Recall the predictions that computers were going to render the use of paper (for writing , reading) obsolete because everything would be on computers and there would be no need to use writing paper.
Sure.
If anything, computers have increased the use of paper because it’s now so easy to print stuff out.
Also recall the famous prediction by that MIT, PHd, and Nobel Prize winner , Dr. Paul Krugman, that the internet would not amount to much in terms of how many people would be using it. He did some math calculation that “proved” his conjecture.
Then again, that’s how economists prove their theories; they invent phony baloney math that describes a system (economic, political, social) that does not exist anywhere within the Milky Way Galaxy, and bingo, they have their proof and an econ. Nobel Prize.
(Had to throw in Krugman’s title of “Dr.” because he does have a PHd and if Jill Biden insists on using this title, well, why shouldn’t Paul Krugman, no matter how often he is wrong).
An off topic item; a few weeks back on Neo’s blog there was a bunch of commentary – including mine – about modern art.
Well, check this out:
I’ll save you the trouble of reading the article. Apparently some famous work of modern “art,” which has been hanging in an art museum for DECADES, was recently discovered to be hanging upside down all these years; this was just discovered.
While this particular work of art cannot be replicated by a zoo animal, it certainly can be by a 5 year old. And it would not have been able to be replicated by Jackson Pollock because it would be impossible to randomly splatter paint onto a canvas and produce straight lines intersecting at 90 degrees.
Paul Krugman is living proof that it’s possible to have a very lucrative career out of being wrong… as long as you have the right credentials, cater to a specific audience, and tell this audience what they want to hear regardless of whether it has any connection to reality not.
John Tyler:
Truly modern art faces the wall not the viewer.
Oh man, I was hoping that the BBC lady would click on Top Gear.
It’s interesting that the presentation focused on “copper telephone lines” versus fiber optic cables. Around that time we had a coaxial cable Ethernet line running down the hallway outside my laboratory with a viper tap on it. A T3 line for the campus I think. Old copper tech that wasn’t too shabby.
Some weeks ago, they actually rolled some fiberoptic cable down my street which I believe is intended for AT&T broadband to the home, though not my provider.
I once took a short course on information theory and the techniques and aspects of digital signal codecs in a noisy channel. I didn’t absorb much of it, but the sophistication of it was most impressive. One nifty aspect is that if the required data rate is very low (think text messages) extremely weak and noisy signals can be used. This material is well known but underappreciated by the public. Not that the latter matters.
On computers and paper: Just before I retired and was dept. chair, the college insisted all tenure, promotion, and files related to hiring searches, be made electronic only and uploaded to the cloud to “save trees!”. I refused and made sure we had paper copies safely locked away in the dept file cabinet. Those files are always subject to legal litigation, and I didn’t want to take the chance of a hacked file out of our control. The Dean insisted I was paranoid and that all was very safe in the cloud. Of course, she being an art history professor before promotion.
Ten swans stopped by this morning. Six adults and four cygnets. This is pretty early.Usually they don’t show up until around Thanksgiving to the first of December.
Just think of the Utopia that awaits in Meta Land, infinite access to all of Hollywood, Bollywood, and Xiwood(?). TicToc, MySpace, YourFace, Everyplace, with wall to wall sound, or with voices in your head. Not that anyone is watching or that it would matter …..
Ten swans stopped by this morning.
A few days ago I went kayaking on a marshy mouth of a local river. There were hundreds of brown pelicans flying about and many of them would cruise a few inches above the flat water within 10 feet of me. Some flew up from behind and dropped down right over my head. Very awe inspiring.
After 30+ years of living here, I also saw my first flock of white pelicans with black trailing edges on their wings.
John Tyler…”Also recall the famous prediction by that MIT, PHd, and Nobel Prize winner , Dr. Paul Krugman, that the internet would not amount to much in terms of how many people would be using it.”
Guy who was CEO of AT&T circa 1996 asserted that the Internet would not amount to much more than CB or Ham radio.
TommyJay…”I once took a short course on information theory and the techniques and aspects of digital signal codecs in a noisy channel. I didn’t absorb much of it, but the sophistication of it was most impressive. One nifty aspect is that if the required data rate is very low (think text messages) extremely weak and noisy signals can be used.”
Messages to underwater submarines are sent using very low frequencies and low data rates….about 30 characters/second, I understand. Certain countries (Russia, India, China) use Extremely Low Frequencies, down around 100 Hz (!), and data rates of only a few characters per minute.
Ten swans stopped by this morning. Six adults and four cygnets.
Chases Eagles, neo:
That would be a fine rough draft start to a poem!
That hair makes her face look like it is floating in a shadow box / unmoored to a body.
