Greenpa
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“Europe remains in bland denial of reality. ”
Perfectly true- and/but- can you point to any big government in the world that is otherwise?
I am so glad Nicole was there.
Very strangely, I was humming “What’ll I do” yesterday, as I repotted a cactus I has been certain was dead- but it started growing in spite of no water – with my 10 year old daughter. She asked what it was, and I sang it for her.
English needs some new words and phrases for this situation. I want to tell you I truly feel, and grieve, with you; but there really are no words to convey it; only phrases so worn out they have no impact.
Take care.
Ah, but here, you see, is THE answer. No, really.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-34288659
It is actually within our technological ability now – to make humans – who are truly green; i.e. photosynthetic themselves. And make it heritable. Your slaves just need to work in the sun much of the day, and a not inconsequential amount of the food they need will be provided by the sun. No kidding. And yes; it’s been mentioned.
“..the economy shows no signs of overheating..”
indeed. Alas the proofreader did not correct it to a more accurate “..the economy shows no signs of breathing..”
In case anyone here were thinking of cheering up – truly- there is no hope.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34271384“How automation could benefit agriculture”
By Claire Marshall BBC Environment Correspondent“Intelligent automation now means that a dairy herd can be fed, cared for and milked by just one or two people. Robert Veitch has a dairy farm near Glasgow that uses one of the most advanced robotic milking systems in the world. It is a £1.8 million facility where 10 machines take care of 250 cattle. … But the cows aren’t out in the fields eating grass, they are kept in the shed. This is intensive farming with one objective – to produce as much milk as possible. Mr Veitch says it works. He believes that the cows are kept so comfortable that, “They wouldn’t want to go out even on a good day.” … Many farmers and policy makers now take the view that intelligent machines are more precise, efficient, and ultimately cheaper than humans: that they are the only way to help feed a growing population.”
Just. Wow. Someone forgot to put into the design, for human brains – “the neurons are supposed to connect.” And. Here we are.
All very true. Of course. 🙂 If it’s not in your hand; you can’t use it.
I prefer silver, being an extremely unwealthy person. Gold is too valuable for me. I have visions of really needing to go someplace, after TSHTF, and being at a gas station desperately needing gas- saying to the station owner “Have you got change for an ounce of gold?” He will smile, and tell you no. So – your 30 gallons of gas will cost you an ounce of gold.
Silver is a little easier. The other factor to keep well in mind is that no business person will accept your gold – until you prove it IS gold, not a fake. Tungsten is only one of the more sophisticated ways to counterfeit; in all other times when metals were money- it was understood, your money had to be tested. That takes time; and money, too.
If I had any money- I might buy a little more silver at the moment.
Ilargi – I thought of you as being one of the few able to read between ALL the lines here. I found this article horrifying enough – but then they added one at the end I’d never heard of before. Japan is well on the down curve; not much in the news, and the Owners have full license to do any bloody thing they want – and they’re doing it. Not included right here is that families on welfare in Japan are at a record high.
———————————————–
“Wages for temporary workers hit record high”
Biz / Tech Sep. 6, 2015 – Updated 19:30 UTC-5“A private research firm says businesses in Japan are offering record-high wages for their non-regular workers.
“An employment information firm Recruit Jobs looked at pay rates in help-wanted advertisements in 3 metropolitan areas in central and western Japan. Officials at Recruit Jobs say the average hourly wage for July stood at about 13-and-a-half dollars, up nearly 4 percent in yen terms from a year earlier.
“System engineers saw the highest rise of about 4.3 percent to 17 dollars an hour.
“The officials say staff shortages are widespread, but especially in IT-related businesses.
“This comes as managers try to hire more IT-related engineers. The move is to prepare for a system that will assign ID numbers to all Japanese citizens, to be launched in January.
“The officials say temporary workers can expect to earn relatively high wages for some time.”
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20150907_11.html
$17/hour for systems engineers !!!!
I’m equally worried about the other criminals, operating at the bottom. The refugees, and their children, are incredibly vulnerable. So easy to take, and disappear (verb). Any police around to prevent it? Not so far as I can see.
Spain/Catalonia – I keep wondering why we don’t hit a point where the larger entity says “Oh, hey, sure! Independence? Sounds great! Let’s draw up the separation agreements!”
