technology Archives - The Automatic Earth

Let’s Save Some Lives

Jun 062021

June 6, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 4:57 pm Finance Tagged with: 1984, allowed, Big Brother, discussion, ivermectin, learned helplessness, Michael Yeadon, Orwell, Pierre Kory, technology, vaccines 53 Responses »

Odilon Redon Sunset 1902

When George Orwell wrote “1984” in 1948, not only did he foresee where advanced technology would bring society, he also foresaw that such technology would become available. At that time, this meant two enormous insights in one. A Big Brother may arise among power hungry forces, but it can do nothing without the technology to control and trace people. And 73 years ago, it wasn’t obvious that this would ever be reality.

But today it is here. If there’s anything the Covid era -virustime- teaches us, it is that. We are now all required to think the same, and act the same, as everyone else, and as scripted by powers that -more than ever- oversee our every move. What 1984 should have taught us, but didn’t, is that once you allow such powers to acquire such oversight, they will never let go. You need to stop them beforehand.

Because if you don’t, they will squeeze you ever tighter, until you have no freedom, no liberty, and finally no personality left: you will no longer be human in the sense that it has long been defined. There is a history and a name for this.

COVID, Learned Helplessness, and Control

Learned helplessness is well-documented. It takes place when an individual believes he continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to improve his circumstances, even when he has the ability to do so. Discovering the loss of control elicits a passive reaction to a harmful situation. Psychologists call this a maladaptive response, characterized by avoidance of challenges and the collapse of problem-solving when obstacles arise. You give up trying to fight back.

You could push back, but you have been made afraid at a core level and so you just give in. You’re left believing nothing will fix this. Helpless to resist, you comply “out of an abundance of caution.” American psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier created the term “learned helplessness” in 1967. They were studying animal behavior by delivering electric shocks to dogs (it was a simpler time.) Dogs who learned they couldn’t escape the shock simply stopped trying, even after the scientists removed a barrier and the dog could have jumped away.

Learned helplessness has three main features: a passive response to trauma, not believing that trauma can be controlled, and stress.{..] You are not responsible, can’t fix something so systemic, and best do what you are told. The way out is to allow people to make decisions and choices on their own. This therapy is used with victims of learned helplessness such as hostages . During their confinement all the important decisions of their life, and most of the minor ones, were made by their captors. Upon release, many hostages fear things as simple as a meal choice and need to be coaxed out of helplessness one micro-choice at a time.

There is no such thing as overwhelming evidence that year-long lockdowns and mask mandates and “the vaccines” can achieve their alleged goals. But that doesn’t matter if and when there is central control over what evidence -and narrative- people are allowed to read and watch. With that kind of control, there is simply just one story, and no discussion.

Whereas discussion, with different views and opinions being submitted, is essential to come out of a situation like this. Two people know more than one, basic stuff. We’re good at it, if we try. But if you look at the media, and the entire medical field, there is on discussion happening. There is only one opinion, and it’s -state and corporate- sanctioned.

I don’t find the stories about the origin of the virus all that interesting -at this moment-, they act mostly as a distraction from what is more important: freedom, having a voice in one’s own life, making your own decisions, and saving lives in the process. The virus origin stories, crazy as they may be, have nothing to do with that: they merely make you watch a sort of battle of the gods, something that never gave anyone any power over their lives.

And in the meantime you may be “allowed” some extra basic human rights, but not too many, you wear a mask on your face, and you get injected with a substance that for 99% of people is both unnecessary for their survival, and potentially dangerous to that same survival. But it’s the only narrative that is “allowed”.

As for the potential danger, it’s not just the blood clots that the media are allowed to report on, it’s also the spike proteins the vaccines induce your cells to produce, and which are free to roam around your body, gathering in testes, ovaries, placenta and a whole slew of other organs.

All we can do is hope our immune systems are strong enough to fight off the vaccines.

Seldom should any substances have been subjected to more rigorous research than mRNA vaccines, and seldom have any been subjected to less. So the problems should not be a surprise to anyone. Facebook now “allows” you to say that the vaccines are not FDA approved, but not that they are experimental or haven’t been appropriately tested. Which is the same thing. What gives Facebook that power to begin with?

Professor emeritus of Medical Microbiology and Immunology Dr. Bhakdi doesn’t agree. But Facebook knows better, right?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1401154680361730049

And then you get things like this line: “Britain’s medicines regulator said Friday the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is safe for adolescents aged 12 to 15 after a “rigorous review”, following similar assessments in the EU and US.” What rigorous review? Where is it? How much time did you take for that research? And if it was so rigorous, why are they still not approved? And what exactly is the benefit to these children? A 0.001% higher chance of survival? Vs a 10x higher chance of suffering adverse effects?

Anyway, one step back. Yes, the vaccines are completely unnecessary. Michael Yeadon, former Chief Scientific Officer of Pfizer put it like this:

“Ivermectin is an off-patent drug that is one of the most widely used drugs in the world, and we know it is able to reduce Covid-19 symptoms at any stage of the disease by about 90%, so there is no need for vaccines.”

A 90% reduction of symptoms means no need for vaccines OR facemasks OR lockdowns. That’s ostensibly better than any of the vaccines can achieve. And this could have started at least 6 months ago (I’m thinking of Pierre Kory’s Dec. 8 Senate testimony here, conveniently killed off by YouTube), and after 6 months of a 90% reduction, there is no danger left at all.

Dr. Pierre Kory said if you take ivermectin, you won’t get sick (and it’s safer than Tylenol). Renowned science writer Michael Capuzzo recently wrote The Drug That Cracked Covid. And couldn’t get it published. Here at the Automatic Earth, we’ve been discussing ivermectin for over a year, especially after our resident physician John Day switched to it from hydroxychloroquine to treat his Covid patients.

This is from a very recent report written by Pierre Kory and the team at FLCCC published in the American Journal of Therapeutics :

It should be noted that the concentrations required for an effect in cell culture models bear little resemblance to human physiology given the absence of an active immune system working synergistically with a therapeutic agent, such as ivermectin. Furthermore, prolonged durations of exposure to a drug likely would require a fraction of the dosing in short-term cell model exposure. Furthermore, multiple coexisting or alternate mechanisms of action likely explain the clinical effects observed, such as the competitive binding of ivermectin with the host receptor-binding region of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, as proposed in 6 molecular modeling studies.21–26

In 4 of the studies, ivermectin was identified as having the highest or among the highest of binding affinities to spike protein S1 binding domains of SARS-CoV-2 among hundreds of molecules collectively examined, with ivermectin not being the particular focus of study in 4 of these studies.27 This is the same mechanism by which viral antibodies, in particular, those generated by the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines contain the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The high binding activity of ivermectin to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein could limit binding to either the ACE-2 receptor or sialic acid receptors, respectively, either preventing cellular entry of the virus or preventing hemagglutination, a recently proposed pathologic mechanism in COVID-19.21,22,26–28

Ivermectin has also been shown to bind to or interfere with multiple essential structural and nonstructural proteins required by the virus to replicate.26,29 Finally, ivermectin also binds to the SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), thereby inhibiting viral replication.30

Dr. Kory estimates that 500,000 deaths could have been prevented with ivermectin treatment. The same is likely true for hydroxychloroquine. And he’s probably deliberately lowballing it. Then there’s vitamin D, and zinc, and a dozen or so repurposed drugs. All put together, there is no doubt they make the vaccines superfluous.

And yes, if someone is responsible for 500,000 deaths, there must be an investigation, just like there must be one into the origin of the virus. Why suppress ivermectin and other drugs, and at the same time promote vaccines without properly testing them? Who made those decisions? But right now, it seems more important to make sure that no more people die unnecessarily. Take care of that first, and then investigate.

In “1984”, the idea is that everybody must do the same thing, and think the same thing. In 2021, they do. Nothing good can come from that.

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Testing 1,2,3

Mar 292021

March 29, 2021 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 2:24 pm Finance Tagged with: EUA, experiment, experts, HCQ, ivermectin, politicians, science, technology, testing, transmission, vaccines 28 Responses »

Rufino Tamayo The Dance of Joy 1950

We’re running two grand experiments at the same time: we inject 100s of millions with untested substances, and then we let them fly and gather and tell them it’s safe to do so.

First things first: none of the “vaccines” that are being injected as we speak into 100s of millions of people have been approved by “medical authorities”. The Pfizer and Moderna mRNA ones, as well as the AstraZeneca and in some places Johnson&Johnson “substances” have only, best case, gotten a permit for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).

This is needed because none of these things have ever been properly tested. The “logic” behind this is that we are in an emergency, so there’s no time for testing. Somehow, this “logic” is combined with claims about “listening to the science”. While not testing is the direct opposite of science.

In order to get the Emergency Use Authorizations, you need to show that there are no other substances available that could perform the job that the “vaccines” do. I put “Vaccines” in quotation marks because mRNA are not vaccines in the traditional sense, they are, at least potentially, much more invasive. A factor that has… never been properly tested.

The other substances that might work vs the coronavirus, repurposed drugs such as ivermectin and (hydroxy) chloroquine -about which many doctors have written very positive reviews-, if the (EUA) label is to be put on the new “vaccines”, must also remain untested, just like the “vaccines” themselves.

So there are a few “tests” out there that applied HCQ and ivermectin, but in the wrong environment. See, if you give them only to 80+ year-olds who are already on an intubator and have multiple co-morbidities, you may well end up with the verdict that they did not prevent that person from dying. The thing is, the same would be true if you gave that person an mRNA “vaccine”. But that last bit, we don’t hear about.

We recently had this from a medical journal in Holland, Google translated:

High Fine For Doctors Who Incorrectly Prescribe HCQ Or Ivermectin (MC)

Doctors who prescribe (hydroxy) chloroquine or ivermectin against covid-19 will now receive a fine of up to 150,000 euros imposed by the inspection. This may also include other medications that are prescribed outside the guidelines. The IGJ calls on pharmacists to report. The Health and Youth Care Inspectorate regularly receives reports that doctors prescribe medicines that are contrary to the treatment recommendations for covid-19, the IGJ reports on its website.

When asked, the IGJ spokesperson cannot explain exactly how many doctors this is about and what their specialty is. “We have talked to a number of doctors about this, but because some of them continue to do so, we are now going to impose fines. We are not going to warn anymore, “said the spokesman. [..] According to the IGJ, (hydroxy) chloroquine has been proven to be ineffective against covid-19 and at the same time can cause serious side effects. There is also no scientific basis for the use of ivermectin.

They either don’t test HCQ and ivermectin at all, or they test them in the wrong environment. When someone is dying from old age and co-morbidities, and then catches Covid, you’re not going to save them with HCQ or ivermectin. But nobody ever said you would. Moreover, you wouldn’t save them with mRNA either.

Chloroquine, later (hydroxy) chloroquine, was discovered in 1934, and used as a malaria treatment, for decades. Some 200 million people were treated with it, primarily in Africa, since, with great success. In fact, so many people were treated that it lost its effectiveness because the parasite that causes malaria slowly developed an immunity against it. But we would still have known if it killed large numbers of people. Same goes for ivermectin.

