the place burns down.”
    .
    Retired CFO of Starrett, the outfit which makes precision measuring tools in Athol, Mass.
    .
    “The trouble with our goddamned tools is they never wear out” Our competitor is ourselves and the market ie E-Bay where someone can get a good used micromoeter for 10 to 20% of the cost of a new one.”

  293. Lucia, I have never used it as a slow cooker. I use it as a pressure cooker 3 to 6 times a week. I used to use slow cookers, but I switched to pressure for pot roasts, beans, rice, potatoes, soups, pasta sauce, veggies. I still have 2 slow cookers (big one and little one) but seldom use them.
    Edit…… I do use it to make yogurt which is not pressure mode.

  294. Second edit…. Even hard boiled eggs are better in a pressure cooker… they are much easier to peal (usually) and take 5 minutes and you don’t have to baby them while cooking.

  296. The problem with buying cheap crap from no-name companies out of China is you have to assume the products are disposable. This is fine sometimes. These companies don’t make the product long enough to allow for simple generational improvements to significantly extend longevity through failure analysis. The economic pressures are such that short term savings of a few cents overrides long term business needs. Most of the engineers and designers want to improve the products, but the feedback cycle from customers to designers gets eliminated.
    .
    You would think the knowledge of how to design a robust umbrella is not a level 10 secret in 2023.

  297. There is simply no need to generationally improve when you can just copy the generational improvements other companies make, save the cash, and sell your product cheaper.

  299. Tom Scharf:
    I bought a 6040 CNC Router from China. There were plenty of pictures of it on Amazon and it included a controller that could be purchased seperately, and a servo driven indexing head that you couldn’t possibly use with this particular machine. It was relativley inexpensive – maybe $1600 in 2014.
    .
    It came in a huge wooden crate with the actual box for the router floating in a sea of large foam blocks. My guess was it could have been dropped 50 feet with no damage to the contents.
    .
    I de-boxed it and did what assembly was required, discovered that it had imperial lead screws not the metric I thought I was buying (no real problem) and that there was a design problem with the fan in the controller which prevented it from operating. The way it was designed, this fan could never have worked. I wondered what the other customers were doing or if they even noticed that their fans were stalled.
    .
    I relocated the component which was in the way, fired it up and was mkaing the parts I needed the next day.
    .
    About 6 months later, I got an email from Shanghai with some questions. Was I using it? If so, what was I making? Did it arrive safe and sound? Did I have any problem assembling it? Did it do what I’d expected, and last but not least, did I have any observations which could help them improve the product. Wow!!!
    .
    I sent them the photos I’d taken of the fan problem and my solution, and a couple of others showing aspects of the design which I would have done another way.
    .
    About 3 weeks later I got another email from them. This one showed how they had relocated the fan in the controller, and what they were doing about two of my suggestoins and why they thought the third one wasn’t a good idea. They wanted my opinion on the above.
    .
    I was overwhelmed that anything like this could happen today, much less from China. I can’t think of anything else I’ve bought in my adult life where the vendor actually wanted to hear my experience.
    .
    I know, I know, we get contantly pinged by vendors whose things we’ve bought. But how many of them ever follow up on a technical whine with anything other than an apology. Is “NONE” the right word?
    .
    I’ve had simlar very good experience with GPS chips bought from Chinese and Genset Controllers bought from India. The real trick to dealing with these guys is figuring out how to address the guy you think can help you withut the question getting lost in marketing. I had a long email discussion which evolved into a discussion of life in 2006 +/- with Chief Engineer in Shanghai of the outfit that made the GPS chips I was trying to use in an anchoring alarm for the boat. Guy’s grandparents had been peasants, his dad worked in the post office and he went to engine school and graduated eventually with equivalent of a master’s in EE. I would have loved to have spent an evening with him.
    .
    So my expereince with Chinese stuff is almost all good, at least with the serious things.

  300. DaveJR (Comment #222683)
    “There is simply no need to generationally improve when you can just copy the generational improvements other companies make, save the cash, and sell your product cheaper.”
    …. and eventually, everything in the stores is cheap crap that is a clone of other cheap crap.

  302. Re john ferguson (Comment #222685)
    July 15th, 2023 at 11:23 am

    “So my expereince with Chinese stuff is almost all good, at least with the serious things.”
    ________

    The Chinese made goods I have are OK, no better or no worse than things made elsewhere. But I still avoid food imported from China. I’m not sure its clean and free of harmful ingredients.

  303. John Ferguson,
    “I was overwhelmed that anything like this could happen today, much less from China. I can’t think of anything else I’ve bought in my adult life where the vendor actually wanted to hear my experience.”
    .
    My experience as well with any significant purchase. (Cheap stuff? forgetaboutit… usually junk… like the 25 mw 405 nm laser which lasted exactly 60 seconds until completely cooked). I believe the exceptional in-person support for significant purchases is because most of these Chinese companies operate with zero State-side technical support/service, so they have to compensate. One Chinese company offered me ceramic ball ABEC7 bearings for 10% of the price from my German supplier…. and they followed up to make sure I was happy. The Germans? Not so much… “Shut up, our bearings are always perfect!”
    .
    Compare no State-side support to my company’s in-China distributor, with three different offices and probably 8 engineers who can support my products. It makes perfect economic sense, since for me to provide that kind of hand-holding support in China would require a) very expensive USA based staff, and b) people who can communicate effectively in Chinese. So just about impossible.

  304. There is an explanation for why you see a lot of “missing cat” posters in Florida. That and coyotes.

  305. A lot of the stuff on Amazon looks like private label stuff all coming out of the same factory.
    .
    Part of the problem is just little effort at customer feedback, most companies make it hard to even give feedback. With software sometimes I know exactly what the problem is and exactly how they can fix it, but I just cannot take the pain of going through their tech support with “reboot your computer … try reinstalling Windows …”.
    .
    I will say I gave what would likely be considered a pretty negative response to a software installation issue a few months ago with a software development tool and was contacted by the President of the company and we went back a forth a few times, and did resolve it.
    .
    I had quite the hissy fit with Adobe Photoshop copy protection issues and India tech support (we are now going to give you a 25 digit install code composed entirely of C,D,E,P,3,T,G,Z in a heavy accent for you to type in…) and was given a permanent US tech support line number. That was the age when you could guess the President’s email address, ha ha.
    .
    It becomes a necessity to screen unsophisticated users from your skilled engineers or they end up going crazy, I’ve been on the other side of that. That screen quickly becomes an impenetrable wall.
    .
    I would say 2/3 of the time when I left a detailed report of a problem, I got nothing but automated replies. Now for an important purchase or a professional tool I always scan their support forums and check release notes looking for active support.

  306. You are right Tom Scharf, sometimes and particularly on amazon you see essentiually the same thing sold by two dozen outfits all of whom can gin up english descriptions which generally reveal that they have no idea what the thing actually is.
    .
    I’d like to think careful reading is key, but in my purchases it has been just as much luck. In a couple of cases I looked at the purchase as buying about 90% of what it would take to complete the machine and then I would reasemble it and provide my own lead screws or switches or whatever else I didn’t like the looks of.
    .
    You can always ask a technical question to see if there is at least one person in the place that understands.
    .
    i reallhy do love present day ease of access to vendors of almost everything. It’s so much better now than when I was young. Then it was the yellow pages and I could spend the day on the phone trying to track down something I needed. I was rebuilding a reed organ and needed 5/32 wood dowel. You’d think that would have been easy, but in 1969 I must have talked to a dozen yellow page listed outfits before someone daid he didn’t have it but Charley Weiss in Hyde Park would know where to get it, and not only did he, he had it.
    .
    I used to think that in Chicago you were usually within 3 phone calse of getting what you wanted. This did not apply to Saint Louis or Washington DC, unles you were satisfied with call someone in New Jersey.
    .
    Now we can find this stuff in 20 minutes, decide who to get it from and have it in a couple of days,
    .
    Yippee.

  307. John Ferguson,
    My company routinely buys our used equipment (usually 6 to 12 years old) on eBay (and other sites). The rational: anyone who buys the used equipment will soon be after us for as much free technical support as possible, sometimes with less-than-honest declarations about the providence of the instrument they own, and we would rather sell new, where we actually make a profit.

  308. OK_Max (Comment #222687)
    “Have you ever seen a bobcat in your neighborhood during the day?”
    Yes, but not frequently. They seem to have a favorite path behind the pool cage.

  309. Tom Scharf (Comment #222690)
    “There is an explanation for why you see a lot of “missing cat” posters in Florida. That and coyotes.”
    Yes, we have no stray cats in our area. We have both bobcats and coyotes plus barred owls, so we are complete in the predator department. My neighbor has a Jack Russel that I worry about becoming cat food. Oddly, we also have a lot of rabbits and squirrels.

  310. SteveF,

    You buy used equipment made by you when it shows up on Ebay to protecgt yourselves from the inevitble aggravation from the people who might otherwise buy it and then beat you up seeking free support.
    .
    This is a very intelligent practice.
    .
    I am not a big fan of “right to repair” I think most of the people who think they somehow have a right to repair their own gizmos also expect the original vendor to support their efforts at no cost to them.
    .
    But things have changed a lot in the last 50 years. I used to get good support from camera company repair centers. The problem was I didn’t have any idea what the broken part was called ( most frequently part of the film advance mechanism) but I could take a polaroid of the part next to a ruler, then another photo of the camera with an arrow pointing to where it lived and then a blank check to the company which had “not to exceed $25” written on the note line. I always got the part and no-one ever cashed the check. Once in a while I received a couple more parts and a note that if the part that had failed was needed, it was a good idea to replace these others while I was at it.
    .
    things used to be so collegiate.
    .
    maybe in some industries they still are.

  312. Tom

    A lot of the stuff on Amazon looks like private label stuff all coming out of the same factory.

    This is also true for blow dryers, uv/led nail lamps, nail polish, all sorts of face creams, hair brushes and many inexpensive sort of common womens clothes. (Leggings, chiffon skirts, shorts…)
    .
    The descriptions are often iffy. Size descriptions can be hilarious. But for some things it doesn’t matter too much. And the reviews on Amazon will mention some features. Sort of. Buyer beware. (Often returns are free, which works very well for the clothes.)
    .
    You can buy stuff in bulk from China, get a label on it and run your own ebay store.

  314. I think right to repair is meaningful to protect against extortionist practices like charging ginormous fees to replace parts that wear out like batteries, or broken phone screens.
    .
    As long as the company is charging reasonable repair rates and are accessible then perhaps it isn’t necessary. Batteries are both the biggest problem and the biggest threat with 3rd party products.

