Friday Squid Blogging: New Extinct Species of Vampire Squid Discovered

Paleontologists have discovered a 183-million-year-old species of vampire squid.

Prior research suggests that the vampyromorph lived in the shallows off an island that once existed in what is now the heart of the European mainland. The research team believes that the remarkable degree of preservation of this squid is due to unique conditions at the moment of the creature’s death. Water at the bottom of the sea where it ventured would have been poorly oxygenated, causing the creature to suffocate. In addition to killing the squid, it would have prevented other creatures from feeding on its remains, allowing it to become buried in the seafloor, wholly intact.

Research paper.

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Read my blog posting guidelines here.

Tags: academic papers, squid

Posted on March 1, 2024 at 5:05 PM • 97 Comments

Comments

vas pup • March 1, 2024 6:02 PM

@all and @jello 117 in particular

1.The Social Psychology of Crowds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe1W21n6sdA&t=12s

2.Mob Psychology: A Guide for the Modern Day Wealthy Elite
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrNTOKYbhG4

Those are two mutually exclusive approach to mob psychology.

Any crowd should be closely monitored and controlled in such way so when it turned into violent mob LEAs MUST immediately suppress it by overwhelming concentration and application all spectrum of modern less than lethal technologies (e.g. see @jello 117 last week post on this blog) mounted on drones rather than jeopardizing life and health of human police force and gambling with pacification approach (see 1 above)since situation is already beyond constitutional rights and the goal is to minimize victims on mob side, LEOs,innocent civilians, destruction of private and public property and restore Law and Order asap.

Cybershow • March 1, 2024 6:30 PM

From TFA, this vampyromorph was into “detritivorous feeding”, which kinda describes
my diet some 183 million years later.

So, we had fun on Infosec-Live
last night, hoping to talk about the slow craft of infiltration, but naturally wandered off
into important discussion about people watching porn on public transport.

Cybershow • March 1, 2024 6:37 PM

Also I like this word Scamicry
coined by Adam Shostak, so there’s a Cybershow blog piece on that too.
Have a good weekend all.

Clive Robinson • March 1, 2024 6:47 PM

Hellon Rusk sues OpenAI for cosy cosy with Micro$haft Big Bucks

I mentioned yesterday that things were confusing with the Micro$haft OpenAI tie up due in part to MSM speculation and the unknown nature of what OpenAI had become or was becoming as a corporate entity with the original “not for profit” and one possibly two “for profit” associated or sub-corps and just what Micro$haft are going to get out of what sounds like a very one-way relationship

Well we are likely to find out a whole lot more. The first part of this article is a bit dull and pedestrian but it gets more interesting as you dig down.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68445981

Greg Webster • March 1, 2024 7:07 PM

Now that we’re a full 5 years from NIST’s password rule book guidelines being published (https://www.isaca.org/resources/isaca-journal/issues/2019/volume-1/nists-new-password-rule-book-updated-guidelines-offer-benefits-and-risk), has there been a corporate survey of how many large companies have moved toward long passphrases and ditched regular scheduled password resets?

Ferritecore • March 1, 2024 9:48 PM

@Greg Webster

My experience is ever longer, ever more complicated password rules where the enforced rules don’t match the published rules combined with ever shorter password expiration intervals.

MK • March 1, 2024 10:37 PM

Long passwords may be fine for documents, but having to use a pass phrase multiple times a day to unlock your screen that locks after 5 minutes of non use would be a PITA.

ResearcherZero • March 2, 2024 12:02 AM

Even after citing an intelligence report, what we are left with is a very poorly produced article which includes an unrelated image and headline.

‘https://www.dailymail.co.uk/galleries/article-13144499/Putin-planning-use-private-militias-weaponise-flow-migrants.html

“how little Western governments, even now, understand the tactic and the ways it plays on the inherently contradictory and hypocritical politics”

Policy announcement is mostly symbolic. News publishing outlets often fail to examine the subject with any rigor. Producing debate with very little substance. Concern about immigration numbers or irregular arrivals is less significant than the high salience given to the issue by politicians and sections of the media.

Labour demand has been the main driver of growing immigration to western countries since the 1990s. Migration rises as poor countries become richer.

https://cis.mit.edu/publications/analysis-opinion/2022/when-migrants-become-weapons

Only 10% of all international migrants are refugees, representing 0.3% of the world population. About 80-85% of refugees remain in their regions of origin.

International migrants account for about 3% of the world population, and this percentage has remained remarkably stable over the past half a century.

Research on the effects of droughts and flooding shows that most people will stay close to home. In fact, the most vulnerable people are most likely to get trapped, unable to move out at all. Contrary to common assumptions, climate breakdown is unlikely to trigger mass movements of “climate refugees”.
https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/wmr-2022-interactive/

Basically, when dog-whistling, politicians join the ranks of those unnamed witting and unwitting agents of foreign interference.

‘https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/sussan-ley-stands-by-foreign-criminals-tweet-on-eve-of-dunkley-byelection-20240301-p5f903.html

ResearcherZero • March 2, 2024 12:07 AM

The news and politicians: Around election time bulls–t prevails…

‘https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/

Calling for tighter borders is a tried-and-true tactic of politicians unwilling to confront reality.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128303672

The last comprehensive legislation to make it through Congress was under President Ronald Reagan in 1986; it granted legal amnesty to some three million undocumented residents.

‘https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-immigration-debate-0

For much of the 1990s, the two parties were essentially in lockstep on the issue of immigration.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/why-immigration-divides/552125/

Immigrants “significantly benefit the U.S. economy by creating new jobs and complementing the skills of the U.S. native workforce.”

‘https://www.uschamber.com/assets/archived/images/documents/files/022851_mythsfacts_2016_report_final.pdf

ResearcherZero • March 2, 2024 4:34 AM

@MK

Hardware dongles are not too bad, less ye lose the little blighters. They are good for students, but such solutions do not work in all situations and are not always compatible.

Fingerprint scanners can work for less sensitive systems and information.