@PhyicsGuy Cloud computer: A computer you don’t own or control, and is a point of failure for you that you chose,
One of Peter Zeihan’s Big Recent Riffs is that the Biden administration has just significantly choked off China’s access to advanced semiconductor chips, the equipment to manufacture such chips and Western engineers and technicians to run the equipment.
According to Zeihan, China does make a lot of chips, but it’s all low-end. China has been unable to grow its own advanced semiconductor industry. With these new restrictions China’s hi-tech future is strangled.
If so, it strikes me as close to an act of war against China. Which isn’t to say I disagree, given China’s history of intellectual property theft and expansionist policies.
But it is serious, yet I’ve seen almost no notice of this development in the media.
Today I found strong corroboration of Zeihan’s claims:
______________________________
On October 7, the other shoe dropped. The Biden administration announced a massive policy shift on semiconductor exports to China as well as revised rules for how the lists of restricted parties are managed. In recent decades, U.S. semiconductor policy has been primarily market driven and laissez faire. With the new policy, which comes on the heels of the CHIPS Act’s passage, the United States is firmly focused on retaining control over “chokepoint” (or as it is sometimes translated from Chinese, “stranglehold”) technologies in the global semiconductor technology supply chain.
The most important chokepoints in the context of this discussion are AI chip designs, electronic design automation software, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and equipment components. The Biden administration’s latest actions simultaneously exploit U.S. dominance across all four of these chokepoints. In doing so, these actions demonstrate an unprecedented degree of U.S. government intervention to not only preserve chokepoint control but also begin a new U.S. policy of actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry—strangling with an intent to kill.
Acts of war and rationalizations for acts of war have proven to be quite flexible in the last year IMO.
sdferr:
Good thing he wasn’t asking about Bill, Hillary, or Hunter.
You don’t F with a Brandon, or so he said.
I wonder about this China development. I had become cynical that much of the US government had bought into future Chinese dominance and was on the take.
However, these semiconductor restrictions paint a different picture, especially given China’s current crises with Covid, drought and economic difficulties. Not to mention China’s demographic collapse which Zeihan says is a China-killer within the decade.
At least some parts of the US government are making serious moves to hobble China. I wouldn’t have been surprised if this had happened under Trump. But Biden?
Was “Get Tough On China” supposed to be the Democrats’ big accomplishment for the 2024 elections?
One more time, here’s an open-thread comment about something that has nothing to do with anything that Neo’s written. I still feel like I’m abusing Neo’s hospitality, but she can always decide not to print it.
If you have an eidetic memory, you might recall that I’ve commented before about my dislike for podcasts. For passing on information, the written word is much more efficient. Podcasts are like extra-innings baseball, on a hot summer day, when I’m half-drunk on cheap beer, in half-empty bleachers, feeling half-asleep. I think you might have said something interesting, but I’m feeling too lazy to even try to remember. Oh look, a foul ball. Also, a well-written essay has logical and aesthetic qualities that I deeply appreciate. The same can’t be said for podcasts.
Having said all that, there are so many good podcasts now that I listen to them once in a while, and I’d like to recommend an interview that Brett Weinstein just did with Bridget Phetasy.
Most people here will remember Bret Weinstein as an evolutionary biologist who was at the center of the outbreak of political insanity at Evergreen State College. Bridget Phetasy is a writer and podcaster. She’s a good writer, a great talker, and terribly funny. Her comedy makes Mrs. Maisel sound like Jack Benny. Recently she wrote an essay entitled “I Regret Being a Slut,” and her YouTube reading of the essay defines the phrase “emotional candor.”
No surprise, Weinstein and Phetsay talk a lot about sex. It’s too much to summarize, but I especially like Weinstein’s intellectually solid defense of monogamy.
Anyway, there’s lots to like about this podcast, so please take a look.
Last January, I set up this speed dome type security camera that I can control with a mouse. I point it at interesting things and my wife curates the recordings and picks out stuff to add music. We have over 100 videos I think so far.
Ray Bradbury reportedly called the Internet a “hoax.”
I happen to like Mondrian’s paintings. Hey, it’s reversible! 🙂
I stopped reading Matt Margolis when he referred to the “murder” of George Floyd.
Meme seen on the Internet:
Modern Dude: My co-worker died suddenly.
Traditional Dude: Wow. That’s sad. Was he vaxxed?
Modern Dude: That is SUCH an inappropriate question!!!
Traditional Dude: Hey, YOU wanted to know if I was vaxxed before you’d let me in to an effin’ McDonalds.
Huxley…”With these new restrictions China’s hi-tech future is strangled.
If so, it strikes me as close to an act of war against China. Which isn’t to say I disagree, given China’s history of intellectual property theft and expansionist policies.”
Is it really an act of war to refuse to sell something to somebody? Anything in ‘international law’, such as it is, to this effect?