  316. From Buffalo Springfield:
    “Paranoia strikes deep
    Into your life it will creep
    It starts when you’re always afraid
    Step out of line, the men come and take you away”
    From ISW:
    “Russian sources reported on July 15 that the Russian military command dismissed 106th Guards Airborne (VDV) Division Commander Major General Vladimir Seliverstov.“
    “Seliverstov’s dismissal may be a part of an ongoing purge of insubordinate commanders by the Russian military command and may suggest that the corrosion of the Russian chain of command in Ukraine is accelerating.”
    Almost everyday we hear of another Russian general being sacked or mysteriously going missing. I don’t know how you can run a war with so much upheaval in the ranks.
    Links:
    Music video, https://youtu.be/gp5JCrSXkJY
    ISW, https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-15-2023

  317. Personally I think it is improper for the media to do these type of prosecutor puff pieces in political prosecutions. Supposedly right before grand jury hears evidence.
    .
    Fani Willis: The No-Nonsense Georgia Prosecutor on a Collision Course With Donald Trump
    District attorney relishes complicated cases, while former president chides her probe as partisan
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/fani-willis-the-no-nonsense-georgia-prosecutor-on-a-collision-course-with-donald-trump-600b88f8?st=evycff1tfb6477k&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

  319. Conspiracy theory [my own]…. Putin wanted a purge of the military. He used Prigozhin and Wagner’s uprising as cover.
    The following are facts:
    Wagner started the rebellion with great success. They were cruising to Moskow but suddenly halted the attack even though they were meeting only light resistance. A few days after the insurrection Putin met with Prigozhin and Wagner’s leadership in Moskow. They were only mildly sanctioned. On the other hand, almost immediately, senior military leaders, particularly generals, began to have bad things happen to them; there have been arrests, disappearances, firings, and several mysterious deaths [blamed on the Ukrainians].
    Further conspiracy theory… I believe Putin was concerned that the poor results in Ukraine would lead to a military coup he wanted to beat them to it. He used Prigozhin and Wagner’s leadership to identify the targets and initiate the purge.
    Some backup evidence:
    NPR:
    Putin met Wagner leader Prigozhin days after failed uprising
    Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and nearly three dozen of his mercenary commanders for talks in Moscow late last month
    https://www.npr.org/2023/07/10/1186726748/putin-met-wagner-leader-prigozhin-after-failed-uprising
    NYT:
    One top commander has disappeared since a mutiny. Another was killed in an airstrike in Ukraine. Another accused his leadership of treachery after being fired. And a fourth former commander was gunned down while out on a jog in what may have been an organized hit.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/world/europe/sergei-surovikin-russian-general-missing.html#:~:text=A%20Russian%20lawmaker%20says%20that,been%20%E2%80%9Ctaking%20a%20rest.%E2%80%9D&text=One%20top%20commander%20has%20disappeared,of%20treachery%20after%20being%20fired.
    NY Post:
    Russia continues firing generals amid ‘purge’ by defense ministry
    https://nypost.com/2023/07/15/russia-continues-firing-generals-amid-purge-by-defense-ministry/
    Moscow Times:
    Russian authorities have returned 10 billion rubles ($111.2 million) to exiled Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin which they had seized in police raids during his aborted rebellion last month.
    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/07/04/111m-seized-during-police-raids-returned-to-prigozhin-a81731
    Radio Free Europe:
    Wagner Chief Prigozhin Calls Off March To Moscow, Easing Tensions
    https://www.rferl.org/a/wagner-prigozhin-mercenaries-occupying-russia/32473532.html
    Anton Gerashchenko:
    In the first hours after Prigozhin’s rebellion, Russia detained at least 13 high-ranking Russian military officers for questioning, and another 15 were dismissed or suspended.
    Putin will probably put them all in jail, just as Stalin did with his generals.
    https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1680487871608659968?s=20

  320. Stalin had the prescience to do it before the war.

    We did it after Pearl Harbor.

    Lincoln did it whenever inadequacy became evident.

  322. john ferguson
    You said you watch Tampa Bay Rays on Spectrum. The Rays and Lightning both use Bally Sports Sun for TV and I am exploring my options for hockey season. Last year for hockey season I had ESPN+. It cost $9.99 /mo [no contract] and it gave me every NHL game except the Lightning who are blacked out. [which is OK since I am a Penguins fan too] Bally Sports Sun has a $14.99 / mo [no contract package] for the Lightning and the Rays, which I am considering adding to the ESPN+ for this hockey season. What does Spectrum charge for the Bally Sports Sun tier? And do you get the out-of-market games for the other hockey teams? And do they do monthly deals? Thanks, I tried looking that stuff up but they require you to give them your address and phone to get any info. [typical cable company!]

  323. Rusell,
    ‘ll have to look into this. I suspect that balley is part of a bundle which costs way too much. We don’t watch any other sports, in part because Janet grew up loving baseball and used to memorize all of the statitstics in the ”50s.

    It looks like Balley broadcasts all of the games unless Apple does it ot Fox. If it’s Fox, it’s included in our cable subsription, if Apple not. Then we have to do a one week Apple subscription and drop it the next day.

    As an aside, the Rays Announcers DeWayne Staats anbd Brian Anderson are the most droll comentators I’ve ever listened to. Dewayne has been doing gthe Rays for many years and Brian Anderson was an MLB pitcvher. I cannot imagine another pair getting into a discussion about how sometbhing which had just happebed on the field reminded them of a particular Shakespeare play and they qwent on to show how this observation was not from deep space.

    They are so good, that we cojuuld listen to them and not watch the game, not that their game reporting would be sufficiently detailed for radio. We are always disappointed when an away game is played on Fox or ?? and we hacve to listen the usually sorry local talent.

  325. Tom Scharf,
    “Local TV blackouts are about the dumbest marketing policy I can imagine.”
    .
    It depends. As I understand the situation, blackouts of the Boston Red Sox are tied to their (team-owned) New England Sports Network (NESN). They have bullied the local cable companies into requiring a NESN subscription in every cable package offered and you can’t opt out. So every cable subscriber in New England supports the Boston Red Sox, even if they never watch a baseball game, generating a huge cash flow which never stops. NESN’s blackout rules make it impossible for someone who wants to watch a Red sox game to do so unless they are outside of the controlled cable access area. You can pay an annual subscription to access Red Sox games via streaming without a cable subscription….. but it costs nearly as much as an annual basic cable package. You can subscribe to MLB-TV and pay a monthly fee to a “fake location” service provider, but then you are back to paying a monthly total not much different from a cable package.

  326. john ferguson (Comment #222710)
    “As an aside, the Rays Announcers DeWayne Staats anbd Brian Anderson are the most droll comentators I’ve ever listened to.”
    That’s hilarious! Way back when we had cable, Staats and Anderson were the Rays commentators. They put me to sleep…every time I tuned in.

  328. We have a new favorite-of-all- time TV Drama…. The title is ‘White Collar’. And it’s not just a favorite of ours, it has Rotten Tomatoes score of 100%.
    We are halfway through season two, which is even better than season one. [but, I recommend you start at season one because there is a theme that runs through it.] This is binge-worthy TV.
    It is included commercial-free in Hulu NOADS [$14.99/mo] plan. Episodes and full seasons can be purchased ad free on Prine Video and Apple+. It is free with commercials on several streaming services, including Prime Video.
    Trailer:
    https://youtu.be/QOt5MBX9-
    Rotten Tomatoes:
    https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/white_collar/s02

  329. Russell,
    I think I had watched white collar before. It’s about a guy who gets out of jail and now works for a really rich woman…. or something like that too. Right?

  332. john ferguson (Comment #222659)
    “I suppose if you are a news junky, cutting the cord may not work. but ???”
    YouTubeTV has a revolutionary new feature for you. It allows viewers to watch up to four different preselected streams at the same time. Currently, they have Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and BBC in the four quadrants.
    You use the direction pad on your remote to highlight the view you want to hear and highlight the view you want to see in full screen. You can toggle between full-screen and multiview.
    They also have several sports multi-screens during peak sports times, two business channels, and two weather channels.
    Drawback…YouTubeTV is one of the priciest streaming services. It costs me $72.99 / mo [no contract].
    Screen shots:
    https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1681294611203932162?s=20

  333. Russell,
    Thanks! I’m a Youtube TV subscriber, but hadn’t seen that new feature. [I signed up back when it was $35/month…sigh]
    Should be very useful in football season!

  337. Thanks for the suggestion Russell, As some of my posts probably reveal, I’m already pretty confused.

  339. Russell, I think our Samsung is able to show multiple screens all by itself. Never tried it.

  340. John, my wife has one of the new Samsung smart TVs. If you have one of those it’s the Holy Grail for streaming. You don’t need a Roku device or any device it’s built into the Samsung.
    Try one of the free services. Pluto TV has 250 free channels. The app is probably preloaded on your TV. [You will need to use the remote that came with the TV, not your cable remote.]

  341. Tom Scharf (Comment #222723)
    “CNN and MSNBC at the same time! A dream come true”
    Yes, Liberals on the Left of the screen and Liberals on the Right!
    We gradually stopped watching tv news after we cut the cord. I am trying the muti-view news on the flatscreen on the wall in my office when I work at my desk. I keep it muted. It’s a novelty. I think we will use it during major events like a hurricane hitting Florida.

  343. Tom, I think so too. We reactivated YouTube TV just for football.
    (And my wife likes their three Hallmark channels for Christmas.)

  344. “Bridge Blast Sparks Mass Exodus of Panicked Russian Tourists”
    50, 000 civilians being directed 400 km through a war zone. Russia issued directions:
    “Instructions for traveling across the liberated territories:
    1. You need the border crossing going through Dzhankoy to Melitopol from Crimea.
    2. Refuel your car, withdraw cash. Buy plenty of drinking water.
    3. Remember that you are entering the regions where there are hostilities in the north and martial law has been imposed in the regions themselves.
    4. Do not stop in unequipped places if possible. Stop at gas stations and in towns.
    5. Gas stations are located every 50-100 km. Many of them accept cards. You can have a snack.
    6. On the way you will meet military checkpoints. Do everything that the servicemen say. Do not be rude, do not push for your rights. At most you will be asked to show your documents and show your bags.
    7. Always keep your documents close to you.
    8. A perfectly smooth new road has been built from Crimea to Rostov region.
    9. In Melitopol in the city center you can have a delicious lunch and withdraw money.
    10. Your way lies through Melitopol, bypassing Berdyansk, then Mariupol and Taganrog. It is 400 km (5-6 hours drive).
    11. Download offline maps, in case the connection is lost, select manually in the section “settings – cellular communication”.
    12. Pass military and vehicles with V and Z symbols.
    13. Do not drive at night.
    14. Insurance policies are not valid there.
    15. The road is safe, but vigilance must be maintained at all times.
    16. Do not stop outside checkpoints and rest areas.
    17. Medical assistance can be sought from the military and police.
    18. Do not go into fields and forests. Do not take pictures of Russian army vehicles and soldiers.
    19. Be polite and calm. Everything is built on mutual respect and patience in the special military operation zone.
    “Bridge Blast Sparks Mass Exodus of Panicked Russian Tourists”

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/drone-strike-on-crimea-bridge-sparks-mass-exodus-of-russian-tourists

  345. “Lavrov to replace Putin at South Africa summit amid ICC arrest warrant” From The Guardian
    This culminates a very public and embarrassing spat between Putin and South Africa.
    President Cyril Ramaphosa:
    “Russia has made it clear that arresting its sitting president would be a declaration of war.”
    All the other presidents are attending:
    “The Summit will be attended by the leaders of Brazil, India, China and South Africa.”
    https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/press-statements/south-africa-finalises-15th-brics-summit-format
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/jul/19/russia-ukraine-war-live-updates-moscow-attacks-odesa-crimea-military-base-fire-evacuation-kirovske-tavrida-highway

  346. “If you look at Putin’s behaviour on that day, Prigozhin started off as a traitor at breakfast, he’d been pardoned by supper and two days later he’d been invited for tea. There are some things that even the chief of MI6 find a little difficult to try and interpret,” Sir Richard said.
    “Speaking at an event in Prague in the Czech Republic, MI6 boss Sir Richard Moore discussed events in Russia since the failed June 23 uprising, when a rebellion by the Wagner Group saw mercenary fighters headed to Moscow.”
    My conspiracy theory that Putin was using Prigozhin to start his purge is holding up pretty well.
    https://news.yahoo.com/uks-spy-chief-says-putin-131556396.html#:~:text=However%2C%20after%20striking%20a%20deal,d%20been%20invited%20for%20tea.

  347. Russell: “Lavrov to replace Putin at South Africa summit amid ICC arrest warrant” From The Guardian
    “This culminates a very public and embarrassing spat between Putin and South Africa.”
    .
    I seriously doubt that this has anything remotely tied to the fear that SA would arrest Putin.
    .
    Now as a prudent defense vs the US or EU interception of Putin’s plane in route, this is understandable.
    .
    NATO is starting to panic, and this can lead to less than ideal decisions.