Ivermectin stems from 1975, long time ago, (though Joe Biden had been a senator for 3 years already ;-)), and many many millions were successfully treated with it as an anti-parasite drug. There’s an entire library by now of ivermectin vs Covid 19 studies. But the health board in Holland says :“There is also no scientific basis for the use of ivermectin.”. Yeah, sure. Look, what there is no scientific basis for is the use of the newfangled untested “vaccines”. Not testing equals not scientific. You could label it “technology” if you will, but not science.

Then we have Prof Anthony Harnden talking about the AstraZeneca vaccine reducing transmission by some 50%. Given the uncertainties and lack of testing and investigation, I would be inclined to label this prof a ‘lying, dog-faced pony soldier’. Yes, I am getting tired of this spiel.

Vaccines Do Not Completely Stop Transmission, JCVI Member Says

Covid-19 vaccines do not completely prevent transmission, Prof Anthony Harnden, deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has said. He told BBC Breakfast on Sunday that while they appear to reduce transmission by about 50%, vaccinated people can still get the virus and spread it to others. He added:

“There’s some good evidence now from Public Health England and from the Oxford/AstraZeneca trials that the vaccines do prevent transmission. But they don’t completely prevent transmission. The figures are still being calculated but it’s in the order of 50%. So, there will be some reduction in transmission, no doubt at all, but it’s still possible, even though you’ve been vaccinated, to get infected, have no symptoms and transmit it to others. That’s why it’s important that all those who get vaccinated still stick to the rules.”

In other words: Get that needle in your arm, stay home, put some underwear on your face, and keep your clap shut. The European Medicines Agency has two cents to spare as well:

EMA advises against use of ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 outside randomised clinical trials

EMA has reviewed the latest evidence on the use of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 and concluded that the available data do not support its use for COVID-19 outside well-designed clinical trials. In the EU, ivermectin tablets are approved for treating some parasitic worm infestations while ivermectin skin preparations are approved for treating skin conditions such as rosacea. Ivermectin is also authorised for veterinary use for a wide range of animal species for internal and external parasites. Ivermectin medicines are not authorised for use in COVID-19 in the EU, and EMA has not received any application for such use.

Following recent media reports and publications on the use of ivermectin, EMA reviewed the latest published evidence from laboratory studies, observational studies, clinical trials and meta-analyses. Laboratory studies found that ivermectin could block replication of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), but at much higher ivermectin concentrations than those achieved with the currently authorised doses. Results from clinical studies were varied, with some studies showing no benefit and others reporting a potential benefit.

Most studies EMA reviewed were small and had additional limitations, including different dosing regimens and use of concomitant medications. EMA therefore concluded that the currently available evidence is not sufficient to support the use of ivermectin in COVID-19 outside clinical trials. Although ivermectin is generally well tolerated at doses authorised for other indications, side effects could increase with the much higher doses that would be needed to obtain concentrations of ivermectin in the lungs that are effective against the virus. Toxicity when ivermectin is used at higher than approved doses therefore cannot be excluded.

So that’s experiment number 1. 100s of millions of people injected with untested substances. For which there seems to be some evidence that they make a person less sick. But that’s all the evidence there is. They can still be infected, and there’s still no evidence that they can’t infect others. So by all means, let’s bet the house on that, shall we? And if we have to kill drugs that might do a much better job to get there, we will.

Then comes experiment number 2. The people who have been injected with this stuff will now be able to get vaccine passports of one sort or another, and travel, get into planes and theaters and what not, and, according to the CDC, gather without wearing masks. While “there’s still no evidence that they can’t infect others”.

I know that politicians are getting desperate, after a full year of lockdowns. But they could all have started nationwide campaigns of improving immune systems through vitamin D a year ago. That was the easiest thing ever, and still is, potentially decreasing both infections and deaths by 50%. Yes, there’s scientific literatute for this.

They could have initiated large scale trials with ivermectin, HCQ, doxycycline and other drugs, but none of them did, outside of countries like India, Peru, Argentina. So that didn’t happen either. Now all they have left are a bunch of non-proven and questionable technologies, and they’re promoting those as if their lives and careers depend on them.

And then we all double down and tell people they’re safe after getting a couple of “jabs”, and everyone around them is too, though there is zero evidence for this. That is a big gamble. But gambling is all we have left. Economies need to open or else. People must be able to see people or else. Governments need to get out of the way and let people take responsibility for their own lives.

We can only wait for the first politician and government and their “expert” advisers to come clean and say they failed. That would at least be a breath of fresh air. Here in Athens after a hard lockdown of almost 6 months, case numbers and intubations are higher than ever. The least they can do is say: we’re sorry, we were wrong, we screwed up.

But politicians and “scientists” don’t do that, unless they’re forced to, even if countless lives are lost in the process. So what do you do? Well, you force them to. And then you make them leave, and start saving lives.

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Debt Rattle August 8 2019

Aug 082019

August 8, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:01 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Boeing, Brexit, Chelsea Manning, Cummings, globalization, MMT, nickel, pesticides, technology, Trump, tyranny 9 Responses »

Piet Mondriaan New York City I 1942

• Globalization As We Know It Will Not Survive Trump (G.)

• The Technological Revolution Devours its Children (Dmitry Orlov)

• Donald Trump More Popular Today Than In 2016 (Raw)

• New York Times Stock Price Has Soared During Trump’s Presidency (R.)

• MMT May Be Democrats’ Economic Cure, But Only Trump Got The Memo (R.)

• New Rebel Bid To Halt No-Deal Brexit Amid Fury At PM’s Enforcer (G.)

• Deal Or No Deal? It’s Not Really Up To Dominic Cummings (G.)

• The Super-Rich Have Made Britain Into A Nation Of Losers (G.)

• Airlines Complain Boeing’s Production Standards ‘Way Below Acceptable’ (BI)

• An Open Invitation to Tyranny (PCR)

• Chelsea Manning Jailed For a YEAR For Refusing To Testify Against Assange (RT)

• Tightening Nickel Supply Threatens Electric Vehicle Boom (SH)

• Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (G.)

• Explosion of Toxic Pesticide Use Causes Insect Apocalypse in US (CD)

“And That’s A Good Thing..”

• Globalization As We Know It Will Not Survive Trump (G.)

The significance of the trade war between China and the US goes well beyond the impact of tit-for-tat tariffs, or which of two self-styled strongmen wins the bragging rights. As was the case in the 1930s, the seemingly inexorable drift towards protectionism is part of a deeper crisis of the international status quo. When Beijing this week accused the US of “deliberately destroying the international order”, it was really saying that US hegemony will no longer go unchallenged. Globalisation as we have known it is coming to an end and that’s by no means unwelcome.

Hailed as the ultimate in human progress, a model based on loosening the controls on capital and the construction of global supply chains has spawned recurrent financial crises, fostered corrosive inequality and worsened the climate emergency. True, millions of people have been lifted out of poverty in the past 25 years, but most of them live in a country – China – that has kept the market at arm’s-length. The world’s stock markets see things differently. They tremble every time Donald Trump tweets a paean to protectionism. Likewise, multinational corporations fret about the possible damage that trade barriers might cause to global supply chains. It is clear that those who have done best out of globalisation tend to be the rich and powerful, and they are not going to give up their privileges without a fight. Nothing in this is new.

Throughout history there have been successive waves of globalisation followed by a backlash when the model over-reached itself. This is one of those occasions and all the ingredients are in place for a struggle between the defenders of the status quo and those who say that recent trends in politics, technology and the climate point to the need for a new world order focused more on local solutions, stronger nation states and a reformed international system. It’s quite a stretch to imagine that Trump has this in mind when he is bashing China, but the economic crisis of the 1930s – of which protectionism was one part – led eventually, albeit after the war, to reforms that made the world a sounder and safer place.

Illustration: Thomas Pullin

“..once your savings are depleted and your debts are maxed out, you are cast out into the howling wilderness roamed by various troglodytes—those the information revolution has already eaten as well as those who were never on the menu.”

• The Technological Revolution Devours its Children (Dmitry Orlov)

As the famous movie quote goes, “If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker” (From John Dahl’s 1988 film Rounders). Another famous quote, all the way back from the French Revolution, is “The revolution, like Saturn, devours its own children” (said by Danton at his trial). If you can’t spot the resource for your next technological revolution, then you are the resource. Look at all the previous technological revolutions. In each case, a new technology opened up for exploitation a new, superabundant resource: agriculture—arable land; mechanical spinning and weaving—water power; steam engine and steelmaking—coal; internal combustion engine—oil; artificial intelligence-based robonanobiotronics—still oil?

Sorry, that’s no longer overabundant by any stretch of the imagination. (If you said “renewable energy” then think again: wind turbines, solar panels and battery banks can’t be made or maintained without oil and natural gas.) Technology without a superabundant resource it can tap into is as useful as a spoon if your bowl is empty. The logic is simple: spot the resource; if you can’t, it’s probably you. Let’s focus on what’s supposed to be the main pillar of the next technological revolution: information technology. Most of us have smartphones, laptops, store our data in the cloud and make use of abundant and free information resources—all the free apps you want, free blogging, free Youtube videos, etc. But what new resource has all this technology opened up for you, the user?

The hardware costs you money (the average iPhone now costs around 800 USD) and the time you spend fiddling around with it is subtracted from all the other, potentially useful and gainful activities. You could try arguing that having an iPhone makes you more efficient because you have all the information and communications technology you could possibly need right at your fingertips. That point is hard to deny. I recently recorded a radio interview for a radio station in upstate New York while strolling about among the potato blossoms on my field in the Novgorod region of Russia via the internet and a 4G connection via a tower in the neighboring village. That’s nothing short of miraculous, and it’s certainly efficient (my smartphone is 7 years old, fully amortized a long time ago and still as good as new now that I’ve replaced every single mechanical component, sometimes twice). But is it effective?

The smartphones are generally effective in making their users spend money that they may or may not have on things they may or may not need. All of the free access to information is paid for by collecting data on users (spying, basically) and using it to create targeted ads that turn users into online shoppers. Everything is highly customized: women look at pictures of shoes; men look at pictures of power tools. Both the shoes and the power tools, if purchased, will be used a few times a year at most, but the money will be gone forever. The limiting factor here, of course, is the resource, which is you: once your savings are depleted and your debts are maxed out, you are cast out into the howling wilderness roamed by various troglodytes—those the information revolution has already eaten as well as those who were never on the menu.

Depends on who you ask.

• Donald Trump More Popular Today Than In 2016 (Raw)

President Donald Trump’s administration has been mired in controversy after controversy, from his racist remarks to the Mueller report–which stopped short of clearing him of obstruction of justice. His policies, such as child separation at the border and his trade wars with China, are divisive. Yet, new numbers seem to show that he’s actually more popular today than he was in 2016, according to polling expert Nate Cohn. “The share of Americans who say they have a favorable view of him has increased significantly since the 2016 election,” Cohn writes. “And over the last few months, some of the highest-quality public opinion polls, though not all, showed the president’s job approval rating — a different measure from personal favorability — had inched up to essentially match the highest level of his term.”

