Personal income increased $87.6 billion (0.4 percent at a monthly rate) in August, according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI), personal income less personal current taxes, increased $46.6 billion (0.2 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $83.6 billion (0.4 percent).The August PCE price index increased 3.5 percent year-over-year (YoY), up from 3.4 percent YoY in July, and down from the recent peak of 7.1 percent in June 2022.
The PCE price index increased 0.4 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.1 percent. Real DPI decreased 0.2 percent in August and real PCE increased 0.1 percent; goods decreased 0.2 percent and services increased 0.2 percent.
emphasis added
Click on graph for larger image.Yesterday's email brought this, from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA):
THIS IS A PRESOLICATION NOTICE ONLY
On March 22, 2023, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) announced a Modernization Initiative (https://www.hrsa.gov/optn-modernization) to strengthen accountability and transparency in the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). The OPTN Modernization Initiative is centered on putting patients first, prioritizing information flow to clinicians, promoting innovation through continuous competition, and enhancing transparency and accountability. HRSA's planned approach and timelines for the first year of the multi-year modernization process focuses on design, implementation, and oversight, including contract solicitations that will be released in 2023 and 2024.
Subject to the availability of funds, the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA), Health Systems Bureau, is planning to issue a multi-vendor solicitation by December 2023 to establish the OPTN Transition contracts to provide the services necessary to ensure the OPTN and the OPTN Board of Directors can effectively carry out all mandated functions, including governance, operations, and enhancement of the OPTN.
A competitive solicitation will be issued with a period of performance of 12 months base plus four 12-month option periods and allow at least 60 days for proposal submission. The required services will be procured following FAR Part 15 - Contracting by Negotiation and FAR 16.5 Indefinity Delivery Contracts.
The North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) code for this acquisition is 541611, and the size standard is 24.5 million.
All future information regarding this acquisition, including the solicitation and any amendments, will be distributed solely through the SAM.gov website (www.sam.gov). Copies of the solicitation document and its related documents, as appropriate, will be posted on this website. Interested parties are responsible for monitoring the SAM.gov website to ensure they have the most up-to-date information regarding this acquisition. The Government will not reimburse interested parties for any costs associated with responding to this notice.
For further information, please contact Naomi Inazawa, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD 20857, (240) 461-7245 and NInazawa@hrsa.gov.
#######
Some background is here (and this site will probably be updated...
Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network Modernization Initiative. President Biden Signed the Securing the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network Act into Law Friday, September 22, 2023
Here is Ayn Rand on the antitrust laws:
Under the Antitrust laws, a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does. For instance, if he charges prices which some bureaucrats judge as too high, he can be prosecuted for monopoly or for a successful “intent to monopolize”; if he charges prices lower than those of his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade”; and if he charges the same prices as his competitors, he can be prosecuted for “collusion” or “conspiracy.” There is only one difference in the legal treatment accorded to a criminal or to a businessman: the criminal’s rights are protected much more securely and objectively than the businessman’s.
Exaggeration? Here is the FTC case against Amazon which has switched almost overnight from one theory to the diametrically opposite theory:
“It’s really hard to square the circle of the earlier theory of harm that Lina Khan enunciated with the current complaint,” said John Mayo, an economist who leads Georgetown University’s Center for Business and Public Policy. “The earlier complaint was that prices were going to be too low and therefore anticompetitive. And now the theory is they are too high and they are anticompetitive.”
More generally, the FTC under Khan seems to be a lost opportunity. There are abusive practices such as hidden pricing by hospitals that could be improved but the FTC is throwing it away on pursing the greatest store the world has ever known. Why? I have liberal friends who quit the FTC because they wanted to work on real cases not political grandstanding.
The post Ayn Rand on the Antitrust Laws appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
- by Rachael Scarborough King & Seth Rudy
China will launch its Chang’e-6 lunar sample return mission next year in an attempt at a first-ever collection of material from the far side of the moon.
The post China to attempt lunar far side sample return in 2024 appeared first on SpaceNews.
Here are the paper highlights:
Women in same-sex couples commute longer to their workplace and work more hours than women in different-sex couples.
Men in same-sex couples instead exhibit shorter commutes and work fewer hours than men in different-sex couples.
These disparities are larger among married couples with children.
Within-couple gaps in commuting time are also significantly smaller in same-sex couples.
These differences are consistent with gender-conforming social norms inducing women in different-sex couples to accept less-rewarding jobs closer to home.
That is from Sonia Oreffice and Dario Sansone, via Shruti.
The post Women in same-sex couples commute longer than women in different-sex couples appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
President Biden recently made history by being the first sitting President to join a picket line, meeting striking UAW workers near Detroit. Biden’s rival, Donald Trump, attempted to match Biden’s move by visiting a non-union auto parts plant, but was largely ignored and mocked by the union leadership. This probably solidifies Biden’s image as a champion of the Rust Belt and the forgotten working class.
The UAW strike — which includes demands for 40% higher wages and a shift to a 32-hour workweek — is part of a more general labor revival in the U.S. A wave of major strikes is spreading across the country, including Hollywood writers and actors, airline pilots at American and Delta, UPS delivery workers, Las Vegas service workers, and possibly healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente. So far, the strike activity in 2023 has already reached levels that haven’t prevailed since the 1980s:
The labor revival has the support not just of the Biden Administration, but of the American people; unions are more popular than they’ve been in decades.
This was probably a long time in coming. With disasters like the Great Recession and Covid behind us and wage competition from China much reduced, a pushback is now possible against high inequality and corporations’ increasing share of the economic pie. And the tight labor market of the post-pandemic period provides a perfect opportunity for unions to flex their muscle. Even some economists are cheering for labor now.
In many industries — especially local service industries where the threat of foreign competition is low — I expect this movement to make some real gains. But in the case of the UAW, I think the strike is ultimately going to run up against even more powerful forces that severely limit its effectiveness. The auto industry is in the middle of a wrenching change like nothing it’s ever seen since its creation over a century ago — the switch from internal combustion cars to battery-powered electrics.
That change is necessary and even inevitable, but it’s going to make life a lot more difficult for unionized auto workers in the U.S. Even if the UAW wins on all their demands, the shift to electrics is going to reduce the importance of traditional heavily unionized industry clusters like Detroit, and will transform the nature of auto manufacturing itself. How flexibly U.S. institutions — the car companies, the government, and labor itself — can respond to these changes will determine whether union-friendly states can avoid a new miniature version of the Rust Belt.
The first thing to understand — the essential background to this whole conversation — is that electric vehicles are simply going to triumph in the marketplace. And this is something that’s going to happen in just the next couple of decades.
That is the first sentence of their abstract, here is the rest:
To explain this puzzling phenomenon, we develop a theory linking internal migration, localized social institutions (e.g., family and friend networks), and voters’ preferences for social insurance. We start with the observation that social ties provide insurance against adverse life events, such as job loss, and highlight two implications. First, those with strong social networks prefer lower spending on social insurance, because they have access to informal insurance that acts as a substitute for public programs. Second, social ties discourage people from moving, even when better economic opportunities are available in other regions. Combining these mechanisms, we argue that the effect of economic shocks on a region’s politics depends on the strength of social ties. Regions with dense social ties have muted migratory responses to negative shocks relative to regions with weaker ties. Further, those who remain in declining regions are more conservative than those who migrate — resulting in an electorate with lower demand for social insurance. Macro-level analysis of American election results, import shocks, and migration data provide empirical support for the theory’s predictions. An original survey corroborates the micro-level mechanisms. The results have important implications for understanding right-wing populist support in economically declining regions in the U.S. and other post-industrial countries.
That is from a new paper by William Marble and Junghyun Lim.
The post Why have economically declining regions turned toward right-wing parties? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
The Boston Globe reports that Tim Wakefield and his wife Stacy are both suffering from cancer. Wakefield, 57 years old, "is fighting an aggressive form of brain cancer that was recently discovered".
This horrible news was first announced to the world on Thursday morning – without Wakefield's knowledge and without his permission – by Curt Schilling, who admitted on his podcast "this is not a message that Tim has asked anyone to share and I don't even know if he wants to share it". Rather than checking with the Wakefields, Schilling opted to publicly blurt out the information.
Catherine Varitek spoke for all decent human beings everywhere:
A statement released by the Red Sox, which was approved by the Wakefields, stated in part:
Against Wakefield's wishes, former teammate Curt Schilling put out that news on his podcast. He also revealed that Wakefield's wife, Stacy, has a different form of cancer. . . . We are aware of the statements and inquiries about the health of Tim and Stacy Wakefield. . . . Their health is a deeply personal matter they intended to keep private as they navigate treatment and work to tackle this disease.
Schilling also confirmed that he continues to present as a delusional narcissist by using the announcement to glorify himself as a supremely religious man, just as he used to do during his playing days when he would – right before the first pitch – make a calculated show of praying on the backside of the mound. (Has Curt ever familiarized himself with Matthew 6:5-8?) It should be obvious there is not even one cell in his Nazi-memorabilia collecting, taxpayer-money stealing, hate-filled, racist body that has any relation to actual Christianity.
Kevin Slane wonders: "Is it possible to revoke someone's induction into the Red Sox Hall of Fame?" . . That is an idea worth exploring.I hope Red Sox management makes a special point of excluding Schilling from any and all celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the 2004 Red Sox's World Series championship next season.
NASA has postponed the launch of the asteroid mission Psyche a week to update the configuration of thrusters on the spacecraft.
The post NASA delays Psyche launch a week appeared first on SpaceNews.
Back from Bennu
Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios.This blog post from independent roleplaying games creator Periapt Games looks at the phenomenon of what’s called “pseudo-anachronistic elements” in fantasy fiction (and fantasy roleplaying games): technologies that have no business existing in the era being portrayed. Of course maps are mentioned, and at length—otherwise why would I mention it here? “Despite being ubiquitous in the modern day, reading a top-down map or even understanding what a map means is a learned skill, and not trivially so. Don’t expect pre-industrial people to be able to purchase a map, read one, or know what one is.” This is precisely what I was trying to say in my 2019 Tor.com article, “Fantasy Maps Don’t Belong in the Hands of Fantasy Characters”; it’s gratifying to see someone else making the same argument.
Previously: Fantasy Maps Don’t Belong in the Hands of Fantasy Characters.
(Office day). This morning Sir W. Batten and Col. Slingsby went with Col. Birch and Sir Wm. Doyly to Chatham to pay off a ship there. So only Sir W. Pen and I left here in town.
All the afternoon among my workmen till 10 or 11 at night, and did give them drink and very merry with them, it being my luck to meet with a sort of drolling workmen on all occasions. To bed.
Santiago Borja is an airline pilot who takes stunning photos of storms and clouds from the flight deck of his 767. Definitely offers up a different perspective than the typical storm chaser photography. You can find his work on his website, on Instagram, and in book form.
Tags: clouds · flying · photography · Santiago Borja
he chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) during a hearing Sept. 28 grilled military officials over their role in the Biden administration’s decision to keep U.S. Space Command’s headquarters in Colorado.
The post Rogers to continue to challenge decision to keep Space Command in Colorado appeared first on SpaceNews.
Links for you. Science:
Worm that jumps from rats to slugs to human brains has invaded Southeast US (paper here)
Intranasal mRNA-LNP vaccination protects hamsters from SARS-CoV-2 infection (promising, now the Biden administration needs to fast track it)
Seventy-plus nations sign historic high seas treaty, paving way for ratification
An ancient arrow in near-intact condition is a fascinating find in Norway’s melting ice
CDC recommends RSV vaccine for pregnant women ahead of virus season
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Infection and Postacute Risk of Non–Coronavirus Disease 2019 Infectious Disease Hospitalizations: A Nationwide Cohort Study of Danish Adults Aged ≥50 Years
Other:
In Hospitals, Viruses Are Everywhere. Masks Are Not. (gift link)
The Strong Towns Movement is Simply Right-Libertarianism Dressed in Progressive Garb: Strong Towns’ critique of America’s car-centric sprawl sounds appealing. But its proposed solutions rely on a conservative politics that prioritizes ‘wealth creation’ over just and equitable urban planning.
Family Punditry: Catching up with the nepo babies of the right
At the Vote Pray Stand Summit, Christian Parents and Their “Rights” Take Center Stage
Federal regulators rip MBTA after finding agency violated safety order
Robert Menendez’s Family Business: The New Jersey senator was indicted by the Justice Department for a series of charges straight out of The Sopranos.
Exposing the Dark Side of the Fashion Industry
Democrats Are on a Winning Streak That Could Transform Our Politics: Recent victories in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire special elections suggest Democrats can score huge wins in the fight to control state legislatures. That changes everything.
Is Thomas Sowell a Legendary “Maverick” Intellectual or a Pseudo-Scholarly Propagandist?
Rupert Murdoch Leaves News Corp on His Own Terms
Official Disapproval
Democrats Can Stand Up for Trans Kids—and Win
Murdoch’s Audience of Two: Was Rupert’s ‘retirement’ notice intended to signify his ride off into the sunset or denote his full-blown support of Lachlan—or, more likely, was it meant for an audience of his daughters, Liz and Prue, whose votes may control the family trust?
Fed Up With the Homelessness Crisis, the Sacramento County DA Sues the City
The Unlikely World Leader Who Just Dispelled Musk’s Utopian AI Dreams: Benjamin Netanyahu is not buying what the billionaire is selling. He may have a point.
Mitch McConnell Will Not Go Gently Into the Senate Goodnight: Even if the senator wanted to retire, there’s no way he’ll let Kentucky’s Democratic governor choose his replacement, even temporarily.