  348. Russell, I find the purge of Russian generals to be in the same vane as Truman firing McArthur.
    .
    The military has a rigid, top down, structure that is completely subordinate to civilian control. This is true for both the US and Russia, as well as any other nation that can be described as democratic.
    .
    The military is expected to keep its mouth shut regarding policy and either fully support that policy or resign. Failure to do so is considered a court martial offense in the US as well.

  349. Ed,
    “Now as a prudent defense vs the US or EU interception of Putin’s plane in route, this is understandable.”
    Along those lines, The Russian Air Force was worried that they might have to make emergency stops along the way for repairs. Putin could face arrest while on the ground.

  350. On the US support for the ICC to arrest Putin, I find this amusing.
    .
    American Service-Members’ Protection Act, colloquially nicknamed “The Hague Invasion Act”, as the act allows the President to order U.S. military action, such as an invasion of The Hague, where the ICC is located, to protect American officials and military personnel from prosecution or rescue them from custody.[3][4] Wiki
    .

  351. Ed

    Russell, I find the purge of Russian generals to be in the same vane as Truman firing McArthur.

    McArthur was one person. Not a purge.

  352. Lucia
    .
    Same situation. Gross insubordination if 1 or several involved. As there is vid on several of the generals engaging in this, not much in their defense.
    .
    One, of several Offenses under “ Article 134, the “General Article” which lists as a punishable offense “all disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces ”
    .
    Partial from Wiki on contempt:
    Contempt towards officials is addressed in the Punitive articles, specifically Article 88 of the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice in the Manual for Courts-Martial (MCM), United States (2008 Edition) as follows:
    .
    Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, athe Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
    .
    Unlike civilian legislation covering defamation, the truth or falsity of the statements is immaterial.

  353. Putin is breaking his generals to the leash. They have been used to pretty loose oversight since the breakup of the Soviet Union and Putin is making the point that this ends now.

  354. Ed Forbes

    Putin is breaking his generals to the leash

    Returning to your “McArthur” notion, I notice you use plural: General. McArthur was one man. Not plural.
    Just pointing out a difference. Even if you don’t want to notice that difference.

  355. Ed

    Same situation. Gross insubordination if 1 or several involved.

    Plural is not the same situation as one person. Sorry… but 1 vs several is different. Even if you want to claim otherwise.

  356. “Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials.”
    OK, That’s scary. From ‘Nature’ ……
    “Investigations suggest that, in some fields, at least one-quarter of clinical trials might be problematic or even entirely made up, warn some researchers. They urge stronger scrutiny.”
    I have no way of authenticating this work, but it seems legit.
    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02299-w

  357. Lucia,
    .
    as to my statement “ Russell, I find the purge of Russian generals to be in the same vane as Truman firing McArthur.”
    .
    Both incidents involved offenses that could have been met with general court martial. The numbers involved in either example is not material to the underlying premise that both the US and Russia have laws on the books that can hammer any general that is not very careful on how he/she criticizes policy or policymakers.
    .
    I stand by my statement and examples.
    .
    To argue, as you seem to be doing, that the numbers involved in the examples somehow destroy the argument is just plain silly. As a point of fact, “purge” can be applied to either a singular person or a group of persons.
    .
    purge
    pûrj
    intransitive verb
    To clear (a container or space, for example) of something unclean or unwanted.
    To remove or eliminate (unwanted physical matter).
    To rid (a person or thing) of something unwanted.
    The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  358. Ed Forbes (Comment #222735)
    “Oh Look, A Squirrel!”
    I was not distracted by your red herring. My focus is still on Putin eliminating a whole slew of generals at a critical time in a war.

  359. “Douglas, help me understand what you want to do. Is it blockade Chinese ports and bomb their industry and bridges?”
    .
    “Yes, Mr. President. There may be some other things we will want to do once we get into it. I’ve done a lot of investigation. I think we have a very good understanding of their capabilitiesand intent. We cannot lose.”
    .
    “Doug, I wasn’t worried about losing. What will we do if we win?”

  360. Russell “ My focus is still on Putin eliminating a whole slew of generals at a critical time in a war.”
    .
    Fair enough. My comment on Putin breaking his generals to the leash falls into this context.
    .
    Most of a general’s work is done by an extensive staff, with overall supervision carried out by the commands chief of staff. This chief of staff ( different organizations have different titles for this position) is very much able to step into command as they are already fully familiar with any ongoing operations. They are in this position with one of the explicit reasons for training them to step up into this command position as needed.
    .
    Failure of higher command to enforce discipline in their lower ranks is much more of problem than the loss of experience from any lower ranking officer, generals included.
    .
    Stalin, in WWII, took needed purges in the high command to extremes and took out commands as far down as battalion. This had a disastrous consequence on the leadership.
    .
    Putin firing of a few insubordinate officers will have no meaningful negative effect on the war and will have a number of positive effects in enforcing the required discipline in the military command structure.
    .

  361. Ed Forbes

    The numbers involved in either example is not material to the underlying premise that both the US and Russia have laws on the books that can hammer any general that is not very careful on how he/she criticizes policy or policymakers.

    The numbers involved is material to understanding what is happening. You can’t just decree that the only thing that maters is “underlying premise that both the US and Russia have laws on the books that can hammer any general”. I get that you might not want to discuss anything else, but you weren’t the first to bring up the discussion of this incident, which is being characterized as a purge. And even if you “see” some similarity with something that was not a purge, others can notice that what is happening in Russia is not the same as the incident you want us to “see” it as being like.
    .
    The Russian situation is looking something like a purge.
    .

    I stand by my statement and examples.

    Well… sure. You see it the way you see it. The way you see it seems distorted. But you can stand by that all you like.

  362. Lucia, lets put a number on the “purge” then
    .
    Full List of Russian Commanders Dismissed by Putin in Ukraine War

    BY ISABEL VAN BRUGEN ON 7/18/23 AT 10:17 AM EDT

    https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-russian-commanders-dismissed-putin-ukraine-war-1813706
    .
    A number of Generals have been removed over the course of the war for various reasons. The comments on a “purge” were in reaction to those removed after Wagners mutiny.
    .
    All 2 of them by my count. Can you point me to any others, by name?

    .

    General Sergey Surovikin

    Surovikin, a former commander of Russia’s forces in Ukraine, has not been seen in public since Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin led a mutiny from southern Russia towards Moscow on June 24. He was notably missing from a July 10 meeting of military officials.

    .

    Major General Vladimir Seliverstov

    Verstka, citing pro-war Telegram channels, said the commander of the 106th Guards Airborne Division, Seliverstov, was removed from his post due to his “uncompromising nature,” but noted that this has not officially been announced by the Kremlin.

    .

  363. Ed Forbes,
    No one said he is only getting rid of generals. I said McArthur was only one person.

    The article you link describes multiple people: at least eight.
    “Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed at least eight senior Russian military commanders since he launched a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February, 2022, without transferring them to new posts, according to a report.”
    .
    Just because only two of the eight are generals doesn’t make it “like” McArthur being fired which you claimed. That it includes generals and others makes it less like the firing of McArthur.

  365. “There are hundreds of different HLA variants. Hollenbach found that one of them, HLA-B*15:01, was associated with asymptomatic COVID.“
    –
    The good old green jelly bean effect strikes again

  366. angech
    “Bonferroni-corrected P (Padj)?=?0.002). ”
    I haven’t read the full paper. But Bonferroni-correction is used to deal with the green jelly bean effect. 🙂

  367. Lucia, only 2 of the officers listed were removed after the Wagner mutiny, which is the entire premise of Russells post.
    .
    So the “purge” due to the mutiny is all of 2 officers.

  368. Ed Forbes,
    “So the “purge” due to the mutiny is all of 2 officers”
    Putin started the purge before the Wagner Rebellion. He used the Rebellion as cover.
    A lot more than two names have been identified in the purge so far:
    General Ivan Popov, General Seliverstov, Major-General Nikolay Gostev, Gen Sergei ‘Armageddon’ Surovikin, Col-Gen Andrey Yudin, Major-General Nikolay Gostev, Air force commander Col-Gen Andrey Yudin, Lt-Gen Vladimir Alexseev, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, Colonel-General Yunus-bek Yevkurov, Lieutenant-General Oleg Tsokov, Commander Stanislav Rzhitsky, General-Major Artem Nasbulin, Lt Gen Oleg Tsokov, Maj. Gen. Vladimir Seliverstov, Maj. Gen. Sergey Goryachev
    The purge has many tools: Mysterious Murder, Firing, Missing, Arrested, Blown up by missiles
    The tip of the iceberg in media stories:
    “Putin ‘purges three more generals’ taking the total to be fired, suspended or vanished ‘up to 11’ as the Russian ruler continues to root out ‘enemies’ among his top brass”
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12304431/Putin-purges-three-generals-taking-total-fired-suspended-vanished-11.html
    “Russian general in Ukraine says he was fired after accusing defense ministry of betraying troops”
    https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/12/europe/russian-general-treachery-accusations-ukraine-intl-hnk/index.html
    “Yet another Russian general is purged as paratroop commander becomes eighth member of top brass to be fired, suspended, detained or vanished
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12302411/Russian-general-purged-paratroop-commander-eighth-member-brass-fired.html
    “
    “Russian submarine commander killed by gunman on morning run”
    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/11/russian-submarine-commander-killed-by-gunman-on-morning-run
    “Russia continues firing generals amid ‘purge’ by defense ministry”
    https://nypost.com/2023/07/15/russia-continues-firing-generals-amid-purge-by-defense-ministry/
    “Kremlin ‘purges’ 28 high-ranking officers after Wagner’s mutiny – Estonian intelligence”
    https://news.yahoo.com/kremlin-purges-28-high-ranking-173200974.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMqQeNENcrII7vzcQsj_YyUfaXEJDUEcXw2bKAnRZN5jVNE_bolm6L9NYGujoZS8yBldG6Fj3cIsA5MQ1xyK741cKsLL26qwKtm94PIR_dvMWK1VfnioXlXNTH6UoldZHwGXuMFUl_OBvGaBvGjYoYOc_EiNVeFv38qHgy3Qf7IH

  369. Lucia “ . But Bonferroni-correction is used to deal with the green jelly bean effect. ????”
    –
    Like it, but….
    –
    It would appear to my admittedly less knowledgeable mathematically brain that the effect of any Boolian adjustment would be immeasurably impaired by a rapidly increasing number of testable components
    With 5 you could justifiably constrain the result to an elephant.
    With thousands the possibility of finding an association that is both real, ie actually happens, and is virtually impossible at the same time, occurs.
    (1000,s of variants of the HLA thing )
    –
    We all know the vulnerability of statistics with small sample sizes and large spreads of rare outcomes.
    ( Highest and lowest cancer rates occur in the smallest states).
    OK a different problem.
    While the premise is plausible, associating sets of observations to find a link, the practicality that such a link may well be spurious has to be considered and acknowledged practically.

  370. angech,
    For sure the data has to be critically evaluated. That said, the study does suggest a very plausible explanation for a puzzling observation: a significant fraction (20%) of people exposed to covid never become sick… not even a little.
    .
    I expect further research will be done on this subject, maybe even enough to prove causation.
    .
    By the way, there was an instance (pre-covid 19) where a nursing home in the USA was suspected to have had an outbreak of the original (non-pandemic) covid based on enzyme immunoassay testing of residents and staff. It was a false alarm…. the illnesses were just due to a ‘common cold’ coronavirus; the assay test for the original covid turned out to be cross-reactive with the common cold virus. Which suggested enough similarity between coronavirus types to possibly give some resistance to covid 19 virus.

  371. Ed Forbes

    Lucia, only 2 of the officers listed were removed after the Wagner mutiny, which is the entire premise of Russells post.

    So? This doesn’t make it “like” McArthur’s removal– which is your claim.
    .
    Like it or not, at least 8 officers have been removed for whatever reason.