This doesn’t guarantee Trump re-election. “The increase in his support since 2016, and the possibility that it continues to move higher, does not necessarily make him a favorite to win re-election. His job approval ratings remain well beneath 50 percent, and have never eclipsed it.” It should be noted that Cohn is relying on two polls, Gallup and YouGov, which show that he is more popular today than in 2016. And according to the website fivethirtyeight.com, which aggregates polling data, only 42.2 percent of Americans polled approve of Donald Trump, while 53.1 disapprove.

But, Trump’s surge in popularity since 2016 is clearly something his democratic challengers need to keep in mind. Of course, Democrats might benefit from a more popular candidate than they had in 2016,” Cohn writes. “Hillary Clinton was an unusually unpopular candidate, surpassed only by Mr. Trump in this regard in the modern era of polling. But an analysis that freezes the president’s standing in 2016 but assumes an improvement for the Democratic nominee would be misleading.”

Cui bono. Inventing Russiagate out of thin air has paid off handsomely.

• New York Times Stock Price Has Soared During Trump’s Presidency (R.)

Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore concludes his “Apocalypse Now” soliloquy about the smell of napalm in the morning wistfully: “Someday this war’s gonna end.” The remark suggests the officer played by Robert Duvall is enjoying the conflict in Vietnam. Despite some recent friendly fire, New York Times commander-in-chief Mark Thompson could be forgiven for feeling similarly about his newspaper’s combat with U.S. President Donald Trump. Few companies have so directly benefitted from Trump’s tumultuous first term in office as the Times. Thanks to a boom in digital-subscription sales linked to the paper’s aggressive coverage of the administration’s many foibles, its shares have outperformed those of nearly every company investors pegged as those likely to suffer or benefit from a Trump presidency.

From around $11 at the time of his election, Times stock has soared to more than $35. That trumped the runup in Wall Street firms, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, whose bottom lines were fattened by tax cuts. Times shares even dusted those of Facebook, the bête noire of all traditional publishers. As of Tuesday, the Manhattan-based company’s $5 billion market value was greater than the combined worth of America’s two biggest for-profit prison operators, whose fortunes were meant to soar under a law-and-order presidency. This background helps in interpreting a set of lousy second-quarter results, and a kerfuffle this week over a poorly conceived front-page headline. The Times added 197,000 net new digital-only subscriptions – bringing total subscribers to 4.7 million, nearly halfway to its 2025 goal of 10 million.

A shortfall in revenue, though, and a warning of greater challenges ahead, took nearly 20% off the Times share price on Wednesday. That came days after amending a headline related to the president’s response to two mass shootings over the weekend failed to stop a barrage of criticism, much of it from Trump’s Democratic opponents, and calls on social media to cancel subscriptions. The top-line miss had nothing to do with the headline skirmish, whose impact would appear in this quarter. But they are not unrelated. The risk for the Times is that any whiff of normalizing its coverage of the president might damage the brand that has fueled its subscription drive since 2016. One dopey headline is survivable, so long as the war shows no sign of ending.

MMT is not going to go away.

• MMT May Be Democrats’ Economic Cure, But Only Trump Got The Memo (R.)

From her home overlooking Setauket Harbor on Long Island’s North Shore, a motorboat bobbing at the dock, Stephanie Kelton hopes to revolutionize how the U.S. government manages the economy. It isn’t always a pleasant task. A key figure in the “Modern Monetary Theory” economic camp, her assertions that the federal government could spend freely for things like a jobs guarantee or Green New Deal without risking runaway inflation, a debt default or a clubbing by global creditors have been Twitter-bombed by mainstream economists as left-wing free lunchism. Proponents of MMT have been called fanciful for the notion that the U.S. Congress, which typically struggles to pass an annual budget, could with smart budgeting and regulation take over the Federal Reserve’s job of controlling inflation.

And even Kelton, an economics professor at Stony Brook University in New York and an adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, is a bit thrown by the fact that the person who appears closest to accepting her argument is President Donald Trump, whose Republican Party has traditionally touted an adherence to fiscal discipline. Trump and Republicans in Congress, she said, “did not allow perceived budget constraints to stand in their way” of a $1.5 trillion tax cut package which was passed in late 2017 and pushed the federal debt beyond $22 trillion. Democrats now seem ready to get in the game. Lawmakers from both parties recently reached a federal spending deal that is expected to raise the federal deficit by $2 trillion over the next two years, and Democrats lining up to run against Trump in 2020 have largely avoided talk of fiscal restraint so far in the campaign.

Told ya: “One Conservative insider said that Cummings had in effect demanded control over Johnson’s operation as his price for entering government..”

• New Rebel Bid To Halt No-Deal Brexit Amid Fury At PM’s Enforcer (G.)

Rebel MPs are working on a plan to thwart Boris Johnson pursuing a no-deal Brexit on 31 October that involves forcing parliament to sit through the autumn recess, amid growing outrage about the power and influence of his controversial aide, Dominic Cummings. The cross-party group of MPs is looking at legislative options with mounting urgency because of the hardline tactics of Cummings, who one Conservative insider described as running a “reign of terror” in No 10 aimed at achieving Brexit on 31 October at any cost. Three MPs have told the Guardian that one method under discussion is for members to amend the motion needed for parliament to break for party conferences in mid-September.

This could give MPs another three weeks of sitting time to stop a no-deal and potentially open the door for days to be set aside for rebels to control parliamentary business. The ultimate aim would be to pass a bill forcing the government to request an extension to article 50 from Brussels. Since joining Johnson’s administration, Cummings has told government advisers that No 10 stands ready to do whatever is necessary to bring about Brexit on 31 October – deal or no deal. This could include proroguing parliament, or ignoring the result of any no-confidence vote in Johnson and calling a “people v politicians” general election – to be held after the UK had left the EU.

However, it is understood that alarm is mounting within No 10, among some special advisers and Tory MPs about the scale of Cummings’ influence and willingness to defy parliament. One Conservative insider said that Cummings had in effect demanded control over Johnson’s operation as his price for entering government and proceeded to sideline more moderate advisers, such as ex-City Hall stalwart Sir Eddie Lister, while installing a team of “true believers” in hard Brexit largely from the former Vote Leave campaign.

Are you sure?

• Deal Or No Deal? It’s Not Really Up To Dominic Cummings (G.)

Yet it would be as much of a mistake to dismiss Cummings as to exaggerate his mastery. He has certainly brought two weeks of focus to the Johnson government by making the Halloween deadline a non-negotiable centrepiece. He has changed the political conversation from Brexit or people’s vote to deal or no deal. Depending on events in the early autumn, he is clearly gearing up for a possible general election shortly afterwards. But Cummings does not control events. He is not Prospero, able to conjure up a tempest that delivers his enemies into his hands. He is having a good run, but he is helped by the most irresponsible parliamentary summer recess of modern times.

Even now MPs should be aiming to get back to Westminster and hold the government to account before the planned return on 3 September. They should scrap this year’s party conferences too. Cummings is also only one player. The idea that he pulls all the strings is lazy and wrong. The Brexit outcome depends on a tangled web of interests and influences beyond his control. These include everything from the role of the Queen to the hoarding of toilet rolls. In particular, it depends on events in the real economy, in parliament, in the courts, in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Irish Republic, in the EU and in Johnson’s own head.

Those who take a Cummings-fixated view of the options find it is easier to forget this. They say the government’s aim is to crash out with no deal on 31 October and nothing will stand in the way. But that is not quite what Johnson and some of his ministers say. They say, still, that a deal is one possibility, perhaps a remote one, and that the UK government is even now looking for a deal with the EU in the next 12 weeks.

“..people whose incomes sit a few zeroes above their value to society.”

• The Super-Rich Have Made Britain Into A Nation Of Losers (G.)

Think of a football stadium. Not one of the vast caverns like Old Trafford or Wembley, but somewhere rather smaller and more bijou. Somewhere like Fulham’s Craven Cottage, which, once its new stand is completed, will pack in only about 30,000 fans. Now imagine this stadium of 30,000 souls rising up into the air and hovering unnoticed over central London. Thirty thousand men in late middle-age living the high life with the capital at their feet – and there, stuck way below on terra firma are their 66 million fellow Britons, tearing lumps out of each other. Congratulations: you’ve just pictured the central problem stalking the UK today. Not Brexit. Not the breakdown in civil debate. Not the dark money contaminating Westminster.

These are urgent and vitally important, but there is one big factor that forms a large part of the backdrop to all of them. It can be summed up by that gulf between a mid-sized football stadium of super-rich men in their 50s, and the rest of us spread out across our suburbs, our towns, our unpretty stretches of urban sprawl. That football stadium represents the top 0.1% of earners in the UK. To join their ranks, numbering just 31,000, you’d need a taxable income of at least £650,000 a year – £12,500 per week. In less than a fortnight, you would easily pull in more than the average Briton makes as taxable income over a whole year. But then, those drudges are the earthbound while you, as the old song out of Mary Poppins puts it, live in an entirely different realm: “Up to the highest height! … Up through the atmosphere! / Up where the air is clear!”

The stratospherically rich are among the subjects of a new report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. An analysis of the tax returns of the highest earning Britons, it shows in uncompromising detail just how our money has ended up in fewer and fewer hands based in less and less of the country. Almost half the super-rich live in London and nearly 90% of them are men. What’s more, they often end up paying a lower tax rate than the pay-as-you-earn mugs like you and me. The generous breaks given by politicians to encourage entrepreneurship, innovation and risk-taking are instead exploited by partners in City law firms and big accountancies and at hedge funds – people whose incomes sit a few zeroes above their value to society.

It’s not just the 737 MAX. It’s Boeing itself.

• Airlines Complain Boeing’s Production Standards ‘Way Below Acceptable’ (BI)

Airlines flying Boeing’s 787-10 Dreamliner have complained to the plane maker about “unacceptable” production mistakes and inconsistent quality. The problems center around Dreamliners built at Boeing’s North Charleston, South Carolina, factory, according to a report from The Post and Courier. Issues at the North Charleston plant were reported in April in a comprehensive New York Times investigation, which found evidence of shoddy production, poor oversight, and a culture that “made speed a priority over safety.” The report came a month after Boeing’s 737 Max jet was grounded worldwide after the second fatal crash in five months. The Department of Justice expanded an inquiry into the 737 Max to include issues at the North Charleston factory in June.

The new report surfaced complaints from a global cadre of airlines that fly the jet and have received orders from the South Carolina plant, one of two locations where the Dreamliner is assembled — other orders are built at Boeing’s Everett, Washington, factory. While the issues are not limited to either the South Carolina plant or the 787 — similar problems have been raised in Everett with both 787s and military tankers — the complaints surfaced by The Post and Courier focus on recent deliveries of Boeing’s newest and largest variant of the Dreamliner, the 787-10. It was not immediately clear whether the airlines made similar complaints about other variants of the plane, including the 787-8 and 787-9.

Paul Craig Roberts on an FBI document that talks about “official” and “prevailing” explanations of events.