In any case, there is a precedent for it being treated as an act of war: the US petroleum embargo against Japan was certainly a factor in their decision to attack us at Pearl Harbor.
David Foster:
I did recall the US oil embargo against Japan when I wrote “close to an act of war” above.
Note I said “close.” I don’t know I would call it an act of war, though I could certainly see China classifying it as such. It is an existential threat to their hi-tech future and their dreams of global dominance.
On the other hand, if China had played nice within the global system — without all the theft and bullying — we wouldn’t have come to this juncture.
I do hope our current leaders haven’t underestimated China’s anger and desperation.
Japan could have stopped their illegal, immoral war of aggression too. Where have I heard that recently?
AoS: Exit Polls — Netanyahu’s Coalition Has Re-Taken Israel’s Knesset
i used to think the push toward war, was because of stanley hornbeck, who was son of chinese missionaries, but harry hopkins and other fellows in the administration wanted this confrontation, yamamoto was the relative moderate in the control regime,
around this time, vr was the up and coming thing, the subject of series like oliver stone’s wild palms, now 30 years later, oculus gets into the picture, but nowhere the level of impact, I guess this is partially because vr has a limited scope as compared to these shells *
*thats the device bradbury described in fahrenheit 451
Another piece of evidence, in case you needed one, that the NeverTrump residue is an auxilliary of the Democratic Party, full stop.
Not to mention China’s demographic collapse which Zeihan says is a China-killer within the decade.
China’s total fertility rate is 1.7 children per woman per lifetime. That of the United States is 1.8. There are a half dozen countries in the Far East whose fertility rates are ghastly low. China is not one.
Paul Krugman is living proof that it’s possible to have a very lucrative career out of being wrong
Krugman stopped producing research papers in 2008 (above and beyond literature reviews). It’s a reasonable inference that he stopped producing topical commentary around about 2000 / 01 and turned over his byline to his wife, who is a political sectary.
Almost no one on the nation’s economics faculties is willing to write a critique of the work produced under his name for general audiences. The disposition so manifest is one reason higher education is such a godawful mess.
“China’s total fertility rate is 1.7 children per woman per lifetime. That of the United States is 1.8.”
Replacement birth rate in 2.1 children per woman per lifetime. China has now been below that for 30 years. And China’s birth rate was BELOW 1.7 for 25 straight years. In addition, the Chinese birthrate has actually been increasing since 2003 but has only gone from 1.61 to 1.702, less than .1 in almost 20 years. Even if this rate of increase continues, which is doubtful because it would require the coming smaller generations to reproduce at an even higher rate, it would take China another 60 to 80 years just to crawl back to replacement rate.
In contrast, the U.S. birthrate was above 2 for almost every year from 1992 to 2009. And the U.S. has the advantage of significant immigration boosting the population.
It’s possible Zeihan is overstating the case a bit, but China is still in serious trouble even without some additional factor like war, disease, or economic collapse negatively impacting its birthrate.
Mike
China’s total fertility rate is 1.7 children per woman per lifetime. That of the United States is 1.8. There are a half dozen countries in the Far East whose fertility rates are ghastly low. China is not one.
As usual, Art Deco cites no sources. I don’t know where he gets the idea that the Chinese fertility rate is 1.7, and just below the US at 1.8.
However, I’ve never seen that number elsewhere nor the notion that China does not have a demography problem. Perhaps AD never heard of China’s One-Child Policy, which rather impacts demography and fertility rate. Here’s wiki:
___________________________________________
Fertility rate: 1.16 children per woman (2021 est.)
The demographics of China demonstrate a huge population with a relatively small youth component, partially a result of China’s one-child policy. China’s population reached 1 billion in late 1981.
I think china faces a much more compelling threat, than mere demographics, after mao’s death, they embraced deng zhaopings, expansion through capitalism, however all the real remaining capitalists were in hong kong and taiwan, so they chose the robber barron model, and elements of the pre maoist chiang social economy but that only went so far, the choice of xi jimping or the opportunity that presented himself, was the replacement of economics with a more socialized economy, under his own newfangled cult of personality, can it hold such a vast country together, we have seen the fracture in shenzen and other places, the lockdowns enabled him to seize the commanding heights but there are some significant headwinds they face,
The US has historically been able to absorb immigrants quite successfully; questionable whether China can do that at any scale.
(Question also whether the US can continue to do it, given current uncontrolled border policies and the attitudes & performance of our educational institutions)
Interesting milestone from Nate Silver’s polling site 538:
_________________________________
Republicans are favored to win the House:
Republicans win in 83 in 100
Democrats win in 17 in 100
Republicans are favored to win the Senate:
Republicans win in 51 in 100
Democrats win in 49 in 100
(Birth rate is not the same as Fertility rate (births per woman).)