As judges, we’ve made thousands of bail decisions. Here’s the truth about detention and public safety (again, the mainland colony of the District of Columbia has had no bail for decades)
Florida’s “War on Woke” Is Spurring a Brain Drain: Thanks to Ron DeSantis’s education policies, the state is seeing an unprecedented exodus of teachers, professors, and college students.
Money Is Pouring Into AI. Skeptics Say It’s a ‘Grift Shift.’
Trump says he always had autoworkers’ backs. Union leaders say his first-term record shows otherwise
China Keeps Trying to Crush Them. Their Movement Keeps Growing.
Who’s Bankrolling the Shutdown Showdown?
These Women Tried to Warn Us About AI
Think this summer was bad? It might be the best one you and I will ever see
Here’s what happens when the government shuts down
North Carolina Republicans Just Passed a Massive Power Grab to Seize Control of Elections
Astroscale says a mission to inspect an upper stage abandoned in low Earth orbit, as a precursor to removing it, is ready for launch, but a recent launch failure will keep it on the ground for the time being.
The post Astroscale inspector satellite ready for launch appeared first on SpaceNews.
From over 23,000 entered images, the judges in the Bird Photographer of the Year competition for 2023 have selected their winners and runners-up. I selected a few of my favorite images above; the photographers from top to bottom: Nicolas Reusens, Henley Spiers, and Gianni Maitan.
Tags: best of · best of 2023 · birds · photography
Let me ask you: what coverage have you seen of ex-President Trump’s event in Michigan Wednesday night? The speech was billed as a message to union autoworkers and comes amidst the on-going UAW strike. It was meant both to counter-program last night’s GOP presidential debate and also to contest President Biden’s relationship with unionized auto workers. Biden showed up to walk on a UAW picket line on Tuesday, making history as the first time a sitting president has ever so explicitly backed not just the right to bargain generally, but a specific strike.
A lot of coverage noted that Trump’s visit wasn’t really “at the strike,” as a number of reports had it, but at a non-union auto parts manufacturer, Drake Enterprises. What’s gotten much less attention is that a substantial number of the “auto workers” and “union members” in the audience appear to have been phonies produced by the Trump campaign. The Detroit News found at least one actual, self-identified auto worker in the crowd, 55 year old Doug King, who works for Stellantis. The paper also reported that a retired auto worker named Brian Pannebecker said he helped recruit people to come to the event. But the paper seemed to have a hard time finding real auto workers or union members in the crowd of between 400 and 500 people.
From The Detroit News …
One individual in the crowd who held a sign that said “union members for Trump,” acknowledged that she wasn’t a union member when approached by a Detroit News reporter after the event. Another person with a sign that read “auto workers for Trump” said he wasn’t an auto worker when asked for an interview. Both people didn’t provide their names.
Anyone who knows how campaigns work knows that the sometimes “home made” signs held by attendees in the crowd are seldom made by the folks holding them. They’re described by the advance team for the campaign. That’s always the case when it’s professionally designed and produced campaign signs like the ones people were holding up here. That’s just two people. But the piece makes it sound like that’s most of what the reporter came up with.
The Detroit Free Press also found at least one actual union autoworker at the event, 50 year old Chris Vitale who works at Chrysler. Were there more? But aside from him it was apparently just the attendees lined up around risers surrounding Trump holding “Union Members for Trump” signs. Maybe some of them were the two phonies the Detroit News talked to?
Given the demographics of the UAW it shouldn’t be that hard to find enough actual autoworkers to show up for Trump at a small venue in Detroit. But it seems like a lot of the “union members” and “auto workers” there were phonies. While the Detroit News reported on it, the fact doesn’t seem to have seeped into any of the coverage from the big agenda setting outlets like Axios, Politico, the Post or the Times. Weird! Curious whether it would be different if the shoe were on the other foot. Have you seen more coverage of the phonies at Trump’s Drake Enterprises event? If so, drop me a line.
Tracking rents is important for understanding the dynamics of the housing market. For example, the sharp increase in rents helped me deduce that there was a surge in household formation in 2021 (See from September 2021: Household Formation Drives Housing Demand).There is much more in the article. You can subscribe at https://calculatedrisk.substack.com/
The surge in household formation has been confirmed (mostly due to work-from-home), and this led to the supposition that household formation would slow sharply in 2023 (mostly confirmed) and that asking rents might decrease in 2023 on a year-over-year basis (now negative year-over-year).
Recent data suggests household formation has slowed sharply and asking rents are declining year-over-year.
...
Here is a graph of the year-over-year (YoY) change for these measures since January 2015. Most of these measures are through August 2023, except CoreLogic is through July and Apartment List is through September 2023.
...
With slow household formation, more supply coming on the market and a rising vacancy rate, rents will be under pressure all year. See: Forecast: Multifamily Starts will Decline Sharply
Canada is pushing the United States and other major economies to follow through on pledges to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies, which have soared despite the growing threat of climate change.
Such subsidies hit records last year, according to several watchdog groups, including one that estimated that major world economies — members of the G-20 cooperation forum — surpassed $1 trillion in subsidies for the first time in 2022. That’s a fourfold increase over subsidy levels in 2010, the year after G-20 nations agreed to phase out support for fossil fuels.
Here is more from Timothy Puko at The Washington Post.
The post They are solving for the equilibrium appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
W-L
John G. 80-82 David F. 79-83
Why Are We Here? Seems like a good set of people, but everyone is looking at each other, wondering what is happening. It’s nefarious; it’s just.. confusing and agenda-less.
Why Am I Here? It seems like a good set of people, but I have no clue how I’m relevant to this meeting. I will sit here a bit and nod, but mostly, I’m wondering why someone thought my presence was a good idea.
We’ve Always Done It This Way Every week. Same time. No matter what. Why? Well, you know, I don’t know why. We’ve always done it this way. Is that a problem?
This Isn’t a Meeting; It’s a Lecture Bunch of people. Check. In a conference room. Check. He’s talking now. Still talking. It’s been 30 minutes, and no one else has said a thing. Why are we meeting? Why is there only one human talking? Not a meeting, by the way.
We Can’t Make Progress It appears that we have a diverse set of humans, but we neglected to invite the humans who could help us make progress, so we’re going to have this meeting again, no matter what.
We’re Aimless We know why we’re here. We have the right people, but no one is referreeing, and now we’re off into topically irrelevant foreign lands.
It’s Everyone Someone was super aggressive about inviting anyone with any possible opinion about the topic, but we cannot make progress with this ginormous crew.
Updated (7:35 p.m. EDT (2335 UTC): Adding NASA confirmation of delay.
The launch of NASA’s Psyche asteroid mission is being delayed a week due to allow “verifications” of parameters used by the spacecraft’s thrusters, the space agency confirmed Thursday. Liftoff on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is now scheduled for no earlier than Oct. 12.
“The change allows the NASA team to complete verifications of the parameters used to control the Psyche spacecraft’s nitrogen cold gas thrusters,” NASA said in a blog post that confirmed the delay, five hours after Spaceflight Now first reported it. “The parameters were recently adjusted in response to updated, warmer temperature predictions for these thrusters.”
The billion-dollar mission had been scheduled to liftoff at the opening of a 20-day launch window on Oct. 5. The probe is already running more than a year behind schedule due to software problems.
Liftoff from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is now scheduled for 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 UTC) on Oct. 12. The Falcon Heavy rocket that will launch the probe is expected to rollout of its hangar soon for a static test firing of its 27 Merlin booster engines that was scheduled no earlier than Friday. As usual, for a mission of this type, the engine test will take place without the payload attached.
The space agency’s said in a blog post on Sept. 22 that fueling and testing of the spacecraft were complete. Psyche had been connected to a payload attach fitting for the Falcon Heavy on Sept. 20 at a satellite processing facility near the Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida, in readiness for encapsulation inside the rocket’s nose cone.
The Falcon Heavy will start the probe on a 2.2 billion mile (3.5 billion km) trek through the solar system. The craft will need a gravitational slingshot from a flyby of Mars in 2026 to supplement its electric propulsion system in order to reach the asteroid, which orbits the Sun at an average distance of three astronomical units (Earth orbits at a distance of one astronomical unit).
Psyche, has an irregular shape, a diameter of about 140 miles (226 kilometers), and is made mostly of nickel and iron metals. NASA Psyche mission will be the first spacecraft to explore a metal-rich asteroid, which might be the leftover core of a protoplanet that began forming in the early solar system more than four billion years ago.
Hey folks. Just wanted to check in with how The Process Tee is going. We've sold quite of a few of them so far, and I've just sent off the first of hopefully many donations to the National Network of Abortion Funds to the tune of $1288 to support their mission of working towards a world "where all reproductive options, including abortion, are valued and free of coercion".
Thanks so much to everyone who has bought a shirt so far! If you'd like to purchase one of your own, you can check out the original post for more information and the ordering links.
Tags: design · fashion · kottke.org• Active inventory declined, with for-sale homes lagging behind year ago levels by 3.7%. During the past week, we observed the 14th successive drop in the number of homes available for sale when compared to the previous year. This decline showed a slight improvement compared to the previous week’s -4.4% figure.
• New listings–a measure of sellers putting homes up for sale–were down again this week, by 7.5% from one year ago. Over the past 64 weeks, we’ve consistently seen a decline in the number of newly listed homes compared to the same period one year ago. While this gap in new listings was gradually narrowed over the past few weeks, in the most recent week, the decrease in newly listed homes was -7.5% compared to the previous year, lower from the -6.0% decline in the week prior.
Here is a graph of the year-over-year change in inventory according to realtor.com. "Health experts are calling for a 'feminist approach' to cancer to eliminate inequalities, as research reveals 800,000 women worldwide are dying needlessly every year because they are denied optimal care."
The Norwegian secret: how friluftsliv boosts health and happiness. "Friluftsliv is not a specific activity. Hiking in the forest, kayaking along the fjords and skiing in the mountains could all be part of it, but so [is] simply sitting in the woods."
Actor Michael Gambon has died at the age of 82. He had a long career on stage and screen and gained international fame as Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films.
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At the frontier of political and economics journalism there’s a long running dialogue looking for that key development that will finally tip the post-COVID U.S. economy into recession. Think of it as a part of “soft landing” discourse, now mixing together analyses of inflation, Fed rate hike policy, the end of loan forbearance and post-COVID savings running dry. In recent weeks it’s focused on the price of oil and thus gas creeping back up towards $100 a barrel. Yesterday saw the biggest one day rise since the Spring.
The drivers of oil prices are complex. Part of the rise is fueled by the very strength of the U.S. and global economy, which is driving up demand. But the big driver is supply and particularly the policy to restrict supply and drive up prices, a policy headquartered in Saudi Arabia. Rising oil prices help keep inflation high. They also increase pressure on the Fed to maintain or increase interest rates. Both have bad effects on the U.S. (and global) economy, as well as knock-on political impacts on Joe Biden’s reelection effort.
The current supply restrictions grow from an ongoing Saudi-Russia agreement to restrict supply to drive up prices under the OPEC+ umbrella. The most recent agreement on cuts dates from the beginning of the summer. Since then the Saudis have announced their own unilateral cuts and then extended them. Indeed, the Saudis have taken multiple steps to prop up the Russian economy since the beginning of the Ukraine war, picking up the slack created on various fronts by the imposition of Western sanctions.
There was talk early this summer that the Saudi-Russia oil pact — what Bloomberg aptly called their “crude, inflationary alliance” — might be under strain in the face of Russia’s apparent cheating on the agreed upon production limits. Russian cheating is not a surprise. To fund its war effort Russia needs the price of oil to be high and it needs to sell a lot of it — two goals which can be hard to pull off together. But the Saudis seem to have generally looked the other way. Indeed, they’ve increased their own cuts beyond the deal with Russia. Thus, intentionally or not, the Saudis find themselves subsidizing the Russian war effort by keeping supply off the market while Russia gets much of the immediate benefit.
For weeks the energy and economics press have been filled with questions about just how high the Saudis want oil prices to go and just how long they’ll be throttling supply. So why is this happening?
As noted above, Russia’s goals are clear and understandable. They need to profit as much as possible from the sale of oil to sustain their war effort. Any secondary benefit in damaging Western economies or damaging Joe Biden’s political prospects just sweetens the deal. We’d do the same in their place: the U.S. and the Biden administration are funding a war effort that is pulverizing the Russian land army.
But what about the Saudis?
One obvious answer that plays a surprisingly small role in U.S. press coverage: the Saudi Kingdom’s growing hostility to the U.S. and, specifically, the U.S. under a Democratic administration. The Kingdom’s closeness to the Trump family is notorious. They cut Jared Kushner a $2 billion check to manage right after Joe Biden took office. They’ve directed a huge amount of the Kingdom’s massive investment in U.S. golf and subsequent takeover of the PGA into Donald Trump’s coffers. It must be a godsend for Trump, as bad publicity combined with interlinked legal and banking woes have impacted his pre-presidential businesses.
There are of course other potential answers. Indeed, there are additional potential answers which are not exclusive of their geopolitical aims or desire to meddle in U.S. politics. The Saudis have an obvious interest in preventing oil prices from going too low. Perhaps the Saudis are stepping in with further supply cuts not in spite of Russian cheating but because of it — because they know the exigencies of the Ukraine war give Russia little choice but to break its agreed upon caps.
I lack the expertise to litigate just what the mix or weight of Saudi Arabia’s different motives are here. What I do know is that the Saudis have cultivated strong personal and financial ties with the Trump family. They display a barely veiled hostility toward the Biden administration. They’d like the former guy back in power. And for whatever reason — who can guess? — they again and again find themselves taking steps that are at best unhelpful to the U.S., and the Biden administration specifically. Perhaps Joe Biden is just super unlucky. But it’s more likely that Mohammad bin Salman is at the very least putting his thumb on the scales against Biden’s reelection efforts when and where he can.