“What the FBI report does, intentionally or unintentionally, is to define a conspiracist as a person who doubts official explanations.”

• An Open Invitation to Tyranny (PCR)

The FBI document says that conspiracy theories “are usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.” Note the use of “official” and “prevailing.” Official explanations are explanations provided by governments. Prevailing explanations are the explanations that the media repeats. Examples of official and prevailing explanations are: Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Iranian nukes, Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the official explanation by the US government for the destruction of Libya. If a person doubts official explanations such as these, that person is a “conspiracy theorist.”

Official and prevailing explanations do not have to be consistent with facts. It is enough that they are official and prevailing. Whether or not they are true is irrelevant. Therefore, a person who stands up for the truth can be labeled a conspiracy theorist, monitored, and perhaps pre-emptively arrested. [..] Consider Russiagate. Here we have an alleged conspiracy between Trump and Russia that was the official prevailing explanation. Yet, to believe in the Russiagate conspiracy did not make one a conspiracy theorist as this conspiracy was the official prevailing explanation. But to doubt the Russiagate conspiracy did make one a conspiracy theorist.

What the FBI report does, intentionally or unintentionally, is to define a conspiracist as a person who doubts official explanations. In other words, it is a way of preventing any accountability of government. Whatever the government says, no matter how obvious a lie, will have to be accepted as fact or we will be put on a list to be monitored for preemptive arrest. In effect, the FBI’s document reduces the First Amendment, that is, free speech, to the right to repeat official and prevailing explanations. Any other speech is a conspiratorial belief that can lead to the commission of a crime.

The judge says she can pay the fines, but he’s the only one who thinks that.

• Chelsea Manning Jailed For a YEAR For Refusing To Testify Against Assange (RT)

Refusal to testify against WikiLeaks is costing whistleblower Chelsea Manning over $400,000 in fines and another year in jail, after a federal judge ruled that she must pay for what he called contempt of court. Manning was jailed for refusing the subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury seeking additional charges against WikiLeaks and its co-founder Julian Assange, currently imprisoned in the UK. To compel testimony, the government also fined the whistleblower $500 a day, going up to $1000 after 60 days. Judge Anthony Trenga of the federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia shot down Manning’s motion to reconsider sanctions on Monday, the final chance to contest the steep fines.

After a review of “a substantial number of financial records documenting her assets, liabilities, and current and future earnings,” the court found “that Ms. Manning has the ability to comply with the Court’s financial sanctions,” Trenga wrote in his ruling. Though Manning is now deeply in debt and unable to work while in jail, the judge nonetheless concluded the fines were payable and therefore amounted to “coercive” sanctions allowed to compel cooperation or testimony, rather than being a purely punitive measure. “I am disappointed but not at all surprised. The government and the judge must know by now that this doesn’t change my position one bit,” Manning said in response.

She insisted that the fines were in fact punitive, because her inability and unwillingness to pay rendered any “coercive” aspect moot. She has already spent 147 days behind bars and owes $38,000 in fines as of August 7. If she remains jailed for another year, Manning could end up owing $441,000 to the government.

Not everything scales up.

• Tightening Nickel Supply Threatens Electric Vehicle Boom (SH)

For Tesla and its chief competitors in the race for global domination of electric vehicle sales, it ain’t all about lithium ion. There are other valuable metals needed to make the battery packs do what’s asked of them, with nickel being essential. Tesla and its battery producer partners, and other automakers and their suppliers, are worried about the longer-term supply of nickel according to a new study by BloombergNEF. The study predicts that EV makers will be driving demand for nickel about 16 times to 1.8 million tons in the next years. Class-one nickel, a high-purity material used in batteries, is expected to see demand greatly outstrip supply in the next few years. That will be fueled by meeting the large Chinese EV market, and other global markets where demand is expected to grow.

That need for class-one nickel will outstrip supply within five years, according to the study. One problem has been a lack of real investment in new mines for materials including nickel, Tesla’s global supply manager of battery metals, Sarah Maryssael, said at a Washington meeting in May. That could drive up prices as battery demand increases greatly. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is concerned about having enough economically viable — and available — metal to continue meeting its growing electric car demand. That will take off even more as the company taps into China’s booming markets. “They are getting ready to have the new factory in China, and are at full capacity in North America,’’ Peter Bradford, chief executive officer of nickel producer Independence Group NL, said. “They recognize the biggest risk from a strategic supply point of view is nickel.’’

Kind of mad that this didn’t stop America from sending its young people to be killed and maimed in more jungles and deserts.

• Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (G.)

‘Someday this war’s gonna end,” is the sage comment from surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, brusquely played by Robert Duvall. In fact, when Francis Ford Coppola’s grandiose epic masterpiece Apocalypse Now was first unveiled in 1979, the Vietnam war had only ended four years previously, and the succeeding Cambodian-Vietnamese war (where the film’s climax is set) was in full swing. Coppola’s bad trip into south-east Asia was co-written by John Milius with narration written by Michael Herr. It was inspired by Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, Herr’s own Vietnam reportage-memoir Dispatches and maybe at one further remove by Rudyard Kipling’s lines about the US taking up the white man’s imperial burden.

It was famously an ordeal for all concerned. The production involved a filming expedition in the Philippines that felt hardly less colossal and traumatic to the participants than the actual war, though it became commonplace in Hollywood’s Vietnam for the anguish of American soldiers, not that of the Vietnamese people themselves, to be seen as important. (The nearest that Vietnamese people get to actual importance in Apocalypse Now is the four South Vietnamese intelligence officers, executed by ColKurtz as Communist spies, whose ID cards we briefly see.) Like Lawrence of Arabia, moreover, this is a film without women – or mostly.

Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. Photograph: Allstar/United Artists

“The study found that American agriculture has become 48 times more toxic to insects over the past 25 years and pinned 92 percent of the toxicity increase on neonicotinoids..”

• Explosion of Toxic Pesticide Use Causes Insect Apocalypse in US (CD)

The rapid and dangerous decline of the insect population in the United States—often called an “insect apocalypse” by scientists—has largely been driven by an increase in the toxicity of U.S. agriculture caused by the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS One. The study found that American agriculture has become 48 times more toxic to insects over the past 25 years and pinned 92 percent of the toxicity increase on neonicotinoids, which were banned by the European Union last year due to the threat they pose to bees and other pollinators. Kendra Klein, Ph.D., study co-author and senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth, said the United States must follow Europe’s lead and ban the toxic pesticides before it is too late.

“It is alarming that U.S. agriculture has become so much more toxic to insect life in the past two decades,” Klein said in a statement. “We need to phase out neonicotinoid pesticides to protect bees and other insects that are critical to biodiversity and the farms that feed us.” “Congress must pass the Saving America’s Pollinators Act to ban neonicotinoids,” Klein added. “In addition, we need to rapidly shift our food system away from dependence on harmful pesticides and toward organic farming methods that work with nature rather than against it.” According to National Geographic, neonics “are used on over 140 different agricultural crops in more than 120 countries. They attack the central nervous system of insects, causing overstimulation of their nerve cells, paralysis, and death.” With insect populations declining due to neonic use, “the numbers of insect-eating birds have plummeted in recent decades,” National Geographic reported. “There’s also been a widespread decline in nearly all bird species.”

Amazon: ~2,700,000 sq mi (7,000,000 km2)

Contiguous US: ~3,100,000 sq mi (8,000,000 km2)

Politics and Algorithms

Jul 262019

July 26, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 1:52 pm Finance, Primers Tagged with: algorithms, Bernie, Biden, Blair, Boris, Brexit, Cummings, Dems, Farage, GOP, Mueller, politics, technology, Trump, Uncivil War 8 Responses »

Edward Hopper Sailing 1911

It’s a development that has long been evident in continental Europe, and that has now arrived on the shores of the US and UK. It is the somewhat slow but very certain dissolution of long-existing political parties, organizations and groups. That’s what I was seeing during the Robert Mueller clown horror show on Wednesday.

Mueller was not just the Democratic Party’s last hope, he was their identity. He was the anti-Trump. Well, he no longer is, he is not fit to play that role anymore. And there is nobody to take it over who is not going to be highly contested by at least some parts of the party. In other words: it’s falling apart.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s a natural process, parties change as conditions do and if they don’t do it fast enough they disappear. Look at the candidates the Dems have. Can anyone imagine the party, post-Mueller, uniting behind Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders or Kamala Harris? And then for one of them to beat Donald Trump in 2020?

I was just watching a little clip from Sean Hannity, doing what Trump did last week, which is going after the Squad. Who he said are anti-Israel socialists and, most importantly, the de facto leaders of the party, not Nancy Pelosi. That is a follow-up consequence of Mueller’s tragic defeat, the right can now go on the chase. The Squad is the face of the Dems because Trump and Hannity have made them that.

The upcoming Horowitz and Durham reports on their respective probes into “meddling into the meddling” will target many people in the Democratic Party, US intelligence services, and the media. In that order. Can the Dems survive such a thing? It’s hard to see.

There’s Bernie and the Squad, the declared socialists, who will never be accepted as leaders by a party so evidently predicated upon support for the arms industry. And they in turn can’t credibly support candidates who do. The Democratic Party will never be socialist, they will have to leave the label behind in order to share that message and remain believable.

But without them, what will be left? Joe Biden, or perhaps Hillary silently waiting in the wings? I don’t see it. Not after Mueller, not after two-three years of gambling all on red anti-Trump. At least the Squad have an identity, got to give them that. Whether it will sell in 2019 America is another thing altogether.

I personally think the term socialist is too tainted, on top of being too misinterpreted, for it to be “electable”, but I also understand there are large swaths of the US population who are in dire straits already with a recession on the horizon, but 2020 seems too soon. And I would ditch the term regardless. It’s like painting a target on your back for Trump and Hannity to aim at.

If you remember the 2016 campaign and the clown parade on stage with the likes of Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush glaring at the headlights, you know that the GOP has issues that are very similar to those of the Dems. But Trump came along.

The Dems have no Trump. They do have a DNC that will stifle any candidate they don’t like (Bernie!), though. Just think what they would have done if Trump had run as a Democrat (crazy, but not that crazy).

The UK’s issues are remarkably similar to those of the US. Only, in their case, the socialists have already taken over the left-wing party (if you can call the Dems left-wing). This has led to absolute stagnation. Tony Blair had moved Labour so far to the right (which he and his Blairites call center, because it sounds so much better), that injecting Jeremy Corbyn as leader was just too fast and furious.

So they labeled Corbyn an anti-semite, the most successful and equally empty smear campaign since Julian Assange was called a rapist. Corbyn never adequately responded, so he couldn’t profile himself and now the Blairites are again calling on him to leave. Oh, and he never gave a direct answer to the question of Brexit yes or no either. Pity. Corbyn’s support among the people is massive, but not in the party.

Which is why it’s now up to Boris Johnson to ‘deliver the will of the people’. And apparently the first thing the people want is 20,000 more policemen. Which were fired by the very party he at the time represented first as first mayor of London and then foreign minister, for goodness sake. His very own Tories closed 600 police stations since 2010 and will have to re-open many now.