Gringo:
Good of you to clear that number up. It would be nice if Art Deco supplied cites, but if my grandmother had wheels she would be a motorcar.
Someone is wrong and my bet is that it’s the World Bank.
China, a near totalitarian regime, outlawed more than one child per family from 1980-2016, which not only reduced the population growth but skewed the population to male children — another factor in the demography crunch.
The US never had a One-Child Policy, much less for 36 years. I don’t believe that the US and China would have just about the same fertility rate.
Plus, we know Chinese statistics aren’t always reliable.
On that score, the Chinese recently announced that it might be possible they overcounted their population by 100 million.
Also, demographics do not reduce to the current fertility rate. It includes how the fertility rate varied over time and changed the size of the different cohorts.
Also, demographics do not reduce to the current fertility rate. It includes how the fertility rate varied over time and changed the size of the different cohorts.
The birth rate falling from 14 per 1,000 in 2016 to 9 per 1,000 in 2020, a fall of 36% in 4 years, but fertility rate remaining constant during that time doesn’t pass the sniff test for me.
(Both fertility rate and birth rate from World Bank, which gets its data from governments. Which is why the World Bank has little data since 2014 on Venezuela’s economy. Chavismo doesn’t want to release such embarrassing data.)
TommyJay,
Your kayaking experience sounds awesome! Glad you have a fun outing!
Cornflour,
Coincidentally I began listening to that Phetasy – Weinstein podcast today and am about 2/3 of the way done. None of it is news to me, because I have listened to them both, independently, quite a bit. It should be required listening for every Junior High student, however.
I first stumbled onto Bridget Phetasy many years ago when I read one of her essays about accidentally joining a cult (in New Zealand, or Australia maybe?). She is a good writer and communicator, obviously very bright (she was apparently a great student until sexually abused in her late teens, right around when her parents divorced). I give her a lot of credit. She has done almost everything wrong in her life, but seems to have always tried to find truth and wisdom and is very courageous about sharing truth, even when the subject is mistakes she has made.
I seem to have a very good memory regarding podcasts. I retain a great deal I hear on them and even can usually remember where I physically was when I heard whatever it is I may be recalling. I can do the same with books. When the subject of a passage in a book comes up I can often remember where I was when I read it.
Sonia Sotomayor was a diversity hire advanced to her present job by another diversity hire. Both she and the president who promoted her have at times embarrassed us – especially Sotomayor, such as when she claimed during a SCOTUS hearing that ‘over 100,000’ children are in ‘serious condition’ with covid. There are more costly and painful ways to learn than through embarrassment, so we should be thankful when it happens. But acknowledging and learning are essential to avert worse disasters down the road.
My cousin is big on Ray Dalio. I’ve never got a firm grip on Dalio — a big investment guy with a theory of historical cycles. Anyway, Instapundit led me to a Dalio link which fits into my concerns about the US semiconductor blockade of China:
________________________________________
Right before there is a shooting war there is usually an intense economic war in which the sides try to disable each other. They have been and still are 1) asset freezes/seizures, 2) blocking capital markets access, and 3) embargoes/blockades. (See Page 209) Sanctions, such as those the United States now commonly uses, are classic throughout history. (The United States cutting off China’s ability to import semiconductor chips and Russia cutting off natural gas to Europe I discussed above are examples.) Also, big increases in military expenditures, such as those that are planned in China and to lesser extents in Europe and the US, are classic early warning signs of a military war ahead. For an explanation of the remarkable similarities between the economic warfare that is going on now and that which occurred immediately before World War II see the case study that begins on Page 201 of Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order.
Recall the predictions that computers were going to render the use of paper (for writing , reading) obsolete because everything would be on computers and there would be no need to use writing paper.
Sure.
If anything, computers have increased the use of paper because it’s now so easy to print stuff out.
Also recall the famous prediction by that MIT, PHd, and Nobel Prize winner , Dr. Paul Krugman, that the internet would not amount to much in terms of how many people would be using it. He did some math calculation that “proved” his conjecture.
Then again, that’s how economists prove their theories; they invent phony baloney math that describes a system (economic, political, social) that does not exist anywhere within the Milky Way Galaxy, and bingo, they have their proof and an econ. Nobel Prize.
(Had to throw in Krugman’s title of “Dr.” because he does have a PHd and if Jill Biden insists on using this title, well, why shouldn’t Paul Krugman, no matter how often he is wrong).
An off topic item; a few weeks back on Neo’s blog there was a bunch of commentary – including mine – about modern art.
Well, check this out:
https://pjmedia.com/culture/matt-margolis/2022/10/31/cant-we-just-admit-that-modern-art-is-garbage-n1641462
I’ll save you the trouble of reading the article. Apparently some famous work of modern “art,” which has been hanging in an art museum for DECADES, was recently discovered to be hanging upside down all these years; this was just discovered.