Depends on your security model too. If your system is fairly well isolated, and not physically accessible by outside parties, as well as not containing sensitive information, it is much easier to secure. If it does contain sensitive information, and also requires outside remote access, then a more robust security model is definitely required.

Within reason however, you can go overboard.

You can make the local network too secure, perhaps to frustrate and deter others, and at the same time frustrate yourself and make it exceedingly difficult to manage.

–

Why the corona is up to 300 times hotter than the photosphere, despite being farther from the solar core, has remained a long-term mystery.

“Nobody had ever thought that the sun would have had million-degree or hotter plasma in it. What does it mean? What are the consequences of it?”

The chromosphere may play a role in conducting heat from the interior of the sun to its outermost layer, the corona.

‘https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-eclipse-is-coming-and-solar-science-will-never-be-the-same/

The third layer of the sun’s atmosphere is the corona. Like the chromosphere, the sun’s corona can only be seen during a total solar eclipse. It appears as white streamers or plumes of ionized gas that flow outward into space. Temperatures in the sun’s corona can get as high as 3.5 million degrees F (2 million degrees C). As the gases cool, they become the solar wind. Yet the estimated temperature of the photosphere is around 10,000 F (5,500 C).

https://www.space.com/17160-sun-atmosphere.html

The radius of the sun is approximately 435,000 miles (700,000 km)

} core, radiative zone, convection zone, photosphere, chromosphere, corona

The photosphere is the lowest layer of the solar atmosphere. It is essentially the solar “surface” that we see when we look at the Sun in “white” (i.e. regular, or visible) light. When we observe sunspots and faculae (bright little cloud-like features) we are observing them in the photosphere.

‘https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/layers-of-sun/

–

The researchers used two P-type silicon layers that create an electric charge when light shines.

The two layers form a flexible membrane that is one micrometer thick (100 times smaller than a human hair) and weighs one-fiftieth of a gram. Conventional pacemakers weigh at least five grams. The device can be installed using a very small tube and an optic fibre.

‘https://news.uchicago.edu/story/uchicago-scientists-invent-ultra-thin-minimally-invasive-pacemaker-controlled-light

fabrication

‘https://cen.acs.org/materials/photonics/New-wireless-pacemaker-powered-light/102/web/2024/02

Clive Robinson • March 2, 2024 4:42 AM

@ Cybershow,

Re : Ancient and modern meanings,

“…which kinda describes my diet some 183 million years later.[1]”

I guess it depends on the point of view, but I get the feeling that those in the C-suits in Silicon Valley Mega-corps, would describe all of us as “Detritivores”.

If we look up the meaning of Detritivores we discover from Wikipedia’s first paragraph,

“Detritivores (also known as detrivores, detritophages, detritus feeders or detritus eaters) are heterotrophs that obtain nutrients by consuming detritus (decomposing plant and animal parts as well as feces). There are many kinds of invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants that carry out coprophagy.”

To save people effort of looking them up, the two other less well known words are,

Heterotrophs : Are entities that in the natural production chain are “consumers” not “producers” of what industry calls from farming and farming from nature “feed stock”.

Coprophagy : It means “to consume” the “waste” from other Heterotrophs or in the more vernacular “eat 5h1t”.

So… If –as we have proof of[2]– we the masses are seen by the Mega Corp C-Suits,

“As ‘heterotrophs’ that survive by ‘coprophagy'”

They look at us in the vernacular,

“As ‘consumers’ that ‘eat 5h1t'”

Which only leaves one vital question,

What is the implied meaning of ‘5h1t’?

In the C-Suit world it is likely to be as a “coarse insult” around since at least the time of what we would call “The Vikings” who as we know had a reputation for “rape pillage and plunder” by brut force or what they saw by self entitlement as “Might is right”…

But there is the majority “consumer view” to consider. Which is that,

“What the ‘producers’ provide is unfit for consumption or safe for use”

So I’m going with the likely majority view and say

“The general view is that the C-suits of the Silicon Valley Mega-Corps not only produce 5h1t as product they are also ‘full of it as well'”….

Does anyone see otherwise 😉

[1] Many think rabbits are cute, especially bunnies… However on acquiring them as pets for their own “wee ones” they discover the awful truth about high fiber low nutrient feed stock and the process chain a short digestive tract forces, and why rabbits produce “soft pellets” and “hard pellets” and what they do with the former…

[2] We have proof of this “eat 5h1t” attitude by Hellon Rusk and his minions use of the “poo emoji” as “official correspondence”.

Clive Robinson • March 2, 2024 5:48 AM

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

With regards “The Daily Fail” and the article about Putin’s terroristic[1] use of militias.

They are lying in the bit you quote.

Western Governments have been using terroristic behaviour either first hand or second hand for centuries.

As I point out it’s exactly what the US Government via “State Dept” thinking have been doing in the Middle East since as long as the end of WWII.

However the US are doing it by “second hand means” through “proxies” and the target for their pogrom terroristic behaviours is actually not as most are lead to think “oil” or “Muslims”, but actually destabilising both the British and French Empires as were as well as to stop and now destabilise the formation of a European Federation. Because untill recently the US saw “Europe” as the greatest threat to the US “National Security” and World Presence.

It’s why the wiser heads in Europe are at best “luke warm” about NATO, because hidden within it is effectively “Full US Control” of any conflict that might arise. That is it’s the same game as the UN “Security Council” that ensures that the only policing behaviours by Nations on other Nations are those the US and other “Super Powers” will allow. Which as we know from history the US State Dept and War Hawks actually have a “Bomb them back to the stoneages” “Might is Right” pogrom core ethic to maintain an authoritarian possition by terroristic activities either directly or through “Proxy Wars”.

I’ve mentioned or alluded to this on this blog for most of it’s existence, but due to what we now call faux-news but once called “Black Propaganda” most readers had cognitive bias against the reality. However due to more recent events most are now aware as due to overwhelming weight of evidence “opening the eyes” as the brutal reality now shines through the fog of all three basic types of propaganda (black, grey, white[2]).

