tingilinde

the roch sisters

They sang a few times at the local folk club in the 90s.. I remember them performing this at the xmas concert. One is an honest to gosh contralto

polyominos

a split through maga

Between MAGA and the billionaires who fund and control DJT - HCR's take.

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Civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republicans. On the one side are the traditional MAGAs, who tend to be white, anti-immigrant, and less educated than the rest of the U.S. They believe that the modern government’s protection of equal rights for women and minorities has ruined America, and they tend to want to isolate the U.S. from the rest of the world. They make up Trump’s voting base.

On the other side are the new MAGAs who appear to have taken control of the incoming Trump administration. Led by Elon Musk, who bankrolled Trump’s campaign, the new MAGA wing is made up of billionaires, especially tech entrepreneurs, many of whom are themselves immigrants.

During the campaign, these two wings made common cause because they both want to destroy the current U.S. government, especially as President Joe Biden had been using it to strengthen American democracy. Traditional MAGA wants to get rid of the government that protects equality and replace it with one that enforces white male supremacy and Christianity. New MAGA—which some have started to call DOGE, after the Department of Government Efficiency run by Musk and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy—wants to get rid of the government that regulates business, especially technology, and protects American interests against competition from countries like China.

Their shared commitment to the destruction of the current government is about the only overlap between these two factions.

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Trump, the great compromise bringing and peace maker, will undoubtedly clear things up and bring unity:)

Ask your R congressperson which side they support.

 

 

 

 

reflecting on japan and looking at what might become of china

Paul Krugman suggests storm clouds for China

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Obviously China isn’t really retrogressing technologically; in fact, it has shown an impressive ability to compete on fairly advanced technologies. What these numbers probably reflect is a combination of massive amounts of wasted investment, especially in real estate, slowing progress in the economy outside sectors the government favors, and a general crackdown on the private sector.

In a way it’s surprising to see such a slowdown in what is, after all, still only a middle-income country; Japan didn’t downshift until it was more or less at the same overall technological level as the West. But China appears to be falling into the middle-income trap — a controversial concept, but one I believe corresponds to something real.

What’s remarkable is that China’s leadership seems completely unwilling to adjust to this changing reality.

As you can see from the chart above on investment shares, China hasn’t moved at all toward the kind of lower investment, higher consumption economy it needs to become. Instead, investment as a share of GDP has gone even higher, thanks to government policies that both fueled a monstrous real estate bubble and pushed investment in government-favored industries even when they already had excess capacity.

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christian greed

The business of selling prosperity gospel

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Life Surge follows a long tradition of evangelists offering financial advice through the lens of morality and the supernatural. The Iowa farming community I grew up in during the 80s and 90s was steeped in these institutions, which vampirically drained my family and community’s economic momentum. Many of our church’s leaders attended Oral Roberts University, named for the televangelist most associated with the “prosperity gospel”, which explained that your financial success or failure was directly tied to your Christian morality.

These teachings often find the most success in economically impoverished communities and developing countries. During the farm crisis of the 1980s – which radiated out into all avenues of the Iowa economy – many desperate families in my home town were susceptible to the get-rich-quick opportunities offered by proponents of the prosperity gospel. But they were often left with little but shame and debt.

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the next two years

Governing may be difficult for the GOP .. unless Trump/Musk/Vance so full dictator.

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My prediction therefore is that time and again you will get big Muskian-Trumpian pronouncements followed by only partial delivery of their objectives. Whatever they achieve will likely be damaging and cause harm but it is hard to do much without needed budgetary authority which will be hard to come by in the divided Congress. And with all the other practical and political headwinds they face, you will get actions that end up being 10-20 percent of what Trump, Musk or their gang have promised/threatened. As ever, when Trump promises something will be “yuge” expect it to be much, much smaller in reality.

Further, although Trump talks a big game about running again, that’s another place he can’t deliver. The Constitution is clear and won’t be overturned. Further, Father Time will not be denied. Trump is old and in bad shape and will decline rapidly due to the pressures of the office. We have seen this movie before. Biden was much fitter but at the same age as Trump will be, we ultimately saw him decline to the point that it was clear to all that he was no longer capable of doing the job. Musk and the Billionaire Boys Club might think they can just turn an elderly Trump into more of a sock puppet than he already will be, but more likely is that over the next four years they fall out with Trump or get what they want and get out of dodge before a Democratic House with investigative authority arrives in DC as is likely in January of 2027 (if not before depending on who stays and who might be forced to leave in the next two years).

In the same vein, Trump is a terrible institution builder as most narcissists are. He will not be spending the next four years ensuring the GOP is able to produce a strong successor to him. They will have money. But they will also very likely have an on-going internal civil war as different forces seek to lead the post-Trump GOP. It may still be MAGA. It may even be Muskier than before. (Though personally, I doubt that.) But expecting Trump to leave the GOP stronger while he contemplates his own mortality is a sucker’s bet.

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on healthcare

 

strange bumper stickers

Odd tshirt slogans for cars

 

on freezing water

The best ice makers (nucleation points) are proteins made of bacteria and fungi.

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Surfaces and impurities can dramatically lower the energy barrier for nucleation — and therefore raise the temperature at which ice forms. “Since the late 1970s, we’ve known that there are lots of aspects of a surface that are important,” said Miriam Freedman (opens a new tab), an atmospheric chemist at Pennsylvania State University.

Like a microscopic construction scaffold, surfaces with the right structure make it easier for water molecules to arrange themselves into a crystal. Researchers have identified a few things that can make a surface better or worse at nucleating ice. A surface’s crystallinity, or structural orderliness, matters. And substances with chemical structures that mimic ice tend to be good at ice nucleation. Pores of a certain size confine water molecules in a way that helps ice form, too.

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stupid things people believed

Many still believe some of them.