So let’s ask ourselves again. Why on earth are we considering giving these malign actors a Korea-style security guarantee? Every great power does business with unsavory regimes when it is in their hard geopolitical interests to do so. It’s harder to explain doing business and favors for such an unsavory regime when it appears to be actively working against American geopolitical interests and actively trying to return its favored U.S. presidential candidate to power.
1. Presale link for the new Coleman Hughes book.
2. The Fish and Wildlife Service constraint on SpaceX.
3. “Proprietor Israel Mizrahi is quite familiar with the shocked look on your face.”
4. Branko here is speaking more truth than he realizes. He is just on the wrong side.
5. Meta to launch new Chatbots. And Meta’s smart glasses.
The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
The Atlantic has an adapted excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson's new book, Democracy Awakening: The Origins of the Socialist Slur. It begins:
Tags: books · Democracy Awakening · Heather Cox Richardson · politics · racism · USAFor years after World War II, the "liberal consensus" — the New Deal idea that the federal government had a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, and promoting infrastructure — was a true consensus. It was so widely popular that in 1950, the critic Lionel Trilling wrote of the United States that "liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition."
But the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional tied the federal government to ensuring not just economic equality, but also civil rights. Opponents of the liberal consensus argued that the newly active federal government was misusing tax dollars taken from hardworking white men to promote civil rights for "undeserving" Black people. The troops President Dwight Eisenhower sent to Little Rock Central High School in 1957, for example, didn't come cheap. The government's defense of civil rights redistributed wealth, they said, and so was virtually socialism.
Matthew Panzarino returns to the show to talk about the new iPhones 15.
Sponsored by:
Pending home sales slid 7.1% in August, according to the National Association of REALTORS®. All four U.S. regions posted monthly losses and year-over-year declines in transactions.This was way below expectations of a 1.0% decrease for this index. Note: Contract signings usually lead sales by about 45 to 60 days, so this would usually be for closed sales in August and September.
"Mortgage rates have been rising above 7% since August, which has diminished the pool of home buyers," said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist. "Some would-be home buyers are taking a pause and readjusting their expectations about the location and type of home to better fit their budgets."
The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI)* – a forward-looking indicator of home sales based on contract signings – sank 7.1% to 71.8 in August. Year over year, pending transactions fell by 18.7%. An index of 100 is equal to the level of contract activity in 2001.
...
The Northeast PHSI declined 0.9% from last month to 62.6, a reduction of 18.2% from August 2022. The Midwest index dropped 7.0% to 71.3 in August, down 19.1% from one year ago.
The South PHSI fell 9.1% to 86.5 in August, dipping 17.6% from the prior year. The West index retreated 7.7% in August to 56.3, sinking 21.4% from August 2022.
emphasis added
Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.1 percent in the second quarter of 2023, according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 2.2 percent (revised).Here is a Comparison of Third and Second Estimates. PCE growth was revised down from 1.7% to 0.8%. Residential investment was revised up from -3.6% to -2.2%.
The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "second" estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, the increase in GDP was also 2.1 percent. The update primarily reflected a downward revision to consumer spending that was partly offset by upward revisions to nonresidential fixed investment, exports, and inventory investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, were revised down (refer to “Updates to GDP”).
The increase in real GDP reflected increases in nonresidential fixed investment, consumer spending, and state and local government spending that were partly offset by a decrease in exports. Imports decreased.
emphasis added
Click on graph for larger image.Here's a paper accepted for publication in the American Journal of Transplantation, tracing the growing role of kidney exchange in the U.S. (But much remains to be done...)
Temporal Trends in Kidney Paired Donation in the United States: 2006 – 2021 UNOS/OPTN Database Analysis by Neetika Garg, MD, Carrie Thiessen, MD, PhD, Peter P. Reese, MD, PhD, Matthew Cooper, MD, Ruthanne Leishman, RN, MPH, John Friedewald, MD, Asif A. Sharfuddin, MD, Angie G. Nishio Lucar, MD, Darshana M. Dadhania, MD, MS, Vineeta Kumar, MD, Amy D. Waterman, PhD, Didier A. Mandelbrot, MD PII: S1600-6135(23)00694-9 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajt.2023.09.006 To appear in: American Journal of Transplantation
Abstract: Kidney paired donation (KPD) is a major innovation that is changing the landscape of kidney transplantation in the United States. We used the 2006 - 2021 United Network for Organ Sharing data to examine trends over time. KPD is increasing, with one in 5 living donor kidney transplants (LDKT) in 2021 facilitated by KPD. The proportion of LDKT performed via KPD was comparable for non-Whites and Whites. An increasing proportion of KPD transplants is going to non-Whites. End-chain recipients are not identified in the database. To what extent these trends reflect how end-chain kidneys are allocated, as opposed to increase in living donation among minorities, remains unclear. Half the LDKT in 2021 in sensitized (PRA ≥80%) and highly sensitized (PRA ≥98%) groups occurred via KPD. Yet, the proportion of KPD transplants performed in sensitized recipients has declined since 2013, likely due to changes in the deceased donor allocation policies and newer KPD strategies such as compatible KPD. In 2021, 40% of the programs reported not performing any KPD transplants. Our study highlights the need for understanding barriers to pursuing and expanding KPD at the center level, and the need for more detailed and accurate data collection at the national level.
In the week ending September 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 204,000, an increase of 2,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 1,000 from 201,000 to 202,000. The 4-week moving average was 211,000, a decrease of 6,250 from the previous week's revised average. The previous week's average was revised up by 250 from 217,000 to 217,250.The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971.
emphasis added
Click on graph for larger image.This paper describes the response of the economy to large shocks in a nonlinear production network. A sector’s tail centrality, measures how a large negative shock transmits to GDP – i.e. the systemic risk of the sector. Tail centrality is theoretically and empirically very different from local centrality measures such as sales share – in a benchmark case, it is measured as a sector’s average downstream closeness to final production. It also measures how large differences in sector productivity can generate cross-country income differences. The paper also uses the results to analyze the determinants of total tail risk in the economy. Increases in interconnectedness can simultaneously reduce the sensitivity of the economy to small shocks while increasing the sensitivity to large shocks. Tail risk is related to conditional granularity, where some sectors become highly influential following negative shocks.
That is a new piece by Ian Dew-Becker, via Alexander Berger.
The post Tail risk in production networks appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Mynaric’s laser communications terminals passed key ground tests required to be deployed on Space Development Agency satellites
The post Mynaric optical terminals selected for Northrop Grumman satellites pass key tests appeared first on SpaceNews.
Eutelsat has combined its geostationary satellite business with OneWeb’s low Earth orbit constellation after shareholders voted Sept. 28 in favor of the all-share deal.
The post Eutelsat completes multi-orbit OneWeb merger after shareholder vote appeared first on SpaceNews.
Achieve is the excellent course management system for our textbook, Modern Principles. With Achieve, teachers can assign videos, homework, exercises and so forth. One advantage of online education is that students can engage with interactive exercises that give them immediate feedback.
Achieve also includes an electronic version of Modern Principles and all the graphs are dynamic so students can interact directly with the textbook. Students, for example, can practice at shifting the curves and also see the data in visually appealing and meaningful ways. Here are two examples.
Contact your rep to get more information.
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- by Aeon Video
- by Noreen Masud
From a new NBER working paper:
Infrastructure costs in the United States are high and rising. The procurement process is one potential cost driver. In this paper we conduct a survey of procurement practices across the 50 states. We survey both employees at each state department of transportation (DOT) and the road builders that win contracts to build and maintain roads. With this survey we are able to create a new dataset of procurement rules and practices across the U.S. and understand what actors on the ground think drive costs. We then assemble a new dataset of project-level infrastructure costs. We correlate the survey practices with our new, detailed data on costs. We find that two important inputs in the procurement process appear to particularly drive costs: (1) the capacity of the DOT procuring the project and (2) the lack of competition in the market for government construction contracts.
That is from Zachary Liscow, Will Nober, and Cailin Slattery. And how about these apples?:
States with (perceived) higher quality DOT employees have lower costs. A state with a neutral rating has almost 30% higher costs per mile than one htat rates the DOT employees as “moderately high quality,” all else equal.
Garett Jones, telephone!
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I won’t double indent, here is the email:
““Whatever It Is, I’m Against It,” Resistance to Change in Higher Education (Harvard Education Press; September 26, 2023; Price: $38.00), is a relentlessly frank look at higher education from the perspective of a long-time college president, dean, and faculty member.
Rosenberg attempts, in this book, to answer a series of questions:
The author is Brian Rosenberg and here is the Amazon listing.
The post From my email, I will read this book appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
I’ve said repeatedly going back almost a year that there’s virtually no way anyone can defeat Donald Trump in the GOP presidential primary. Certainly nothing has changed to alter that judgment. The two GOP debates have amounted to a kind of cosplay episode. Aside from the yelling, canned comments and embarrassing moments, the one thing that struck me about tonight’s debate is this: two or three of the contenders seem to be realizing, finally, that there’s zero point in doing this without attacking Donald Trump. Not in some vague wink wink way but directly. Is this a game changer? Of course not. But it was enough to give a hint of how this primary process might actually have been contested in some meaningful way, even if Trump likely still would have been the nominee.
Fundamentally it’s Trump’s party. So he’s the nominee. But in those few moments of attacks you could see how a different kind of contest could have unfolded. They really seem to have thought that Republicans might abandon Trump (to whom Republican voters have committed so much) without them even saying there was anything wrong with him. That’s a remarkable failure of imagination and personal character.
10:53 PM: Just a brutally stupid spectacle. Hard to know what to say beyond that.
9:56 PM: The most chilling thing about watching this debate is the commercials. I just saw an ad saying to oppose a new Biden FDA ban on menthol flavoring in cigarettes will empower the Mexican drug cartels.
9:40 PM: Chris Christie finally stood up and attacked Trump for once.
9:12 PM: It’s not Trump talking here. But there’s a big argument out there that the GOP is somehow increasingly pro-union. Not just Trump but the GOP. And yet here you see a pretty resoundingly anti-union message. Mass firings, making fun of wage demands support for right-to-work laws.
9:08 PM: The message here seems to be making fun of UAW and the strike.
9:01 PM: Ok, folks. Here we go.
Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios.
Ridges of glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds
The Federal Aviation Administration announced Sept. 26 it had closed the mishap investigation into a failed launch by Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle more than a year ago, but said the vehicle is not yet cleared to resume flights.
The post FAA closes New Shepard mishap investigation appeared first on SpaceNews.
To my Lord at Mr. Crew’s, and there took order about some business of his, and from thence home to my workmen all the afternoon. In the evening to my Lord’s, and there did read over with him and Dr. Walker my lord’s new commission for sea, and advised thereupon how to have it drawn. So home and to bed.
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory awarded X-Bow Systems, a startup that specializes in solid rocket propulsion, a $17.8 million contract to demonstrate additive manufacturing technologies.
The post X-Bow to demonstrate additive manufacturing of solid rocket motors for U.S. Air Force appeared first on SpaceNews.
Rogue Space Systems, a three-year-old startup with plans for a fleet of small in-orbit servicing spacecraft, announced more U.S. government funding Sept. 27 to develop core technologies.
The post Rogue Space Systems gets US Air Force funds to advance in-orbit servicing tech appeared first on SpaceNews.
AI was the toughest issue to resolve in the Hollywood screenwriters’ strike. Who could have anticipated that just a few months ago?
But nowadays we’re living inside a Terminator movie—the only difference is that it’s your job getting terminated.
That was probably inevitable. But I always figured that when the Terminator finally arrived from the future, he would take out politicians in DC first.
It would be a cinch—if you blew on some of those folks, they’d fall over.
Instead, AI left politicians alone, and decided instead to terminate writers, artists, and musicians.
So screenwriters had genuine concerns. They really did need to fight over this issue. And they got a victory (which I’ll discuss more below). The Terminator now has to focus on something else—maybe getting a million software developers fired or whatever else Terminators enjoy terminating.
I’m happy the writers got a win. But what about musicians?
The same day I heard about the new screenwriters’ contract, I read this account from musician Bill Cantos.
This would make for a Kafka-esque scene in a sci-fi comedy. You take a time machine to the future, and everybody is listening to crappy bossa nova Muzak—because, hey, the robots demand it.
This might be funny, except that it’s actually what’s underway in music right now. AI tracks are showing up everywhere, but not because they’re good. There are no devoted fans of this genre. It’s only happening because AI music is cheap, and somebody can make a buck by getting rid of the musicians—provided listeners aren’t paying attention.
If you think this over, you immediately grasp that:
AI music is more profitable for streaming platforms, because they can buy it as cheap work-for-hire (or even make their own tracks at almost no cost).
But these AI tracks are markedly inferior. Listeners won’t prefer them or seek them out.
So they need to make users as passive and indifferent as possible in order to reap the cost savings.
This explains, I believe, why streaming music platforms are so dull and unexciting. Or why they give us so little information about musicians. Or why they are so anxious to take the responsibility for ‘music discovery’ away from listeners and handle it themselves.
Dull and banal is part of the plan.
We’ve finally heard the music of the future, and it’s a soundscape for snoozeville. We’re a long, long way from the Star Wars cantina band. But what does this kind of institutionalized passivity do to our music culture?
I say these things based on analysis and inference, but facts are scarce. The reality is that the streaming platforms make it hard to figure out what they’re doing.
So I can’t prove that cost savings from AI is why Spotify gives 49 different names to a 52-second track, that is almost identical in each instance. (We only found out because a listener actually compiled a list.)
And I can’t prove that cost savings is the driving force behind all those fake artists on the platform.