Some survey must have told him it polled well. Just like polling was an essential part of pushing through Brexit. There’s a very revealing TV movie that came out 6 months ago called Brexit: The Uncivil War, that makes this very clear. The extent to which campaigns these days rely on data gathering and voter targeting will take a while yet to be understood, but they’re a future that is already here. Wikipedia in its description of the film puts it quite well:

After the opening credits, [Dominic] Cummings rejects an offer in 2015 by UKIP MP Douglas Carswell and political strategist Matthew Elliott to lead the Vote Leave campaign due to his contempt for “Westminister politics”, but accepts when Carswell promises Cummings full control.

The next sequences show Cummings outlining the core strategy on a whiteboard of narrow disciplined messaging delivered via algorithmic database-driven micro-targeting tools. Cummings rejects an approach by Nigel Farage and Arron Banks of Leave.EU to merge their campaigns, as his data shows Farage is an obstacle to winning an overall majority.

[..] In a eureka moment, Cummings refines the core message to “Take Back Control”, thus positioning Vote Leave as the historical status quo, and Remain as the “change” option. Cummings meets and hires Canadian Zack Massingham, co-founder of AggregateIQ, who offers to build a database using social media tools of [3 million] voters who are not on the UK electoral register but are inclined to vote to leave.

[..] In the final stages, high-profile senior Tory MPs Michael Gove and Boris Johnson join the Vote Leave campaign emphasising the need to “Take Back Control”, while Penny Mordaunt is shown on BBC raising concerns over the accession of Turkey. Gove and Johnson are shown as having some reticence over specific Vote Leave claims (e.g. £350 million for NHS, and 70 million potential Turkish emigrants) but are seen to overcome them.

Dominic Cummings, played in the movie by Benedict Cumberbatch, is an independent political adviser who belongs to no party. But guess what? He was the first adviser Boris Johnson hired after his nomination Wednesday. Cummings didn’t want Nigel Farage as the face of Brexit, because he polled poorly. He wanted Boris, because his numbers were better. Not because he didn’t think Boris was a bumbling fool, he did.

And now Cummings is back to finish the job. Far as I can see, that can only mean one thing: elections, and soon (it’s what Cummings does). A no-deal Brexit was voted down, in the same Parliament Boris Johnson now faces, 3 times, or was it 4? There is going to be a lot of opposition. Boris wants Brexit on October 31, and has practically bet his career on it. But there is going to be a lot of opposition.

He can’t have elections before September, because of the summer recess. So perhaps end of September?! But he has Dominic Cummings and his “algorithmic database-driven micro-targeting tools”. Without which Brexit would never have been voted in. So if you don’t want Brexit, you better come prepared.

Cummings and his techies weren’t -just- sending out mass mails or that kind of stuff. That’s already arcane. They were sending targeted personalized messages to individual voters, by the millions. Algorithms. AI. Tailor made. If you’re the opposition, and you don’t have those tools, then what do you have exactly?

Already thought before it all happened that it was funny that Boris Johnson’s ascension and Robert Mueller’s downfall were scheduled for the same day. There must be a pattern somewhere.

You can find the movie at HBO or Channel 4, I’m sure. Try this link for Channel 4. Seeing that movie, and thinking about the implications of the technology, the whole notion of Russian meddling becomes arcane as well. We just have no idea.

The News About Fake News Is Fake

Jan 192019

January 19, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:21 pm Primers Tagged with: baby boomers, BuzzFeed, Cohen, confirmation bias, fake news, lies, Mueller, Republican, Russia, technology, Trump, websites 3 Responses »

Johannes Vermeer Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window 1657-59

In the last few days I was looking around for stories that could illustrate what fake news actually is, and I had a nice collection, but then last night Robert Mueller of all people clarified what exactly fake news is better than I could have. At first the BuzzFeed crew that was caught staring straight into the headlights has a feeble response (what exactly was untrue in our article?), but was silenced by the WaPo of all publications: Mueller’s team said every bit of the article was false.

And still I wonder if people now understand better what fake news is. Which I think has a lot to do whit the fact that the term was monopolized by a section of US media as meaning things that had to do with Trump, more or less exclusively. That way, when Trump accused these same media of publishing fake news, they knew their loyal readers wouldn’t believe him.

But in reality they’ve been at it ever since Trump entered US politics, and they dug in ever deeper into their anti-Donald trenches, first for political reasons, later for profit (nothing sells like Trump in America today). And in the process, especially since they published umpteen pieces a day on the topic, they had to use unproven and biased allegations and innuendo. There was never enough real news to go around to feed the monster they created. That’s how we got Russiagate.

Still, of course, like me, you want to know how fake news is recognized, how ‘experts’ tell it apart from real news. Well, despair no more. An actual professor researched it, and was quoted by the New York Times last week, which doesn’t publish fake news, it says. I got to say, personally, I found this highly enlightening.

Older People Shared Fake News on Facebook More Than Others in 2016 Race

The authors were careful in defining “fake news,” a term that has been weaponized by many, including President Trump, to dismiss real news they dislike. “Reasonable people disagree about where to draw the line and we were very conscious of those issues,” Professor Guess said.

As a result, they assembled a limited list of sites that reliably published fake content, based on various sources, including reporting from BuzzFeed News. As best the researchers could tell, the list did not include any websites associated with Russian disinformation efforts, according to Professor Guess. The Facebook and survey data came from a group of about 3,500 people whom the authors tracked during the 2016 election in order to better understand the role social media played in political discourse.

They found that Republicans and those who identified as “very conservative” tended to share the most news from questionable sources. But that tendency may have less to do with ideology and more to do with what those articles said: Users tend to share stories they agree with and the fake news sites were disproportionately pro-Trump, the authors said.

So the researchers distinguish fake news from real news, but they don’t tell us -or the NYT doesn’t- what methods they use to tell the two apart. They do tell us that what Trump calls fake news is merely real news he dislikes. It’s funny how people say that so easily, and never think they themselves might do just that.

“..a limited list of sites that reliably published fake content..” sounds intriguing, but not convincing. That this list partly comes from BuzzFeed is hilarious in view of Mueller’s indictment of BuzzFeed’s article about Trump instructing Michael Cohen to lie. Other than that, the article doesn’t really say much. But luckily Quentin Fottrell, personal finance editor at MarketWatch, elaborates (free advice: Quentin, stick to your trade!)

His article caught my eye because whereas the NYTimes piece talked about older people sharing more fake news, Quentin adds that it’s about Republican older people. And that I find hard to believe. At least without proof; I wouldn’t want to jump to such conclusions based on fake news. Let’s see how far I can get:

Why Republican Baby Boomers Are More Likely To Share #Fakenews On Facebook

So why are Republican baby boomers more likely to share fake news on Facebook? One theory: As they didn’t grow up with technology, they may be more susceptible to being fooled.

That one sentence says a lot about this entire ‘study’. It even sounds fake to me. Because while I can see the “less exposed to tech” issue to an extent, I see no reason why Republican baby boomers would be fooled more easily by technology than their Democrat peers.

[..] Andrew Guess, an associate professor at Princeton University, and his colleagues disseminated an online survey to 3,500 people in three waves throughout the 2016 campaign. Of the respondents, 1,331 in the initial wave agreed to share their Facebook profile data, which allowed researchers to analyze the age and political affiliations of those people who were more likely to spread fake news.

The results showed that 90% of these users actually did not share misleading or fake articles and only 8.5% shared one or more fake news articles. A plurality, 18%, of the Facebook users who shared the fake stories were both self-identified Republicans and over the age of 65, the authors concluded, and these individuals shared nearly seven times as many fake news articles as respondents in the youngest age group, ranging in age from 18 to 29.

I had to look at this a few times. Here’s what I think it says:

• They ‘studied’ 3,500 people in 3 waves, of which the initial one was larger than 1,331 people, since that is the segment of the first wave who shared their Facebook data (we assume not all did).

• 90% of these 1,331, or 1,198 people, shared nothing at all (no fake news).

• 8.5% of the 1,331, or 114 people, did share fake news stories. 18% of those 114 (so 18% of 8.5%), or 20 people, were self-identified Republicans over the age of 65.

• Therefore 20 people out of 3,500, or 0.57%, were older Republicans who shared fake news (as it was defined by the survey). There are probably even more people in that target group suffering from dementia than the 0.57% who shared fake news. So what are we looking at here?

You could argue that it’s really 20 people out of 1,331, but that’s still only 1.5%. Meaningless.

• These 20 people shared 7 times as many fake news pieces as young people. That may be true, but they also shared more than 99.43% of people their own age. Does this still mean anything at all to you?

Quentin delights us with some more data;

Another possible explanation: Older Americans may have felt particularly passionate and entrenched in their political views and, therefore, ideological. For instance, the most ideological members of Congress shared news stories on their Facebook pages more than twice as often as moderate legislators between Jan. 2, 2015, and July 20, 2017, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center study, which examined all official Facebook posts created by and for members of Congress in this period.

If you ask me, it’s peculiar to make statements about politics that heap ordinary Americans together with politicians, but at least that paragraph doesn’t say Republicans are more likely than others to [fill in your preference]. But then we’re off to the races again:

[..] What’s more, baby boomers are more likely to be conservative and ideological, according to data crunched by Pew. “In both 2015 and 2016, about one in 10 baby boomers identified as conservative Republicans — the highest percentages dating back to 2000,” researchers Shiva Maniam and Samantha Smith wrote for Pew. “In both years, conservative Republicans made up the largest single partisan and ideological group among boomers.”

Wait. The logic here is that baby boomers are more likely to be conservative and ideological because 1 in 10 baby boomers say they’re conservative Republicans. But that means 9 out of 10 does not. This doesn’t even make a single sliver of sense. Yo, Quentin (and professor Guess), we need some help here.

To be fair, older Republicans share more news in general, and fake news gets caught up in the mix. Members of Congress with very conservative or very liberal voting records both shared news links in about 14% of all their posts, but members with more moderate ideology scores shared links to news stories in just 6% of their posts, Pew found.

That starts out with older Republicans in general and then seamlessly veers into members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, with either very conservative or very liberal voting records. Not fully self-contradictory, but darn close.

There may also be a political explanation: A trickle-down effect from the president’s own remarks about the liberal media. Older Republicans could feel more emboldened by Trump’s comments and, as a result, assume stories that support their causes are accurate.

That’s the first time I explicitly read Quentin saying that fake news is linked to Trump. But other than that, there is no sign that older Democrats don’t feel ’emboldened’ by DNC or Hillary or Pelosi comments just as much as Republicans do by Trump. Quentin and professor Guess only pretend to make a point, but there’s nothing there.

The president has doubled down of late on the view that the mainstream media’s negative coverage of his administration is rooted in bias. “The media also has a responsibility to set a civil tone and to stop the endless hostility and constant negative and often times false attacks and stories,” Trump said last year.

“Confirmation bias” helps outlandish theories and reports gain traction on social media. And that, psychologists say, is where fake news comes in.

Since there is nothing that indicates one political side is more prone to confirmation bias than the other, fake news will necessarily also occur on both sides. Why you would have psychologists define fake news I don’t know. Oh, and I think that Trump comment makes a lot of sense.