Sure, Spain would lose some seaports, tax base, etc – but think of the headaches it would avoid; and the costs! And think of all the Catalonians would learn, when they really had to run/fund their own roads, hospitals, police, military… Seems to me both sides would gain more, faster, from a friendly separation – and might easily decide to rejoin, in a decade or two.
I’m willing to send an invitation to Texas for them to secede, right now.
winced, Ilargi, not at your interest; but at the horrifyingly inadequate filtering of “science”, both inside science, and via journalists.
I’m afraid I winced, again, at the announcement of the “new mathematical discovery about predator-prey relationships”.
It’s not new. And this isn’t even a “study” in the old meaning; it’s a meta-study, hashing over data from previous publications. There are problems with those.
Population dynamics is something I have specialized in. The great majority of “amazing discoveries” in this metastudy have been well understood for at least 50 years. The idea that ANYONE ever expected predator populations to rise in a linear relationship to prey numbers is just astonishing bullshit – NO ONE who has actually stepped outside the lab and looked at real animals would every make that suggestion. Gee whiz- prey eat “grass”, mostly; predators eat prey (mostly) – their life dynamics, intra-species relationships, territory requirements, are parsecs apart. They never increase, expand, or stabilize in anything like similar ways.
The metastudy authors DID come up with some useful observations, particularly the idea that predator-prey dynamics are so very similar across many taxa. That IS interesting, and even a little surprising. Cool.
But the blather about “looky what we discovered, all by our selfs, that nobody ever thought of before!” is not only bullshit, it’s dangerous to our civilization. Science is very badly regulated today, and the amount of money and life times being expended on studying problems that were well studied many decades ago is horrifying. You would think being able to google a point would make younger scientists more widely educated, aware. But the opposite seems to be the case. Within the disciplines where I have professional awareness, newly minted PhDs seem to have 1/10th or so of the basic information once required.
Yeah, I know; sounds like typical “old guy” crankiness about “young guys” – but – there is hard evidence. Like this, in the NYT last week: ” Since 1986, though, when scientists discovered human pheromones —…” Really? 1986? So how is it I took an intensive 1:1 reading course on human pheromones, with a research Endocrinologist, in 1973? And one of the things we discussed in detail was the amount of documentation in literature about the human awareness of human pheromones, going back into antiquity. Ever heard of musk based perfumes? Musks are animal pheromones; that cross react with humans. And we knew that. And the writer didn’t get that year via Google; but from scientists. Oh, and, this NYT article is not in any way science- is a giggle piece – laughing mostly at science.
Perfesser; I know some of those farmers, too. One told me: “If you’re not making huge profits from all the government programs- you’re just plain stupid.” Food? Not part of the equations.
Most of the people now on the forefront of “real” farming, for lack of a better phrase- are no longer interested in the organic label – it has become meaningless; at best. Big commercial “organic” operations are very cynical about staying within the letter of the laws they had written for them – which completely subvert the original ideas. My own labels say “Beyond Organic”, which is both true, and easily commands the same premium price. Because my customers know me.
rapier: “To choose a word a commune might be called a tribe and tribes just don’t happen spontaneously.”
A useful and accurate description- and also one with very useful and abundant scientific study of extant successful “tribes”. A) they are structured. B) there is a hierarchy of authority, in long-term existence, and long mutually agreed to. Long as in; many human generations.
No structure, no hierarchy -> rapid collapse. New structure, new hierarchy created last year-> incredibly difficult to hold together until it matures and is truly agreed to.
Absolute authoritarian religious communes- can last for centuries easily, millennia, sometimes. Communes based on individual freedom- show me one.
Kerry – just google “military design of video games”. (first one is mil prop)
“But at the end of the day, when faced with actually doing it, most hippies opt out because it turns out to be just too hard.”
I have a different view on the problem. It isn’t that “it’s too hard”; in fact many young folks launching into these kinds of farms (I run one) enjoy the daily hard work.
There are two major reasons they fail (and they often do). A) they got into it armed with vast enthusiasms. But the directions and practices they are steered into are far too often simply bullshit. The field is full of charlatans, who will take your money for “classes” – and never actually operate a farm as they teach- profitably. There are people who are not charlatans, to be sure. But they are often less “flashy”; and the young folks are just like those enthusiastic for Trump at the moment; they really want a loud iconoclast to follow.