And I can’t prove that the background jazz playlists—filled with artists I’ve never heard of, playing tinkly generic improvisations—are constructed to improve profit margins.
But what other reason do streaming platforms have for promoting these insipid tracks instead of music by esteemed and beloved human artists?
“Dull and banal are part of the plan.”
It would be great if streamers told us which tracks were AI-generated. (Shouldn’t there be a law requiring that? Don’t we have a right to know the ingredients?) But they seem reluctant to share that info.
That’s another sign that AI music is not the great innovation we were promised. If this tech were really so transformative and exciting and mind-expanding, the businesses using it would brag about it.
Instead, everything is happening quietly and behind-the-scenes—just as in those dystopian films.
Let’s return to the screenwriters. It’s worth noting that their new deal does not prohibit AI. The new contract simply makes it harder for studios to use AI for cost-savings.
Some people are disappointed by this. They want more. But the screenwriters actually got exactly what they needed.
AI in Hollywood will now have to compete on the basis of quality, not terminating. And if it produces outstanding results, everybody benefits—writers, studios, and the audience.
That’s really all we need in music, too. Because…
If you surveyed fans about their favorite music genres, AI songs don’t even get mentioned.
In fact, I have not met a single person who prefers AI music over human-made songs.
Except for a few novelty tracks—for example, making an AI John Lennon sing a David Bowie song—these don’t go viral.
Hence, the business model for AI music collapses overnight as soon as we focus on music quality. And that’s the metric any music lover ought to care about.
I don’t rule out the possibility—or maybe even the likelihood—that AI will eventually generate some successful songs. Maybe even big hits. But, based on what I’ve heard so far, the Terminator isn’t winning amateur night at the Apollo any time soon.
As a human listener who prefers human-made music, I’m willing to live with those robot tunes. They just need to compete fairly in the marketplace on the basis of music quality and fan loyalty.
So the screenwriters get my praise. They went straight to the heart of the issue. They decided that AI can exist as a tool for humans, but not as their cheap and inferior terminator and replacement.
This ought to be the playbook for musicians too. Let musicians use these tools, and benefit from them—but in a context of transparency, and with the goal of creating high quality music and empowering artists and listeners.
I’m confident that Spotify and Apple Music and other platforms would agree to those measures if necessary. But they won’t do it unless somebody forces their hand.
Who will lead the charge?
Major record labels have the most power to get this done. But look at the top execs and ask yourselves if they are the generals who will fight and win this battle. Hah!—they probably think (mistakenly) that this AI game will eventually benefit them too.
And if labels are (as I suspect) in some co-dependency relationship with streamers, who else can we count on? Legislators? The musicians’ union? Taylor Swift? Indie outfits like Bandcamp and Patreon and Substack? The tooth fairy?
If you love music, it’s easy to get depressed by all this. But Hollywood screenwriters have now showed us what is possible. And they even laid out the framework for a solution.
Musicians can do the same.
The platforms need their music, and musicians are in a position to make demands. We just need leadership and organization. That’s not an impossible dream. But until those leaders appear, we will continue to live inside this Terminator film—and the soundtrack absolutely sucks.
Links for you. Science:
Vaccine specialist Peter Hotez: scientists are ‘under attack for someone else’s political gain’
What next for COVID evolution? Untangling the mysteries of antigenic turnover
A Medieval French Skeleton Is Rewriting the History of Syphilis. Christopher Columbus was blamed for bringing syphilis to Europe. New DNA evidence suggests it was already there. Maybe both stories are true.
The Ongoing Risk Of Long COVID: What are the rates of ongoing COVID-19 symptoms in 2023 and beyond? (might have to write about this; my estimate throughout the pandemic, among the vaccinated, has been 1-2% too, and my take on the Australian study is that three percent is a reasonable number for that study, not the higher values, given the effects on working. I do worry that he’s downplaying what one percent means–it’s not good at all)
Why We’ll Never Live in Space
Under a Hellish Ocean Habitat, Bizarre Animals Are Lurking: For the first time, scientists observed tubeworms and other complex ocean creatures dwelling beneath hydrothermal vents.
Other:
Trump Is the Reason Women Can’t Get Abortions: The former president wants you to believe he is a moderate on abortion. He isn’t.
DeSantis vows to end federal funding of COVID-19 vaccines (as bad as Biden has been on COVID policy, Republicans would be even worse)
The GOP’s Plan to Ban Birth Control (Part I): Redefining Contraception as ‘Abortion’
High earners who left DC during pandemic cost city $3 billion in tax revenue, data reveals (they moved to Prince George’s County mostly, so this might be a largely mini-Black high-earner exodus?)
Americans trying to get new covid vaccine hit insurance snags, face bills: Now that the government is no longer buying and distributing all the shots, Americans must endure the usual insurance company headaches (the Biden administration shouldn’t want to piss off early adopters, as they will disproportionately be Democrats as well as people who really want the vaccine)
GOP Prez Wannabes’ Plans for Government: Dangerous—and Really Dumb
The Return of the Marriage Plot: Why everyone is suddenly so eager for men and women to get hitched.
Americans’ COVID-19 Concerns Rise, but Still Restrained
Wow, You Can’t Even Pound A Quart Of Whiskey At The Airport For Less Than $60 Anymore
Federal prosecutors indict Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez: The fact that the Biden-era Justice Department is prosecuting a Democratic senator ahead of his re-election race doesn’t help GOP conspiracy theorists. (and the entire New Jersey Democratic state establishment called for him to resign only after nine hours; contrast with, let’s say, Texas Republicans)
Elon May Have Accidentally Revealed How ExTwitter Usage Has Dropped Massively Since His Takeover
Allegations against Rudy Giuliani and Russell Brand show sexual abuse is a selling point for MAGA: The quickest way to be a hero to Donald Trump fanboys? Face multiple, credible sexual assault allegations
What men are thinking about when they think about the Roman Empire. Is the measure of a man really based on ancient Rome?
Milk antibody response after 3rd COVID-19 vaccine and SARS-CoV-2 infection and implications for infant protection
7 ways the pandemic changed the Washington commute
Bloody Murdoch: As much as anyone, the Fox News mogul is responsible for America’s conservative crackup. What did it get him? (very good)
New habits are making more commutes miserable: Data shows the disproportionate return of cars at the expense of transit has shaken a balance between road and rail networks in the D.C. region
Of Course Clarence Thomas Was Getting Cozy With Koch Donors
This is the grave of John Lomax.
“A stunning betrayal” Gavin Newsom vetoes bill protecting trans kids in California (he’s running–in 2028)
Texas Revamps Houston Schools, Closing Libraries and Angering Parents: As part of a state takeover plan, libraries in underperforming schools are becoming spaces for disruptive students to watch lessons on computers.
The Off-Kilter Beauty of the City’s Shabby, Singular Storefronts: And the photographers who made it their life’s work to document them.
AIPAC Targets Black Democrats — While the Congressional Black Caucus Stays Silent
The Coming Collapse of the U.S. Health Care System
Why Detroit, America’s poorest city, doesn’t have an L.A.-sized homeless problem
What James Baldwin Got Wrong About Black Antisemitism
Click on graph for larger image.
The second graph shows the seasonal factors for the Case-Shiller National index since 1987. The factors started to change near the peak of the bubble, and really increased during the bust since normal sales followed the regular seasonal pattern - and distressed sales happened all year. 
Enlarge / NASA astronaut Frank Rubio smiles and waves moments after arriving back on Earth to wrap up more than a year in orbit. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and two Russian crewmates parachuted to a landing on the remote steppe of Kazakhstan on Wednesday, capping a 371-day mission at the International Space Station, the longest single spaceflight ever undertaken by an American.
It was also the third-longest mission off the planet in the history of human spaceflight, eclipsed only by two Russian cosmonauts who lived on the Mir space station in the 1990s.
Rubio, a US Army lieutenant colonel who grew up in El Salvador and Miami, was supposed to spend about six months in low-Earth orbit on the International Space Station. He launched on September 21, 2022, on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft with commander Sergey Prokopyev and flight engineer Dmitri Petelin.
This is absolutely insane. TAMU was probably one of the most conservative flagship state universities in the nation https://t.co/z3yVLvoe7I
— constans (@constans) September 25, 2023
The post Texas fact of the day, educational polarization issue appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Daniel Huffman’s map projection trading cards are making a comeback. “While my colleagues and I did our best to let everyone know about these cards, some people inevitably missed out during the first print run. I’ve had many people contact me asking and hoping to get their hands on a pack or two. So, I am bringing them back for one final print run via Kickstarter,” writes Huffman. “I hope you’ll share this widely, so that we don’t miss anyone this time around, as this is almost certainly the last time these cards will be printed.”
Previously: Map Projection Trading Cards.
The biggest challenge of telling the story of history as it unfolds is that you don’t know how it ends. This is a commonplace, of course — a humorous aside or even trite. But the implications of this fact are not always obvious. So it can be worth considering what it means. We are a story-telling species. We take the unorganized facts of existence and weave them together into meaningful trajectories through time. The meaning and logic of these stories are intrinsically linked to and bounded by the unique features of the human brain. When I started studying to be a historian in a PhD program in the early 90s I found this unnerving. But I later realized or perhaps decided that it was one of the essential, nourishing features of being human.
This is always the case. And we are constantly in the process of revising stories — either in our own individual lives or as journalists making sense of the larger world we live in. But there are some moments in which the fracture, the potentially different storylines seem especially great, where the very different lists of what’s important and what’s not is especially stark. We seem to be in one of those moments in the story of the 2024 campaign. And by this I actually don’t mean the hugely consequential question of who wins the election, though of course it’s related to that. I’m talking about the Trump story itself.
On the one hand, we remain locked in this 50-50 contest between Trump and his opponents, soft authoritarianism and damaged civic democracy. It’s the story of 2016, 2020 and now 2024. Trump may be defeated a second and final time. Or he may reclaim power. It may prove to be like a latter-day War of the Roses in which power is snatched back and forth for years until the contest is finally settled. But it’s possible to look at all this and see a very different story.
While Trump may be on the road to reclaiming power, he is also in the process of being eaten alive. He faces almost a hundred separate felony indictments, in four jurisdictions, on charges ranging from novel and uncertain to open and shut. Trump’s uncanny luck has led many of us to think he can’t possibly see the inside of a jail cell regardless of just how he evades it. But this is an illusion created by Trump’s own unique reality-distortion vortex. There are very good reasons to think Trump is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. You may not believe it. But Trump’s own words and actions say he definitely does. The threats of violence and vengeance that make his potential return to power such a horror are driven in large part by his fear and desperation.
Meanwhile his family business, yesterday, took the first steps toward being dissolved. The state of Trump’s finances generally today are as opaque as always. There’s little question that much of his old business has been damaged greatly by adverse publicity. But other revenue sources have clearly increased, perhaps dramatically. While the details are unclear, Trump clearly got a windfall from the de facto Saudi takeover of the PGA Golf. Trump appears to be facing vast legal expenses, though, for the moment, the GOP small donor spigot he still controls appears to be willing to pick up the tab. Regardless, he clearly feels besieged and endangered on every front with the standard ruses and gambits he’s used in the past failing again and again.
In this sense we see most clearly that the two story lines are actually one. The mounting existential threats Trump faces fuel his escalating threats of violence, authoritarian crackdowns and extra-constitutional actions if he is returned to power. A week ago Rolling Stone published an account of Trump privately worrying that he is headed to prison and anxiously asking advisors what sort of treatment he might expect in confinement. While not doubting the reporting, I am always wary of these kinds of stories since I suspect the Trumpworld is so leaky and filled with different layers of lickspittles, backstabbers and hangers-on that you can find people who will say, claim and report lots of things about what Trump is really saying. But it is enough to make us consider the degree to which Trump’s current posture of bravado and menace — while real enough as a threat — is simply his latest con, concealing a weaker and more terrified reality. It may best be seen as the kind of over-the-top aggression that, in his earlier history, allowed him to overawe and cow more conventional business titans when he was actually holding no cards at all.
As the CBC’s evening news program The National reports, flood maps can be incredibly hard to find, with even municipal maps requiring an NDA to view in some cases. Now this story focuses on Halifax, Nova Scotia in the wake of flash flooding this summer; the situation elsewhere in Canada may be quite different (Quebec’s flood maps, for example, are available online, though only in French).
A government shutdown this year has looked likely for several months, and we now think the odds have risen to 90%. ... We continue to think a shutdown would last 2-3 weeks.And from Nick Timiraos at the WSJ: Shutdown Would Blindfold Fed in Piloting Course on Rates. We will all be flying mostly blind without reports on employment, inflation, housing starts and more. However, there will be some private data to fill the gap.
We have estimated a shutdown would subtract 0.2pp from Q4 GDP growth for each week it lasts ... We expect all data releases from federal agencies to be postponed until after the government reopens, except for releases from the Federal Reserve, which does not rely on congressional funding.
2. Why is multilateralism in the tax sphere surviving when multilateralism is collapsing elsewhere?
3. The U.S. effects of banning cousin marriage.
4. I am not convinced, but here is an argument that AI will lead to explosive rates of economic growth. And a new AI hardware device? (this has been my standing prediction).
5. We’ve finally mapped all of Zealandia.
The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
TPM Reader NB responds to my post on Trump coverage …
I have to say, this piece made me uncharacteristically angry, and I’m still trying to put my finger on precisely why—especially since I agree with you about the basic remedy. Yes, the media’s job is neither to hide behind endless euphemism or analysis-as-apologia, nor to engage in deplatforming, but first and foremost to inform. Leave the excuse-making to partisans or to the audience’s own shocked internal But Surely!’s.