Thus people in the US are now seeing “US Exceptionalism” in the blood and guts of their loved ones in distant lands and the “lost opportunity costs” to them and their loved ones within the US as what it is. The very few self entitled using Authoritarian means to trample the ordinary citizen down to pennilessness and early death.

[1] The original meaning of “terroristic” is the opposite of what we get told it means today. That is it’s something various “Governments” did to populations for the likes of “ethnic cleansing” looking up the Russian word “pogrom” will give a clear indicator.

[2] It’s interesting to note that the “tools of propaganda” are nearly always the same it’s how the “Directing Mind” uses the technology that decides the type of propaganda. To see this look up the history of the “Aspidistra Transmitter” near Crowborough in South East England. In WWII it was used for “Black Propaganda” then after WWII for “White Propaganda” as part of the “BBC World Service”. As we now know UK politicians tried to forced the “World Service” first from White to Grey propaganda as this got considerable push back from the BBC and was mostly unsuccessful the right wing authoritarian party in the UK forced the “World Service” to be shut down. Which was about as stupid as “dum as a stump” authoritarian nutf4ckery gets. Because now we need to put out White Propaganda to not just war torn areas but the voting citizens where the communications infrastructure is either destroyed or in effect “In the hands of the enemy” “Our voice can nolonger be heard where it needs to be heard”… Entirely predictable and was, but got “shouted down” by the “Dum as a stumpers” who amongst other things enabled the Falklands War over four decades ago.

Winter • March 2, 2024 6:38 AM

@Clive

Many think rabbits are cute, especially bunnies… However on acquiring them as pets for their own “wee ones” they discover the awful truth

What awful truth?

We had rabbits as kids and we did not even raise an eyebrow for it. We also knew how dogs look at cow manure. We never saw a problew with it.

And we were city kids. You are too sensitive.

And I won’t start about kids riding and caring for horses.

echo • March 2, 2024 7:31 AM

Deleting that post about governance under Sunak was a bit stupid. It was foundational to later items. Just because something doesn’t have a CPU in it or involve military stuff doesn’t mean it’s not security and I’ve previous cited policies with “security” in the title to illustrate this.

Anyway, honing in on the “culture war”.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1872869/Lee-Anderson-fundraiser-Liz-Truss

Lee Anderson was welcomed with a standing ovation at a Tory Party fundraiser this evening, in a sign the party faithful want him readmitted to the party.
Mr Anderson made a surprise appearance at a dinner raising money for Bassetlaw MP Brendan Clarke-Smith, where Liz Truss was billed as the guest of honour.
The former party chairman’s appearance was a “complete surprise” to the assembled members, although they welcomed him rapturously when he entered the room.

And:

https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/originals/conversion-therapy-ban-billl-uk/

In 2018, the government vowed to eradicate so-called ‘conversion therapy’ for the first time. Six years later, LGBTQIA+ people are still waiting for a ban to actually materialise. “I believe that this government has lost the trust, respect and frankly, votes of the vast majority of the LGBT community as a result,” says Jayne Ozanne, a campaigner and ‘conversion therapy’ survivor who has been a longtime proponent of a ban. “It will take a generation, if not longer, for them to rebuild trust because no one believes they’ve got their best interests at heart.”

This is not a surprise to anyone. Behind Sunak’s “uptalk” the Tories have a deliberate strategy of weaponising human rights for votes. I have zero objection to sound immigration policy and safeguarding. What I object to is unlawful, calculated, and persistent abuse of human rights. Citizens should not be scared of their government.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/feb/29/met-police-should-never-have-employed-wayne-couzens-report-finds

Police should never have employed Wayne Couzens, report finds
Official report finds new and worse failures to spot danger of officer who kidnapped and murdered Sarah Everard

Tory reforms have pretty much made everything worse. Doing away with committees and replacing them with Police and Crime Commissioners politicised governance and destroyed institutional knowledge.

I know from personal experience how bad the police are institutionally at every level. Off the top of my head I’d estimate I have ten pages of detailed logs and there’s at least a dozen formal external documents and media reports linked. To say they’re aggressively walled off from accountability and reform is an understatement. Knowing all this I thought I’d give it another try and see if they could get a sexual harassment case right. Fully evidenced including CCTV and witness and I even did the legal research and pointed out the exact Crown Prosecution Policy they needed to follow plus time sensitive and safeguarding issues. Nope. They totally bungled it. I didn’t even bother with the next case which, I kid you not, as I avoided location one ended up getting felt up at location two. Yes, the man who did this did go to jail but that was for another separate charge brought by another woman.

Nobody apart from me here cares. Like, when I said police were turning a blind eye to trafficked women being abused nobody raised an eyebrow. Less than two weeks later the Met were able to plant an article in the media buffing their reputation and claiming they were taking concerns seriously. In spite of Tory laws which have rights stripped trafficked women the police have nothing to say. Again, nobody here gave a shit.

It’s worse than this as there are avoidable deaths caused by the police being negligent. And yes there is a paper trail proving this.

And now Sunak wants to go full “miner’s strike” on citizens??

I’ve got a video where a senior police officer is detailing how they handle large protests. It’s a top down technocratic view. Like, a repeat run of the De Menezes shooting only this time at scale.

Security without human rights is not security.

echo • March 2, 2024 8:06 AM

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/feb/29/taxation-worlds-billionaires-super-rich-g20-brazil

‘A historic step’: G20 discusses plans for global minimum tax on billionaires.

Leaders gather in Brazil to explore solutions to hypermobile super-rich avoiding tax.

And:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js9tVxYyH18
Libertarianism Just Doesn’t Work

How can you have your thumb on the scale when you have no thumbs?

Which leads neatly into this:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/26/more-women-may-be-psychopaths-than-previously-thought-says-expert

More women may be psychopaths than previously thought, says expert

Dr Clive Boddy says assessment skews towards obvious male traits but female psychopathy is more subtle

Criminology and gender studies are two developing and intertwined fields. You also have to take into account how organisations work: they’re made up of domains, lawyers, and networks. You also need an eye on social policy and education and safeguarding policy.