And B) this kind of agriculture is a life-long endeavor and career. In 10 years – you’ll still be doing the same work- with the same very slim results- and it dawns on people this is not going to be exciting, it’s going to be work. Many people bail out at that point; marriages and partnerships disintegrate.
There are, I can tell you, a growing number of people to do understand this, and are actually looking for the lifetime from the outset. But they’re quiet, and outnumbered by the charlatans; who reproduce freely. Con games have always been an easy way to make a living; and running a con is more “exciting” than just farming.
rapier: “And then there is America’s love of bombing cities, civilians. Everyone just loves it. So clean. Death by remote control.”
Just in case you are not already aware (I would bet you are, though) – the US military has been intimately involved in the design and distribution of video games- for decades. With the specific goals of both training kids to accurately use video pointers, and to get them used to the idea that “this is just a game”. Then they put the top video players to flying armed drones, and inside tanks- etc. This is not random paranoia; this has been documented.
My own guess for the very high suicide rate among US soldiers these days – they kill by remote control – but it eventually dawns on them they are killing actual people – and is horrifies them They also find out there are no sane reasons why they are doing this – and it destroys them.
The best commentary on current Chinese economics I’ve seen. All questions and good history; no answers.
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/08/china-the-new-spanish-empire-000211““I acquired the news from private conversations, which is an abnormal way, and added my personal judgment and subjective views to finish this story, said Mr Wang”
Can you read? This was written by government agent, at a probability >95%. They’ve told him, “We have your family, and will wreck your career, and your offsprings, unless you play ball.”
“I changed migrants to refugees in the title. Getting really tired of this politically motivated misnomer.”
Japan TV just switched to refugee; but they still quote anyone using migrant. I would place a small wager that the Abe regime will get that changed back this week. No one is more afraid of strangers coming to their land to stay.
The nail that sticks up will be hammered down (I was taught that was of Chinese origin, not Japanese) – happens in many ways; and this is not new: https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/08/31/world/asia/ap-as-india-scholar-killed.html
“Beijing’s security forces are transforming China into a place of “fear and panic”, ”
Malarky. This is primarily being repeated as a part of the current attempt to paint China as evil and the scapegoat for world problems. But wait. I have a twist here.
It’s the present tense I object to. There has never been a time, as far back as we can see, when China has NOT caused dissidents to disappear, permanently. China is, was, will be- deadly dangerous if you insist on being the nail that sticks up (you will be hammered down). No matter what you are doing, there are higher officials with the power to just get sick of you, and make you vanish. Don’t do that.
I knew a disappeared person personally. She was a “Communist Princess” – her father one of Mao’s generals. She lived in my home for a full summer; weeded our garden, made potstickers for us, then went back; of course. Normally persons with that much guanxi do not disappear. But she wound up being insulting, on national TV – and was gone, the next day. Not even her father could learn what happened.
China is China; forget at your peril.
Another bit of econo-theater, from a professor:
My reading of this article – he’s working hard on having his cake, and eating it too; casting fat aspersions on “conventional wisdom”, citing down statistics of his own, but always qualifying, so he does not actually stick his neck out. “Who knows what the truth is, anyway?” 🙂
“To answer this, Nouriel, you might first want to ask why it doesn’t have one already.” re:
• Does The World Need A Financial Early Warning System? (Roubini)What I would ask, rather is “Yes? And then what?” I’m dismayed to find Roubini buying into the general academic fantasy that “If we explain it, then of course the world will act on our knowledge – intelligently.” Um. No evidence for that, anywhere, ever. A nice global financial early warning system would be exactly the same as a tsunami warning siren – that is set to alert you when the wave is 30 seconds away. You’ll have time to turn and look, and watch it coming, fully appreciating your inescapable doom.
If you’ll remember my predictions for the “market” from last week – at mid day, the NY markets are slightly down; high volatility; but overall for the week the 3 major indices are positive for the week, and I would guess will close that way. Maybe up, maybe down, for the day; but up for the week. Which will still be well down for the month; but nobody looks that far back.