With so much noise on social media, how can people distinguish between rumor and reality? Psychologists say people develop defense mechanisms to cope with an uncertain world early in life, but this also draws people to information that seems to confirm their own beliefs and world views and to ignore reports or opinions that contradict their perceptions.

“At its core is the need for the brain to receive confirming information that harmonizes with an individual’s existing views and beliefs,” said Mark Whitmore, an assistant professor of management and information systems in Kent State University’s business school. “In fact, one could say the brain is hard-wired to accept, reject, miss-remember or distort information based on whether it is viewed as accepting of or threatening to existing beliefs.”

Older Americans may be less likely to question authority

However, many people effectively rationalize the irrational in order to avoid going against values and ideas they were taught by their parents. “Children’s learning about make-believe and mastery becomes the basis for more complex forms of self-deception and illusion into adulthood,” Eve Whitmore said. When people are faced with absurd and conflicting messages, her husband added, “It becomes easier to cling to a simple fiction than a complicated reality.”

[..] Ultimately, however, it may come down to our trust in the internet, rather than institutions or belief systems. “People who have grown up with the internet have experienced things that are not necessarily truthful. They have had experiences on social media or they have witnessed friends dealing with false information, which has made them more skeptical about what they read versus the baby boomers who did not grow up with the internet and have, therefore, limited experience.”

Remember, the article’s headline is “Why Republican Baby Boomers Are More Likely To Share #Fakenews On Facebook”. And then it does absolutely nothing to make that point, but instead goes a very long way to proving that ALL baby boomers do that. Either one of which, first of all, you don’t prove by talking 20 people out of a sample of 3,500, but moreover, secondly, your entire article -strongly- appears to deny.

And do we know what fake news is now, are we any closer to that? Not that I can see. And there’s no way I can say it all in one go, so I’ll get back to this topic. But not before thanking Robert Mueller for defining fake news in his own way. It must have cost him, and the FBI and DOJ, some genuine heartache, but in the end he couldn’t let the entire avalanche of media and Democrats run with such an overtly fake piece of ‘news’. There were calls for Congressional investigations based on it, for crying out loud.

Speaking of which, crying out loud might be what you expect BuzzFeed to do now, but don’t count on it: they got a ton of free publicity, and that’s all the entire fake news cycle has been based on from the start. And if it didn’t kill the New York Times or CNN, why would it kill BuzzFeed? It’s a growth industry. And credibility is overrated.

This is the End of the Euro

May 252018

May 25, 2018 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 2:20 pm Finance Tagged with: bonds, Draghi, ECB, euro, exchange rate, Germany, Italy, M5S, non-confidence, Rajoy, Spain, technology, trade 13 Responses »

René Magritte The therapeutist 1937

The Spanish government is about to fall after the Ciudadanos party decided to join PSOE (socialist) and Podemos in a non-confidence vote against PM Rajoy. Hmm, what would that mean for the Catalan politicians Rajoy is persecuting? The Spanish political crisis is inextricably linked to the Italian one, not even because they are so much alike, but because both combine to create huge financial uncertainty in the eurozone.

Sometimes it takes a little uproar to reveal the reality behind the curtain. Both countries, Italy perhaps some more than Spain, would long since have seen collapse if not for the ECB. In essence, Mario Draghi is buying up trillions in sovereign bonds to disguise the fact that the present construction of the euro makes it inevitable that the poorer south of Europe will lose against the north.

Club Med needs a mechanism to devalue their currencies from time to time to keep up. Signing up for the euro meant they lost that mechanism, and the currency itself doesn’t provide an alternative. The euro has become a cage, a prison for the poorer brethren, but if you look a bit further, it’s also a prison for Germany, which will be forced to either bail out Italy or crush it the way Greece was crushed.

Italy and Spain are much larger economies than Greece is, and therefore much larger problems. Problems that are about to become infinitely more painful then they would have been had the countries been able to devalue their currencies. If you want to define the main fault of the euro, it is that: it creates problems that would not have existed if the common currency itself didn’t. This was inevitable from the get-go. The fatal flaw was baked into the cake.

And if you think about it, today the need for a common currency has largely vanished anyway already. Anno 2018, people wouldn’t have to go to banks to exchange their deutschmarks or guilders or francs, they would either pay in plastic or get some local currency out of an ATM. All this could be done at automatically adjusting exchange rates without the use of all sorts of middlemen that existed when the euro was introduced.

Americans and British visiting Europe already use this exact same system. Governments can make strong deals that make it impossible for banks and credit card companies to charge more than, say, 1% or 0.5%, on exchange rate transactions. This would be good for all cross-border trade as well, it could be seamless.

Technology has eradicated the reason why the euro was introduced in the first place, and made it completely unnecessary. But the euro is here, and it is going to cause a lot more pain and mayhem. Any country that even thinks about leaving the system will be punished hard, even if that’s the by far more logical thing to do.

Europe is not ready to call for the end of the experiment. Because so much reputation and ego has been invested in it, and because the richer nations and their banks still benefit -hugely- from the problems the poorer face. The one country that got it right was Britain, when it decided to stay out of the eurozone.

But then they screwed up the next decision. And found themselves with the most incompetent ever group of ‘chosen few’ to handle the outcome. Still, anyone want to take out a bet on who’s going to be worse off when the euro whip comes down, Britain or for instance Italy or France? Not me. Close call is the best I can come up with.

The euro was devised and introduced, ostensibly, to solve problems. Problems with cross border trade between European nations, with exchange rates. But instead it has created a whole new set of problems that turn out to be much worse than the ones it was supposed to solve. That’s how and why M5S and the League got to form Italy’s government.

In Spain, if an election is called, and it looks that way, you will either get a left wing coalition or more of the Rajoy-style same. Left wing means problems with the EU, more of the same means domestic problems; the non-confidence vote comes on the heels of yet another corruption scandal for Rajoy’s party.

And let’s not forget that all economic numbers are being greatly embellished all over the continent. If you can claim with a straight face that the Greek economy is growing, anything goes. Same with Italy. It’s only been getting worse. And yeah, there’s a lot of corruption left in these countries, and yeah, Europe could have helped them solve that. Only, it hasn’t, that is not what Brussels focuses on.

Italy for now is the big Kahuna. The EU can’t save it if the new coalition is serious about its government program. But it also can’t NOT save it, because that would mean Italy leaving the euro. And perhaps the EU.

If Italian bonds are sufficiently downgraded by the markets, Mario Draghi’s ECB will no longer be permitted to purchase them. And access to other support programs would depend on doing the very opposite of what the M5S/League program spells out, which is to stimulate the domestic economy. Is that a bad idea? Hell no, it’s just that the eurozone rules forbid it.

The euro has entirely outlived its purpose, and then some. But it exists, and it will be incredibly painful to unravel. The new game for the north will be to unload as much of that pain as possible on the south.

Europe would have been much better off of it had never had the euro. But it does. The politicians and bankers will make sure they’re fine. But the people won’t be.

The euro will disappear because the reasons for it not to exist are much more pressing than for it to do. At least that bit is simple. The unwind will not be.

Adapting Technology To A Brave New World

Feb 022014

February 2, 2014 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 1:10 pm Finance Tagged with: collapse, computer, technology 12 Responses »

Steffano Webb Vacuum Cleaning Co. machine, Christchurch, New Zealand 1910

When I had some serious problems with my Mac earlier this year, I wrote that I saw no other alternative then to get a new one. Several readers, for different reasons, commented that Macs are not the way to go. Of course, I’ve heard much of that many times before, and I haven’t for a moment been tempted to switch away from Mac. I’ve seen many people go the opposite way, though, from Windows to Mac.

One commenter, who goes by the moniker AutoMan, had a slightly different take, and one I found interesting. He talked about the proper attitude towards computing in the face of The Automatic Earth’s own “principles”, like those of getting and staying out of debt, and teaching yourself skills, for instance. So I asked Automan to wrote a guest post on the topic, and here it is. Please note I’m not a tech guy, so, as an editor, it’s hard for me to assess much of what AutoMan writes, but I’m sure many people will be able to take away quite a bit from this post. And I’ll be the first to admit it would be better to have more control over the whole process of using a computer or related device.

AutoMan: Recently, Raúl Ilargi Meijer – editor-in-chief of The Automatic Earth (TAE) – tried to awaken his Mac, something he had done countless times before, and faced the terror that computer users dread the world over: a cold dead machine. You can just hear him shout, "Damn!!! #$%@!" His trusted Mac – no ordinary machine, mind you, but a shiny icon that radiated "cool" and had faithfully served Ilargi through thick and thin – was no more.

Ilargi quickly gave notice to TAE’s faithful readers of his misfortune ("Mac died"), noting he had “no choice but to try and get a new one tomorrow, and that’s the last thing we need here at TAE these days, major expenses.” A number of TAE’s readers (including yours truly), however, perhaps not fully appreciating just how cool Ilargi’s Mac really was, questioned whether a Mac was really the most suitable machine for TAE, in light of the principles espoused by TAE. In response, Ilargi did not react defensively, like a lesser man might; instead, Ilargi, demonstrating character, despite his misfortune, graciously invited me to submit a guest post. Here it is.

This post will not seek to preach about any particular computer platform–indeed, it is possible that a replacement Mac is the best choice for Ilargi’s work at TAE at this time–instead, this post will seek to provide you, dear reader, with a set of lenses regarding how to analyze your tech decisions to adapt your computer technology in preparation for the post-collapse world that TAE is warning us about.

TAE Principles relevant to Technology

To begin with, readers of TAE know that TAE seeks to prepare us for a deflationary crisis. Nicole Foss reiterated this point in "The Future Belongs To the Adaptable":

"As our readers know, we do not provide investment advice. We do not exist to help people make money in the markets, but to help them avoid losing what they have in a deflationary crisis, at a time when almost everyone will lose a great deal."

TAE has published a list of principles to help its readers prepare for the deflationary crisis (a recent version of the complete list appears in "How to Build a Lifeboat"). Out of the nine principles that TAE espouses, there are four principles that are directly relevant to our technological choices, namely:

1) Hold no debt (for most people, this means renting);

5) Gain some control over the necessities of your own existence;

6) Work with others to enhance personal and community resilience and security;

8) Be worth more to your employer than he is paying you.

Before applying these principles to technology, it is necessary to briefly survey the current landscape of consumer computing, the world from which Ilargi’s Mac arose.

The current tech world: Microsoft, Apple, Google, and FOSS

For our purposes, the current consumer computing world can be divided into the following four competitive fields (or "spaces"): (1) desktop (including laptops), (2) server, (3) mobile (including smartphones and tablets), and (4) the burgeoning "DIY electronics movement" ("DIY" refers to "Do It Yourself"). These fields are dominated by the following "players": the Microsoft Corporation, Apple Inc., Google Inc., and "Free and open-source software" ("FOSS"). (Amazon, Facebook, and other players are also significant, but for the sake of brevity, we’ll narrow our focus to these four primary players.)