  372. angech (Comment #222753): “The good old green jelly bean effect strikes again”.
    .
    What is this ‘green jelly bean effect’? The internet does not seem to have heard of it.

  374. angech

    It would appear to my admittedly less knowledgeable mathematically brain that the effect of any Boolian adjustment would be immeasurably impaired by a rapidly increasing number of testable components

    The Bonferroni-correction deals with the number of testing options. The number “N” is in the formula for the correction.
    .
    The finding could be spurious. All statistical tests are subject to both false positive and false negative error. But the “green jelly bean” effect can be corrected for using math and it has been in this case. It’s one of the first papers I’ve seen where it is obviously needed and it was done.
    .
    I could explain the math basis– but if you really are math impaired, the thing to know is when you suspect “green jelly bean”, hunt for “Bonferroni” in the paper.

  375. mark bofill (Comment #222761): “Holy smokes, green jelly beans cause cancer?!?”
    .
    Thanks. So the ‘green jelly bean effect’ is an idiosyncratic name for p-hacking.

  376. Mike,
    My understanding is that the green jelly bean example illuminates the increased probability of false accepting significance when testing for significance multiple times & varying some unrelated factor. I thought p-hacking indicated deliberate intent (maybe I am wrong about that), where as green jelly bean is more general. Green jelly bean term might apply to an honest oversight for instance.
    But basically yes.

  377. The US Women’s soccer team got balls.
    Late last night I had live sports multi-view playing on the wall TV in my office. I noticed on one obscure channel, Women’s World Cup Soccer was showing live Philippines vs Switzerland. The stands were empty, the field was eerily quiet. Later I looked up and the same thing with Spain vs Costa Rice, one channel, no fans, and crickets. Contrast this with Mens World Cup; The big sports channels are running wall-to-wall live coverage, the stands are packed and the field is aroar.
    Now about the US women’s Soccer team, they have been bitching for years because the US Men’s team made more in salary than they did. They even sued. That is ridiculous. Woman’s soccer, like woman’s tennis, women’s basketball, and women’s [you name it] generate much less revenue than the corresponding men’s teams. They deserve much lease pay.

  378. mark bofill,
    “I thought p-hacking indicated deliberate intent (maybe I am wrong about that)”
    .
    My memory is that p-hacking is just throwing enough S.H.I.T. (super-high inter-relational tests) against the wall to find something that sticks, then declaring the ‘observed’ p-based significance implies causation. Like a lot of ‘nutritional studies’, such as coffee causes cancer (or coffee protects from cancer)… there are hundreds of examples. All stupid, all the time.

  379. Thanks Steve. I guess I understood the term too narrowly.
    [Edit: Super-high inter-relational tests, I gotta remember that one 🙂 ]

  382. Lucia “ Like it or not, at least 8 officers have been removed for whatever reason”
    .
    So you are now moving the goal posts. The discussion is over post mutiny removals. If you are now wanting to include pre mutiny numbers, lets go back to the 1930’s for a much larger number.

  383. John Ferguson,
    “I always thought living caused cancer. Green Jelly Beans? nuts.”
    .
    Sure, living causes cancer. But at a deeper level, the existence of highly differentiated organisms, where differentiated cell lines lead to vastly different cell function, is the cause. That capacity for differentiation stems from complicated regulation of individual cells’ behavior and growth…. regulation which can go astray. So it seems to me cancer is the price we (and many other organisms) pay for being much more complicated and more capable than single cell life forms. There is no free lunch.

  384. Ed,
    “So you are now moving the goal posts.“
    Lucia might respond herself, but I started this brouhaha and want to set the record straight.
    My Comment #222706:?“Conspiracy theory [my own]…. Putin wanted a purge of the military. He used Prigozhin and Wagner’s uprising as cover.” I didn’t say the PUtin PUrge started with the uprising. I said he was using it as cover.?But still given that, the numbers after the rebellion are large: “In the first hours after Prigozhin’s rebellion, Russia detained at least 13 high-ranking Russian military officers for questioning, and another 15 were dismissed or suspended.”
    https://twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1680487871608659968?s=61&t=q3_InP1nXWdPIXqj8656mQ

  385. Ok…. language vs susbtance.

    I think the difference between “p-hacking” and the “green jelly bean” issue is intent. However, to be “p-hacking” the intent isn’t necessarily to deceive. It might just involve not understanding the green jelly bean effect.
    .
    The “green jelly bean” effect happens if someone decides they want to investigate whether different colored jelly beans cause cancer. They the test with a whole bunch of colors. They find one that individually has a ‘p’ of 0.05, and decree that color bean causes cancer.
    .
    A “hack” is (what the person using it) thinks is a “useful or brilliant thing to do”. So a person who was disappointed by the initial result that “jelly beans don’t cause cancer” decides that they could partition the data and try with each color, that would be a “hack”.
    .
    The “intent” was the “do something creative or clever”.
    .
    Now, if there were14 or more colors, unless jelly beans have a protective effect, they will likely find at least 1 color “caused cancer”. (1-(1-0.05)^14 = 0.512325 ).
    .
    .
    This is understood. The Bonneferoni correction is basically the algebra required to find the correct criteria to have a “p” chance of getting 1 positive by random chance when you do N test.
    .
    (1) If you are aware of the problem, you should do the Bonneferoni correction.

    (2) If you are not aware you might not do the correction. I think that’s still “hacking” but you will deceive yourself and likely others who are also not aware. (Perhaps. If all you are doing is data mining to explore and later intend to do other studies, this isn’t so bad. I mean… “it looks like maybe putting magazines in the check out aisle leads to more profit, it’s worth a shot!” isn’t such a bad thing to do.)

    (3) If you are aware, do the hack, don’t do the correction, conceal that you did a bunch of tests, and report it as a novel finding, that’s fraud.
    .
    The authors of this paper are perfectly aware of the “green jelly bean effect” and corrected for it. I haven’t read the rest of it, but “green jelly bean” does not appear to be a problem here.
    .
    As far as I can tell, there is ton’s of “p hacking” in social sciences where everyone goes through samples of convenience — census data or some big survey group’s data. You might, for example find men’s monthly income is positively correlated with height. (It is.) And you might report the ±95% confidence intervals. But those sets are so poured over you are going to find some correlations if you hunt. If you are motivated you can find the one you want.
    .
    You almost can’t help that because if you don’t pour over it, someone else will. So generally, ideally you go find another set. (Does it correlate in Norway?) Or you partition the set? (Does it correlate if I look at data from the 1997 survey? And the 2002 survey? and the…. ) If it’s robust, it’s probably real. (You will, for example find on average men are taller than women in nearly all countries. It’s strong. We don’t even need to look at a survey. )
    .
    Any result might be interesting and reportable if that’s the only data or survey. Then you try to replicate. Or continue looking.

  386. Ed Forbes

    So you are now moving the goal posts. The discussion is over post mutiny removals.

    I’m not moving any goal posts. I said, contrary to your view, this purge doesn’t looke “like” Truman firing McArthur. And it doesn’t.
    .
    I commented on something very specific you wrote. And I was pretty clear:

    lucia (Comment #222739)
    July 19th, 2023 at 7:16 pm

    Ed

    Russell, I find the purge of Russian generals to be in the same vane as Truman firing McArthur.

    McArthur was one person. Not a purge.

    .
    You are the one who is writing replies to me (i.e. “lucia”, not “russel”) by changing the topic to something else. In fact: Truman firing McArthur was not a purge. What we are seeing in Russia involves many people and looks like a purge.
    .
    That the purge involves two generals in addition to other people doesn’t make it “not purge like”. That the purge isn’t solely due to the mutiny doesn’t make it “not purge like”. And it doesn’t make it look like “McArthur”. It looks like something more.

  388. Most people know of the green jelly bean effect through this xkcd comic:
    https://xkcd.com/882/
    .
    Aaagh! beat by a few minutes!
    .
    Any time lawyers see cancer clusters, think of this.

  389. The effect could be spurious, which is why it needs to be replicated before anybody gets too excited. The effect size of all these type of findings tend to go down on further studies much more often than they go up. It’s a real problem, but interesting. Something(s) causes 20% of people to have asymptomatic covid cases. Maybe it is just a lower initial dose at the start, etc.

  390. Another common version of p-hacking is filtering inputs before statistical testing. This is hard to referee, there are valid reasons to eliminate some inputs (bad sensor data, etc.). Anytime a somewhat desperate researcher can see the statistical outcomes and dynamically adjust input filters, results tend to get better somehow. I think somebody did a study that showed statistical testing outcomes “mysteriously” clustered near 0.05.
    .
    Ultimately I think the root cause is that people who spend a lot of research money are heavily incentivized to come up with important results. The failure is that jelly beans not causing cancer is actually an important result in the grand scheme. The incentives are broken.

  391. Tom–
    And the paper is pretty clear on the notion that this is an interesting finding and might be an avenue worth pursuing when investigating ways to deal with Covid (or other diseases.)
    .
    It will turn out to be useful…. or not.
    .
    It’s interesting.

  392. Tom Scharf (Comment #222776): “Most people know of the green jelly bean effect through this xkcd comic:”
    .
    It might be that those who recognize the phrase “green jelly bean effect” do so because of that comic. But I don’t believe that most people know that phrase. I say that because an internet search gave me the following:

    No results found for “green jelly bean effect”.

    ——–

    FWIW, I don’t think it much matters if p-hacking is deliberate fraud. Scientists have a responsibility to do their work competently. A scientist who “accidentally” engages in p-hacking is not living up to that responsibility.

  393. Tom

    Another common version of p-hacking is filtering inputs before statistical testing. This is hard to referee, there are valid reasons to eliminate some inputs (bad sensor data, etc.).

    Yes. If your filtering is done post-hoc and you tried several kinds, it’s a type of p-hacking. Post-hoc can even be that you didn’t like someone else’s result.
    .
    It definitely can be very difficult to referee the effect of filtering. Sometimes throwing out some data makes sense. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s borderline.
    .
    Often getting p<0.05 makes something "publishable". So p=0.051 is "uninteresting" and p=0.049 is "interesting". Deciding a particular case was "suspicious" and throwing it out can make the difference. If the filter made a difference, temptation is going to be very strong. Once you get p=0.049, a person will stop pushing.

  394. Mike M,
    Yes, many p-hacking discussions tend to link that XKCD comic very quickly.

  395. Mike,

    FWIW, I don’t think it much matters if p-hacking is deliberate fraud.

    It only matters to me maybe. Sometimes there is a path forward with somebody who makes an innocent or careless mistake and arrives at the wrong conclusion. I think there is seldom a path forward with somebody who knows perfectly well they are making an error and are proceeding regardless.
    But that’s just me.

  397. Using statistics to make decisions about health and nutrition should be illegal. It’s very much like making political decisions in smoke-filled rooms. Only a very few enlightened people are allowed to participate in the discussion and the big-money hired guns always dominate the decision making. I studied statistics at the feet of the master, Mark Twain [Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics] and anyone who studied anywhere else has a conflict of interest in this debate.
    I used to believe that the food and medical industry mathematicians were being watched by government brains protecting the public interest. I find now that the government’s brains are either crooked or stupid.
    I do think there are questions where statistics should be used in the analysis, for example, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

  398. mark bofill (Comment #222783): “somebody who makes an innocent or careless mistake”.
    .
    There may have been a time when p-hacking could have been an innocent or careless mistake. I recall reading general interest science articles about the issue back in the 80’s. And it is now nearly 20 years since John Ioannidis made his big splash about most research findings being wrong. In this day and age, p-hacking is professional malpractice.

  399. Russell,

    Using statistics to make decisions about health and nutrition should be illegal

    That’s sort of silly. Statistics are a useful tool. Any tool can be misused.