This work does make a very useful point. I am a bit concerned though. If psychs get too carried away there might be problems. Medical harm and medical misogyny are things and in the UK at least there are huge problems with mental health services and women’s health. Conditions can go undiagnosed for decades, women are not listened to because of medical arrogance, and anxiety through to BPD are used to pigeon hole women who are “problem patients” i.e. women don’t like not being taken seriously and don’t like misogynistic doctors messing them around, and don’t like the medical equivalent of being given a black eye for advocating for their own health.

I’m interested in prevention and public policy with a mitigating effect so the impact of “bad actors” is diluted. The current far right Tory government has done nothing but make everything worse.

Clive Robinson • March 2, 2024 8:26 AM

@ Winter,

“And we were city kids. You are too sensitive.”

It’s not the kids that care, all they have to learn is two things,

1, How to attend to the needs
2, How to feel love and compassion

Which mostly they instinctively do it’s the “applied” mechanics that need to be learned.

It’s the parents that fear for their children that are the sensitive ones, not the children untill they are between six and twelve when the adult prejudices are instilled in the formative minds.

As for me being sensitive, not really as I’ve mentioned before I have helped with the slaughter of the family pig of relatives who had farms when coming up for six years. Also the splitting and cooking of pigs heads with my mother to make brawn and the prep of pigs feet for smoking and honey glazing. And with in a couple of years later being a large lad helped with the actual basic butchery to turn a warm carcass into cold joints, chitterlings thence to bungs by brining and filling to make puddings and sausages. And still I practice charcuterie these days as an autumnal practice more than half a century later. A well fattened and thoughtfully slaughtered pig will put meat and both sweet and savoury puddings on the table for a family for most of a year. But… The one thing you learn about pigs that is “when allowed to” they are,

1, very clean living
2, very social
3, very useful in basic agriculture
4, very useful in waste disposal
5, quite intelligent and curious
6, mostly friendly and protective

As well as tasting nice…

If you have rough ground covered in brambles etc it’s a lot of hard work to get to the point of being used for agriculture. Send in the goats to get rid of the brambles, then send in the pigs to clear out the roots and turn the soil over. Your heavy lift then is reduced to moving the shelters for the goats and pigs and providing them with tasty treat scraps and importantly entertainment for their curious minds.

Winter • March 2, 2024 10:37 AM

@Clive

The one thing you learn about pigs that is “when allowed to” they are,

I do not understand how pigs are relevant to keeping rabbits. But I agree about pigs, that’s why I do not eat them.

Clive Robinson • March 2, 2024 11:11 AM

@ Winter,

Re : You care for what you eat.

“I do not understand how pigs are relevant to keeping rabbits”

They are both “live stock” that are kept “penned in / caged” and in the UK historically cared for by the younger members of the family.

It’s where the idea of pets came from, they were either livestock destined for the table, or working animals destined for the nackker man and becoming dog food and glue etc.

They also were a valuable life lesson for children about familial love and the human condition, as well as cold hard realism in “tooth and claw” (or more correctly knife and fork).

Whilst bits of pink on white plastic trays under shrink wrap may be the modern reality of meat, and about as far divorced of it’s true origins as you can get. The meaning of “welfare” and “mutual dependence” symbiotically of man and animal is almost entirely lost. This causes significant problems with “NIMBY” types and multiples from generation to generation

I would love to have a pet again, but it’s not about me but the animals welfare. I’m not a well individual and I’m immuno compromised (which I try to ignore). But having had a blood clot the size of the end of your thumb blocking up my heart very shortly after receiving a vaccine and nearly dying in the hospital several times you kind of get a message. It would be unfair on the animal. Having in the past fostered other orphaned pets I know that the animals do not just miss their deceased owners but suffer a grief process as they come to terms with the new realities of their existence.

Pets are for the love and joy of the young, the comfort, companionship, and health of adults, but also the concern for those around older members of the family or social circle.

Clive Robinson • March 2, 2024 11:27 AM

@ Winter, ALL,

Re : Ghana bill and US religion

I think you know my views on the dangers of religion especially the authoritarian almost cult types.

They are without doubt the same “burn the witch” types that are by their own definitions “never good enough” thus have to invent new sins to be pious about, and thus flagellate themselves and bribe or beat others.

The question people should ask themselves is what actual danger am I in from group XXX as opposed to the religious whip hand fascists?

Most of the time XXX is of no danger and often quite the opposite.

Religion is a form of delusion some people are prone to, their id tells them they are bad / unworthy / etc, which makes them very vulnerable to certain authoritarian types who benefit greatly from the vulnerable.

As I point out only half jokingly,

“Man made gods in his own image”

Thus the type of religion says much about the worshipers.

echo • March 2, 2024 11:39 AM

The Uganda operation was pretty bad. Wagner are also stamping all over central Africa and feeding coups. One hand washes the other.

Speaking of genocidal types S.P.E.C.T.R.E (Special Programme for Exposure and Containment and Tracking and Reconnaissance of Extremists) agent number five had eyes on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0WFA6zswnY
Trans person infiltrates CPAC (Part 1).

Cover story? Disguises? Surveillance? Social engineering? Exfiltration? What’s not to like?

After the first few minutes she shifts to content with the odd security related action or observation scattered through the video. Her political commentary is on point although anyone familiar with the subject matter will already know it so this is a hard skip if you don’t want to watch that part of the content.

When someone says “We’ve got people everywhere”, you expect it to be hyperbole! Lots of people say that. Florists use that expression. It doesn’t mean that they’ve got somebody working for them inside the bloody room!

M, Quantum of solace.

Well, I thought it was funny.

lurker • March 2, 2024 12:25 PM

@Winter, Clive Robinson

There’s no place for squeamishness if you can’t cobble up in your lab something more efficient than pigs and chickens at converting stuff humans can’t or won’t eat, into useful animal protein.

Winter • March 2, 2024 12:26 PM

@Clive

Thus the type of religion says much about the worshipers.

My point completely.

People select a god that let’s them do what they already want to do and who punishes them for what they already want to be punished for. People murder, pillage, rape, and abuse in the name of a god they created in their own image.

