| Time |
Event |
| 2:25a |
Corp. rename butt of media jokes, UK
A corporation that changed its name to "abrdn" claims to be entitled to certain kinds of
human
kindness that we think humans deserve. Corporations are not in fact persons, and they are
not entitled to human rights or even human kindness.
I conjecture that the name "abrdn" was meant to acknowledge that large
corporations are often a brdn on society, and to encourage regulating
them more strictly ;-}.
Where the article comments on a matter of trademark law, it injects
gratuitous confusion by using the propaganda overgeneralization of
"the intellectual property" instead of the objective and concrete
term, "the trademark".
Trademarks are nothing whatsoever like copyrights or patents or trade
secrets — be careful
never to generalize about all those laws.
|
| 2:25a |
Global coal-power up 2%
China is building new
coal-fired
generators faster than the US and Europe are closing them.
|
| 2:25a |
Food production crisis building, UK
Britain has had a year of heavy rain, which has damaged wheat
production.
This is surely related somehow to global heating. Whether it will continue, get better, or get
worse, I have no basis to predict. But it is a dangerous situation.
|
| 3:26a |
|
| 3:26a |
Negative experiences
*Negative experiences during military service are the main drivers of
extremist
beliefs amongst veterans,*
suggests a small survey.
These "negative experiences" are likely to involve hatred, bullying
and war crimes. How ironic that their reaction to such violence leads
them to commit or advocate similar violence themselves.
It is a mistake to classify "Antifa" as "extremist", since it means
only participation in organized activity against a form of violence
(fascism). That sometimes takes the form of fighting violent
fascists, but basically it is nonviolent
resistance against fascists.
Right-wing disinformation
in the US portrayed Antifa a few years ago as a violent movement,
which
it was not.
|
| 3:26a |
Trump case
The cheater is about to be tried for violating campaign finance laws
to hush up a scandal that could have interfered with his chances
of getting elected. Describing it as a matter of a "sex scandal"
covers up what is really at stake.
|
| 3:26a |
Labour and the Sun
*Starmer is courting Tory voters so hard it’s almost as though he
wants to
lose his own.*
I think he wants to convert the Labour Party into a competent but
mainly plutocratist party, which would make policies mainly to benefit
the wealthy, and carry them out competently. This would occupy the
space that the Tory Party has abandoned to become the party of cruel
rigidity.
party of cruel
rigidity.
Labour would then try to win elections by preventing any
non-plutocratist opposition party from becoming a real alternative.
It is true that victory for a political cause usually requires
compromises. The crucial thing is to distinguish the compromises that
you can safely make from the compromises that would
undermine your
values.
|
| 3:55a |
Cashier-free shops
Amazon's notorious checkout-less stores supposedly used secret scanning
and AI systems to figure out what each shopper bought. Actually they
used remote workers in low-wage
countries to watch the shoppers.
What Amazon had invented was a new method of replacing workers in the US
with outsourcing to low-wage workers. But if they ever succeed in really
automating this, workers will lose even more.
|
| 3:55a |
Heat stress
Ocean temperatures of 25°C lead to the premature death of octopus
mothers, from heat stress,
before their eggs have hatched.
The article is confused when it talks about "unborn offspring".
Octopus eggs are not "born", any more than birds' chicks are "born"
when they hatch. Baby octopuses do not develop inside their mother.
However, the mother must circulate water for them constantly until
they are ready to swim away.
It is too bad that the experiment did not report on the visual
capabilities of octopuses that did hatch at 25°C. That is the only
way to tell for certain whether that water high temperature will damage
their vision.
It is possible that octopuses can evolve to adopt to warmer
conditions, if the change is not terribly fast. Or they can survive
farther from the equator.
|
| 3:55a |
Prescription concerns
*"What we’re seeing is not tele[medicine]": alarm over doctors using
AI and prescribing
without seeing patients.*
Medicine is intended to result in better health (better than it would
otherwise have been), but it is misleading to refer to medicine as
"health", and likewise to refer to telemedicine as "telehealth".
|
| 3:55a |
Carbon-offsetting revolt
*The UN-backed [107]Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which
certifies whether a company is on track to help limit global heating
to under 1.5°C,* has bought into the idea that "carbon offsets" are
valid methods for
curbing global heating.
The organization's staff condemn the plan and say it is not in fact
based on science.
I've said for many years that we cannot trust them to achieve the
goal,
because it is easy to set up bogus offsets that won't really reduce emissions
but only pretend to.
For similar reasons, a "carbon market" would be easy to game and
therefore to render ineffective. It appeals to the
worshipers of the
Invisible Hand.
By contrast, a carbon tax really would
pressure companies to emit less greenhouse gas.
|
| 3:55a |
(Satire) gated community
(satire) *Residents [of a Gated Community] Establish More Exclusive
Gated [Nested]
Community Within First.*
|
| 4:26a |
|