Where you lose me though is in your contempt for deplatforming, and for the whole “amplification” argument. It’s simply untrue that cutting off channels of mass communication doesn’t work—Milo Yiannopoulos went broke and essentially disappeared once he lost his book deal and main platform (Twitter, if I recall correctly), and Tucker Carlson is a shadow of his former self. These are just the first two examples that spring to mind. The fact is that there *is* a major difference between the situation where people can find you if they look, and the situation where your every angry thought is pumped into the public consciousness with a firehose. Trump being booted from Twitter had no ill effects whatsoever, and indeed made the platform much more tolerable until Elon Musk bought it and decided to fill the void with his own firehose of hateful bullshit.
Look, by all means inform us, but we are under no obligation to accept the kind of constant bombardment of Trump content that we lived with for five-plus years. As you say, the problem here isn’t really ignorance, it’s that millions and millions of Americans know damn well what he’s about and love him for it. The modern Republican Party is simply a 21st century American Nazi party, complete with book burnings, persecution of “deviants,” and gleeful fascist memes and propaganda—and a sizable portion of our population is eating it up. Does that mean the rest of us have to bear witness to every sonnenrad and fourteen-word statement that graces the former president’s timeline? The man keeps making news by doing newer, viler things, and at some point the media’s mission to report on him has to be balanced against the need to tell us about the not-him parts of the world—which are most of it! If you have to dig past Trump’s sixteen most recent threats to democracy in order to find out what your government is actually doing right now, are you really being informed?
I don’t think the answer here is simply to scoff at the media critics who say Trump shouldn’t be amplified. Sure, the dynamics of 2016 are no more, and there’s no reason to believe that getting on CNN is a superpower—but that doesn’t mean CNN doesn’t have better things to report on. The media has a sort of sickness where it deems one man’s fascist bluster more newsworthy than any actual thing that is actually happening. Again, if you have to dig past Trump’s sixteen most recent threats to democracy…
Let me ask you this: Did anyone who follows the news doubt, before this latest iteration, that Trump would spend his time in office exercising violence against his enemies du jour and threatening various powerful companies with legal/illegal action? I’m pretty sure we were all kind of banking on it. That is, after all, what he spent his time in office doing, right up to his final hours! This is a man who, faced with an unprecedented pandemic, tried to cut blue states off from the supply of ventilators and PPE! Who publicly and famously tried to get his own vice president killed! So when he threatens Milley with execution, it’s not that we don’t need to know, it’s that we already *do* know. What Trump said just isn’t news, by any meaningful definition. Same story with the Comcast bit. Are we really shocked by this threat, when Trump’s most sad-trombone mimi-me has been engaged in a seemingly endless twilight struggle with Disney?
The fact is that, perhaps now more than ever, media space is a limited commodity. Tweets and their Truth Social equivalents are taking up space that might otherwise be indictment coverage, or or court system coverage, or what have you. If we don’t raise the threshold for what counts as Trump news, we’ll miss a lot of what’s actually going on.
With a shutdown looming–and given the (relative) advance planning happening at federal agencies, it appears the Biden administration isn’t going to knuckle under, so it’s pretty likely–I can’t figure out how the Freedom Caucus thinks their little tantrum will play out.
I understand why they want to do this: they are anti-government radicals (Rep. Good has said 75% of federal spending is unnecessary). But I don’t see how they’ll get what they want. Democrats believe (along with many Republicans), and I think correctly, that this will only benefit Democrats. It seems like the Freedom Caucus believes that they can overrun not only the House, but also the Senate and the White House, solely through intensity of will. While Democrats don’t exactly have a long history of brave stands, they simply have to do nothing, other than agree to what already negotiated months ago.
This is why I think the shutdown might not happen: there’s no good end game for Freedom Caucus Republicans. Then again, most wars begin because one side (or both) underestimates their opponents, so it will likely happen.
Update: Ryan Grim details the utter stupidity of the Republican strategy.
It has been over 17 years since the bubble peak. In the June Case-Shiller house price index released yesterday, the seasonally adjusted National Index (SA), was reported as being 66% above the bubble peak in 2006. However, in real terms, the National index (SA) is about 9% above the bubble peak (and historically there has been an upward slope to real house prices). The composite 20, in real terms, is at the bubble peak.
People usually graph nominal house prices, but it is also important to look at prices in real terms. As an example, if a house price was $200,000 in January 2000, the price would be $360,000 today adjusted for inflation (80% increase). That is why the second graph below is important - this shows "real" prices.
The third graph shows the price-to-rent ratio, and the fourth graph is the affordability index. The last graph shows the 5-year real return based on the Case-Shiller National Index.
NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and two Russian cosmonauts undocked from the International Space Station and plunged back to Earth early Wednesday, landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan to close out an unexpected yearlong stay in space, the longest single flight in U.S. space history.
With Soyuz MS-69/23S commander Sergey Prokopyev monitoring cockpit displays, flanked on the left by co-pilot Dmitri Petelin and on the right by NASA flight engineer Frank Rubio, the Russian ferry ship undocked from the space station’s multi-port Prichal module at 3:54 a.m. EDT.
After backing a safe distance away from the lab and waiting to reach the precise point in space to begin the descent, the spacecraft fired its braking rockets for four minutes and 39 seconds starting at 6:24 a.m., slowing the ship’s 17,100-mph velocity by about 286 mph.
That was just enough to drop the far side of the orbit deep into the atmosphere, putting the ship on course for the targeted landing site.
After separating from the upper orbital compartment and lower propulsion and power module, the central crew compartment, the only one protected by a heat shield, hit the top of the discernible atmosphere, 62 miles up, at 6:55 a.m. and landed near the town of Dzhezkazgan at 7:17 a.m. (5:17 p.m. local time).
“Everybody did really well,” Rubio said. “It’s good to be home.”
Unofficial mission duration: 370 days, 21 hours and 22 minutes in a voyage spanning 5,936 orbits and 157 million miles.
Asked earlier about what he looked forward to the most once back on Earth, Rubio, a father of four, said “hugging my wife and kids is going to be paramount. And I’ll probably focus on that for the first couple days.”
“We’re blessed enough to have kind of a quiet backyard,” he added. “And I think just going out in the yard and enjoying the trees and the silence. Up here, we kind of have the constant hum of machinery. … So I’m looking forward to just being outside and enjoying the peace and quiet.”
Russian recovery crews, along with U.S. flight surgeons and support personnel, were standing by at the Soyuz landing site to help the returning crew out of the cramped decent module as their bodies begin re-adjusting to unfamiliar strain of gravity after a full year in weightlessness.
Like all long-duration station crew members, all three men spent about two hours per day exercising to stay in the best shape possible. Even so, Rubio said it likely will take them several months to get their land legs back.
“Your vestibular system is probably the most affected,” he said. “And then after that, really, it’s a couple of months to regain your strength. Our trainers do a great job of keeping us in shape up here. But the reality is we’re not standing, we’re not walking, we’re not bearing our own weight.
“And so it just takes some time to get your bones and your muscles used to doing that consistently back on Earth. So it’ll be anywhere from two to six months before I essentially say that I feel normal.”
The late cosmonaut Valery Polyakov holds the world record for the longest single spaceflight, a 438-day stay aboard the Russian Mir space station in 1994-95. Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio are now third on the list, just behind retired cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev, who logged a 380-day stint aboard Mir in 1998-99.
The longest previous U.S. flight was carried out by Mark Vande Hei, who spent 355 days aboard the International Space Station in 2021-22.
After initial medical checks at the landing site, the Soyuz crew were to be flown by helicopter to the city of Karaganda where Rubio will board a NASA Gulfstream jet for the long flight back to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The cosmonauts will be flown to Star City near Moscow aboard a Russian jet.
When Rubio and his cosmonaut crewmates launched on Sept. 21, 2022, they expected to spend six months aboard the International Space Station, the normal tour of duty for a long-duration crew.
But a coolant leak disabled their Soyuz MS-22/68S ferry ship last December, prompting the Russians to launch a replacement — Soyuz MS-23/69S — last February. That meant Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio had to stay aloft an additional six months to put the Russian crew-rotation schedule back on track.
“On a personal level, it was pretty tough, just because I was missing my family and I knew I was going to miss some pretty big milestones, for my kids, especially,” Rubio said in an interview from orbit with The Associated Press.
“Birthdays, anniversaries, my son’s going to head off to college this year, my oldest daughter is finishing up her first year of college,” he added. “We’ve tried really hard to stay in touch with one another. … My wife, my kids, they’ve been troopers, and they’ve really handled it incredibly well.
“And how well they’ve handled it has made it easier for me to just focus on work and make do with with the hand we’ve been dealt.”
During a brief change-of-command ceremony Tuesday, ISS Expedition 69 commander Prokopyev turned the lab over to European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen.
Speaking to the departing crew members, Mogensen offered congratulations, saying “you have shown resilience, professionalism and grace in the face of unexpected challenges and significant uncertainty.”
“It’s one thing to launch to space, knowing that you’re going to be up here for a year,” he added. “It’s a completely different thing for you and your families to find out towards the end of your six-month mission that you’re going to be spending an additional six months in space. But you took it upon your shoulders, and you excelled.”
He thanked Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio for their “competence, dedication and hard work” keeping the station shipshape and “setting us up for success” in ISS Expedition 70.
“We hope to leave the space station is as good as condition as we found it,” Mogensen concluded. “No one deserves to go home to their families more than you.”
Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio were replaced by Soyuz MS-24/70S commander Oleg Kononenko, flight engineer Nicolai Chub and NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, who arrived at the space station on Sept. 15.
Mogensen flew to the station last month aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft along with NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli, Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.
Soyuz MS-23 parachutes back to Earth with NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin. Credit: NASA
Two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut returned to Earth after a 371-day stay in space — the third longest mission in human spaceflight history.
Russia’s Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin and NASA’s Frank Rubio landed in their Soyuz MS-23 capsule at 7:17 a.m. EDT (11:17 UTC) Sept. 27 on the Steppe of Kazakhstan after spending more than a year living aboard the International Space Station. The trio launched to the space station Sept. 21, 2022. However, their mission was extended by six months after the spacecraft they launched with, Soyuz MS-22, had to be replaced following a coolant leak resulting from a likely micrometeoroid impact.
Frank Rubio, left, Sergey Prokopyev, center, and Dmitry Petelin sit in couches after being extracted from their Soyuz MS-23 capsule following their touchdown in Kazakhstan. Credit: NASA
Rubio broke the previous duration record for a NASA astronaut set by Mark Vande Hei by 16 days and is the first American to spend more than a year in orbit for a single mission. Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio now also hold the record for the longest serving crew aboard the ISS.
Only two other people have had longer spaceflights — both aboard the Mir space station: Sergei Avdeyev for 379.6 days in 1998/1999 and Valeri Polyakov for 437.7 days in 1994/1995.
The original planned crew for Soyuz MS-23 was bumped to Soyuz MS-24, which launched to the ISS Sept. 15 with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub and NASA’s Loral O’Hara.
The two cosmonauts are expected to remain in orbit until next September, returning in Soyuz MS-25. O’Hara will return with a short-duration crew in Soyuz MS-24 in March 2024.
Also aboard the ISS are the four members of the SpaceX Crew-7 mission: NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen, Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa and Russian cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov. They arrived at the outpost in late August, also for a six-month stay.
Together, the seven people still aboard the ISS make up Expedition 70, commanded by Mogensen, which officially began when Soyuz MS-23 undocked from the station’s Prichal module at around 3:54 a.m. EDT (07:54 UTC).
Video courtesy of NASA
The post A record ride: Soyuz MS-23 trio return to Earth after a year in orbit appeared first on SpaceFlight Insider.
Today is Jason's 50th birthday. Ten years ago, Aaron Cohen and I surprised Jason by rounding up as many Kottke.org guest hosts as we could find and taking over the site for the day.
If I'd planned further ahead, I would have done something similarly spectacular, like all of us (and there are even more guest hosts and friends-of-Kottke now) arriving in Vermont to take him on a party train to Montreal. (We need more party trains. We rented a party train -- technically just a private car -- for my wife Karen McGrane's 50th birthday, and it was amazing.) But we will just have to settle for this short solo tribute.
Jason runs the best blog on the planet, and he's been doing it for half his life. But blog posts rarely go viral any more, and Jason's style was never about controversy or provocation or any of the things that lead to virality, even novelty. Jason has cultivated an audience of dedicated readers who help make other things go viral.
I'm sure there are casual Kottke.org readers, but most of the ones I've encountered in my thirteen years writing for the site are unusually devoted to it, and to him as a writer and editor -- again, even though Jason himself does not do most of the things that inspire that kind of charismatic devotion.
Jason puts the internet first and keeps himself at arm's length. So you get peeks and pieces of his face and his character, but mostly it shows through his interests rather than his confessions.
I've been lucky that Jason's been my friend and counselor and frequent collaborator now for many years. And we're lucky to have him. We're lucky that he and a few others from the beginning of blogging/posting are holding it down for RSS and the open web. We're generationally lucky that so much of Gen X's contribution to this still evolving form has a steadfast representative -- even though again, Jason is not especially well-characterized by most of the stereotypes about Generation X!
We're lucky that as the fortunes of online advertising for independent sites have waxed and waned, Jason has still found a model that has let him keep doing what he does full-time. And we should celebrate that and keep it going. (It would make an excellent birthday gift.)
Ten years ago, when we took over the site for a day, we asked each of the guest hosts to say something about their favorite Kottke.org post. I wrote a short essay called "Computers Are For People," which riffed on a 2009 post Jason wrote called "One-Handed Computing with the iPhone". You can read both pieces to find out more about why September 27th is important to me, for reasons only tangentially to do with Jason. But it ends like this:
Jason is important to me because Jason is always writing about how technology is for human beings. He doesn't bang gavels and rattle sabres and shout "TECHNOLOGY IS FOR HUMAN BEINGS!" That's partly because Jason is not a gavel-banging, sabre-rattling sort of person. But it's mostly because it wouldn't occur to him to talk about it in any other way. It's so obvious.