Personally. I take the current market behavior to mean: the Owners are still in full control of market prices. The S&P down almost 6% for the month though- MAY mean they are starting the highly profitable down movement when bubbles pop. They run the bubbles. And make millions (sorry, billions; I still tend to think in 1980 dollars) on both up, and down. There is a small element of market movement they cannot directly control forever – they know that, are prepared for it- and ride the trends actively vacuuming the saps of the world both ways. China, Greece, EU stew, and the onset of climate change mass refugee movements- which will never stop in the next 200 years – are down pressures.
We may now be on the down leg for western style capitalist systems, including the governmental sides. Exactly as the TAE team has been saying is inevitable. I’d give it a 62% probability; down from today on.
Meanwhile, WE are of course spending money, and our time, on the things that really matter:
Oh, yeah, it will “bring in an estimated $700 Million” for the “area”. Enriching, of course, thousands of midstream wage earners… And yet, we just let such bald-faced lies be repeated, with zero evidence – again, and again. Still.
• Albert Edwards: “99.7% Chance We Are Now In A Bear Market” (Zero Hedge)
Oh, pish. My Bayesian analysis gives only 98.4%; far more optimistic!
“This is going to be seminal.”
• Money Pours Out of Emerging Markets at Rate Unseen Since Lehman (Bloomberg)
And devastating for people there who had fantasies of “improvements.” And immense fodder for jihadists, etc.
Another signal; a couple days ago I saw the phrase “Third World” in a mainstream economic column, with no qualifiers or explanations. It was the Third Worlders themselves who objected to the phrase, so 1st worlders accepted the euphemism “developing”, then changed to “emerging” – but they are not going to develop, nor emerge.
Ilargi; I’m so sorry about your mother’s situation.
I’ve been through it with both my parents. My mother’s death was not so bad; there was time for the family to come, and they were prescribing enough morphine for the pain. I actually decreased her morphine, so she was no longer hallucinating, and she could recognize us; that worked well.
My father was a very different story; and it might possibly be of use in your mother’s case. At the age of 92, he found himself rather permanently hospitalized, with the knowledge all around that there really was nothing more the doctors could do for him.
His mental function was still solid, however, and he in essence pulled his own plug. He announced to nurses, doctors, and family that as of now, he was refusing all medication, oxygen support; anything. The nurses and doctors are not likely to resort to force to get medication down; and they didn’t want to; they understood. In less than a day, he was gone.
If there’s anything there your mother could use, I’ll be glad.
One tactic I found useful in my mother’s case – give orders exactly like you are a senior doctor. They’ll jump to do whatever you direct – and only after ask “who authorized this?” I was shameless; there is no defense against the fait accompli- nurses and orderlies shake their heads and go to the next emergency.
“Back to the country.”
I’ve been in China’s true back country, and I’d live there in a second. The unspoiled parts.
That was a village we had to walk to, on a donkey trail, for an hour. The village where we parked the Jeep Cherokees – no, I would NOT want to live there.
The pristine village was full of happy people, immaculate laughing young women being what caught my eye the most. 🙂 Adobe houses, communal threshing floor in the middle of everything.
The village on the road- had dead motorcycles, bare lightbulbs everywhere – and no smiles, almost no young people. Ah, the benefits of western capitalism.
Carbon – that is a large factor, but it has turned out to not always be the ultimate determinant. Population geneticists study exactly this across taxa; many, many plants and animals have their modern “center of diversity” very very far away from their origins. Oak trees for example originated in what is now North America, according to present knowledge of the fossil record; but the center of diversity is SE Asia. Horses- likewise originated in N. Am; but went extinct there- all descendants are now in the “Old” world, diversity mainly affected by humans.
So – good place to start, but “more study is needed”…
Ilargi – it would be enormous fun to try to tease out cause and effect there- they had empires, which can (not always) lead to decreasing genetic diversity, as some are slaughtered, and genes mingle – It’s not impossible the diversity is the result of empires failing, and small groups staying separate for very long times; as well as initial diversity leading to failures to stay united… We have no handles on the question, as far as I know, and no one studying it- but, what fun it would be.
All of us retain a little of our childhood innocence – for me, I’m truly baffled as to how any honest analyst would EVER take ANY official “report” on economic factors as “truth”, let alone pass on such things as truth. From ANY government, or media source, let alone from China.
Official reports may be interesting, to be sure – but “true”, or “accurate” – I’m not that innocent. 🙂
“Who rules Italy?”
That is a seminal question – very seriously – and once again, Ilargi, you are way out ahead of the curve here.