While this particular work of art cannot be replicated by a zoo animal, it certainly can be by a 5 year old. And it would not have been able to be replicated by Jackson Pollock because it would be impossible to randomly splatter paint onto a canvas and produce straight lines intersecting at 90 degrees.
Paul Krugman is living proof that it’s possible to have a very lucrative career out of being wrong… as long as you have the right credentials, cater to a specific audience, and tell this audience what they want to hear regardless of whether it has any connection to reality not.
John Tyler:
Truly modern art faces the wall not the viewer.
Oh man, I was hoping that the BBC lady would click on Top Gear.
It’s interesting that the presentation focused on “copper telephone lines” versus fiber optic cables. Around that time we had a coaxial cable Ethernet line running down the hallway outside my laboratory with a viper tap on it. A T3 line for the campus I think. Old copper tech that wasn’t too shabby.
Some weeks ago, they actually rolled some fiberoptic cable down my street which I believe is intended for AT&T broadband to the home, though not my provider.
I once took a short course on information theory and the techniques and aspects of digital signal codecs in a noisy channel. I didn’t absorb much of it, but the sophistication of it was most impressive. One nifty aspect is that if the required data rate is very low (think text messages) extremely weak and noisy signals can be used. This material is well known but underappreciated by the public. Not that the latter matters.
A fairly impenetrable Wikipedia page on the topic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noisy-channel_coding_theorem
On computers and paper: Just before I retired and was dept. chair, the college insisted all tenure, promotion, and files related to hiring searches, be made electronic only and uploaded to the cloud to “save trees!”. I refused and made sure we had paper copies safely locked away in the dept file cabinet. Those files are always subject to legal litigation, and I didn’t want to take the chance of a hacked file out of our control. The Dean insisted I was paranoid and that all was very safe in the cloud. Of course, she being an art history professor before promotion.
Ten swans stopped by this morning. Six adults and four cygnets. This is pretty early.Usually they don’t show up until around Thanksgiving to the first of December.
Just think of the Utopia that awaits in Meta Land, infinite access to all of Hollywood, Bollywood, and Xiwood(?). TicToc, MySpace, YourFace, Everyplace, with wall to wall sound, or with voices in your head. Not that anyone is watching or that it would matter …..
Ten swans stopped by this morning.
A few days ago I went kayaking on a marshy mouth of a local river. There were hundreds of brown pelicans flying about and many of them would cruise a few inches above the flat water within 10 feet of me. Some flew up from behind and dropped down right over my head. Very awe inspiring.
After 30+ years of living here, I also saw my first flock of white pelicans with black trailing edges on their wings.
John Tyler…”Also recall the famous prediction by that MIT, PHd, and Nobel Prize winner , Dr. Paul Krugman, that the internet would not amount to much in terms of how many people would be using it.”
Guy who was CEO of AT&T circa 1996 asserted that the Internet would not amount to much more than CB or Ham radio.
TommyJay…”I once took a short course on information theory and the techniques and aspects of digital signal codecs in a noisy channel. I didn’t absorb much of it, but the sophistication of it was most impressive. One nifty aspect is that if the required data rate is very low (think text messages) extremely weak and noisy signals can be used.”
Messages to underwater submarines are sent using very low frequencies and low data rates….about 30 characters/second, I understand. Certain countries (Russia, India, China) use Extremely Low Frequencies, down around 100 Hz (!), and data rates of only a few characters per minute.
Chases Eagles:
See this poem by Yeats..
The PostMillenial: “ABC producer spotted for first time in months after FBI raid”
https://thepostmillennial.com/missing-abc-producer-spotted-for-first-time-in-months-after-fbi-raid?utm_campaign=64483
Ten swans stopped by this morning. Six adults and four cygnets.
Chases Eagles, neo:
That would be a fine rough draft start to a poem!
That hair makes her face look like it is floating in a shadow box / unmoored to a body.
@PhyicsGuy Cloud computer: A computer you don’t own or control, and is a point of failure for you that you chose,
One of Peter Zeihan’s Big Recent Riffs is that the Biden administration has just significantly choked off China’s access to advanced semiconductor chips, the equipment to manufacture such chips and Western engineers and technicians to run the equipment.
According to Zeihan, China does make a lot of chips, but it’s all low-end. China has been unable to grow its own advanced semiconductor industry. With these new restrictions China’s hi-tech future is strangled.
If so, it strikes me as close to an act of war against China. Which isn’t to say I disagree, given China’s history of intellectual property theft and expansionist policies.
But it is serious, yet I’ve seen almost no notice of this development in the media.