  400. Mike,
    Yes, of course. I am not actually an academic, so. In my world it doesn’t come up much, and most people I work with are not experts with statistics, far from it in fact. Indeed, statistics don’t come up all that often. When they do, it’s understandable to me that people might apply them incorrectly. I usually do (apply statistics incorrectly) myself the first few go rounds.
    [Edit: or a data scientist, or researcher, or paper publisher, or study conductor; whichever of these things where it would be less conceivable that p-hacking could be an innocent error. I am none of those things and don’t operate in that sort of environment.]

  401. Lucia,
    “Any tool can be misused.”
    .
    ‘Bang-bang Maxwell’s silver hammer came down on her head…’ Some tools are misused more than others, of course.

  402. mark bofill (Comment #222788): “Indeed, statistics don’t come up all that often. When they do, it’s understandable to me that people might apply them incorrectly.”
    .
    Sure. There are fields where that might well be the case. But I think that p-hacking only comes up with studies that are designed to be statistical from the get-go. The statistical treatment is not a refinement in the analysis of results, it is the entirety of the analysis.

  403. Mike, I give. Sometimes people make honest mistakes trying to do statistics, and that’s not the same to me as people who abuse statistics deliberately. FFS, that’s all I was trying to say.

  404. In my youth, I worked for a lottery company. We were attempting to make what was known in the industry as ‘probability games’ work. These were lottery tickets where every ticket could win any prize depending on how it was played. We had POS terminals that would attempt to validate winners and detect fraud.
    As an additional measure and part of our security, we tried to detect fraud statistically among our retailers. I can’t say that I remember whether or not at any point in my thinking I made a p-hacking type of error, but it seems possible in hindsight I did.
    [Edit: Heh. I was on that patent.]

  405. On holidays. North for the winter!
    Sunny Queensland. Jellyfish on the beach, 22 C.
    Will go with wife to see the Barbie film (Australian actress) and then try to talk her into seeing the Oppenheimer film.
    Thank god for American politics and bloggers for providing an interesting world counterpoint.

  406. Lucia,
    “Statistics are a useful tool. Any tool can be misused.”
    Now we are getting somewhere. The first step in recovery is admitting there may be a problem.
    I think medical and nutritional research in this country is in chaos.
    I think there is so much money involved in these industries that misusing statistics to further private business interest are the standard rather than the exception. And our regulatory watchdogs are of two types: the fox guarding the chickens or the Keystone cops. The headlong dash into statistical analysis being the ultimate authority is the root of the problem. It enables the people who want to abuse the system. Regular intelligent analysis is frozen out of the process because it is lacking statistics.
    The Covid vaccine fiasco is the logical outcome.
    Further reading:
    “FDA oversight of clinical trials is “grossly inadequate,”
    https://www.bmj.com/content/379/bmj.o2628
    “Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed?
    Investigations suggest that, in some fields, at least one-quarter of clinical trials might be problematic or even entirely made up, warn some researchers. They urge stronger scrutiny.”
    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02299-w

  407. Angech: “Will go with wife to see the Barbie film”
    .
    Oof! Good luck! Drop a quick review, I’m curious how you find it.

  409. Food science is the only sector in contention for being worse than climate science. I will add that the bulk of the problem is the science / media interface that promotes trendy activism above all else. Economics is not exactly dependable either, but I think they try harder.

  410. The WSJ editorial board shows why DeSantis’s legal moves against DEI are necessary, see CA:
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/daymon-johnson-lawsuit-california-community-colleges-bakersfield-deia-faculty-education-7fc2763e?st=us6buqgo0aff09q&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
    .
    From the official DEIA glossary for CA community colleges
    “Colorblindness “de-emphasizes, or ignores, race and ethnicity, a large part of one’s identity and lived experience.” A suggested synonym is “color-evasiveness,” which is better, because it “avoids describing people with disabilities as problematic or deficient by using blindness as a metaphor for ignorance.”

    • Merit “at face value appears to be a neutral measure of academic achievement and qualifications; however, merit is embedded in the ideology of Whiteness and upholds race-based structural inequality.”
    .
    There are many more examples of this official madness here. I doubt many people really believe this stuff, they just don’t have the backbone to fight the bureaucracy. It is a career threatening move to not engage in the struggle session “voluntarily”.

  411. Russel,

    I think medical and nutritional research in this country is in chaos.

    Nutritional research has been distorted for a long time. The issue is just what type of distortion. Is it pushing USDA promoted products? Or other hype? The only thing that is a constant is that people should probably eat more food from the produce aisle. But that’s pretty much never been the push. They either were pushing grains, meat, milk — different ones at different times.
    .
    Do I follow my own advice to eat more produce…. not enough. I do like Dove bars.

  412. Russel,
    I will for sure watch Barbie…. when it hits streaming. 🙂
    Oppenheimer… probably. Eventually.
    .
    There is a group of people who love to hate the Barbie movie. They are complaining it’s “woke”. Because Ken decides to start a “Ken” world that revolves around the male dolls (the way Barbie world revolves about Barbie.) Maybe it is. It’s a Barbie movie. Shrug.
    .
    It generally doesn’t bother me if movies are somewhat political. The only thing that matters is: Did the manage to do it in a fun, enjoyable/ and or insightful way?
    .
    When political hate happens, ratings are a big distorted.

  413. Lucia,
    Related to the Barbie theme, Last night we had nostalgia night…. TV dinners, and binge-watched ‘White Collar’.
    We haven’t had TV dinners in a coon’s age. We did our homework online and selected three to try. One turned out to be really good; Stouffer’s Bowl-Fulls Fried Chicken & Mashed Potatoes. We plan on doing that again. The other two were ok, sort of.
    One bummer, the aluminum foil trays have been replaced with plastic.
    [White Collar was great except for a short detour into ‘Chic Flic’ land.]
    https://www.publix.com/pd/stouffers-bowl-fulls-fried-chicken-and-mashed-potatoes/RIO-PCI-569371?origin=search16

  414. I think there is a pretty innocent explanation for a lot of poor quality publications. Works like this: you come up with a hypothesis. Really rigorous examination of the hypothesis can be very expensive (eg large no. of people needed for trial, complex setup, equipment and if this a PhD thesis, then options can very limited). So run a small cheap experiment instead (eg small nos). If that result is “interesting” then gets published, and pressure to publish even a negative result for a PhD student is enormous. In normal course of events, it may get picked up by a meta-analysis and if that is “interesting” then case builds to fund a truly large scale study which rigorously tests the hypothesis. However, in the desperate world of academic funding, in comes the PR person anxious to demonstrate relevance and/or reputation of institution and from there to the truly hopeless world of science journalism. Media treatment of science stuff is really really bad. I like John Oliver’s hilarious take on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw . This is absolutely not a defense of p-hacking or any other kind of fraud, but I think this is likely less common than PR drawing a long bow from cheap experiments. I don’t think the small cheap experiments are a problem by themselves so long as they are only are used to build case for better experiments.

  415. Phil,
    For sure there is a lot of pressure to publish the ‘right kind’ of results (climate, economic, social).
    .
    What is published under those pressures tends to be little more than dehydrated, socially correct, obvious horse shit. I suspect that is not going to change.

  416. Phil,
    Yes. In many cases, the actual paper words things more cautiously. But the PR blurb by the school drops all caution. Then “science communicators” write things for “science magazines”. The “science writers” also interview the researchers. They will want sound bits, or metaphors, or… whatever… and can come up with some doozies.

  417. Research on inconvenient subjects doesn’t even get funded except through NGO’s, in which case the tainted funding canard gets immediately brought up. The social sciences is an apocalyptic disaster area, I don’t even consider it science, it is advocacy. I’m sure there is probably some good work in there somewhere, but how can you tell the difference? I don’t know.

  418. On weird research.. my neighbor posted this
    .
    https://www.thecollegefix.com/students-list-apache-attack-helicopter-as-gender-on-engineering-culture-survey-angering-scholars/?fbclid=IwAR326sDmfARAKVkvHJEOOUp5IYluCcyIe26zMJGvgW5f2PIMcr5l0k6dKqU
    .

    The researchers wrote a paper that described their experiences while working on a survey about LGBT students in STEM in the Summer 2023 edition of the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, housed out of Northwestern University.

    .
    Find the paper here– scroll down to p 67.
    https://bulletin.appliedtransstudies.org/downloads/BATS_2023_2769-2124_v2_i1-2.pdf
    .
    I don’t know if the original planned research was published.
    But I tend to think that this one shows what happens when you try to study something controversial, then invite tons of unscreened people to fill out an online survey.
    .
    They must have had a miniscule response rate to the invitation. (They wanted engineering students to fill it out. They sent the invitation to 3000 faculty and administrator , who presumably then did something like post it on a bulletin board or blast it out in an email to “all the students”. So, presumably, the invitation was extended to 30,000 at least? Or more– whoever read the email.
    .
    Surveys are a pain. And people are busy. Only the most motivated of students are likely to fill it out. But whose motivated? In this case, two groups:
    (a) LGBTQ engineering students who might want to fill it out and
    (b) Engineering students who are either hostile to various diversity things coming up on campus, or just tired of it.
    And people in either category are likely to tell their friends. Especially those in (b). And especially those in (b) who have indulged in happy hour or some other drinking event.
    .
    Those in “b” gave ridiculous answers.
    .
    The researchers then decided to “study” the malicious answers. Which were… well… malicious. People wrote intentionally racists, snide, hostile answers. The survey was open ended– so they wrote essays. It’s clear some knew the researchers would read them and wanted to give them a piece of their mind.
    .
    I’m not entirely sure what the researchers really think the world learned from their paper. Yes…. people hostile to social science surveys exist and are willing to be super rude and hostile on a survey. Is this important? Or surprising?
    .
    Anyway, it got published. No “p” values though.

  419. Steve. “For sure there is a lot of pressure to publish the ‘right kind’ of results (climate, economic, social).”

    Can you enlarge on this? Where is pressure from and how is it applied? I admittedly have low knowledge of US system beyond collaborators in US institutes, but doesn’t seem to be something that comes from NSF.

    I started in my institute in 1980 and I would have to say that I have never seen a research contract that started with bottom line (“the result will be…”) except from some industries seeking “scientists for hire” to provide PR. I am not aware of institute ever accepting such a proposition. Contracts are very much “we want answers to this unknown”.

    For PhD’s publishing is critical to getting a job. For research contracts, outputs certainly can be (and generally are) published papers, but funders we deal with (including NSF) want results of research published not a particular conclusion.

  420. MTG showed some pictures in the House the other day and the subject’s lawyers have complained to the ethics committee in writing.
    While I think salacious material is better left in the gutter, I think I think that.
    The press response has been extremely telling, not one word when they usually go bananas.
    Someone should take the advice of just not responding but they did not.
    Hopefully the ethics committee shows some commonsense.
    –
    Oppenheimer, volume too loud, good anti war message.

  421. Phil,
    You need only consider the career consequences for publishing research which contradicts the social/political consensus in academic circles. Heck, even stating anything contrary to that consensus can cause big problems; Larry Summers was driven from his position at Harvard for saying that the relatively small number of top female mathematicians might be due (among other possible causes) to fewer women than men being in the extreme tail of the distribution of math ability. Harvard faculty would not allow Summers to remain in office for making that statement.
    .
    Another example is Roger Pielke Jr, who was continuously attacked by well known climate researchers for (among other things) publishing research showing that financial losses from tropical cyclones increased due to much more at-risk structure in coastal areas, not due to increasing tropical cyclone frequency or intensity.
    .
    And of course, any research (even on genetic markers) which suggests inherent differences in intellectual capacity risks turning you into an object of scorn. Drawing the ‘wrong’ conclusions about genetics and intelligence could easily end a career.
    .
    Of course, nobody is going to apply for research support by putting the expected results in the application. But depending on the field, certain subjects for research are beyond the pale, and so effectively forbidden.