The European Eunion is turning into Roma stew. 200 ingredients and different every day; and not heading in any particular direction.
Is it even possible for humans to maintain an effective and just government over time? We seem to repeatedly break into factions; fight, separate, and lose all advances.
Looking for answers, we ignore Africa as a place with anything to teach – most cultures there were in a state of feudalism at best when Western Civilization started moving in.
But in fact Africa is the oldest population of humans; had many highly evolved kingdoms, possibly invented copper and iron working, was exposed to the many advances of Egypt for thousands of years – but has repeatedly crumbled back to village pastoralism.
There is zero chance this is because black peoples are stupid or inferior – scientifically; zero. They are pure human. The oldest peoples. They do not show examples of humans being able to maintain complexity in states, empires, governments.
“It doesn’t matter what they do anymore.”
Well – nothing within the normal range of actions of modern banks and governments. But don’t forget that China is truly different. For one thing, the idea that the central government is a unified group is wildly inaccurate; there are multiple factions operating at the top; and one of them, still quite powerful, is still mainline Communist. They never liked all this capitalism anyway; and now they have a chance to take back power, by “doing something” effective.
My Chinese partner was one of the intellectuals sent to the country for years in the Cultural Revolution; he’ll be about 50 years old now. Plowed rice behind a water buffalo for 3 years, and really knows what “poor” means.
I think China is entirely capable of launching something on the scale of another Cultural Revolution – where the populace is directed and incited to take things entirely into their own hands; this time directed against new rich capitalists instead of intellectuals and historians.
The central government could just announce “ok, all this capitalism stuff was obviously a mistake; just go take back all the wealth the rich have stolen.”
This would be ugly; possibly not very effective; but it would for sure make a difference. 🙂
The VIX is higher than it has been for around 4 years. https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/VIX
I have been under the impression in the past few years that this index has been successfully suborned, via Owner manipulations, and is no longer an objective measure, but one under control. If so – the Owners are now inciting panic; which would be interesting.
Dow opens up, as expected. I’m waiting for one of my favorite market phrases to reappear, the “dead cat bounce” observation. So evocative!
“We won’t stop until it’s all gone.” re tropical forests.
There is no evidence to the contrary.
This one obscenity by our species is enough for the apparent “Toxic, Keep Out” sign the other intelligences of the galaxy have posted on our planet.
The suggestion about carbon taxes is naive beyond belief. Want to do something effective about the annihilation of the richest communities on the planet? A) recognize fully that all actions taken so far have been totally useless. B) find something utterly different to attempt. C) Be prepared to kill people to be effective; because the forest genocide forces – do kill people to keep cutting – we know that for absolute fact. D) identify the real causes of the continuing genocides; it is NOT the poverty of the local people – the cause is the end user, the neowealthy of China, the organized criminal rich of the west – who buy the end products. It would be gratifying to kill a few of the corrupt enablers, but without much point; they will instantly be replaced with another corrupt official.
Make cutting tropical forests unprofitable. Nothing else will work.
You REALLY have to look at all this as theater and entertainment – because it is; but it is also educational once seen that way. Reuters News service is really out of the closet; to me; as a total tool of the Owners, for feeding bs, propaganda, rumors, and morale directions to all the many, many emotionally needy investors:
“Wall Street stages dramatic comeback as Apple rebounds
“BY TANYA AGRAWAL
“U.S. stocks staged a stunning recovery off their lows on Monday, helped by a sharp turnaround in Apple’s shares..”Hilarious!!! My own headline would be “Wall Street Jiggles Meaninglessly, as Hedge Fund Managers Tinker With Pump And Dump”…
“We’re poised to see a lot of this.”, re: stockholders reacting violently – I believe you are quite correct; and it may be contagious to other countries, since we are now so instantly interconnected.
Many, many grandparents in China personally remember the days when “landlords” were evil, and were killed immediately. They remember they have the power to act- personally- immediately. When their grandson comes come with tales of having lost the family fortune to a corrupt higher-up – they WILL act; this one instance is not the only one reported internationally the past few years.
The Chinese people are going to really suffer from this crash; they did not have the experience of the Great Depression to provide ANY wariness about getting rich, and tons of middle class money is in their market; and will vanish.
Hopefully grandma still lives in the old village, and they can go home.