The thing that tech companies forget — that journalists forget, that Wall Street never knew, that commenters who root for tech companies like sports fans for their teams could never formulate — that technology is for people — is obvious to Jason. Technology is for us. All of us. People who carry things.
People. Us. These stupid, stubborn, spectacular machines made of meat and electricity, friends and laughter, genes and dreams.
Happy birthday, Jason. I hope you're surrounded by people you love today. Here's to the next 50 years of Kottke.org.*
* It could be a family business! The Ochs-Sulzbergers did it! Why not Ollie or Minna? Dream big, kids.
Update: Oh man, thank you Tim! And also to the Swedish Chef! What a lovely and touching surprise. I was going to write a bday post this morning — something about how the only thing I want for my birthday is for you to support kottke.org with a membership, buy a Squiggle t-shirt, etc. — but it seems like Tim's got that covered. So, I'm gonna take the day and I'll see you back here tomorrow. I'm gonna get changed, grab my bike, and head out to the trails. 👋 -jason
P.S. You should check out Tim's new gig: he's producing a weekly newsletter about AI called The Batch.
Tags: birthday · iPhone · Jason KottkeHere's a somewhat chilling recent NBER paper:
Exporting the Surveillance State via Trade in AI by Martin Beraja, Andrew Kao, David Y. Yang & Noam Yuchtman WORKING PAPER 31676 DOI 10.3386/w31676 September 2023
We document three facts about the global diffusion of surveillance AI technology, and in particular, the role played by China. First, China has a comparative advantage in this technology. It is substantially more likely to export surveillance AI than other countries, and particularly so as compared to other frontier technologies. Second, autocracies and weak democracies are more likely to import surveillance AI from China. This bias is not observed in AI imports from the US or in imports of other frontier technologies from China. Third, autocracies and weak democracies are especially more likely to import China’s surveillance AI in years of domestic unrest. Such imports coincide with declines in domestic institutional quality more broadly. To the extent that China may be exporting its surveillance state via trade in AI, this can enhance and beget more autocracies abroad. This possibility challenges the view that economic integration is necessarily associated with the diffusion of liberal institutions.
A Soyuz capsule landed in Kazakhstan Sept. 27, returning two Russians and one American from the International Space Station after more than a year in orbit.
The post Soyuz returns ISS crew after record-setting stay appeared first on SpaceNews.
During the summer I had the opportunity to spend a week at a16z’s crypto lab in New York City where I gave a fun talk on intellectual property including patents and copyrights, the great stagnation, the diffusion of ideas, American economic dynamism and even some discussion of AI and copyright in the Q&A. Check it out!
The post Patents, Intellectual Property and the Rise of the Rent Seeking Society appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Both Apple and Google have recently reported critical vulnerabilities in their systems—iOS and Chrome, respectively—that are ultimately the result of the same vulnerability in the libwebp library:
On Thursday, researchers from security firm Rezillion published evidence that they said made it “highly likely” both indeed stemmed from the same bug, specifically in libwebp, the code library that apps, operating systems, and other code libraries incorporate to process WebP images.
Rather than Apple, Google, and Citizen Lab coordinating and accurately reporting the common origin of the vulnerability, they chose to use a separate CVE designation, the researchers said. The researchers concluded that “millions of different applications” would remain vulnerable until they, too, incorporated the libwebp fix. That, in turn, they said, was preventing automated systems that developers use to track known vulnerabilities in their offerings from detecting a critical vulnerability that’s under active exploitation.
Mortgage applications decreased 1.3 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending September 22, 2023.
The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 1.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 2 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index decreased 1 percent from the previous week and was 21 percent lower than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 2 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 2 percent compared with the previous week and was 27 percent lower than the same week one year ago.
“Mortgage rates moved to their highest levels in over 20 years as Treasury yields increased late last week. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate increased to 7.41 percent, the highest rate since December 2000, and the 30-year fixed jumbo mortgage rate increased to 7.34 percent, the highest rate in the history of the jumbo rate series dating back to 2011,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. “Based on the FOMC’s most recent projections, rates are expected to be higher for longer, which drove the increase in Treasury yields. Overall applications declined, as both prospective homebuyers and homeowners continue to feel the impact of these elevated rates. The purchase market, which is still facing limited for-sale inventory and eroded purchasing power, saw applications down over the week and 27 percent behind last year’s pace. Refinance activity was down over 20 percent from last year and accounted for approximately one third of applications, as many homeowners have little incentive to refinance.”
...
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($726,200 or less) increased to 7.41 percent, the highest level since December 2000, from 7.31 percent, with points decreasing to 0.71 from 0.72 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.
emphasis added
Click on graph for larger image.
- by Aeon Video
The cybersecurity firm Xage Security won a $17 million contract to protect Space Systems Command networks for the next five years.
The post Cybersecurity firm Xage gets $17 million contract to protect Space Force networks appeared first on SpaceNews.
China’s human spaceflight agency has chosen four proposals to advance to the next stage of low-cost cargo transportation system development for the country’s space station.
The post China narrows field for low-cost space station cargo missions appeared first on SpaceNews.
In the mid-1980s manufacturing accounted for a third of Brazil’s gdp; now it represents just 10%. The country’s surplus in manufacturing trade, $6bn in 2005, became a deficit of $108bn by 2019. Productivity in manufacturing and services has stagnated or shrunk.
Here is more from The Economist, note that the hinterlands, such as Mato Grosso, are growing faster than average. Mining, agricultural, and commodities are doing well: “Seven of the ten municipalities that have grown most are in the farmbelt in the southern half of the country and the centre-west.”
Finally, note this:
…the capital, Brasília, grew by 1.2% a year, more than double the national rate.
The notion that Brasilia is simply some white elephant modernist failure has become one of the more enduring social science myths. Like many other national capitals it is atrophied along some of the wrong dimensions, but taking that into account it is doing OK enough. The real problem is Brazil, not Brasilia.
The post Brazil facts of the day appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Dan Rivera, South Carolina, FavorPiedmont, addiction recovery and treatment.
Lukas Bogacz, Utrecht/South Africa, to start a company based on fine-tuning LLMs.
Brian Wang, MIT, Panoplia Laboratories, for DNA-based pan-virus vaccine research.
Gabriel Abrams, Washington, D.C., Sidwell (high school), LLMs and economic research.
Chloe Chia, Berkeley, to pursue computational research about human behavior in dense cities.
Jannik Schilling, 18, Hamburg, Bay Area (?), general career development.
David Siegel, to assist in the education of his son Micah Siegel, Bethesda, MD, to produce a YouTube channel about how to help animals.
Shannon Kim, University of Chicago, biology and the origins of life, “Can prebiotic networks and the spread of chiral information explain the origins of biological homochirality?”
Kyrylo Kalashnikov, mini-robotics, University of Toronto, from Ukraine.
Andrew Nijmeh, Toronto, to study the tech of traffic management systems, 15 years old.
Vinaya Sharma, Ontario, “VoltVision.AI is transforming electric grid fault detection and monitoring with autonomous drones, computer vision, and 3D and thermal imaging, helping embark on cheaper, faster and safer transmission line maintenance.”
Stuart Buck, Houston, Good Science Project, to improve the study of meta science and improve science policy.
Leah Gimbel, Washington, DC, to create a new system to grade principals.
Benjamin Yeoh, London, to organize a London Unconference about home schooling. Also works as a playwright.
Ukraine cohort:
Eugene Shcherbinin, London/LSE/Odesa, general career support, mathematics and economics.
Anna Orekhova, to aid her new company in science education, Kyiv.
Bohdana Pavlychko, Kyiv, venture capital and talent search, The Second Derivative Fund.
Nadia Parfan, Takflix, Ukrainian movies marketed abroad by streaming, Kyiv
Dmytro Marakhovskiya, co-founder and CEO of Rozmova, a Ukrainian tech platform that connects psychotherapists with clients, to expand into Poland.
And yes there are still other winners to be announced, forthcoming…
The post Emergent Ventures winners, 29th cohort appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Donald Trump is no longer in business.
Worse, the self-proclaimed multibillionaire may soon be personally bankrupt as a result, stripped of just about everything because for years he engaged in calculated bank fraud and insurance fraud by inflating the value of his properties, a judge ruled Tuesday.
His gaudy Trump Tower apartment, his golf courses, his Boeing 757 jet and even Mar-a-Lago could all be disposed of by a court-appointed monitor, leaving Trump with not much more than his pensions as a one term president and a television performer.
A New York State judge on Tuesday cancelled all of the business licenses for the Trump Organization and its 500 or so subsidiary companies and partnerships after finding that Trump used them to, along with his older two sons, commit fraud.
Under the New York General Business Law you can only do business in your own name as a sole proprietor or with a business license, which the state calls a “business certificate.” All of Trump’s businesses were corporations or partnerships that require business certificates.
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The civil fraud case was brought by Letitia James, the elected attorney general of New York State.
The evidence and the issues were so clear cut, Judge Arthur F. Engoron ruled on Tuesday, that there was no reason to waste the court’s time trying them.
In a 35-page decision, Judge Engoron also excoriated Trump and his lawyers for making nonsense arguments, so badly misquoting legal cases that they turned the law upside down, and other legal misconduct.
Five Trump lawyers were each fined $7,500 for making “frivolous” arguments.
A judge calling a lawyer’s argument “frivolous” is the equivalent of saying it is no better than nonsense from a drunk in a bar, as I teach my Syracuse University College of Law students.
Those lawyers may well find it wise to hire their own lawyers as Judge Engoron’s findings could form the basis of disbarment proceedings, something already underway against Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, the former federal prosecutor, and John Eastman, a former dean of the Chapman University School of Law in Orange, Calif.
In 2015 Trump claimed his net worth was north of $10 billion. When he became president, he asked if he could file his federally required financial disclosure statements without signing them under penalty of perjury. That request was denied. The statement Trump then filed, by my counting, showed a net worth of not much more than $1 billion, but was based on fantastical assertions of value.
News organizations, except DCReport, told their audiences next to nothing about how from June 2015 to January 2017 Trump’s claimed net worth fell by roughly 90 percent.
Trump will, of course, appeal. He is already suing the judge, so far without success.
I give Trump’s chances of prevailing on appeal at somewhere between zero and nothing except perhaps on some minor procedural point, which you can be sure Trump will describe as complete vindication.
The summary judgement decision Tuesday was partial, however.
A non-jury trial before Judge Engoron next week will determine how much Trump will be fined for his years of bank fraud and insurance fraud.
Barring a highly unlikely reversal by an appeals court, Trump’s business assets eventually will be liquidated since he cannot operate them without a business license. Retired Judge Barbara Jones was appointed to monitor the assets, an arrangement not unlike the court-supervised liquidation of a bankrupt company or the assets of a drug lord.
Creditors, any fines due the state because of the fraud, and taxes will be paid first from sales of Trump properties.
The various properties are likely to be sold at fire sale prices and certainly not for top dollar when liquidation begins, probably after all appeals are exhausted.
Among these properties is the portion of Trump Tower that Trump still owns and leases to businesses as office and retail space; his own triplex apartment there; his golf courses; and Mar-a-Lago, the Florida mansion he bought in a corrupt mortgage deal decades ago. He also has deals to license his name on buildings and businesses, which similarly he can no longer operate and whose profits he must give up.
The fact that Trump assigned values two, four, ten times and more above their actual values indicates that once all of the priority bills are paid there will be little to nothing left for Trump.
Trump, for example, has claimed that his Westchester County mansion north of Manhattan was worth close to $300 million, ten times the highest valuation by appraisers and bankers. Even those valuations may be inflated because of restrictions on developing the 30-acre property with more mansions.
Trump asserted in annual financial summaries that his gaudy Trump Tower triplex was about 30,000 square feet when it is closer to 10,000 square feet, testimony showed. He also valued the residence at as much as $200 million more than its highest appraised value.
The judge noted that these were not small differences that might be due to an apartment having, for example, an odd shape.
Trump of course will appeal. Trump always insists he has done nothing wrong and in this civil matter is the victim of a judge who doesn’t know the law. It’s a laughable argument.
Trump, in his own mind, can do and never has done anything wrong. Indeed, in 2016 he told a radio show host that as a Christian he has never asked for godly forgiveness because he has never done anything in his life that would require seeking forgiveness. No actual Christian would say that, nor would a Christian say, as Trump has many times, that his life philosophy is a single word: revenge.
When Trump was deposed by the state attorney general’s litigators, he cited his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination hundreds of times.
He also asserted that his annual financial statements were meaningless and everyone in the banking and insurance fields knew to pay them no heed so the judge shouldn’t either.
Judge Engoron rejected the idea that one can put out financial statements that are meaningless. As Judge Engoron wrote about the fantastical financial valuations and bizarre and baseless arguments Trump made in court:
“In defendants’ world rent-regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air. That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”
The carefully written 35-page decision by Judge Engoron is known as a partial summary judgment. The judge found that on most of the civil fraud case brought by Letitia James, the state attorney general, there were no issues in dispute because James got the law and the facts exactly right and Trump had nothing but distortions, lies and baseless denials.
The principal issue to be decided at a trial scheduled to start Monday, Oct. 2, is how much Trump will be fined.
Trump also argued that since he paid his bank loans and insurance premiums on time no one was hurt. He argued against “restitution.”
The judge noted that the case is not about restitution but disgorging ill-got gains.
Here’s the analogy I will teach my students: Suppose your employer is closing for a day and when business is done you swipe $100 from the cash register, go to the racetrack, make a winning bet and before business resumes you put back $100.
