Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

the lab leak hypothesis

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Deconstructed podcast says the idea that Covid-19 may have originated in an unintentional leak from a Wuhan virology lab is looking “stronger by the day”. There is no smoking gun proving it, but nor is this a conspiracy theory. The facts appear to be that the science and technology to modify a natural coronavirus into something more transmissable and deadly exists, and that this type of research was being carried out at the Wuhan lab in question.

To me, the fact that there was a lab conducting this type of research near where the novel virus was first detected does not prove that it was the source. I would want to know how many labs around the world are conducting this type of research. In other words, do many cities around the world have labs conducting this type of research? If so, the fact that there was a lab in the city where Covid-19 was first detected would be expected and likely, and not evidence that it was the source. But if there are labs all over the place doing this type of research, would that be comforting in any way? Certainly no!

I am a little surprised there are not more conspiracy theories suggesting any of the variants could be genetically modified. It seems like the technology would exist for some sociopathic scientist to take a sample of the virus and mess with it. Let’s hope that is not happening. But even if there is no suggestion it is happening now, this sort of thing is going to happen. It seems like a big risk to me – how do we deal with it?

we won’t be building back better

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Bernie Sanders reminds us what we lost when the “build back better” plan collapsed.

Build Back Better would have tackled several progressive priorities including implementing universal prekindergarten, creating a federal paid family leave program, expanding Medicaid coverage and lowering prescription drug costs.

The Hill

These aren’t far left policies, they are just ones that improve lives in nearly all other developed country economies. These were policies that would have helped get the U.S. back to average, mediocre level among its peers on many objectives metrics. Instead, the vast majority will continue to slip behind as a small upper class continues to suck in a greater share of the enormous wealth our country has built up over two centuries of relative peace, growth, and innovation (for many people, much of the time, obviously not for everyone all the time).

I think Biden’s first term legislative agenda is done. The Democrats would have lost seats in Congress in 2022 no matter what, and with minimal public credit for pulling the country out of its Covid tailspin and the inflation situation pinned on the administration, it might be a landslide. His priorities now should be dealing with the Ukraine situation and doing what he can to reduce international nuclear and climate risks. These issues could leave a positive legacy whether or not he ends up getting reelected in 2024. A lot can still happen between now and then.

country-specific warming trends and projections

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Berkeley Earth has country-specific warming trends to date and projections to 2100. The accelerated warming predicted from here on out is startling, particularly if emissions continue to increase. I figure we can use air conditioning, but the biggest issues are going to be loss of places where food can be grown, and massive migration pressure. It seems too late to stop this, but making it less bad than it could be is more urgent than ever.

April 2022 in Review

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Is it just me, or is the world in general just in a bad mood? I keep hoping that we have to bottom out at some point and start climbing back up. The cycle from trough to peak seems to be 20 years or so.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: The use of small nuclear weapons is becoming more thinkable. Just a reminder that nuclear war is truly insane. Assuming we manage to avoid nuclear war, food insecurity might be our biggest near- to medium-term issue. One lesson of World War II is worries about food security played a role in the diseased minds of both Hitler and Stalin. And food prices right now are experiencing a “giant leap” unprecedented over the last couple decades. Food security, natural disasters, sea level rise, migration, and geopolitical stability all can form ugly feedback loops. And no, I couldn’t limit myself to just one depressing story this month!

Most hopeful story: While we are experiencing a disturbing homicide wave in U.S. cities, violent and overall crime are not necessarily at historical highs and are more or less flat. And yes, this was the most uplifting story I could come up with this month. Brave politicians could use the Ukraine emergency to talk about arms control, but if anybody is talking about that I am missing it.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: We might be able to use windmills to control the weather.

IMF World Economic Outlook

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The IMF predicts a worldwide slowdown over the next 2-3 years, although not an outright contraction. Of course, we know these things are not predictable.

Global growth is projected to slow from an estimated 6.1 percent in 2021 to 3.6 percent in 2022 and 2023. This is 0.8 and 0.2 percentage points lower for 2022 and 2023 than projected in January. 

Beyond 2023, global growth is forecast to decline to about 3.3 percent over the medium term. War-induced commodity price increases and broadening price pressures have led to 2022 inflation projections of 5.7 percent in advanced economies and 8.7 percent in emerging market and developing economies—1.8 and 2.8 percentage points higher than projected last January. Multilateral efforts to respond to the humanitarian crisis, prevent further economic fragmentation, maintain global liquidity, manage debt distress, tackle climate change, and end the pandemic are essential.

IMF

more on tactical nukes

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A New Yorker article lays out situations under which Russia might consider using tactical nuclear weapons.

Four scenarios may lead Russia to use a nuclear weapon, according to Kimball of the Arms Control Association. To coerce Kyiv or its nato allies to back down, Putin could carry out a “demonstration” bombing in the atmosphere above the Arctic Ocean or the Baltic Sea—not for killing, but “to remind everyone that Russia has nuclear weapons.” Russia could also use tactical weapons to change the military balance on the ground with Ukraine. If the war expands, and nato gets drawn into the fight, Russia could further escalate the conflict with the use of short-range nuclear weapons. “Both U.S. and Russian policy leave open the possibility of using nuclear weapons in response to an extreme non-nuclear threat,” Kimball said. Finally, if Putin believes that the Russian state (or leadership) is at risk, he might use a tactical nuclear weapon to “save Russia from a major military defeat.” Russia has lost some twenty-five per cent of its combat power in the last two months, a Pentagon official estimated this week. Moscow’s military doctrine reserves the right to use nuclear weapons “in response to the use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction” against Russia or its allies, and also in response to aggression via conventional weapons “when the very existence of the state is threatened.” In military jargon, the country’s policy is “to escalate to de-escalate,” Richard Burt, the lead negotiator on the original start accord, which was signed by Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush in 1991, told me. “The idea is to so shock the adversary that a nuclear weapon has been used, to demonstrate your resolve that you’re willing to use a nuclear weapon, that you paralyze your adversary.”