The first three players are all major corporations; indeed, the three are some of the most profitable corporations in the world. The last player, FOSS, is different: it refers to the myriad of software projects that are produced under a FOSS license and are available free of charge, including operating systems, such as Linux, and the descendants of the original Berkeley Software Distribution, e.g., FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.

FOSS actually has two branches: "free software," a term coined by the father of free software, Richard Stallman, which stresses the political value of the freedoms secured by FOSS licenses, and "open source," a term which stresses the pragmatic advantages of having access to the source code. In practice, the two approaches espouse the same freedoms, and FOSS licenses generally secure the right of users to (1) run the code for any purpose; (2) modify the code; and (3) distribute the code without paying royalties to the original producer (as David A. Wheeler summarized in "Why Open Source Software / Free Software?"). The formal definitions of Free Software and Open Source can be found here and here, respectively.

What is perhaps more important than the license terms is the system of production that arises from these licenses. Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler coined the term "commons-based peer-production," in his seminal paper "Coase’s Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm," Professor Benkler posited that "commons-based peer-production" is a different type of system of production, which is markedly different from the traditional firm-based and market-based systems of production; perhaps most notably, it is not based on the profit motive, although it is not necessarily antithetical to the profit motive, either. Aaron Krowne of Free Software Magazine has offered a broader definition, as follows:

"commons-based peer production refers to any coordinated, (chiefly) internet-based effort whereby volunteers contribute project components, and there exists some process to combine them to produce a unified intellectual work. CBPP covers many different types of intellectual output, from software to libraries of quantitative data to human-readable documents (manuals, books, encyclopedias, reviews, blogs, periodicals, and more)."

With this background, we can now turn to the playing field from which Ilargi’s late Mac arose: the desktop space, which will be our primary focus.

The Desktop

Microsoft

The desktop space is overwhelmingly dominated by Microsoft: its windows operating system, in its various incarnations (Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8) runs on upwards of 90% of desktop computers (including laptops) (according to Net Applications, a web analytics firm). Even if you don’t run Windows, Microsoft’s overwhelming market share may be relevant to your computing choices, since it may affect the work product you must work with (e.g., file formats, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) and the technology at your workplace and among co-workers and colleagues. Further, Microsoft’s overwhelming market share in the desktop space also means that most desktop programs have a Windows version, and many programs have Windows versions exclusively. An understanding of how Microsoft captured the desktop space may give us some useful insights.

Because IBM was late to enter the personal computing space, in order to play catch up (including with Apple, which had beat it to the personal computer market), its engineers used off-the-shelf hardware to get its original PC models to market. This made it easy for other manufacturers, such as Compaq, to create clones of the IBM PC by purchasing the same off-the-shelf hardware and then reverse engineering the BIOS of IBM’s PC (the Basic Input/Output System; the small firmware that initializes a computer). Although IBM effectively created the PC industry with its preeminent brand name at the time, as the dominant large computer manufacturer, it lost the PC market to the clone manufacturers: Dell, Compaq, HP, ACER, Lenovo (which later bought its ThinkPad line), etc.

Microsoft, however, made out like a bandit because its deal with IBM permitted it to sell its operating system to the other clone manufactures, who produce a never-ending variety of new PC models, around the world. That’s the secret of how Bill Gates & Co. built the "House of Microsoft": on the back of IBM’s cloned hardware. In a sense, Microsoft’s overwhelming market share on the desktop is the fortuitous product of a de facto commons-based peer production, carried out not by volunteers but by the clone manufacturers, a de facto commons-based peer production that was the result not of IBM’s generosity in sharing its hardware designs but its inability to control its hardware design (due to its late entry into the market).

Microsoft’s dominant position in the desktop has allowed it to nurture its second cash cow on the desktop: Microsoft Office (its office suite of desktop applications, e.g., word processing, spreadsheet, presentation software, email, database, etc.). Although Google has actively promoted a cloud based competitor, Google Docs, and respectable FOSS alternatives exist, e.g., Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice, Microsoft Office overwhelmingly dominates the desktop office suite market, with estimates of upwards of 80% of the market. In fact, over the last few years, Microsoft Office’s share of this market has actually increased.

OS X

Apple’s OS X (the operating system produced by Apple that Macs run natively, such as on Ilargi’s late Mac) comes in a very distant second in the desktop space, running on about 7.53% of desktop computers (according to Net Applications). Apple, however, focuses on providing high-end machines that sell at a premium to regular PC hardware (the least expensive Mac laptop, the 11-inch MacBook Air, currently starts at $999 in the U.S., and to purchase a MacBook with a discrete graphics card will set you back $2,599.00).

Mac aficionados claim that the higher prices are offset by lower maintenance costs. Because Apple sells both the hardware and the operating system software, it purportedly is able to provide a more integrated system (or so it claims). Apple is also known to take great pains to maximize the design esthetics of its machines and user experience, compared to Microsoft, which is known to focus more on adding as many features as possible.

Be that as it may, Macs tend to dominate niche segments of the desktop space, such as fields that rely on audio-visual software and the education field; paradoxically, Macs tend to be most popular with the least computer savvy (who rely on their perceived ease of operation, including perceived lack of malware), as well as the most tech savvy, such as Silicon Valley engineers, who covet the avant-garde hardware and the Unix features of the operating system (or is it due to the "cool factor" fostered by Steve Jobs that increases their perceived personal attractiveness as they click away at Starbucks?).

Recently, Apple has been making considerable strides in breaking into the corporate market: many business users are replacing PCs with Apple iPads, and others are moving up the Apple lineup, e.g., from iPhones to Macs, according to the Wall Street Journal ("Apple Devices Flow Into Corporate World,", January 9 2014).

One idiosyncrasy of OS X is that it is a hybrid proprietary-FOSS operating system. OS X’s core, i.e. the foundation of the system, known as Darwin, is licensed under the Apple Public Source License, which is approved as a free software license by the Free Software Foundation. In fact, Apple incorporates a number of FOSS components into OS X and openly praises commons-based peer production:

"Apple believes that using Open Source methodology makes Mac OS X a more robust, secure operating system, as its core components have been subjected to the crucible of peer review for decades. Any problems found with this software can be immediately identified and fixed by Apple and the Open Source community."

Other parts of the system that wrap around this core such as the graphical users interface, however, are proprietary to Apple. Apparently, Steve Jobs, the master marketer, decided to harness the force of commons-based peer production and to simply add a veneer around that core; hence, through this veneer, Apple is able to effectively monetize FOSS software. The question for users is whether the veneer is worth Apple’s asking price.

FOSS: Linux & Co.

The main FOSS contender in this space, the Linux operating system, only runs on about 1.73% of desktop computers, in its various distributions (e.g., Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, etc.) (according to Net Applications). The Linux operating system was originally developed by Linus Torvalds (its namesake), a software engineer from Finland, who put out a call for help on the internet, in 1991, for fellow techies from around the world to lend a hand in developing a free operating system ("Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?" Linus Torvalds).

Through his call, Torvalds unleashed the power of commons-based peer production, which resulted in one of the most successful FOSS projects of all time: the Linux operating system. This was made possible not only by the commons-based peer production that answered Torvalds call to arms, but also by the legacy commons-based peer production code that already existed at the time, thanks primarily to the work of Richard Stallman and his GNU Project, which had already completed the work on many of the core features of an operating system, leaving Torvalds and his legions to focus on the heart of the operating system: the kernel (to this day Stallman insists that Linux should be referred to as "GNU/Linux" for this reason).

Torvalds is pragmatic to a fault: he owns a MacBook Air, for the utility of the hardware, but runs only Linux as its operating system, scrapping the native OS X. In contrast to the pragmatic Torvalds, Richard Stallman is an unyielding idealist, eschewing even many popular Linux distributions as being compromised by the inclusion of certain commercial features. As for Apple, Stallman has called for a boycott of its products altogether, for a litany of reasons.

Don’t let Linux’s small market share on the desktop fool you, Linux is a giant in computing overall. It runs on over 90% of supercomputers. Hollywood purportedly uses Linux on over 90% of its desktops and servers for the creation of special effects and animation. One would expect to find a state of the art commercial platform in the bastion of capitalism, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), but no: The NYSE runs Linux, because its messaging system is apparently superior to the commercial systems. The scientific community is known to be one of Linux’s niches, building on its Unix background. The International Space Station, for example, recently replaced Windows with Linux for its laptops. According to ComputerWeekly.com (“International Space Station adopts Debian Linux, drops Windows & Red Hat into airlock”, May 13, 2013), the Manager of the Space Operations Computing (SpOC) for NASA Keith Chuvala explained their decision:

"We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable — one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust, or adapt, we could."

Perhaps even more importantly, Linux is also a giant in the mobile space, thanks to Google’s adaption of Linux for its Android mobile operating system. In addition to using Linux in the servers that bring you the Google search engine, incorporating Linux into Android, Google also created a Linux-based desktop operating system, known as Chrome OS, which is included with its new line of laptops, known as Chromebooks.

Google Chromebook

Recently, Google launched an attack into the desktop space with its Chromebook line of computers, which have become best-sellers almost overnight. Chromebooks are ultra-affordable laptops (they currently start at $199) and run a minimalist operating system that runs all apps out of a browser, known as Chrome OS, a Linux-based operating system. But that hasn’t stopped some enterprising techies from purchasing Chromebooks and loading regular versions of Linux on them; thereby, converting them into full Linux computers, albeit with bare-bones power (but for $199 and all the free software you can use, who can beat that?).

Servers

Servers are the dedicated computers that provide a variety of "services" to a network; they come in all types: email servers, file servers, print servers, web servers, etc. Microsoft and FOSS operating systems, such as Linux and the BSD derivatives, tend to share this space as major players, with Microsoft appearing to take the lion’s share. Linux, however, is known the world over as an excellent operating system for servers, and may be significantly undercounted in the relevant surveys.

Mobile

Although our focus is primarily on the desktop, we must take note that the mobile space is effectively disrupting the desktop. Ever since Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, the computing world has been subjected to tsunami of mobile devices that have changed the desktop space to its core. Increasing number of users, for example, are eschewing laptops altogether in favor of tablets.

The mobile space is dominated by Apple and Google Android, with Android taking the lion’s share, but Apple is reportedly taking the lion’s share of profits. Android is based on the Linux kernel. Google distributes Android free of charge to manufacturers, in exchange for compliance with certain terms.

Microsoft has a tiny share of the mobile space: both its smartphones and tablets have tiny shares of their respective segments. Microsoft’s attempt to leverage its desktop operating system to persuade users to adopt tablets running Windows 8 appears to have failed for the time being. When the consumer computing market is viewed as an aggregate of the desktop and mobile segments, Microsoft’s share of the overall market has reportedly dropped precipitously. From 2004 to 2012, Microsoft’s share of the consumer computing market dropped from 95% to 20%, according to IDC.

The DIY electronics movement

We must also take notice of the burgeoning DIY electronics movement. This movement seeks to expand personal electronics from the domain of personal computers to all facets of day to day living. It makes use of off-the-shelf electronic parts to create all types of projects: robots, sensors, works of art, wearable electronics–and gadgets of all types. FOSS is at the heart of this movement: from providing the main operating system for the tiny computers that provide the brains for its projects, to the common specifications for much of its electronic gear.