Many a crime has been, and still is, justified as God’s command. But in the end, you cannot hide behind “God”. Everyone is responsible for their own actions.

My question to any true believer is:
God appears to you, as real as you can wish, and He/She commands you to take an assault riffle, go to a kindergarten, and kill all the children. Would you do it?[1]

The answer will reveal a lot about the person.

[1] This was basically what God asked of Abraham, to sacrifice his child. God seems to have been displeased with Abraham’s response. God never spoke to Abraham again. Something the Christian tradition never mentions.
‘https://www.rutgers.edu/news/exploring-ultimate-sacrifice-gods-command-abraham-sacrifice-his-son

Winter • March 2, 2024 12:45 PM

@lurker

There’s no place for squeamishness if you can’t cobble up in your lab something more efficient than pigs and chickens

I am well aware of that. But until it is absolutely necessary, I would rather not. [1]

[1] ‘https://www.history.com/news/miracle-andes-disaster-survival

lurker • March 2, 2024 12:57 PM

Why do courts allow to be admitted a evidence

a) printouts of emails without the complete verifying headers; and

b) screenshots of anything?

a) has been a pet peeve of mine for over thirty years since I first saw it used. A recent case of b) has come to my notice, where the screenshots are alleged to be forgeries. I would have put them down at the least as hearsay.

‘https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/02/27/craig-wrights-own-legal-team-expose-more-potential-forgeries/

echo • March 2, 2024 1:09 PM

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/02/police-aggression-towards-gaza-march-observers-on-the-rise-in-uk-as-woman-says-officers-knocked-her-over

A 71-year-old legal observer has accused a group of police officers of deliberately knocking her over and leaving her bloodied and unconscious on the ground during a Gaza ceasefire protest in London.

And:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bmK8ytkETo&t=1220s
Is it time for Rishi to boot out Liz ‘deep state’ Truss? | The News Agents

This is a police explanation of their view of how they handle protest marches. It’s a very top down institutional view and lacks a broader context including unlawful behaviour by government ministers which create the cause for and environment for encouraging the protests as a response. It also lacks a statement of the actual objective risks and panders somewhat to institutional empire building and inefficiency.

The police have a nasty habit of punching down not up. No arrests of government ministers for Brexit fraud or the rise in hate crime or the Tories looting the country. Not a peep on maybe we shouldn’t play a part in genocide or war crimes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOjSCZYU9Qo
Bizarre ‘North Korean-style’ escort for Rishi Sunak’s motorcade in London

In contrast this was outright embarrassing. What were they thinking? Then there’s Sunak using a helicopter for everything like a Poundshop Bond villain.

Sorry for the “Breitbart Lite” Telegraph link.

Raven • March 2, 2024 1:24 PM

More women may be psychopaths than previously thought, says expert

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/26/more-women-may-be-psychopaths-than-previously-thought-says-expert

echo • March 2, 2024 1:53 PM

Before I forget it’s Women’s History Month. The theme this year is “Women Who Advocate for Equity, Diversity & Inclusion”.

Clive Robinson • March 2, 2024 1:56 PM

@ lurker, Winter,

Re : Nobody does it better…

“if you can’t cobble up in your lab something more efficient than pigs and chickens at converting stuff humans can’t or won’t eat, into useful animal protein.”

I’ve mentioned that decades ago I wrote a paper called

“The economies of death”

Three main points,

1, Research had narrow scope thus incorrect findings.
2, Insects or Rodents were the fastest converters, but ment millions of creature deaths per human life.
3, Blue Whales gave the minimum number of creature deaths for the maximum numbers of people fed.

Not exactly surprising except for the first one…

All to often in “green” or “environmental” solutions apples are not compared with apples, and scopes of coverage were different.

As an example energy to heat your home that starts at the well head and creates heat in your home.

The least lossy by a massive margin is to pipe the gas from well head to home where you then extract the heat energy in a catalytic burner and exhaust gas water heater.

The least efficient is to send gas to a power station close to the well head burn it conventionally to produce high pressure steam to drive turbines to drive generators to put in high loss distribution networks to finally arrive at a home to heat a resistor and inefficiently distribute the heat.

Price per kWH at the home for the two methods was different by six to one, in favour of gas distribution.

As a friend does they have both solar and wind, which whilst they cover the average day usage do not cover peak usage first thing in the morning or in the evening. For this they have a generator powered by natural gas. And with a little planning and timing the peak load on the generator stays inside of 3kW mostly.

As they note if they had more time in the morning all load would be sequentially optimized keeping the peak down to 2kW.

But either way the financial savings are immense.

The generator is an unusual CHP design that whilst producing electricity uses heat recovery from the exhaust and a two step heat storage loop and heat pump heating / hot water system. Put simply a high temperature mass storage system for heating and a lower temperature excess water “gravitic gradient” tank for hot water use on humans etc.

It’s difficult to explain without a diagram but simple in operation with very few moving parts.

JonKnowsNothing • March 2, 2024 2:17 PM

@ lurker, All

re:

Why do courts allow to be admitted a evidence

a) printouts of emails without the complete verifying headers; and

b) screenshots of anything?

In the USA, the rules vary by type of court but the principles are the same. It’s called Expert Testimony.

The judge may consider the witness’s specialized (scientific, technical or other) opinion about evidence or about facts before the court within the expert’s area of expertise, to be referred to as an “expert opinion”.

What happens practically, is that courts (generalized) accept the submission and statements of LEAs especially FBI ones, as being Truthful without Deceit.

So if an FBI agent says it is so, the courts go OK.

In some cases the defense can poke holes in the FBI narrative, but such lawyers cost a lot of money. Digging through layers and layers of FBI false documentation and false presentation requires counter-experts to sift though the garbage pile.

It can take decades of sifting to find the false narrative. Meanwhile the accused is convicted, sentenced, incarcerated, and sometimes executed before the false narrative is discovered.

Note: Have no worries about the LEA agents in this situation, they are perfectly OK with what they do, and how they do it. They have no qualms or remorse. For them, no matter what is found to the contrary, that person is guilty.