You still committed a crime and if get caught you forfeit the track winnings as the proceeds of your ill-got gain — that’s disgorgement.
Trump also made the ludicrous claim that the state attorney general had no power to sue him, that she lacked what the law calls “standing” to file a case because she was not harmed.
Judge Engoron noted that state law specifically authorizes the attorney general to sue in such cases on behalf of the people of the state.
The fact is that Trump’s bizarre, fact-free, and frivolous arguments may enthrall those who see him as their hero or savior, but in a court of law all Trump could present was distortions, lies, and childish nonsense.
The post Judge Gives Trump Organization the Corporate Death Penalty appeared first on DCReport.org.
Nearly two weeks after the successful launch of a payload for the U.S. Space Force’s Space System Command, leaders from the branch along with launch provider, Firefly Aerospace, and satellite manufacturer, Millennium Space Systems, touted the importance and details of the mission during a press briefing on Tuesday.
Lt. Col. MacKenzie Birchenough, the materiel leader for the SSC’s Space Safari Program Office (an acquisition program office supporting USSPACECOM), said the Victus Nox mission was an important step forward in establishing what they term “Tactically Responsive Space” (TacRS) missions.
“The overarching purpose of this mission was to demonstrate our ability to rapidly… deter and, if necessary, respond to adversary threats in the space domain,” Birchenough said.
The Sept. 14 launch of the Victus Nox spacecraft on a Firefly Alpha rocket was the company’s third launch to date and demonstrated a record turnaround time for a mission from end-to-end.
As images of Firefly’s Alpha rocket soaring through the night sky were captured across the southwest United States, a team of passionate Fireflies flawlessly executed a mission that has never been done before — launching after a 24-hour notice.
Here’s how the U.S. Space Force’s… pic.twitter.com/TcEjpHqYyi
— Firefly Aerospace (@Firefly_Space) September 15, 2023
After receiving the contract for the mission in 2022, both Firefly and Millennium entered into a six-month, so-called “hot standby” phase of the operation. Within those months, at any point, they could be given an alert that kicked off the 60-hour window during which the satellite would need to be delivered to Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) to undergo final launch preparations.
Once on orbit, Millennium had a 48-hour goal to have the satellite in an operational state.
Millennium got the spacecraft to VSFB, tested it and mated it to the launch adapter in less than 58 hours, compared to the standard timeframe of weeks to months. They were able to do so by pulling one of their spacecraft buses from an existing production line that was eight months into the manufacturing process.
“Five plus years ago, Millennium didn’t have an active production line, but now we have several and really its because we’re focused on national security space, just like Firefly is,” said Jason Kim, the CEO of Millennium Space Systems, a subsidiary of Boeing. “There’s a lot of threats, adversary threats out there and we’re trying to get ahead of them.”
On the launch side, Firefly was able to get its Alpha rocket to the pad, complete all pre-launch requirements and fuel it within the first 24 hours and launch within the first window at 7:28 p.m. PDT (0228 p.m. UTC on Sept. 15).
Firefly CEO Bill Weber said having a rapid response-type of mentality is something that he wants the company to maintain moving forward.
“The entire team worked as a unified force. We set new standards, I think, that the rest of the industry is going to meet, and this will be the expected standard going forward,” Weber said. He later added that they would “not inject risk in order to meet a timeline.”
“We’re not looking for a trophy or a merit badge to be able to say that we got it done in 24 hours. We want mission success,” Weber said. “What we believe we just proved is that we can do things in parallel that used to be done in serial. We can get a lot more efficient about steps that we were never pushing for any kind of speed. That it is possible to do that without creating risk in the mission.”
Millennium space was also able to get the satellite in operation order in 37 hours, beating its 48-hour goal.
In discussing the Victus Nox mission on Tuesday, Lt. Col. Justin Beltz, the materiel leader and chief of the SSC Small Launch and Targets Division, said it was a concerted effort to pivot on their part and improve upon the previous 21-day launch record set on June 13, 2021, by the SSC’s TacRL-2 mission.
“Our respective government team had their day job at the different bases that they work and so, when we got called to alert status, everyone immediately picked up the phone and booked flights to Vandenberg Space Force Base,” Beltz said. “We transited out there and planned to stay for the duration of the mission. That was what was required to enable that kind of speed.”
Beltz and his colleagues said this demonstration is an important step on being able to stand up the full ability for TacRS missions starting in 2026, a goal that SSC leaders said was achievable.
“We set the bar really high with Victus Nox, so it’s going to be very difficult to top that, but we want to continue to push commercial industry as hard as we can because we know the threats are not going to slow down,” said Maj. Jason Altenhofen, the deputy branch chief of Space Safari. “We need to leverage the competition, the commercial base, as much as possible because we want to get faster and that goes for build to on-orbit ops.”
Going into this mission, Beltz said there were a suite of seven possible flight profiles that Firefly was ready to perform. He said the goal is to be able to establish more nimble rapid response capability, both in location as well as orbital destination. That includes, he said, continuing to work alongside other federal agencies for operations like this, such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
“As we head towards the future, we need to kind of tease apart the tension between speed and flexibility and get to the point where we’re hitting both in full,” Beltz said.
Firefly said for its part, it is looking towards increasing its launch capabilities by bringing Space Launch Complex 20 (SLC-20) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station online. Weber said construction is ongoing.
“[Victus Nox] was flight three. We could probably fly up through flight eight out of Vandenberg. Somewhere in the six, seven, eight timeframe for Alpha flights, SLC-20 will come online and we’ll be able to fly East and West Coast missions,” Weber said. “We’re about a year, maybe a year-and-a-quarter calendar-wise away from that capability coming online there.”
Beltz said the actions that they’re taking now are a response from what he and others describe as increasing aggression in the space domain. He pointed to an incident in 2019 when Russian satellites “cozied right up to an important United States satellite,” noting that at the time, “the (response) playbook was very limited.”
“Those conversations have directly prompted our ability to do this kind of mission and so, that very much is the focus,” Beltz said. “I am sure that over the years and decades, this kind of mission will play out in a way that nobody is predicting today, but the important thing is that we’re addressing kind of a clear threat and making sure that the United States can respond.”
Regarding funding, $30 million was requested for this TacRS program missions in each FY24 and FY25.
“I think we fully recognize that that’s not going to scale to a fully operational solution,” Altenhofen said. “These demonstrations are really about proving capabilities, proving that we can do it and then we’re working through the budget process to figure out what right size of funding is needed to make a truly operational, repeatable capability for the future.”
The contracts for launch providers and satellite manufacturers are open and officials described them as robust, but declined to specify which others competed.
“Launch providers view these responsive missions as a key part of the value proposition,” Beltz said. “The ability for these systems to focus on a timeline like this and execute to it, it’s pretty important and I think you’ve probably seen each company in that segment, kind of seek to specialize in some way.”
The next such demonstration TacRS mission is called “Victus Haze,” which represents a partnership between the Space Safari Program Office and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU). It’s goal is to “focus on end-to-end execution using commercial capabilities.”
Birchenough said they are applying lessons learned from Victus Nox to Victus Haze.
“I think you could walk through every single phase and every single step of this and kind of refine those processes and that’s really what this mission was all about,” she said. “We certainly intend to roll as many of those lessons learned as we can into Victus Haze and our future efforts.”
Contracts for Victus Haze will be awarded in the Fall of 2023. A launch timeframe has not yet been announced.
Enlarge / The lid is open on the OSIRIS-REx sample return canister, revealing a tantalizing ring of dust outside the main sample collection chamber. (credit: Dante Lauretta)
Dante Lauretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, has waited nearly 20 years to get his hands on pristine specimens from an asteroid, which he says is a key to unlocking answers to mysteries about the origin of life on Earth. On Tuesday, he got his first look at dust grains returned by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission.
Because they want to be sure, members of the OSIRIS-REx science team will wipe some of the dust from the asteroid sample canister and send it to a laboratory for analysis. But there's little question the dust grains visible immediately after scientists opened the lid to the canister are from asteroid Bennu, where the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft captured rocks during a touch-and-go landing in 2020.
The spacecraft completed its round-trip journey to asteroid Bennu with a near-bullseye landing of its sample return capsule Sunday morning in Utah. The OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) mothership released the capsule to plunge into the atmosphere while it fired its thrusters to maneuver on a trajectory to head back into the Solar System for an extended mission to visit another asteroid.
Sometimes, this process of seeking to wring meaning about our values from watching how we conduct ourselves is obvious. Once again, apparently, greed keeps returning as a standing human motivation.
What is most remarkable then about the indictment and downfall of Sen. Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat charged along with his wife and three businessmen in a bribery-for-influence scheme, is not the why, but the speed with which his Democratic colleagues have turned on him.
Basically, the people one might expect to stand by him want him out not only of the powerful Senate Foreign Affairs Committee chairmanship, which he immediately did to adhere to Senate rules, but out of the Senate – and politics – altogether.
There could be debate over whether it is the perceived political baggage of having gotten caught by investigators with gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash still in envelopes or whether it is because of intended moral outrage about someone who seemingly twice now has been charged with using his office for personal gain. But there appears little question that fellow Democrats want him to face up to charges and get out of politics.
By contrast, of course, we see congressional Republicans dawdling about the political fate of Rep. George Santos, R-NY, the Long Island Republican under 13 federal charges for fraud. Or the insistence on pinning Hunter Biden’s misdeeds on his dad for political gain. And we daily watch the antics of House Republicans to do anything and everything to defend, defray, even threaten prosecution defunding for the defense of Donald Trump, who faces more than 90 indictment counts in four separate state and federal cases.
And, House Republicans, so much for a “weaponized” federal justice system that only pursues Republicans as criminal.
We might note that Speaker Kevin McCarthy proves daily that he needs every vote, even from Santos, in his split House, but so do Democrats in the Senate have a need to preserve a one-vote majority.
Of course, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, who called first to oust Menendez, can appoint an interim senator to fill the spot — presumably a Democrat — keeping the current majority in place. In Long Island, removing Santos would result in a special election, with an angry electorate bound to punish any alternative Republican.
Yet, as with former Sen. Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat pressured to resign over a far lesser, non-criminal offense of bad behavior, the Democrats seem far more willing to hold to some ethical standards.
Is there something different in the political water that Democrats drink than Republicans? How do we explain this split? There certainly is enough skepticism among American voters to believe the worst from all politicians, that party alignment hardly seems the distinction.
Whether the disclosures come from City Hall, the State House or the Supreme Court these days, we are almost blasé as voters about hearing that some politician has been drinking at the political trough for personal gain. By now, we’re as used to hearing about Congress failing to regulate its members with inside knowledge from buying and selling stock as we are about the errant individual who is found with payoff dollars stuffed in a home freezer.
Indeed, as the Menendez case reflects, this guy was up on charges six years ago, beat that charge on a hung jury, and then allegedly returned to his job to run a yet more complicated international scheme for gain that, according to the indictment, meant sharing information with Egyptian officials that he had no legal, moral, diplomatic or political right to do. We’ve heard that investigators were on his case for months.
The shameless Menendez defense that he is being picked on – because he is Latin-American – came across as weak and self-serving. Hell, he even expects to stand for reelection with this indictment apparently serving as a proud achievement. Sounds awfully like the tortured plaint of a former president caught up with accountability efforts aimed at his own scheming.
As Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin noted, “This is a moment of choosing for Democrats. Unlike their GOP counterparts, they should not feel compelled to cover their eyes and ears when one of their own appears to be caught red-handed.”
And they seem not to be doing so.
Once again, it took exactly zero time for Fox News commentators to link the influence-peddling charge against Menendez to, yes, Hunter Biden and the entire “Biden Crime Family” as if the events, years and oceans apart in origin, had any relationship.
“I think the best thing that can be said of Bob Menendez is, at this point, at least he didn’t set up 20 shell companies to hide the fact he was accepting bribes,” said Fox News contributor Kaylee McGee White, referring to unproven Republican smarmy claims that Hunter Biden was linked to shell companies funded by Russian oligarchs.
There is something absurd about trying to square the Menendez indictment with last week’s vitriolic House Republican interrogation of Attorney General Merrick Garland over a “weaponized” Justice Department. Republican after Republican fired off half-truth barbs against Garland in such rapid fashion as to stop Garland from even being able to respond at several points – even if it were considered appropriate for the attorney general to discuss current, individual criminal cases still facing trial.
Still, there is the obvious coincidence here of a powerful Democratic senator facing criminal charges just as the withering attacks on Garland are still resonating about protecting Democrats to attack Republican officeholders and candidates.
None of the Menendez case sounds like good news.
But the Democrats’ quick turn on Menendez somehow says that there remains a place for ethics in government. Apart from criminal charges, Menendez has lost credibility to work effectively as a senator.
The post On Tossing Out Menendez appeared first on DCReport.org.
The Space Force awarded a $10 million contract to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab to evaluate the software and cybersecurity of ground systems being developed for a new classified satellite network.
The post Space Force selects university partner to evaluate classified ground systems software appeared first on SpaceNews.
Not every road ends in a STEVE.
NASA has issued a call for proposals for an International Space Station deorbit module, giving bidders an opportunity to choose the type of contract for its development.
The post NASA offers choice of contract type for ISS deorbit vehicle appeared first on SpaceNews.
Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios.
I decided to re-read Fahrenheit 451 with my eldest this last week. I don’t think that I have read this classic Bradbury text since high school. What I had remembered about the book was that it described a world in which books were banned and the job of firefighters was to track down books and burn them. Written in 1953, I also remembered it was a response to the moral panics of the McCarthy era and the book burning activities in Nazi Germany. I remember being horrified to learn that book burning was a thing. Thirty years later, I still treat books like precious objects.