Anyone looking for the "Bill Gates" or "Steve Jobs" of the DIY electronics movement should look no further than Limor "Ladyada" Fried, a young MIT-educated entrepreneur who founded Adafruit, a New York City based distributor of all things DIY electronics (see a recent interview). Ladyada, who often sports a bright purple hairdo and lip ring, was named Entrepreneur of the year by Entrepreneur magazine in its January 2013 edition. She was also the first female engineer to appear on the cover of WIRED magazine. Both she and her company act as evangelists for the DIY electronics movement. Check out her weekly Youtube show, Adafruit learning system, tutorials, and blog.

The Raspberry Pi, a tiny single-board computer (about the size of a credit card) is an example of the type of hardware that makes up the arsenal of the DIY electronics movement. This tiny computer was originally intended to educate youth on computer hardware (given the trend away from users dabbling with the innards of computer systems), but was quickly adopted by hobbyists who use it as a workhorse computer for their projects. It currently has two models: model A, which sells for $25 (US), and model B, which sells for $35 (US). The Raspberry Pi doesn’t do Windows or OS X (which even if it were adopted to run on this hardware, perhaps in its iOS incarnation, would violate Apple’s licensing terms). Linux is its chosen operating system.

Likewise, the arduino is an inexpensive single-board microcontroller, distributed under a FOSS license, which costs approximately $30 for an official version and $9 for a clone. Arduinos are used in a myriad of DIY electronics projects.

In theory, the DIY electronics movement may also offer ordinary people a chance to compete in the coming tsunami of the automation of jobs, resulting from the application of robotics and computer automation to the workplace. "One recent study by academics at Oxford University suggests that 47% of todays jobs could be automated in the next two decades," according to The Economist ("Coming to an office near you," January 18, 2014). By mastering DIY electronics, it is possible that some people will be able to use the available off-the-shelf technology to supply services to this insatiable demand for automation, since the DIY electronics technology is by and large based on FOSS and available to anyone who is willing to pay the price of learning.

Four Tech-Specific Principles

The technology reviewed above arose in an environment of cheap credit and cheap energy, which forms our current tech-world. Applying TAE’s four tech relevant principles to the consumer-computing world that we just surveyed, I arrive at the following:

1) To avoid holding debt, scrutinize all tech purchases under the light of the post-collapse reality;

2) To gain some control over the necessities of your own existence, gain as much control over your personal technology as possible, including by adapting FOSS and DIY solutions where possible;

3) Learn the art of working with others in FOSS and projects, both by contributing to existing projects and eventually–for some–starting your own FOSS projects;

4) To make yourself more valuable to your employer, learn cost-effective technical solutions that apply in your occupation.

Let’s look at the first principle in detail.

1) To avoid holding debt, scrutinize all tech purchases under the light of the post-collapse reality

Will you be whipping out that credit card to buy that shiny new Mac? If so, you may be violating TAE’s first principle of holding no debt.

In a post-collapse world that is suffering a deflationary crisis, cash and credit will be very hard to come by. Nicole Foss, for example, has warned that ordinary people may not have access to any credit, at all. Just imagine what that will mean in an economy such as the U.S. economy in which consumers habitually buy almost all purchases of any size on credit. Moreover, holding debt in such an environment will be extremely detrimental because it will be very difficult to service any debt. Hence, avoiding debt is TAE’s suggested top priority. From a planning perspective, holding no debt means not only avoiding taking on debt now, while you prepare for a deflationary crisis, but also learning debt avoidance skills.

The principle of holding no debt shifts the "time is money equation." Under the precept that time is money, it is often more economical to spend money in exchange for saving time. This precept has become especially valuable in recent years, in which the demands on our time has exploded. However, in a world in which holding debt is anathema, this precept is turned on its head: suddenly it may be more economical for you to use more of your time in order to save that precious capital, given the scarcity of capital in the deflationary environment in which you must survive. For our purposes, we can refer to the deflationary version of this precept as "money is time," to remind ourselves of the new priority of saving money, even if it means using more of our time.

In the tech world, the normal "time is money" precept usually means buying a commercial solution, such as Windows or OS X, instead of a FOSS solution, because the commercial solutions usually have the "rough edges" worked out, while FOSS solutions often require you to roll-up your sleeves to fine-tune the particular application to your needs. That’s what often turns people off to FOSS solutions. They prefer, for example, to just turn on a Mac and have it just work. In a post-collapse world, however, that may not be possible. The money for that Mac may be needed to feed yourself and your family (even now, when you may not need that money for food, you may be better off saving that money, in preparation for the deflationary crisis, when you may need it for food).

So does this mean that everyone should immediately avoid buying Macs and Windows machines and opt for FOSS solutions? No, it does not. A reasonable approach to this problem is more complicated. For example, the software requirements of your field may make a FOSS solution not viable; competitive FOSS solutions may simply not be available. Likewise, you may have too much invested in a commercial solution, in terms of equipment and/or know-how, or both, so that a FOSS solution would be too expensive to implement, despite the low software and hardware costs. Consequently, what is needed is a more realistic approach to analyzing computer purchases in light of the deflationary threat. One approach (and this is by no means the only approach) is as follows.

First, if your purchase is a replacement for a machine you currently own, you should carefully scrutinize whether you really need a new machine, or whether you can repair or upgrade your current machine. This is a direct application of the "money is time" precept: you should seriously consider using your time to repair or upgrade your current machine (assuming you have those skills or can acquire those skills), in order to save your capital. Anyone who has spent time in a lesser-developed country and has observed how the people deal with the maintenance of machinery may have already witnessed the application of this precept. For example, if an automobile starter motor breaks down in the U.S., mechanics will often simply replace the whole starter, without even trying to repair it. In lessor-developed countries, on the other hand, mechanics will often go through great pains to open the starter and to try to repair the starter itself. This is because the cost of labor (the time) is much lower than in the developed country, and the replacement part may also be more expensive due to higher importing costs. Well, the forces of deflation may force a similar reality on developed countries; hence, learning such skills now, as well as the "try to repair attitude," may be an excellent investment.

In this regard, you may also consider installing a FOSS operating system in that older hardware. Operating systems, such as Linux, are known to work much better on older hardware than Windows or OS X. You may also consider using your old hardware for other purposes, e.g., file server, media server, firewall, etc.

Second, if you must buy a new machine, consider buying a tablet (e.g., iPad, Android, Kindle Fire, or Windows RT) instead of a laptop. For example, if you will be primarily using the device to consume content instead of producing it, a tablet may be an adequate solution. More and more people are opting for this option, so much so that it appears to be eating into the sales of desktops (including laptops).

Third, if you must buy a laptop or regular desktop, consider buying the minimum. You could first look at a Chromebook solution (with prices starting at $199 in the U.S.), and then consider a Linux solution, followed by a Windows machine, and finally, a Mac (given the generally higher up-front costs of Macs). The key is to learn to analyze your purchase decision in light of the benefits that you really need versus the cash that you must surrender, in light of the premium on the value of cash in a deflationary environment.

In this regard, if you are forced to run a considerable number of commercial apps that are optimized for Windows, you may conclude that a Windows solution may actually be the logical choice, i.e., it may permit you to purchase hardware that is cheaper than Apple’s offerings, while obtaining a machine that can run Windows software without having to incur the costs of dual booting a Mac (i.e., setting up a Mac to run both Windows and OS X separately) or running Windows in a virtual machine on a Mac, both of which sometimes require higher priced Macs to run efficiently. Of course, running Windows instead of a Unix operating system, such as OS X or Linux, may mean higher maintenance costs (e.g., for keeping the system free of malware). However, when "money is time," it may be worth investing the time to learn how to properly maintain that Windows machine, to avoid having to pay for higher prices hardware, even if you don’t really like Windows.

Fourth, you may seriously wish to consider adopting FOSS as your default solution for your tech needs, given the zero price of FOSS software (provided you invest the time in learning the necessary skills to implement FOSS solutions, of course, but remember the money is time precept). Note that in many FOSS operating systems, such as Debian Linux, the default set up provides a package management system, in which you can simply select software from the numerous offerings, "click on your selection," and the system automatically loads the selected software–free of charge. Of course, sometimes you must "open the hood" and configure the particular installation, but since "money is time," the learning costs may be worth it. Further, even if the software offerings are not as a good as commercial offerings, they may be good enough, especially in the economic reality in which you must survive. Hence, the question may no longer be what is the best, coolest solution–which may become an unaffordable luxury of bygone days; instead, the question may be what is the absolute cheapest solution that provides a good enough output.

However, FOSS can only be a "default," and not a definitive solution because it is possible that FOSS is not a viable solution for your particular situation, as noted above; it may even be a more expensive solution when all costs are factored in.

Fifth, if you determine that you cannot adopt FOSS as your operating system, you may have no choice but to learn to "dance with the guerilla." This means learning to use Windows or OS X while minimizing your "lock-in" to these systems and while maximizing your use of FOSS on these systems (to develop your FOSS skill set). Minimizing your lock-in means avoiding purchasing software for these systems for which there are FOSS alternatives. For example, you could decide to avoid Microsoft Outlook and opt for Mozilla Thunderbird, instead. Further, you could decide to dual boot a FOSS operating system with your commercial system or run FOSS in a virtual machine, in order to build up your FOSS skills and software inventory (provided that your hardware permits these solutions).

If you are running OS X, you may wish to opt for FOSS apps instead of commercial apps (see examples here, here, and here). The more tech savvy can explore OS X’s FOSS components, as part of the guerilla dancing. Likewise, if you load one of the package management systems for OS X, such as MacPorts or Fink, you can directly access a plethora of FOSS software for your Mac at the command line level. Whether any of it will be of use depends on your particular needs. Similar solutions also exist for Windows (such as Cygwin and Npackd).

The bottom line is that "dancing with the guerilla" is an art form. The key is to realize that protecting your interests may require that you not automatically fall for purchases that the operating system producers may have designed to get your money while providing limited value. In bygone days those purchases may have been no big deal, but not if youre facing a deflationary crisis.

Finally, you should also be aware that the possibility exists that the large tech players, like Microsoft and Apple, may slash their prices in the face of a deflationary tsunami. The problem, however, is that they are unlikely to slash their prices sufficiently in comparison to the price of FOSS software, especially, since they are saddled with significant fixed costs that they may not be able to shake quickly enough to permit them to slash their prices substantially. Nonetheless, this is an additional factor to include in your calculus.

Conclusion

Those who wish to prepare for a deflationary crisis should scrutinize their purchases, including their tech purchases, in light of the harsh realities that a deflationary collapse will impose. Seeing the beauty of solutions that work in such an environment will pay dividends in the brave new world.

This article addresses just one of the many issues discussed in Nicole Foss’ new video presentation, Facing the Future, co-presented with Laurence Boomert and available from the Automatic Earth Store. Get your copy now, be much better prepared for 2014, and support The Automatic Earth in the process!