So, the FBI and LEAs in their evidence submissions claim they are authentic and that the item follows the standard evidence processing for the item in question.

iirc(badly) The FBI has some universal time method that they apply to all emails or computer file timestamps. It’s not the one ordinary people use but some conversion to an FBI Time Standard. This FBI Time Conversion is what you see on the evidence documents and submissions. How the FBI does this is not detailed.

vas pup • March 2, 2024 4:23 PM

@JonKnowsNothing thank you for input.
As I see: it should two absolutely different but a little overlapped standards for collection and usage evidence. For internal investigative usage by FBI and other LEAs: evidence are for future working out of prospective versions of the crime suspects, motive, you name it. Usage of technology for collecting such evidence is more relax than rules of collecting evidence for federal procedures and usage in the court. Meaning not ALL evidence collected could be presented to the court but still used by FBI/LEAs for internal investigative purpose (e.g.1023s,302s).
I guess that Congressional oversight of such evidence including information about confidential sources is relevant if and only if they OPENLY and CLEAR violate rights protected by US Constitution (Amendments in particular).
See, FBI/LEAs have two basically competitive tasks: preventing real crimes and providing evidence to accuse perpetrators in the court. The latter is more for prosecutors. So, when real violent crime with multiple casualties is about to be committed former should take the first place. Just my own opinion.

vas pup • March 2, 2024 4:41 PM

@Raven – thank you for the link. I want to read it without rush later.
Just for now: man and woman braid differ in wiring/connection of left and right part of the brain: woman has more connections between hemispheres plus hormonal cycle menstruation also affect general emotional background and difference in response. Moreover, pregnant woman is psychology kind of different person as she was before and required more patient and care of her emotional reactions.

@Clive on Musk and OpenAI (if I may add to what our Guru already posted 🙂
Elon Musk sues ChatGPT-maker OpenAI over Microsoft links
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68445981

“Elon Musk is suing OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, arguing it has breached the
principles he agreed to when he helped found it in 2015.

The lawsuit – which has also been filed against OpenAI boss Sam Altman – says the firm has departed from its original non-profit, open source mission.

It says instead of trying to “benefit humanity” – as it was set up to do – it is focusing on “maximizing profits” for major investor Microsoft.

The firm was created with the intention of building what’s known as artificial
general intelligence (AGI) – AI that can perform any task a human being is
capable of.

It was also set up as a not-for-profit company, meaning it would not aim to make money.

The lawsuit, which has been filed in San Francisco, states it was under these
conditions, that Mr Musk agreed to found OpenAI, along with Mr Altman and co-
founder Greg Brockman.

“This case is filed to compel OpenAI to adhere to the Founding Agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, not to

personally benefit the individual Defendants and the largest technology company in the world,” the lawsuit says.

“Its technology, including GPT-4, is closed-source primarily to serve the
proprietary commercial interests of Microsoft,” it says.

Microsoft’s initial $1bn backing of OpenAI in 2019 came shortly after the AI firm – previously operating as a non-profit – announced a new “capped profit”
structure which would allow investment in it.

Mr Musk’s lawyers say, among other desired outcomes of the lawsuit, they want
OpenAI to be ordered to continue making information relating to its AI
developments available to the public.”

My nickel: Microsoft try (as King Midas) with their touch to transform ANYTHING to profit (gold) but often the result is not gold but rather s#@t. Just opinion.

Bravo Musk! Support Your move on that absolutely.

Winter • March 2, 2024 4:50 PM

@Clive

“The economies of death”

Animals are pretty inefficient food producers. Fungi would be better. If it can be metabolized, fungi can do it. And they Need less energy to stay alive. Also, fungi can be made to produce a really large spectrum of stuff.

echo • March 2, 2024 5:05 PM

@Clive

Not only are you talking over me again but you’re leaving out supplemental material I noted. (I was the first to post btw.)

“Poison is a woman’s weapon of choice”

It’s not necessarily literal. Women can and do often use proxies. Women are also less direct. Women can also be overlooked as suspects because they are women. Women tend to indulge more in social violence often among other women. (The Times and Telegraph are full of it.) When women are violent or perceived to be violent men tend to either A.) Ignore it as women being silly or B.) Punish disproportionately.

It’s actually quite complicated and there’s very bad or polluted data. It’s really only a developing field of interest in criminology and gender studies in the past ten years as I have noted in the past.

A dated literature review indicates some degree of sociopathy in some people can be moderated by therapy and other helpful intervention.

I cannot rule out the endocrinological system playing a role alongside situational problems i.e. stimulation during the higher levels of oestrogen in the system during the period cycle causes behaviour associated with excitement to stick.

Something makes me think you won’t understand why I was so leery of the topic. I just knew someone would seize on it which is one reason why I was so circumspect and mentioned general healthcare and systemic issues in a hope to moderate discussion but no. Nobody took the hint.

You’re a man. It doesn’t effect you and medical stuff is already badly compromised because of a century of using the male model by default because women are “too complicated”. That is only just being dealt with and I do mean just and sometimes it goes backwards as well as forwards or is ignored or is ignored because “it’s too expensive”.

Can you just STOP being the expert in everything for once??

And if you DARE start slating autistic people again God help you.

Clive Robinson • March 2, 2024 6:40 PM

@ Winter,

“Animals are pretty inefficient food producers. Fungi would be better.”

As would bacteria.

The paper was written back in the early 1980’s mostly as a kick back to get certain lets say “tie dye” students to stop badgering every other day about the wonders of all plant diets.

It was clear to me having spent time in various farming communities that their arguments about land usage, certainly in the UK were wrong.

As has been indicated Avocados which are supposedly a “wholefood” can not be grown with sufficient density per unit of area of land to be even remotely effective as a entirely plant based food source.

The high intensity avocado growing in places like India are 100% reliant on animal waste products to have the soil sufficiently nutrient rich. To get these animal waste products needs land to produce feed for the animals which makes the whole avocado growing take up considerable more land and crops when included… Actually more land than the high intensity saves…

Nearly all arguments for plant based diets back then had equivalent “thumb on the scales” optimism.