Today I found strong corroboration of Zeihan’s claims:
______________________________
On October 7, the other shoe dropped. The Biden administration announced a massive policy shift on semiconductor exports to China as well as revised rules for how the lists of restricted parties are managed. In recent decades, U.S. semiconductor policy has been primarily market driven and laissez faire. With the new policy, which comes on the heels of the CHIPS Act’s passage, the United States is firmly focused on retaining control over “chokepoint” (or as it is sometimes translated from Chinese, “stranglehold”) technologies in the global semiconductor technology supply chain.
The most important chokepoints in the context of this discussion are AI chip designs, electronic design automation software, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and equipment components. The Biden administration’s latest actions simultaneously exploit U.S. dominance across all four of these chokepoints. In doing so, these actions demonstrate an unprecedented degree of U.S. government intervention to not only preserve chokepoint control but also begin a new U.S. policy of actively strangling large segments of the Chinese technology industry—strangling with an intent to kill.
–Gregory C. Allen, “Choking Off China’s Access to the Future of AI”
https://www.csis.org/analysis/choking-chinas-access-future-ai
Acts of war and rationalizations for acts of war have proven to be quite flexible in the last year IMO.
sdferr:
Good thing he wasn’t asking about Bill, Hillary, or Hunter.
You don’t F with a Brandon, or so he said.
I wonder about this China development. I had become cynical that much of the US government had bought into future Chinese dominance and was on the take.
However, these semiconductor restrictions paint a different picture, especially given China’s current crises with Covid, drought and economic difficulties. Not to mention China’s demographic collapse which Zeihan says is a China-killer within the decade.
At least some parts of the US government are making serious moves to hobble China. I wouldn’t have been surprised if this had happened under Trump. But Biden?
Was “Get Tough On China” supposed to be the Democrats’ big accomplishment for the 2024 elections?
One more time, here’s an open-thread comment about something that has nothing to do with anything that Neo’s written. I still feel like I’m abusing Neo’s hospitality, but she can always decide not to print it.
If you have an eidetic memory, you might recall that I’ve commented before about my dislike for podcasts. For passing on information, the written word is much more efficient. Podcasts are like extra-innings baseball, on a hot summer day, when I’m half-drunk on cheap beer, in half-empty bleachers, feeling half-asleep. I think you might have said something interesting, but I’m feeling too lazy to even try to remember. Oh look, a foul ball. Also, a well-written essay has logical and aesthetic qualities that I deeply appreciate. The same can’t be said for podcasts.
Having said all that, there are so many good podcasts now that I listen to them once in a while, and I’d like to recommend an interview that Brett Weinstein just did with Bridget Phetasy.
Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/VdpUOMiC_mE
Most people here will remember Bret Weinstein as an evolutionary biologist who was at the center of the outbreak of political insanity at Evergreen State College. Bridget Phetasy is a writer and podcaster. She’s a good writer, a great talker, and terribly funny. Her comedy makes Mrs. Maisel sound like Jack Benny. Recently she wrote an essay entitled “I Regret Being a Slut,” and her YouTube reading of the essay defines the phrase “emotional candor.”
No surprise, Weinstein and Phetsay talk a lot about sex. It’s too much to summarize, but I especially like Weinstein’s intellectually solid defense of monogamy.
Anyway, there’s lots to like about this podcast, so please take a look.
Last January, I set up this speed dome type security camera that I can control with a mouse. I point it at interesting things and my wife curates the recordings and picks out stuff to add music. We have over 100 videos I think so far.
some are like these eagles attacking a river otter:
https://youtu.be/4LSBkyuHbdw
and a lot are like this sunset (this is 3 hours compressed to 3 minutes):
https://youtu.be/42-eGqUi8js
Notice how the water changes with the sunset.
Ray Bradbury reportedly called the Internet a “hoax.”
I happen to like Mondrian’s paintings. Hey, it’s reversible! 🙂
I stopped reading Matt Margolis when he referred to the “murder” of George Floyd.
Meme seen on the Internet:
Modern Dude: My co-worker died suddenly.
Traditional Dude: Wow. That’s sad. Was he vaxxed?
Modern Dude: That is SUCH an inappropriate question!!!
Traditional Dude: Hey, YOU wanted to know if I was vaxxed before you’d let me in to an effin’ McDonalds.
Huxley…”With these new restrictions China’s hi-tech future is strangled.
If so, it strikes me as close to an act of war against China. Which isn’t to say I disagree, given China’s history of intellectual property theft and expansionist policies.”
Is it really an act of war to refuse to sell something to somebody? Anything in ‘international law’, such as it is, to this effect?
In any case, there is a precedent for it being treated as an act of war: the US petroleum embargo against Japan was certainly a factor in their decision to attack us at Pearl Harbor.
David Foster:
I did recall the US oil embargo against Japan when I wrote “close to an act of war” above.
