Trump withdrew U.S. troops from Somalia

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One thing I am willing to give Donald Trump some credit for is trying to end U.S. involvement in foreign wars. He tried unsuccessfully to withdraw from Syria, and he set the Afghanistan withdrawal in motion although it later became a debacle. Add to that an actual successful withdrawal from Somalia. This is from Middle East Eye, a publication I was previously unfamiliar with.

President Donald Trump’s administration moved to withdraw all 700 American troops from Somalia in 2020, after a three-decade presence in the country.

Middle East Eye

This does not mean drone strikes on targets in Somalia ended. They continued, and they are continuing now. And the Biden administration is sending a small number of troops back to Somalia. Apparently this is legal (ish?) – the U.S. is there at the invitation of the Somali government to please by all means attack its enemies. And the domestic justification supposedly goes all the way back to Congress’s approval of the global war on terror after 9/11.

bouncing between layers of limits

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This Asia Times article is dramatically titled The Renewable Energy Transition is Failing. This seems overly dramatic to me, but the point to me is that if we overcome one limit, in this case the atmospheric sink for carbon dioxide, we will encounter other limits. In this article, the author focuses on availability of raw materials like metals. If we overcome that limit, we may have an issue of sinks for these metals and other waste products produced. So we bounce back and forth between sources and sinks being the limiting factor.

cigarettes with 95% less nicotine

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According to this (paywalled) Philadelphia Inquirer article, commercially produced cigarettes sold in Pennsylvania may soon be modified to be very low in nicotine. Now, who at this point is going to inhale cancer-causing smoke for no reason? I imagine a lot of people will quit, which is the point, and others will turn to the black market or other substances. There will be some irony if former cannabis dealers turn to black market cigarettes as the more profitable option.

I think cigarettes are dumb and I am against the health impacts, annoyance they cause for everyone around, and especially the disgusting trash they produce. But are we sure it is a good idea to criminalize a drug that has been legal and popular for centuries? What’s the enforcement plan for this?

what epidemiologists, virologists, and immunologists are doing

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This STAT article surveys not what they recommend to others, but what they are actually doing. The sample size is 34, so I am not sure this qualifies as a scientific survey. But to summarize, they are ALL getting the bivalent booster. Almost all are wearing masks when they go shopping. Most are eating indoors and attending family gatherings, but they are testing first. Most are letting their children and grandchildren engage in more or less normal activities, but requiring or encouraging them to wear masks.

So, it seems at least this group of people with scientific/medical knowledge about Covid-19 are being more conservative than the public at large.

ESA getting serious about space-based solar

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The idea of space-based solar has been around for awhile, but the European Space Agency appears to be getting more serious about it.

The Sun’s energy can be collected much more efficiently in space because there is neither night nor clouds. The idea has been around for more than 50 years, but it has been too difficult and too expensive to implement, until maybe now.

The game-changer has been the plummeting cost of launches, thanks to reusable rockets and other innovations developed by the private sector. But there have also been advances in robotic construction in space and the development of technology to wirelessly beam electricity from space to Earth.

BBC

Different sources say this could be commercially valuable in around a decade to maybe 2040. Even sooner with massive public investment, say companies who are hoping for massive public investment in their companies. Obvious Bond villain Elon Musk could not be reached for comment.

solar sidewalks

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At first I thought this article was called Tampa tries sidewalk solar panels as backup power for traffic, but then I noticed it is just for traffic lights. This seems a bit underwhelming, but it’s something. Here in Philadelphia, the instant response to any idea involving sidewalks will be “yeah, but they’re private”. It’s a convenient excuse, just put the legal/financial responsibility for half the transportation system on the backs of private property owners and pretend that’s working. People can’t actually afford to maintain the sidewalks, and the government mostly doesn’t enforce the ordinance because that would be very bad politics. So aside from the occasional successful lawsuit, we get unmaintained sidewalks. So maybe if the sidewalks could generate a bit of revenue to help pay for their own maintenance, this could be a step forward. Just a thought – let the chorus of “yeah but” begin.

November 2022 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: Asteroids could be used as a weapon.

Most hopeful story: A review of Limits to Growth suggests our civilization may be on a path to stagnation rather than collapse. Or, we may be on the cusp of a fantastic science ficition future of abundance brought to us by solar energy, asteroid mining (there are those asteroids again!), and biotechnology.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I tried to put myself in Russia’s shoes and explain the Ukraine conflict, mostly to myself.

U.S. life span inequality

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We hear a lot about health and life expectancy differences between ethnic groups and income levels in the U.S. This article shows those same numbers by county. Not too surprisingly, Appalachia and the southeast have some of the lowest average life expectancies. Heart disease and drug overdoses are major reasons why. The most shocking numbers though are from heavily Native American areas.

The article prescribes more exercise, healthier food, blood pressure and cholesterol control, and lower health care costs. Sounds good. In my opinion, high cost is certainly an issue, but it is really a proxy for access. We need a health care system that provides access to everyone, at least starting with basic preventive care. This is not particularly high tech. Let’s do it.

what to do about blocked bike lanes?

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Some cities are considering a “bounty”, where a person reporting a blocked bike lane would receive a portion of the ticket proceeds.

I’m not sure the bounty is necessary. Even having the option of submitting a photo of a vehicle blocking a bike lane, including its license plate, and knowing the owner will get a ticket might be enough to get many bicyclists to do this. (and just a reminder that most if not nearly all bicyclists are also drivers at least some of the time.)

Other ideas include providing more temporary loading and delivery zones in residential neighborhoods. To me this is not an alternative, but something that is almost a no-brainer. Poor, unimaginative and ignorant design is what creates a lot of these conflicts in the first place.

The Texas anti-abortion law allowing any private citizen to sue a doctor who provides an abortion made me think – now that we have opened this door a crack, what is to stop any state applying this approach to any law. For example, pass a law allowing any citizen to sue a driver for parking illegally or running a red light. This seems like less of a stretch than the abortion thing, because if you are in a position to take the photo, you are being put at risk by the activity and you should have a case.

5 of Bill Gates’s Favorite Books

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I guess this qualifies as my first “best of” post for 2022. It’s a bit weak though. Bill Gates, instead of picking his five favorite books that came out during the year, picked five books that he recommended to somebody during the year. He picked Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land as the “best introduction to grownup sci-fi”, which I take to mean sci-fi books for people who don’t have enough imagine to consider reading sci-fi, but might enjoy it if they try. This is not one of my favorite sci-fi books. About all I remember is a swimming pool supposedly somewhere in the Poconos, and the audiobook reader inexplicably giving a key character supposedly from the Poconos and southern accent. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an okay book, but even if I were restricting myself to Heinlein I might pick something else, like Starship Troopers, which some “serious” people have at least heard of (and to be fair, Billy G. mentions in his post). How about Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End, which depicts a plausible near-future and is extremely entertaining and mind-blowing.

The only other book I’ll mention is a biography of Abraham Lincoln, which might be interesting. Still, this list don’t impress me much. I’m thinking old Billy Gates just didn’t do a lot of reading this year. Can’t he pay people to give him the Cliff’s Notes? (Considering he has more money than any particular gods, couldn’t he track down Cliff himself? Well, I looked this up and Cliff was Clifton K. Hillegass, and he died in 2001.)