A Prof who got to see the paper –one of the tie dyes was so incensed by what I’d written they took it to the Prof to find fault with it– tried to get it published. But none of the Journals would bite. Another academic took me aside and said of course it was not going to get published it was against the current mantra and I would be in effect committing academic suicide going against it (much like the nonsense with sugar good fat bad of Ancel Keys that’s killed probably 10’s of millions of people and made billions for the pharmaceutical industry).

The thing is sometimes the only crop that will realistically grow on land is not suitable for human consumption, but is suitable for herbivore consumption. In the UK it’s why we have sheep on hillsides and in summer cattle in the likes of water meadows.

But also not all climates are suitable for other types of crop. The likes of the Soy bean is problematical at best in this regard.

But worse some plants are full of poisons as you noted there’s very few plants humans can eat. Whilst others after significant processing can be eaten, which energy wise makes them a bad deal because of the land required to grow the energy source.

But goats for instance can eat a whole lot more as their tolerance for plant based poisons is over ten times that of humans, which is why they were used for chemical weapons testing (look up “goat clips”). So they will happily eat what we can not, whilst producing safe milk to drink and safe meat to eat. OK still not as good as growing land/climate plants we can eat.

But… Wheat was man’s first experiment in GMO’s some four thousand years ago using cross fertilisation rather than gene splicing of modern day “Franken-Foods”. But even so 2% of people are poisoned by some of it’s proteins whilst another 2% or so suffer other reactions so ~1 in 25 people can not eat wheat. Which has the secondary issue with regards the use of the Soy bean. As far as I’m aware only micro nutritionally poor polished white rice can be eaten by everyone. And whilst you hear “prepper talk” of stocking up on “Rice and beans”, “pasta or noodles” the simple fact is 2-8% of western people would be desperately ill or dead in three months on such diets.

Plus few have a handle on what whole foods that have low micro nutrient density cause as a consequence.

Farm labourers used to eat mostly wheat, but it was a valuable crop and potatoes only needed around a quarter of the land, so land lords forced potatoes onto both the Scots and the Irish, both of which got potato blight and thus famines and starvation, land clearance and permanent land usage changes.

What is less common knowledge is that a 1lb (454g) loaf provides most of the food requirements as far as carbs go as well as much of the micro nutrition a labourer needs, so the addition of animal fats…

However the labourer on potatoes alone needs around 14lb or 6.4kg of potatoes prior to cooking every day… Which is a lot to swallow at about a cubic foot and a lot of fuel to cook. Also potatoes unlike wheat grain needs a lot of storage space to last the year due to water content. So additional land set aside for “clamp” storage… As for planting, banking-up, and lifting potatoes that’s hard, back breaking, and slow, work…

echo • March 2, 2024 7:44 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwr27EjZWt0
Ukraine: German General’s Talk leaked – What did they say?

This call was an intercept of a dodgy wifi in a hotel in Singapore.

I skipped through this as I didn’t have the patience. It doesn’t much if anything anyone didn’t already know. Top down rote learned silo mentalities do their thing and that’s not new either.

The following notes are mine from memory of older material. The video may or may not add anything useful.

Stormshadow (UK), SCALP (France), and Taurus (Germany) are all variants of the same platform. Apparently the Taurus has a different fuse which makes it especially ideal for targeting bridges.

The UK has already done the work for creating an interface so Ukrainian assets can use Stormshadow (and possibly SCALP as it has been used in Ukraine). I have zero idea whether the interface is the same for all the variants or different. I also have zero idea as to the general platform differences whether specification wise or performance or use.

Post WII German foreign policy and intelligence has always been a bit wonky.

The main blocker to Ukraine getting Taurus is Scholz. Everyone else has signed off.

https://www.politico.eu/article/why-germany-scholz-rattled-sending-taurus-missile-ukraine/

Why Germany is rattled about sending its Taurus missile to Ukraine

The fuss about the Taurus is about its fuze — which makes it a bridge-killer.

I’m more annoyed the Germans have a fuse like that and we don’t.

Clive Robinson • March 2, 2024 8:19 PM

@ echo, Raven, vas pup,

“Not only are you talking over me again…”

Facts not in evidence, burden of proof of your accusation falls on you.

As for,

“You’re a man. It doesn’t effect you and medical stuff is already badly compromised because of a century of using the male model by default because women are “too complicated””

Actually you are again making an assumption, today whilst women are being used for studies, those that are “sinistré” (French of Latin for Left Handed) are not. As I’ve remarked before I’ve a friend who is a recognised expert in the subject and at a social event whilst casually chatting I asked why southpaws were disbarred from active studies. The three pun reply was “Because you lefties are not wired up right”. (Yes many see me as “a big soft lefty” as well as looking like “a cross between Karl Marx and a Klingon having a bad hair day”).

“Can you just STOP being the expert in everything for once??”

It is –if you had actually read what I had written you would know– something I’m actively researching for quite some time now, and the what and the why of it.

“And if you DARE start slating autistic people again God help you.”

You’ve already been called on this nonsense invention of yours. Just repeating it does not change the facts.

You’ve been told that as I am fully diagnosed as a high functioning person on the spectrum it’s not something I would do.

Or did you fail to understand the implication of that?

But as you are now doing the

“STOP being the expert”

I will point out I not only have unique insight most others do not, I also have insight from supporting others on the spectrum in learning and other activities.

Jelo 117 • March 2, 2024 8:40 PM

Today’s recursion https://xkcd.com/386/

Clive Robinson • March 2, 2024 10:48 PM

@ Winter, JonKnowsNothing,

Re : What about us?

You make two points,

1, farming animals is what gave us every plague we have

2, for fear of yet another epidemic that wipes out the animals.

But what about NOT wiping out us poor little humans?

More seriously, there is “antibiotic concern”.

It’s been known for a while that Big Agri has used antibiotics as “growth promoters” to fatten up livestock faster thus have more profit.