  423. Lucia,
    Partially “redacted” photos from Hunter’s laptop showing him having sex with prostitutes. She also presented evidence of Hunter routinely paying for the travel of these women between states to have sex with him, which is illegal under Federal law.
    .
    In spite of complaints from Biden’s lawyers, the ethics committee is not likely to touch this episode, if only because she made no false statements and showed only actual photos and other records. She also stated that Hunter had himself uploaded some of those photos to porn websites.

  425. Phil Scadden (Comment #222818): “I have never seen a research contract that started with bottom line …funders … want results of research published not a particular conclusion”.
    .
    That is a straw man argument. One does not expect a con artist to introduce himself by saying “I want to get to know you so that I can fleece you of your money”. Nevertheless, con artists exist.
    .
    If you want funding, you need to get your work published. In some fields, it can be difficult to get non-conforming work published and, when you do, it will likely be in a lower impact journal. A weaker publication record will make it harder to get future funding. Not only that, once you are out of the closet, you will likely have enemies among reviewers and/or grant panelists.

  426. I hope that Kevin McCarthy told MTG that if she a tries another such stunt, then he will encourage Republicans on the ethics committee to take her down.
    .
    The committee is not investigating Hunter Biden. The Dems and their media lackeys are pushing the lie that that thy are. By showing picture that obviously have nothing to do with Joe, MTG gave support to the Dems.

  427. Phil, Example:
    Don’t Even Go There
    The National Institutes of Health now blocks access to an important database if it thinks a scientist’s research may enter “forbidden” territory.
    https://www.city-journal.org/article/dont-even-go-there
    “Sometimes, NIH denies access to some of the attributes that I have just mentioned, on the grounds that studying their genetic basis is “stigmatizing.”
    .
    There are many examples in climate science for violations in groupthink resulting in a scientist being excommunicated, but it is usually not as overt as the example above. People know where the funding red lines are, and behave accordingly.
    .
    A: “We are going to analyze the study habits of Asians and their educational culture to see why they over perform”
    B: “We are going to analyze systemic racism in schools and society to see why African Americans under perform”
    .
    Which of these framings is more likely to get funded? Perhaps the work is identical. Everybody knows what the desired answer is, and if that answer is not borne out by the data then it is dropped, or buried in the tables and ignored, or relegated to “further study”.
    .
    I have seen this repeatedly in extreme weather vs climate studies, and in the effectiveness of natural immunity for covid. Most things aren’t a conspiracy, but some things are. The way “science” will work here is a year or two from now they will release studies that show natural immunity was measurably better than the vaccine, and pretend they knew this all along. They will sweep the fact they ignored it under the rug for the timeframe it was important to know this.
    .
    There are two narratives with climate change and extreme weather. (1) Weather X has a link to climate change however tenuous according to recent single study (2) Weather Y’s link to climate change is unknown and requires further study (this means there is no link). I typed in “tornadoes and climate change” into Google and it said:
    “While climate change is known to make some extreme weather conditions more frequent and more severe, current science isn’t definitive about how much climate change influences tornadoes. But climate change seems to be shifting the concentration and range of tornadoes, pushing them into more vulnerable areas”
    Ha ha. They don’t know how to count and trend tornadoes? Green jelly beans.
    .
    Most people in the tech area now have a fairly well tuned “science BS” detectors. When the counter arguments are emotionally based and they resort to group shaming instead of fact based argument that is a clue something has gone awry.

  428. Call me cynical, but this is the real reason for “holistic admissions”:
    .
    NYT: Study of Elite College Admissions Data Suggests Being Very Rich Is Its Own Qualification
    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/24/upshot/ivy-league-elite-college-admissions.html
    “A large new study, released Monday, shows that it has not been because these children had more impressive grades on average or took harder classes. They tended to have higher SAT scores and finely honed résumés, and applied at a higher rate — but they were overrepresented even after accounting for those things. For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, children from families in the top 1 percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, and those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in.”
    “… and gave children from private schools higher nonacademic ratings.”
    .
    This is not surprising in the least, and I doubt it is explicitly knowing the income level of the student. There are a myriad of ways to signal to elite colleges you are from the preferred group. Expensive private schools. Unpaid summer internships at elite locations. An essay response that is perfectly tuned to today’s sensibilities. They worry about “test prep”? They don’t even begin to consider that essay responses are completely fabricated by somebody other than the student, and those people know exactly what the school wants to hear.
    .
    “One in eight admitted students from the top 1 percent was a recruited athlete.”
    .
    Funny, my kid’s school didn’t have lacrosse, rowing, or sailing.

  429. Tom,
    Yes. I read that. Among the things they concluded: The Ivies want to admit very rich kids. Yah think?
    Interestingly, MIT was an exception. (Doesn’t surprise me. Kids who can’t cut it get failed at MIT.)

    Funny, my kid’s school didn’t have lacrosse, rowing, or sailing.

    Precisely. And most state schools don’t have teams on this either. Elite schools run “elite sports”. I’m surprised they don’t have dressage.

  430. Tom Scharf,
    “Expensive private schools. Unpaid summer internships at elite locations. An essay response that is perfectly tuned to today’s sensibilities.”
    .
    There is a private school a few miles from my house in Florida for grades 1 to 12. It costs about $35,000 per year for high schoolers. It has a campus of a couple hundred acres of very valuable (and very private) real estate not far from the intracoastal waterway, with under 500 students and class sizes of about 15. They brag on 100% college attendance and impossibly high rates of Ivy admissions. They are the kids of the extremely wealthy, with homes on Jupiter Island and a few other uber-expensive enclaves. Lacrosse? Yup. Rowing? Yup. Sailing? You betcha! Fencing? I think that too. The fix is in for these kids. They are never going to rub shoulders with the deplorables, and the Ivies will keep admitting them, no matter their qualifications.

  431. Lucia,
    “What ethics rules would posting redacted photos have violated?”
    .
    None that I am aware of. Hunter’s lawyers have been raging about her actions being “below the dignity of the House”. Which is amusing, since I have never believed for a second that most politicians in the House have much dignity.

  432. Mike M,
    That Hunter Biden conducts himself as a criminal in multiple ways and suffers no real legal consequences is a legitimate mater for Congress to investigate. The politically driven corruption of the DOJ and FBI is deep and long running.

  433. So Steve/Tom, do I understand that you mean pressure to publish papers supporting particular results is effectively peer-pressure or worse, that institutions threaten job security if your results are “unpopular”?

    I find the idea of “taboo” questions interesting. Anyone published research on proposals that failed NSF funding?

    Tom, to my mind, neither A nor B would be fundable as both have implicit bottom line (ie educational culture is reason for asian over-performance and racism is reason for black under-performance).

  434. Phil Scadden,
    Tom’s “B” proposal, or something very similar, would be funded in a heartbeat. “A”… not so much. BTW, few would be so foolish as to request NSF funding for a taboo subject, so the number of rejections wouldn’t mean much. The corruption of science by politics is worse now than at any time in my 50 years of being aware of it.

  436. “To oblique”.
    Sorry and thanks SteveF for clarifying.
    Reasons for obliqueness are manifold.
    I guess we all do it at times.
    –
    I try to self censure myself when blogging.
    Too verbose. Trying to be too smart. Lazy sentence formations , often because I have flights of ideas and have to get them down before they go away.
    –
    I feel very aware of the current censorship practices and mores on the internet.
    Sites such as yours, newscorp and climate etc, for example are harder to reach or bring up on a couple of common search engines for me.
    Certain subjects like the laptop are taboo on the internet and carrying comments on them are likely to increase these difficulties.
    –
    News sometimes has to seep out rather than yell from rooftops. Your readership understands this and some of the more forthright ones will call things as they see it.
    In their own way the commentaries on the war allowed here with the diverse and heartfelt opinions are what people want to read and engage with, search out and be informed about.
    –
    Ethics Committees.
    Ministries of Truth.
    Honest John the car Salesman.
    –
    When a politician, here or in America, is allowed to get up and freely slander someone without any avenue of recourse the true meaning of ethics for Ethics Committees is obvious.

  437. angech,
    I can’t comment on Australian law, but here in the States, you can’t slander someone by telling the truth. Hunter Biden has no case for slander under US law.

  438. Angech,
    Yeah. Way back in Colonial times, Americans decided truth was a defense against accusations of defamation. I think this can be surprising to the British. Perhaps Australians too?
    .
    I know Prince Harry has sometimes said things to the press which just make everyone say “Hahahahah! You’re in the US now!” (I think he wanted to instruct the press they couldn’t post photos of “the car chase” or something like that.)

  439. lucia (Comment #222837): “Americans decided truth was a defense against accusations of defamation. I think this can be surprising to the British.”
    .
    Probably not surprising to Canadians, since they are usually quite familiar with American culture. But very different from the law in Canada.

  440. I think angech (Comment #222835) might have caused some confusion about defamation law in Australia. As shown in the recent Ben Roberts-Smith VC case truth can be a defence in a defamation case, in fact you only need to show that you had a reasonable belief what you said was true, it doesn’t matter if it is latter shown not to be true or that you can’t prove it is true. The big exception is, and what I believe angech was writing about, parliamentary privilege: nothing said on the floor of parliament can be found to be defamation in a law court, the parliament itself can find you in contempt.

  441. Thanks Andrew.
    Parliamentary privilege us a big thing in Australia.
    I thought the Americans copied it from the British and that was why MTG was able to get away with her obnoxious behaviour.
    The issue of there being truth in what she said or showed does not stop it from being defamatory in the sense that the exposed person is damaged by it.
    Nonetheless I feel better that she had the fortitude to do so even though I disapprove of her having to use a vile method to get some publicity.

  442. JAMA says covid preferred killing Republicans over Dems in Florida ….
    “Findings In this cohort study evaluating 538?159 deaths in individuals aged 25 years and older in Florida and Ohio between March 2020 and December 2021, excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before. These differences were concentrated in counties with lower vaccination rates, and primarily noted in voters residing in Ohio.”
    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2807617

  443. angech (Comment #222840): “The issue of there being truth in what she said or showed does not stop it from being defamatory in the sense that the exposed person is damaged by it.”
    .
    In the US, but not Canada, that would protect MTG from being sued for libel no matter the forum in which she acted. But if not for Congressional Immunity, she could potentially be sued on other grounds. A superficially similar case would be Bollea v Gawker. Bollea is better known as Hulk Hogan. His lawsuit bankrupted Gawker.
    .
    I do not know if she violated any rules of Congressional decorum. But what she did was extremely selfish. The Republicans are closing in on the Biden Crime Family and MTG created a huge distraction.