New Yorker

Nuclear weapons are a cheap way to make a big bang, or at least threaten to do so. Cheap compared to maintaining a huge, capable conventional military force anyway. Russia seems particularly dangerous right now because it is a relatively poor, backwards country whose leadership has successfully used limited military aggression to appear strong and strategic to a domestic audience. The Ukraine war seems to have changed that, with Russia’s conventional military looking weak, ineffective, and the leadership lacking in strategery. Nuclear brinksmanship or even the recklessness of some kind of limited nuclear attack could be seen as a way to regain the upper hand. Let’s hope not.

Thinking a little about what might induce the Russian leadership to call off this attack, new nuclear agreements with the U.S., like reducing the arsenal overall, removing weapons from Europe, or a no-first-use pledge, seem like they should be on the table and would benefit everybody.

don’t block the road

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Matt Taibbi on what forms of protest work:

Any reporter who’s covered street activism knows there are rules of successful demonstrations. One, numbers matter. More is usually better, and much more even better than that (although even one individual can make a powerful statement). Two, have a clear message. Three, have just one message. Four, logistics matter. Five, only annoy the right people.

Declare Emergency runs the gamut in Washington. The chaining-ourselves-to-the-White-House gambit seems to go well, but highway-blocking exercises, not so much.

Matt Taibbi

I remember this sentiment from family members during Occupy Wall Street. The argument was that people have a right to protest, but the second they step off the sidewalk and block motor vehicles, they should be arrested if not beaten and then arrested. During the Black Lives Matter protests in Philadelphia, police were pretty hands off when it came to protests on city streets and looting, but when they stepped on an interstate highway the tear gas came out.

I don’t like it, but people just feel extremely entitled when it comes to driving and parking. Interfering with cars is a great way to get the wrong sort of attention, and a bad way to build general public support.

I’m generally against capital punishment, but I wonder if maybe one way to get attention would be to go back to gallows and gibbet cages for motorists who kill pedestrians and children with their cars. String them up in the spot where they killed an innocent person through their reckless disregard for a human life, and other entitled motorists might take notice. (In case there is any doubt – this is sarcasm people. We don’t need more violence on top of the violence in our society, we need less. We do need laws that clearly put the responsibility on drivers to protect people on foot and non-motorized vehicles, even when the latter do silly or irresponsible things. And we need much better street designs in the United States in line with international best practices. Relatively easy solutions exist to save lives, and it is mostly just our ignorant not-invented-here attitude and falling for car-industry propaganda that hold us back.)

weather control

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Here is some new research on chaos theory and the so-called “butterfly attractor“. The idea is that by making small-scale interactions with the atmosphere, for example by speeding up or slowing down wind turbines, it might be possible to influence the development of extreme events. This is all theoretical and simulation-based at this point, but if it is true it would certainly be easier, more reversible and less risky than schemes such as releasing massive amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere.

more on Philadelphia crime

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Pew has a nice “state of the city” report, including interesting crime statistics over multiple decades. One thing that is clear is that homicide and overall crime do not move in tandem, although the media tends to use the terms interchangeably. While homicide is way up, and homicide is the most horrible crime because, well, people don’t come back from being dead, “major crime” and “violent crime” are still low by historical standards, and this has happened as the jail population has decreased significantly.

A couple other things I found interesting, though far from uplifting:

  • Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh all have higher homicide rates on a population basis. I think these stats are at the municipal level. New York and Los Angeles are notably absent from these lists – maybe they were not included as “peer cities”?
  • Drug overdose deaths in our city are at a historic high at around 1200 people per year. This has been going on since at least 2017 so we can’t just blame the pandemic. And this is more than double than horrific homicide total (which doesn’t make either one better, it makes both added together worse. And this article doesn’t cover suicide.)
  • Of the major cities presented, only Baltimore has a worse drug overdose toll than Philadelphia on a population basis though. It might be a bit misleading though because the statistics are for the county that includes the major city, and some counties are going to include (economically if not racially segregated) suburban areas while others do not.
  • The racial composition of Philadelphia (the municipality) has changed significantly over the last 30 years. In 1990, it was about half white, 40% black, 10% hispanic/Asian/other. In 2020, it is still about 40% black, but only 35% white and 25% hispanic/Asian/other. I do wonder though if changes in how people have reported being white, Hispanic, mixed race, or combinations of these over time have something to do with these changes.

Pew does a good job of reporting stats on a population-normalized basis, which the press does not do. I would like to see a bit more and a bit clearer reporting on metro areas vs. municipalities, and putting the latter in the context of the former. I don’t fund county-level data helpful at all when comparing across metropolitan and state lines. It would be particularly useful to understand how regional poverty is concentrated (or not) within the largest political jurisdiction of a metro area, and how that plays into these statistics. In other words, a metro area as a whole may not be poor or have low tax revenues compared to peer metro areas, but the central municipality where economic and cultural activity are concentrated (at least historically) may have its hands tied by a narrow tax base and high expenses (underfunded pensions for example) that make providing quality services to its poor and working classes difficult. Although this conundrum might have a fairly obvious logical solution of sharing resources across the metro area, it is politically intractable. I don’t have great solutions to offer other than my half-joking one of metro areas applying for statehood.