Note I said “close.” I don’t know I would call it an act of war, though I could certainly see China classifying it as such. It is an existential threat to their hi-tech future and their dreams of global dominance.
On the other hand, if China had played nice within the global system — without all the theft and bullying — we wouldn’t have come to this juncture.
I do hope our current leaders haven’t underestimated China’s anger and desperation.
Japan could have stopped their illegal, immoral war of aggression too. Where have I heard that recently?
AoS: Exit Polls — Netanyahu’s Coalition Has Re-Taken Israel’s Knesset
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/401659.php
JNS: https://www.jns.org/israel-elections-2022-exit-polls-show-netanyahus-bloc-winning-parliamentary-majority/
i used to think the push toward war, was because of stanley hornbeck, who was son of chinese missionaries, but harry hopkins and other fellows in the administration wanted this confrontation, yamamoto was the relative moderate in the control regime,
around this time, vr was the up and coming thing, the subject of series like oliver stone’s wild palms, now 30 years later, oculus gets into the picture, but nowhere the level of impact, I guess this is partially because vr has a limited scope as compared to these shells *
*thats the device bradbury described in fahrenheit 451
Another piece of evidence, in case you needed one, that the NeverTrump residue is an auxilliary of the Democratic Party, full stop.
https://pjmedia.com/columns/paula-bolyard/2022/11/01/liz-cheney-may-have-just-put-the-final-nail-in-democrats-coffin-in-ohio-senate-race-n1641874
Not to mention China’s demographic collapse which Zeihan says is a China-killer within the decade.
China’s total fertility rate is 1.7 children per woman per lifetime. That of the United States is 1.8. There are a half dozen countries in the Far East whose fertility rates are ghastly low. China is not one.
Paul Krugman is living proof that it’s possible to have a very lucrative career out of being wrong
Krugman stopped producing research papers in 2008 (above and beyond literature reviews). It’s a reasonable inference that he stopped producing topical commentary around about 2000 / 01 and turned over his byline to his wife, who is a political sectary.
Almost no one on the nation’s economics faculties is willing to write a critique of the work produced under his name for general audiences. The disposition so manifest is one reason higher education is such a godawful mess.
“China’s total fertility rate is 1.7 children per woman per lifetime. That of the United States is 1.8.”
Replacement birth rate in 2.1 children per woman per lifetime. China has now been below that for 30 years. And China’s birth rate was BELOW 1.7 for 25 straight years. In addition, the Chinese birthrate has actually been increasing since 2003 but has only gone from 1.61 to 1.702, less than .1 in almost 20 years. Even if this rate of increase continues, which is doubtful because it would require the coming smaller generations to reproduce at an even higher rate, it would take China another 60 to 80 years just to crawl back to replacement rate.
In contrast, the U.S. birthrate was above 2 for almost every year from 1992 to 2009. And the U.S. has the advantage of significant immigration boosting the population.
It’s possible Zeihan is overstating the case a bit, but China is still in serious trouble even without some additional factor like war, disease, or economic collapse negatively impacting its birthrate.
Mike
China’s total fertility rate is 1.7 children per woman per lifetime. That of the United States is 1.8. There are a half dozen countries in the Far East whose fertility rates are ghastly low. China is not one.
As usual, Art Deco cites no sources. I don’t know where he gets the idea that the Chinese fertility rate is 1.7, and just below the US at 1.8.
However, I’ve never seen that number elsewhere nor the notion that China does not have a demography problem. Perhaps AD never heard of China’s One-Child Policy, which rather impacts demography and fertility rate. Here’s wiki:
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Fertility rate: 1.16 children per woman (2021 est.)
The demographics of China demonstrate a huge population with a relatively small youth component, partially a result of China’s one-child policy. China’s population reached 1 billion in late 1981.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China
I think china faces a much more compelling threat, than mere demographics, after mao’s death, they embraced deng zhaopings, expansion through capitalism, however all the real remaining capitalists were in hong kong and taiwan, so they chose the robber barron model, and elements of the pre maoist chiang social economy but that only went so far, the choice of xi jimping or the opportunity that presented himself, was the replacement of economics with a more socialized economy, under his own newfangled cult of personality, can it hold such a vast country together, we have seen the fracture in shenzen and other places, the lockdowns enabled him to seize the commanding heights but there are some significant headwinds they face,
The US has historically been able to absorb immigrants quite successfully; questionable whether China can do that at any scale.
(Question also whether the US can continue to do it, given current uncontrolled border policies and the attitudes & performance of our educational institutions)
Interesting milestone from Nate Silver’s polling site 538:
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Republicans are favored to win the House:
Republicans win in 83 in 100
Democrats win in 17 in 100
Republicans are favored to win the Senate:
Republicans win in 51 in 100
Democrats win in 49 in 100
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/senate/
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This is the first time in many months in which 538 shows Republicans winning the Senate above 50 in 100.