  444. Phil,
    “Was political party affiliation a risk factor associated with excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in Florida and Ohio?”
    .
    You don’t think that was a politically tainted pandering funding attempt that the authors already knew the answer to? Do you * really * believe that if the situation was reversed that this study would be funded? I do not.
    .
    Do Asian students work harder? Aaaagggh, feeling triggered? Isn’t that the very first question a person asks themselves when Asian test scores are higher? The null model? Yes, especially with the trendy blank slate theory. Now, go look at a thousand media articles on the educational race gap in the US and see how many bring this obvious factoid up. For the record:
    “Asian high school students spent more hours per week on homework (10 hours on average) than students of all other races/ethnicities shown (who spent an average of 6 to 7 hours per week on homework)”
    .
    NYT’s helpfully clears thing up:
    “This extraordinary record by Asian-Americans has * prompted a new series of studies * to find out what lies behind their success. So far there is little agreement on the answers. Some scholars believe Asians are genetically superior, possessing higher I.Q.’s. Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, Harvard’s eminent pediatrician, suggests that Chinese and Japanese babies are more alert and sensitive at birth, making them faster learners. Other specialists feel the secret is cultural, rooted in the emphasis people like Ms. Ngoc place on the traditional Confucian values of education and the family. Still others caution that the Asian-American children doing so well today are the offspring of a unique group of immigrants, drawn largely from the intellectual and professional elite of their home countries.”
    “In a survey he recently conducted of 7,836 students in six San Francisco area high schools, Professor Dornbusch found that Asian-Americans consistently got better grades than other students regardless of their parents’ level of education or their families’ social and economic status.”
    “”What we found was that whether it was kindergarten, first grade or fifth grade, the Japanese kids were on top in math,” he said. ”The kids in Taiwan started out just below the American kindergarten kids in math, but they were better by the first grade. And as the American kids do progressively worse in math, the gap widens.”
    “The American first-graders spent an average of 14 minutes a night on homework and hated it; the Japanese spent 37 minutes and the Chinese youngsters 77 minutes and both liked their homework.”
    .
    Wow. Do you find that answer surprising coming from the NYT’s? It’s from 1986, ha ha. Good luck getting that funded today.
    https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/03/education/why-asians-are-going-to-the-head-of-the-class.html

  445. There was more vaccine hesitancy in Republicans. I think it is primarily related to trust in higher education and other institutions:
    Americans’ Confidence in Higher Education Down Sharply
    https://news.gallup.com/poll/508352/americans-confidence-higher-education-down-sharply.aspx
    “Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen to 36%, sharply lower than in two prior readings in 2015 (57%) and 2018 (48%).”
    .
    Why is a more difficult question, but I think the ideological capture of higher education by the left is a big factor. If they want to regain trust I suggest funding and amplifying studies such as “Republicans are stupid morons who deserve their covid deaths” should be reconsidered. My view is they have earned that distrust.

  446. Tom Scharf,
    “Do you find that answer surprising coming from the NYT’s? It’s from 1986, ha ha. Good luck getting that funded today.”
    .
    Thanks for that bit of humor.
    .
    In 1986 I actually would (could!) read some of what the NYTs printed without having to roll my eyes. No more. It is now mostly lies of commission and omission, combined with constant willful distortions of all politically inconvenient facts. Their tripe is worth nobody’s time. The change is politically driven; the serious journalists at the NYTs who mostly reported the news without bias in 1986 are long gone. Only lefty crazies work there now. It shows.

  447. Tom, are your quoted questions NSF-funded studies? I am assuming so. Frankly, I find “Was political party affiliation a risk factor associated with excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in Florida and Ohio?” surprising, shall we say? To my mind it is an open valid research question, but not one you could possibly get government funding for here. But one which many non-government funders would certainly go for.

    A study question along the lines of “What factors influence different educational performance or outcomes between different ethnic groups” is certainly a valid question and given the large differences between ethnicities, one where I would expect considerable study. As is “Why do Asian students outperform other ethnic groups in education” so long as it is well established that Asian student do outperform other ethnic groups. These are questions that do not have an expected outcome built into the question unlike the earlier suggestions.

    As an aside, I think there is very good reason to be doubtful that hours of study *beyond a certain minimum* is sole determinant (my prior on that heavily influenced by observation in Philippines). What studied and how are also important. The observation that American first-graders hated homework and Japanese/Chinese enjoyed it immediately suggests other important ethnic factors at play. Hope they study that.

  448. Phil,
    “Hope they study that…”
    .
    Not sure who ‘they’ might be, but that most certainly is not going to be seriously studied, because the answer is already known at least in part, and because there is no appetite at all for a complete answer, since that complete answer might include that east asians are a little smarter on average than Europeans and Africans.
    .
    It is not that the question is impossible (or even difficult) to answer, it is that the answer could possibly support ‘racism’. So inquiry is essentially forbidden. Maybe things are different where you live, but here in the States academia has swallowed the poisonous woke Koolaid, and they will not countenance research which could demonstrate they are mistaken.

  449. Well I don’t really think it matters much if there were racial differences in intelligence since if they did exist, they would be small and I fail to see any practical bearing. There would also be plenty of race A who were smarter than you, and plenty of race B who were dumber.

    However, “liking versus not liking homework” does not sound to me like something that would have a race/genetic component on a general scale but much more likely to be cultural factor. I could throw up hypotheses like what other activities the kids did before they went to school; strength of desire for parental approval; access to media. Probably a lot more if I thought about it. We used to live in a very multi-cultural area (Pacifica, Indian, Maori, East Asian, only 24% NZ European) and the differences in home life for kids were very large.

  450. There are some very strange reports coming out regarding Hunter and his plea deal.
    .
    A Republicans attorney filed docs with the court asking the judge to not grant the deal.
    .
    An attorney for Hunter is said to have called the court, misrepresenting as the Republican attorney, and asked for the filing to be disregarded as it was filled in error.
    .
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl9w7Jy2Cv0

  451. Phil,
    ” There would also be plenty of race A who were smarter than you, and plenty of race B who were dumber.”
    .
    Sure, the widths of the distributions are considerably greater than any differences in the means. I don’t think anyone has seriously suggested anything different. The real impact of differences in the means would be seen mainly in the populations found in the tails, which, like Larry Summers’ comment about the dearth of top female mathematicians, is strictly forbidden. Suggesting differences in the tails of the distribution could be due, even in part, to the effect of native differences in group means invites being attacked as a racist.
    .
    The social/cultural influences on performance are likely far more important; if a student misses school 25% of the time and never studies, they usually do poorly. Despite that being pretty obvious, any suggestion that social/cultural influences are important invites loud complaints about “blaming the victim”, along with insane educational policies like “anti-racist” math, where getting the right answer no longer matters in the grade you get. Lest you think I am joking, check California’s latest state educational guidance on math. The only acceptable cause for racial disparities in education within academia is “structural racism”; argue against that at your peril.
    .
    All of which only emphasizes the tragedy of the USA refusing to adopt public policies which could actually help narrow the substantial racial differences in educational outcomes. The woke stupidity which academia insists on for public policy is exactly the opposite of what is needed.

  452. Reuters: “One dead in cargo ship fire, electric car suspected source, Dutch coastguard says”
    “The Panama-registered Fremantle Highway was transporting 2,857 cars from Germany to Egypt, 25 of them electric.” “An electric car was the suspected source of the blaze, a coastguard spokesperson said, adding that the ship was still burning.”
    This is at least the second big cargo ship transporting electric cars that went up in flames. Last year the Felicity Ace: “The Azorean harbourmaster told Reuters that lithium-ion batteries in electric cars ignited and the fire could only be extinguished with special equipment.”
    “Analysts estimated the damage caused by the cargo loss to be between US$334 million and US$401 million.” Today’s ship one is still burning. I bet the insurance companies stop this practice.
    https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/one-dead-several-wounded-after-fire-cargo-ship-dutch-coast-guard-2023-07-26/
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicity_Ace

  453. It is taboo in the US to suggest that cultural factors are a significant factor in the education gap, at least cultural factors beyond systemic racism. Although your genetic statements are likely correct, since when does practical bearing block academic inquiry? Test scores have approx. one standard deviation of difference depending on age and type of test. It’s not tiny, but it is measurable and enduring.
    .
    My view is that this (cultural / genetic) is only worth bringing up when assertions are made that the lack of representation in STEM is * completely * due to societal racism and equity fixes must be used, depriving others of their earned results from hard work. The testing (or perhaps interest?) gap goes all the way back into grade school. This cannot be ignored. The testing curves significantly overlap but as SteveF brought up the differences at the edges are more pronounced. The representations in engineering and some other professions reflect that. So definitely disparate outcomes, but maybe they shouldn’t be fixed by equity thumbs on the scale.

  454. Lithium battery fires are a big problem. There is a reason they don’t ship those on aircraft.

  455. Good news. Hunter’s sweetheart plea deal collapsed as soon as the judge started to ask questions.

  456. Tom, interesting. Going to google scholar I find a fairly rich literature on both black and asian achievement and investigations on causes covering multiple hypotheses including genetics and in-home cultural factors. However, they are largely 1990-2010. I see very little US paper if I limit search to last 5 years (and some of those are earlier papers republished in books). Seems to support your taboo.

  458. Halftime World Cup: Nederlands-1, U.S. Women’s National Team-0
    I have no idea what I’m watching, but I am having fun cheering wildly against the US women.

  459. Phil,
    The big change that has taken place in my lifetime is the abandonment of the expectation that racial differences in education, earnings, and general life outcomes would be reduced via laws against discrimination in education, hiring, and promotion.
    .
    Those laws did not substantially eliminate racial differences. The new standard on the left in the USA is that only widespread ‘systemic racism’ can explain the differences…. leading to all manner of destructive social policies, most obviously institutionalized racial discrimination against the most successful groups in education, hiring, and promotion. The entire “equal rights” movement of my youth (which I strongly supported) has been bizarrely distorted to justify… indeed, to demand…. permanent racial discrimination against all other groups in favor of African Americans (and to a lesser extent Latinos). IMO, it is an utter abomination and unrelated to equal rights.

  460. Something is up in the Ukrainian offensive. After months of meager advances suddenly tonight positive news is coming from several sectors. For example,
    ISW posted several times like this:
    “ Russian sources, including the Russian MoD and several prominent milbloggers, claimed that Ukrainian forces launched an intense frontal assault towards #Robotyne (10km south of #Orikhiv) and broke through Russian defensive positions northeast of the settlement.
    Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western #Donetsk Oblast on July 26 and have made gains south of Velyka Novosilka. Geolocated footage of Ukrainian forces capturing prisoners in #Staromayorske shows that UKR troops have advanced to the NE part of the settlement.
    NEW: #Ukrainian forces launched a significant mechanized #counteroffensive operation in western #Zaporizhia Oblast on July 26 and appear to have broken through certain pre-prepared Russian defensive positions south of #Orikhiv.”
    The old reliable NOELREPORTS is active too:
    “The AFU has entrenched itself inside Staromaiors’ke and is advancing to Urozhaine RU forces retreated from Nadiya (west of Raihorodka) which was captured yesterday. “Front line leveled off”. RU forces did a failed counterattack near Kurdyumivka”

    There are posts from Russian bloggers about this being the first engagement of the Ukrainian stormtroopers trained by NATO and outfitted with NATO gear.
    Tomorrow’s news should tell the tale.
    https://twitter.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1684372642407522305?s=20
    https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1684447491201150977?s=20

  461. SteveF,
    .
    The flap du jour complains that Harvard favors rich white people in their admissions. And legacies.
    .
    Is it possible that were Harvard to double-blind their application review and the applications were to be limited to a serious essay, and perhaps the SAT’s, the origins of the admitted might not change that much?

  463. John Ferguson,
    Since essays can be written by an (expensive) hired gun and SAT scores inflated with private school and extensive (and expensive) coaching/training, the children of the wealthy would continue to be advantaged. But if the thumb-on-the-scale of legacy admissions were eliminated, I expect far fewer of those kids would be admitted. I also expect that truly merit based admissions would significantly reduce admissions of black and Latino applicants. Of course, Harvard (and many other selective schools) will not adopt a merit based admissions policy, so they will continue admit students based on factors in addition to merit.
    .
    Larry Summers wants Harvard to end their legacy admissions policies (https://www.thefp.com/p/harvard-president-larry-summers-bari-weiss). It will be interesting to see how it turns out, but if I had to bet, I’d bet Harvard figures out a way to admit an ‘unexpected’ number of legacies…. especially the very wealthy ones.

  464. HaroldW,
    Very interesting publication…. the LK-99 material sounds a lot like “unobtanium” on Pandora. 😉
    .
    A lot of their data looks solid, but I was very much not impressed by the videos the authors released, where magnetic interactions appeared weak and could be largely or entirely due to other influences…. if there is superconductivity actually present, it must be a very small volume fraction of the material. The preparation method described is so simple (mix two powders in a quartz tube under vacuum and heat to 950C for <24 hours) that replication or refutation can be expected quickly…. certainly within a month or two.
    .
    If real, it is a stunning breakthrough. Replication is needed.