What I had forgotten over these last decades is that the book is also a story about screens, described in the book as “parlor walls.” In Bradbury’s dystopic world, screens are not the attractor but the substitute for other things that are intentionally restricted. Books, poetry, plays, and arts are suppressed in this world because they invite people to feel, think, and question — and this is seen as problematic. Screens are nearly mandated as an opiate for the masses, meant to pacify people. Kids are expected to be staring at screens and not asking questions. In other words, the badness of screens are not about screens themselves but the social configuration that made screens the dominant social, entertainment, and interactive outlet.
It’s also notable how social fabrics are narrated in this text. The main character is a firefighter named Montag, but his wife Mildred spends her days engaging with her “family” on these parlor walls in a constant stream of meaningless chatter about nothing in particular. To talk about anything of substance and merit is verboten: the goal is to never upset anyone in this society. Only niceties will do. This “family” includes various neighbors who are presumably friends, but also celebrities available to everyone. Notably, Montag pays extra so that these celebrities’ speech acts directly address Mildred by name in a personalized fashion that makes her feel more connected to the celebrity. Oh, parasociality and algorithms as imagined in the 1950s. This society has not devolved into trolling. Instead, it is a screen world of such boringness that the government can use the high speed robot chase at the end of the tale to direct the energy of everyone.
I had also completely forgotten how this book sees children. In short, children are treated with disdain as a problem that society must manage. It reflects an attitude that was commonplace in the 1950s where children were seen as a danger that must be managed rather than a vulnerable population that needed support. This book is a stark reminder of how far we’ve shifted from being afraid OF children to being afraid FOR them even as the same source of fears remain. And so in Bradbury’s world, children are plugged into screens all day not for their benefit, but for the benefit of adults. (Side note: don’t forget that compulsory high school was created only a few decades before as a jailing infrastructure to benefit adults and protect the morality of adolescents.)
The role of medication is also intriguing in this world. Mildred is addicted to sleeping pills, which she needs to separate herself from her parlor walls at night. And medicine is easily available to deal with the side effects by eliminating memories and increasing the checked out state of everyone. Of course, the opening scene of the book centers on Mildred overdosing and not even realizing the gravity of that. Indeed, the medics in this world accept that they must regularly revive people from overdosing on sleeping pills.
All of this is to say that the plot of Fahrenheit 451 centers both on Montag’s attempt to reckon with censorship as well as how he is unable to extract Mildred from her mundane and unhealthy relationship to her way of life, even when she’s on the brink of death. It is about seeing screens as the product of disturbing political choices, not the thing that drives them. I couldn’t help but be fascinated by how inverted this is to today’s conversation.
Over the last two years, I’ve been intentionally purchasing and reading books that are banned. I wanted to re-read Fahrenheit 451 because of the contemporary resurgence of book banning. But in actually rereading this book, I couldn’t help but marinate on the entanglement between fears about screens, repression of knowledge, disgust towards children, and conflicted visions of happiness. I also kept thinking about how different the theory of change is in this book compared with how these conversations go in the present. In short, Montag (and the various foils he works with) aren’t really focused on destroying the screens — they are wholly focused on embracing, saving, and sharing knowledge from books. Here, I’m reminded of an era in which education was seen as a path forward not simply a site to be controlled.
The people in Bradbury’s world aren’t happy. They are zombies. But Bradbury recognizes that they are structurally configured, a byproduct of a world that was designed to prevent them from thinking, connecting, questioning, and being physically engaged. Instead, he offers us Clarisse — his sole child character — who teaches Montag how to see the world differently. How to ask questions, how to engage with the physical world, how to not take for granted the social configuration. She invites him to open his eyes. She’s also the one and only character who is actively willing to challenge the status quo.
The counter to Clarisse is Montag’s boss, a character who clearly knows how the society has been configured. He fully recognizes that the banning of books is a ruse for political control. He has no qualms with reinforcing the status quo. So his job as a firefighter is to repress resistance. Books and screens aren’t the real enemy to an authoritarian state — knowledge is.
Fahrenheit 451 is unquestionably a tale about the caustic consequences of banning books and repressing knowledge. But it’s also an invitation to see the structural conditions that enable and support such repression. It’s easy to want to fight the symptoms, but Bradbury invites us to track the entanglements. Little did I realize just how much I would value rereading this book at this moment in time and with my kiddo. Thank you Ray Bradbury.
…
Relatedly…
For better or worse, I’m spending a bit too much time thinking about the rise in efforts to oppress, sanction, and harm youth under the deeply disturbing trends towards parental control, parental surveillance, and state paternalism. I’ll come back to these topics this fall.
In the meantime, apropos of Fahrenheit 451, I hope folks are tracking how conservative states are now rejecting support from the American Library Association, accusing librarians of exposing children to books that include content they don’t like. ::shaking head:: Next week is “Banned Books Week.” Support the ALA.
Researchers are also increasingly under attack by those who disagree with their findings or for otherwise producing knowledge that is uncomfortable or inconvenient. While this is happening in multiple domains right now (ranging from scholars focused on climate change to youth mental health), scholars working on topics related to disinformation are facing this acutely at the moment. Around the country, researchers are being sued and their institutions are being pressured to turn over communications to Congressional committees. This is starting to feel a lot like the McCarthy era for scholars, especially with universities being ill-equipped (or actively unmotivated) to support researchers.
See why Bradbury’s book felt really poignant right now?
I decided to re-read Fahrenheit 451 with my eldest this last week. I don’t think that I have read this classic Bradbury text since high school. What I had remembered about the book was that it described a world in which books were banned and the job of firefighters was to track down books and burn them. Written in 1953, I also remembered it was a response to the moral panics of the McCarthy era and the book burning activities in Nazi Germany. I remember being horrified to learn that book burning was a thing. Thirty years later, I still treat books like precious objects.
What I had forgotten over these last decades is that the book is also a story about screens, described in the book as “parlor walls.” In Bradbury’s dystopic world, screens are not the attractor but the substitute for other things that are intentionally restricted. Books, poetry, plays, and arts are suppressed in this world because they invite people to feel, think, and question – and this is seen as problematic. Screens are nearly mandated as an opiate for the masses, meant to pacify people. Kids are expected to be staring at screens and not asking questions. In other words, the badness of screens are not about screens themselves but the social configuration that made screens the dominant social, entertainment, and interactive outlet.
It’s also notable how social fabrics are narrated in this text. The main character is a firefighter named Montag, but his wife Mildred spends her days engaging with her “family” on these parlor walls in a constant stream of meaningless chatter about nothing in particular. To talk about anything of substance and merit is verboten: the goal is to never upset anyone in this society. Only niceties will do. This “family” includes various neighbors who are presumably friends, but also celebrities available to everyone. Notably, Montag pays extra so that these celebrities’ speech acts directly address Mildred by name in a personalized fashion that makes her feel more connected to the celebrity. Oh, parasociality and algorithms as imagined in the 1950s. This society has not devolved into trolling. Instead, it is a screen world of such boringness that the government can use the high speed robot chase at the end of the tale to direct the energy of everyone.
I had also completely forgotten how this book sees children. In short, children are treated with disdain as a problem that society must manage. It reflects an attitude that was commonplace in the 1950s where children were seen as a danger that must be managed rather than a vulnerable population that needed support. This book is a stark reminder of how far we’ve shifted from being afraid OF children to being afraid FOR them even as the same source of fears remain. And so in Bradbury’s world, children are plugged into screens all day not for their benefit, but for the benefit of adults. (Side note: don’t forget that compulsory high school was created only a few decades before as a jailing infrastructure to benefit adults and protect the morality of adolescents.)
The role of medication is also intriguing in this world. Mildred is addicted to sleeping pills, which she needs to separate herself from her parlor walls at night. And medicine is easily available to deal with the side effects by eliminating memories and increasing the checked out state of everyone. Of course, the opening scene of the book centers on Mildred overdosing and not even realizing the gravity of that. Indeed, the medics in this world accept that they must regularly revive people from overdosing on sleeping pills.
All of this is to say that the plot of Fahrenheit 451 centers both on Montag’s attempt to reckon with censorship as well as how he is unable to extract Mildred from her mundane and unhealthy relationship to her way of life, even when she’s on the brink of death. It is about seeing screens as the product of disturbing political choices, not the thing that drives them. I couldn’t help but be fascinated by how inverted this is to today’s conversation.
Over the last two years, I’ve been intentionally purchasing and reading books that are banned. I wanted to re-read Fahrenheit 451 because of the contemporary resurgence of book banning. But in actually rereading this book, I couldn’t help but marinate on the entanglement between fears about screens, repression of knowledge, disgust towards children, and conflicted visions of happiness. I also kept thinking about how different the theory of change is in this book compared with how these conversations go in the present. In short, Montag (and the various foils he works with) aren’t really focused on destroying the screens – they are wholly focused on embracing, saving, and sharing knowledge from books. Here, I’m reminded of an era in which education was seen as a path forward not simply a site to be controlled.
The people in Bradbury’s world aren’t happy. They are zombies. But Bradbury recognizes that they are structurally configured, a byproduct of a world that was designed to prevent them from thinking, connecting, questioning, and being physically engaged. Instead, he offers us Clarisse – his sole child character – who teaches Montag how to see the world differently. How to ask questions, how to engage with the physical world, how to not take for granted the social configuration. She invites him to open his eyes. She’s also the one and only character who is actively willing to challenge the status quo.
The counter to Clarisse is Montag’s boss, a character who clearly knows how the society has been configured. He fully recognizes that the banning of books is a ruse for political control. He has no qualms with reinforcing the status quo. So his job as a firefighter is to repress resistance. Books and screens aren’t the real enemy to an authoritarian state – knowledge is.
Fahrenheit 451 is unquestionably a tale about the caustic consequences of banning books and repressing knowledge. But it’s also an invitation to see the structural conditions that enable and support such repression. It’s easy to want to fight the symptoms, but Bradbury invites us to track the entanglements. Little did I realize just how much I would value rereading this book at this moment in time and with my kiddo. Thank you Ray Bradbury.
…
Relatedly…
For better or worse, I’m spending a bit too much time thinking about the rise in efforts to oppress, sanction, and harm youth under the deeply disturbing trends towards parental control, parental surveillance, and state paternalism. I’ll come back to these topics this fall.
In the meantime, apropos of Fahrenheit 451, I hope folks are tracking how conservative states are now rejecting support from the American Library Association, accusing librarians of exposing children to books that include content they don’t like. ::shaking head:: Next week is “Banned Books Week.” Support the ALA.
Researchers are also increasingly under attack by those who disagree with their findings or for otherwise producing knowledge that is uncomfortable or inconvenient. While this is happening in multiple domains right now (ranging from scholars focused on climate change to youth mental health), scholars working on topics related to disinformation are facing this acutely at the moment. Around the country, researchers are being sued and their institutions are being pressured to turn over communications to Congressional committees. This is starting to feel a lot like the McCarthy era for scholars, especially with universities being ill-equipped (or actively unmotivated) to support researchers.
See why Bradbury’s book felt really poignant right now?
What's new in CPUs since the 80s and how it affects programmers
Normalization of deviance: how completely broken practices become normal
Saving data to files is harder than it looks
Startup vs. big company work and pay: everything VCs tell you is wrong
CPU bugs of 2015, and what they mean for the future
Lessons Learned From Reading Postmortems
How Misaligning Data Can Increase Performance 12x by Reducing Cache Misses
Why Don't Schools Teach Debugging?
The Empirical Evidence That Types Affect Productivity and Correctness
Why Intel Added Cache Allocation Technology in Broadwell
Dunning-Kruger and Type Systems
The Performance Impact of Integer Overflow Checks
Why Intel Has So Many CPU Bugs And We Should Expect More In The Future
A Quick Tutorial on Implementing and Debugging Malloc, Free, Calloc, and Realloc
What's Worked In Computer Science: 1999 v. 2015
Slashdot Media's Relationship with Sourceforge
Advantages of Monolithic Version Control
How Disaggregated Disk Is Going To Give You Infinite Disk
Why Hardware Development Is Hard: The Physical World Is Unforgiving
Jeff Atwood's Case Against Using ECC RAM Is Completely Wrong
Datacenter Costs: Power vs. Capital vs. Maintenance
How to Discourage Open Source Contributions
Reviewing Steve Yegge's Prediction Record
Why HN and Reddit Should Use Randomized Algorithms
When Limping Hardware Is Worse Than Dead Hardware
Modifying Binaries With a Hex Editor: Easier Than It Sounds
Why Hardware Development Is Hard, Part 1: Verilog Is Weird
Why Intel Is Adding Instructions to Speed Up Non-volatile Memory
Markets Don't Eliminate Discrimination
How to Write Safe Verilog: Become a PL Troll
Given That We Aren’t Going to Put Any Effort Into Testing, What’s the Best Way to Test?
Hand Coded Assembly Beats Intrinsics in Speed and Simplicity
Cache Eviction: When Are Randomized Algorithms Better Than LRU?
Should I Run Ads? Also, Why Is Alexa So Badly Wrong?
How Much Math Do You Really Need for Software Development?
Please Don't Block Everything but Googlebot in robots.txt
There Is a Gender Gap in Tech Salaries
What Are the Odds the Build Actually Works?
What Software Testing Looks Like to a Hardware Engineer
What IQ, Cholesterol, and 99%-ile Latency Have In Common
What are C, C++, and Java Used for?
Automated Bug Detection With Analytics
Read Along: The Chubby Lock Service for Loosely-coupled Distributed Systems
Can Computers Provide Better Customer Service Than Humans?
What Do Linux Developers Say in Commit Messages?
Market Design
the joy of sox