I’ve been watching 538. Lately the momentum is on the Rs. And I believe 538 underestimates the Red Wave.
Art Deco
huxley
The World Bank lists China’s fertility rate as 1.7, which has been around that level since 1995.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=CN
There are other sources which give a lower fertility rate:
1.3 from
https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/china/2021/05/china-210511-globaltimes04.htm
The World Bank lists China’s birth rate as 9 per 1,000 and declining in recent years, which doesn’t appear to match the fertility rate being constant for the last 25 years.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CBRT.IN?locations=CN&name_desc=false
Don’t blame Art Deco, blame the World Bank.
(Birth rate is not the same as Fertility rate (births per woman).)
Gringo:
Good of you to clear that number up. It would be nice if Art Deco supplied cites, but if my grandmother had wheels she would be a motorcar.
Someone is wrong and my bet is that it’s the World Bank.
China, a near totalitarian regime, outlawed more than one child per family from 1980-2016, which not only reduced the population growth but skewed the population to male children — another factor in the demography crunch.
The US never had a One-Child Policy, much less for 36 years. I don’t believe that the US and China would have just about the same fertility rate.
Plus, we know Chinese statistics aren’t always reliable.
On that score, the Chinese recently announced that it might be possible they overcounted their population by 100 million.
Also, demographics do not reduce to the current fertility rate. It includes how the fertility rate varied over time and changed the size of the different cohorts.
Also, demographics do not reduce to the current fertility rate. It includes how the fertility rate varied over time and changed the size of the different cohorts.
The birth rate falling from 14 per 1,000 in 2016 to 9 per 1,000 in 2020, a fall of 36% in 4 years, but fertility rate remaining constant during that time doesn’t pass the sniff test for me.
(Both fertility rate and birth rate from World Bank, which gets its data from governments. Which is why the World Bank has little data since 2014 on Venezuela’s economy. Chavismo doesn’t want to release such embarrassing data.)
TommyJay,
Your kayaking experience sounds awesome! Glad you have a fun outing!
Cornflour,
Coincidentally I began listening to that Phetasy – Weinstein podcast today and am about 2/3 of the way done. None of it is news to me, because I have listened to them both, independently, quite a bit. It should be required listening for every Junior High student, however.
I first stumbled onto Bridget Phetasy many years ago when I read one of her essays about accidentally joining a cult (in New Zealand, or Australia maybe?). She is a good writer and communicator, obviously very bright (she was apparently a great student until sexually abused in her late teens, right around when her parents divorced). I give her a lot of credit. She has done almost everything wrong in her life, but seems to have always tried to find truth and wisdom and is very courageous about sharing truth, even when the subject is mistakes she has made.
I seem to have a very good memory regarding podcasts. I retain a great deal I hear on them and even can usually remember where I physically was when I heard whatever it is I may be recalling. I can do the same with books. When the subject of a passage in a book comes up I can often remember where I was when I read it.
Sonia Sotomayor was a diversity hire advanced to her present job by another diversity hire. Both she and the president who promoted her have at times embarrassed us – especially Sotomayor, such as when she claimed during a SCOTUS hearing that ‘over 100,000’ children are in ‘serious condition’ with covid. There are more costly and painful ways to learn than through embarrassment, so we should be thankful when it happens. But acknowledging and learning are essential to avert worse disasters down the road.
The overriding lesson from Obama/Sotomayor is the danger of putting aside meritocratic principle for the sake of superficial diversity. Tucker elaborates:
Tucker Carlson: Isn’t this supposed to be a meritocracy?
My cousin is big on Ray Dalio. I’ve never got a firm grip on Dalio — a big investment guy with a theory of historical cycles. Anyway, Instapundit led me to a Dalio link which fits into my concerns about the US semiconductor blockade of China:
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Right before there is a shooting war there is usually an intense economic war in which the sides try to disable each other. They have been and still are 1) asset freezes/seizures, 2) blocking capital markets access, and 3) embargoes/blockades. (See Page 209) Sanctions, such as those the United States now commonly uses, are classic throughout history. (The United States cutting off China’s ability to import semiconductor chips and Russia cutting off natural gas to Europe I discussed above are examples.) Also, big increases in military expenditures, such as those that are planned in China and to lesser extents in Europe and the US, are classic early warning signs of a military war ahead. For an explanation of the remarkable similarities between the economic warfare that is going on now and that which occurred immediately before World War II see the case study that begins on Page 201 of Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/changing-world-order-approaching-stage-6-war-ray-dalio/?trackingId=RzjuSXxOQi67pyMU%2BtsPxA%3D%3D
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It seems there are more ways for things to go seriously sideways these days.