  465. HaroldW,
    BTW, one thing that puzzles (and casts doubt) is the complete lack of detail on preparation. Obvious things like particle size distributions of the mixed powders, chemical purity of the starting materials, and how those influence superconductivity are completely absent.
    .
    Failure to even mention such basic stuff is not at all what you would expect with such a simple preparation method. Maybe there is a good explanation for so little information, but if so, I don’t see it. People trying to replicate the results will need more details.

  467. john fergusson

    Is it possible that were Harvard to double-blind their application review and the applications were to be limited to a serious essay, and perhaps the SAT’s, the origins of the admitted might not change that much?

    They may blind them to race going forward. But they certainly didn’t in the past. I don’t think they want to blind themselves sufficiently to not favor rich kids. And I mean in the sense that if two kids are otherwise equal, they want to admit the rich kid. They way to be certain to favor the rich kids is to not be blind.
    .
    I think the NYTimes article on admissions of rich kids makes it pretty clear that the two things harvard wanted was (a) rich and (b) “diversity”. Ideally, they could get a rich black kid. But there was a graph showing the distribution of SAT with family income and distribution of Admission with income. And kids from “medium rich” families were the ones not getting in. Mind you, I imagine the “poor” kids were disproportionately “diversity”. Because Harvard wants rich kids. So “not rich enough” and “not ‘diversity'” got slammed.
    .
    It sounds like schools are going to try to figure out how to continue to benefit the “diversity” groups. But we can be sure they don’t want to do it by any means that reduces the number of rich kids.
    .
    At places like Harvard, favoring ‘legacy’ favors rich kids— at least statistically.

  468. Phil,
    I haven’t verified this, but the Google results I get for those kind of searches has also changed a lot in the last ten years. I used to get links to those old studies and some “heretic” websites and blogs, now I get a majority of recent social science dogma.

  469. If Harvard wants to discriminate in legal ways in its admissions process that is their choice. What I cannot stand is them pretending they are super virtuous and the media amplifying that.

  470. I think the current endpoint here is that admissions officers are not going to be allowed to see the race checkbox, nor are they going to be allowed to know the racial makeup of the class prior to final decisions. The race checkbox will still be there for statistical reasons.
    .
    Most minority applicants will wisely make it clear in whatever way is allowable that they are a minority, mostly essay.
    .
    The game has changed though. The schools are now on the defensive legally. For some admission officers, this is probably a relief.

  471. Lucia,
    Janet’s alma mater for the last few years has endeavored to operate a financial-condition-blind admission program. The school believes that it can fund everyone admitted who may need help. They are well endowed.

    SteveF,
    I was trying to get at the possibility that if the application review process at a place like Harvard is careful, rich kids are going to be accepted in greater numbers even if the process is financial condition blind.
    .
    This does not appear to be happening at Jan’s alma mater because, I suspect, their selection process is diversity driven and they very likely have all manner of sensors to pick it up wherever it may be possible.
    .

  472. Yevgeny Prigozhin says “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”
    Putin held an Africa-Russia summit in Petersburg this week. Guess who was photographed rubbing elbows with the African nabobs? Yes, Prigozhin…. I warned you all that guy wasn’t a goner. This supports my conspiracy theory that the rebellion was all part of Putin’s plan for a purge.
    From the BBC:
    “Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was photographed in St Petersburg during this week’s Africa-Russia summit.
    He was seen shaking hands with Ambassador Freddy Mapouka, a senior official in the Central African Republic (CAR)”
    Picture and link to BBC article:
    https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1684850945178378240?s=20
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-66333403?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_link_type=web_link&at_format=link&at_link_id=542333C8-2D06-11EE-900E-3DAE5B3BE886&at_medium=social&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_ptr_name=twitter&at_link_origin=BBCWorld&at_campaign_type=owned

  473. “Georgians protest, forcing Russian cruise liner out of Batumi port”
    Protests erupted in the Georgian cities of Tbilisi and Batumi in response to the arrival of the cruise liner Astoria Grande in Georgia, carrying over 800 tourists, the majority of whom were Russian citizens.
    Slogans like “Russian ship, go f..k yourself” (the phrase widely adopted as a slogan at the beginning of 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine by Ukrainians) and “Abkhazia is Georgia” were heard at the rally,
    Sea Track of ASTORIA GRANDE cruise ship, currently in the Black sea:
    https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1684859201598685184?s=20
    News article from Georgia:
    https://civil.ge/archives/553449

  474. SteveF (Comment #222865): “Obvious things like particle size distributions of the mixed powders, chemical purity of the starting materials, and how those influence superconductivity are completely absent.”
    .
    I don’t see the issue. It is not normal to determine purity of reagents. Usually, supplier and grade is all that is reported, as the Korean authors did. I have never done solid state reactions, but I would be surprised if it were normal to determine particle size distributions after grinding reagents. If that were a big issue, they presumably would have encountered problems with reproducibility. The description of the prep procedure seemed fine to me.
    .
    It is always possible that the reaction won’t proceed in the absence of some specific impurity. If so, we will be hearing about that any day now.

  475. Mike M,

    I have many customers who always monitor size distribution of powders that go into a range of processes, often focusing on exactly how grinding conditions influence size distribution and downstream properties. I found the “materials mixed with mortar and pestle” description of the process thin and archaic. 2 seconds? 2 minutes? 2 hours? 20 grams of force? 2Kg of force? And many other uncontrolled variables. Sounds like a paper from 1804 on preparing gunpowder. This is not how I have seen research on powders done.
    .
    Their superconductor results may be real, but there is a great deal of skepticism already in print, and one Chinese group claims (no paper yet) to have replicated and seen nothing except the expected conductivity of copper.

  476. SteveF (Comment #222876): “I have many customers who always monitor size distribution of powders that go into a range of processes”.
    .
    Is there a subsequent phase change? I think that would make a big difference as to whether particle size matters.
    .
    I would think that the effort that goes into developing an industrial process exceeds what is practical in the typical academic lab.

  477. WSJ:
    “De Oliveira later lied to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents during a Jan. 13 interview at his home, according to the indictment, which said he had “personally observed and helped move Trump’s boxes when they arrived at The Mar-a-Lago Club in January 2021,” but during his interview said he “never saw anything.”

    The FBI agents had advised him that it was a voluntary interview, and that it is a crime to lie to the FBI, according to the indictment.”
    .
    A maintenance worker pincered between Trump and the FBI. Yeah FBI! Protecting democracy. The only lesson I learn from these type of process crimes is NEVER talk to the FBI and DOJ, they are not your friends and will use the system against you at the drop of a hat. They are obviously using this process crime charge to pressure him to testify against Trump.
    .
    In other news, circa 2015: “Hillary Clinton’s former IT staffer who handled her private email system asserted his Fifth Amendment right Thursday, refusing to answer lawmakers’ questions about her unusual tech set-up.”
    .
    Should you talk to the FBI?

  478. Season three of ‘Only Murders in the Building’ drops August 8th. Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez are back and joined by Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep.
    Seasons 1&2 were blockbusters. A comedy-murder-mystery that only the mind of Steve Martin could dream up! We watched season one week to week in serial form and waited till the end of season two and binge-watched it over a four day stretch. I think we will do season three in serial form… the mystery deepens with a week to ponder it.
    Trailer: https://youtu.be/aaifwVfAf4E

  479. As if we need more confirmation the government has been privately applying pressure to social media to censor their citizens…
    .
    Facebook Bowed to White House Pressure, Removed Covid Posts
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-bowed-to-white-house-pressure-removed-covid-posts-2df436b7?st=10ejrzknqizm4if&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
    .
    The question is “What is to be done about it?”. I’m not sure there is even a process to hold people accountable for these free speech violations. Tell them to stop?
    .
    There used to be a time when the legacy media would make fighting this their pet cause, but they now support this operation in large, as long as their rights aren’t touched.

  480. “Should you talk to the FBI?”
    .
    No. Never, under any circumstances, except maybe with a good lawyer.

  481. Mike M,
    “Is there a subsequent phase change?”
    .
    There are often subsequent reactions which include the complete disappearance of the original particles.
    .
    Yes, a good commercial process for sure requires more control of conditions than you will likely find at an academic lab. One of the reasons to look closely at any claimed breakthrough in an academic setting. I still think the Korean paper is pretty thin on control in the preparation process…. it gives me added doubt.
    .
    I hope their claims are accurate. I wouldn’t put the chance at much more than 25%.

  482. Tom Scharf,
    ” I’m not sure there is even a process to hold people accountable for these free speech violations. Tell them to stop?”
    .
    Good point. They are simply not going to stop unless they are fired.
    .
    That takes the election of a president 100% dedicated to cleaning house at all the culpable agencies, and willing to issue executive orders prohibiting the current practice of censorship… and firing all who refuse to comply.

  483. SteveF (Comment #222884)
    July 28th, 2023 at 10:57 am

    I think that once the party out of power gets into power they will consider the censoring of the previous party a good tool for them to use. Trump would certainly not be above doing that.

    I believe we have to realize that governments that have been given great power like most have in the world there will be attempts at some point in the power move to more completely control speech. It is what they they do. It is not a single issue problem but rather a general problem of big government.

    The Republicans have the advantage/disadvantage of having the media and including social media on the side of the left and Democrats and probably not about to do their bidding.

    Most disconcerting is when the media and large private concerns acquiesce to the exercised power of the state. That situation can rapidly become full blown fascism.

  484. Back in the day when I was doing chemistry laboratory experiments and reading related papers, I believe all that was required in published papers was to relate the grade (reagent), percent purity and the manufacturer. That was however related to making new compounds or compounds for new investigations of their properties.

    Experiments with super conducting materials would I think require much more detailed information. The degree of information required should be related to the specific research being done and reported.

    Commercially I have dealt with phosphorescent materials where particle size was critical and making slurries for coatings required ball milling that if not correctly controlled could reduce the phosphorescent properties drastically. The phosphorescence was controlled by very low concentrations (like impurities) of other materials.

  485. Well, it’s about time! NASA is launching a streaming service called NASA+. The promise: “to dramatically improve the user experience for the public we serve”.
    Some of you know how frustrating it can be to access NASA data. Near Real-Time environmental data is near impossible to master.
    Glitzy intro video;
    https://youtu.be/RrlDv-ts2f0
    The streaming launch is soon, but you can see a Beta version online:
    https://beta.nasa.gov/ [Caution, it needs work]
    Laudable goals:
    “We’re putting space on demand and at your fingertips with NASA’s new streaming platform,” said Marc Etkind, associate administrator, Office of Communications, NASA Headquarters. “Transforming our digital presence will help us better tell the stories of how NASA explores the unknown in air and space, inspires through discovery, and innovates for the benefit of humanity.”

  486. Ken Fritsch,
    “I think that once the party out of power gets into power they will consider the censoring of the previous party a good tool for them to use. Trump would certainly not be above doing that.”
    .
    The difference is that the MSM and businesses will never go along with Trump trying to censor. For the first time in my memory, journalists, educators, most business leaders and most of government are all opposed to free speech. This is not normal, and IMHO, very dangerous for liberty.

  487. Steve,

    For the first time in my memory, journalists, educators, most business leaders and most of government are all opposed to free speech. This is not normal, and IMHO, very dangerous for liberty.

    I agree. I think the rot is widespread and not simply top down, and growing. As time goes on we the people diverge more and more from our original Enlightenment based political philosophies in our thinking. Freedom of speech? Right to bear arms? At best viewed as quaint and archaic, at worst as dangerous and impractical. I think it’s only going to get worse; all downhill from here.

  488. The left wing bias of these groups has been there for a long time. It has become more obvious recently because it is now blatant whereas previously their words were accepted without much scrutiny and opposition making people less likely to be attuned to biases.

    There was a very obvious sweetheart and unquestioning piece in today’s WSJ about Hunter and Joe Biden that could be used as a prime example of that blatant bias.

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