In Europe there was legislation saying that certain antibiotics should not be used on food destined live stock and all antibiotics and similar had to be stoped X weeks before slaughter to reduce the risk of

“The antibiotics of last resort getting nullified”

It appears that in some parts of the world “Business Trumps Sanity” and animals are getting shots of antibiotics just days before slaughter…

Sometimes we really are,

“Fools unto ourselves!”

(Just reserve me a seat in Hades, my creaky old bones need the warmth 😉

JonKnowsNothing • March 2, 2024 11:54 PM

@Clive, Winter, All

re: Big Agri and antibiotics

Farming, ranching growing has changed over the centuries. While the processes remain pretty much the same, the methods have changed.

It’s pretty hard to find a “real small farmer” in the USA, most are under contracts now or have a commodities contract for their harvest, outputs. So most are governed by Big Business, Big Pharma, Big Banks and there are competing demands for resources.

Owens valley farm water diverted to Beverly Hills swimming pools

Individual farmers rely on University Ag Specialists, Government Farm Bureau Advice, and Banks for Working Capital and Business Practice support.

Farmers do not invent the wheel, someone shows them a wheel and the farmer figures out how to use it.

Farmers globally rely on such advice, as their livelihoods depend on a crop or harvest. Most farmers like farming and they do not intentionally do bad stuff that will impact future harvests. What happens is that someone with a Big Name comes along and says “You can do this better if you do XYZ”.

Sometimes, it works or works for a while, then it’s found out that XYZ and the Big Name didn’t tell them everything. The result being Not Good.

This information is not generated by the farmer. It’s generated by Governments, Universities, Researchers, Scientists, and Bankers. The biggest impact comes from what YOU are willing to buy.

RL tl;dr

Antibiotics similar to

Zoetis Liquamycin LA-200 is a long-lasting, broad-spectrum antibiotic containing 200 mg oxytetracycline per ml. LA-200 swine and cattle antibiotics are effective in the treatment of a wide range of diseases, including pinkeye, footrot and pneumonia. These livestock antibiotics are or use in beef cattle, dairy cattle, calves, and swine.

Were provided to livestock ranchers as a “cure all” for common sicknesses. A single jab was helpful so you didn’t have to constantly corral up the animal (causing stress) and risk having illness spread within the herd.

So, ranchers would go to the livestock auction, where hundreds of cattle are milling about, coming from many locations and environments and buy animals for their herds.

Cattle are very susceptible to stress induced illnesses and shipping fever was a common problem. When the cattle got to their new destination the effects of stress and exposure to other cattle and transportation, they got sick. Repeated rounds of veterinarians, medicines, constant doctoring was required as the illness spread through the herd.

So this jab was used when the rancher was unloading the new members of the herd, every animal got a jab on the way out of the chute. No more scours.

But animals who get this injection are no longer permitted in Organic Cattle Herds. The animals that get jabbed are excluded and sold as Non Organic Beef since cattle in the Organic Cattle Industry cannot have antibiotics.

You either have a Sick Cow that gets vet care or you have a Sick Cow you hope gets better without treatment.

Farmers don’t make this category distinction; Big Business and Your Supermarket does.

If you are willing to pay extra $$ for No Jabs, a farmer will be willing to supply that for you. The farmer may lose a few cows due to No Treatment, but that’s what you are paying for.

===

ht tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars

ht tps://en.wikipe dia.org/wiki/Oxytetracycline#Veterinary_indications

Winter • March 3, 2024 4:13 AM

@Clive

But what about NOT wiping out us poor little humans?

I have to stop somewhere. Feeding 8 billion people meat does more to killing us all than what can be discussed in a single thread. So I picked the most urgent.

Bird flu is mass killing livestock and wild birds alike for more than a year now, and has jumped to mammals. Almost any human who gets it dies.

We are just waiting for the Big Jump.

Clive Robinson • March 3, 2024 6:30 AM

@ Winter, JonKnowsNothing, ALL,

Re : AB resistance build.

I’m going to respond backwards as it makes it quicker and easier on the brain.

“Bird flu is mass killing livestock and wild birds alike for more than a year now, and has jumped to mammals. Almost any human who gets it dies.”

Bird flu in various forms has been around for sometime now. The question of zoonotic transfer from live stock in Asia has been a significant concern it’s been discussed in quite some depth before here by you, @JonKnowsNothing, and myself over the years.

The big question is what actually kills the host to which the virus is novel.

In many cases it’s not actually the virus but secondary infection to opportunistic pathogens in the persons environment. With C19 there was in India outbreaks of “black mold” that was flesh eating and once established required radical surgery to excise from the body.

Similarly those with weakened immune systems get a respiratory virus they’ve previously had and then secondary bacterial infections get a toe hold…

The most likely secondary pathogen to kill you is bacterial giving rise to the likes of “blood poisoning”(sepsis)[1], “toxic shock”, and it’s sequeli “Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation”(DIC)[2] of either bleeding or organ failure. In the UK with a population of ~70million five people an hour –or ~44thousad a year or around 1 in 1600 of the population– die from sepsis and what follows.

So secondary bacterial infection is a significant risk.

Which if there is as you say “a big jump” then we do not need nearly all the antibiotics to have been rendered ineffective by the over use in farming which builds opportunistic bacteria immune to antibiotics.

@JonKnowsNothing has given one part of the argument from the other side.

But it can be seen that behind Big Agg is Big Phama behaving in a totally immoral way. No doubt they would argue as Corporations they are amorally doing their legal requirement of “Maximising ShareHolder Value”. Which is the sort of nonsense that arises in a hard capitalist system driven by neo-con mantras chanted by very self entitled MBAs etc trying to grab a big slice of profit from others pain, deaths, and misery of those that loved them, that they have caused by driving both the kill and by then the ineffective cure.

Thus how to break this encirclement of death the least problematical way. Which is as the EU started to do was limit what farmers could do.

What @JonKnowsNothing did not mention is that the cattle illness from transportation and in mega herds is a problem that predated antibiotics and had fairly simple remedies historically. Which are still practiced in the UK, it’s by using segregation and time.

When you buy new live stock you quarantine them in an entirely different part of the farm it makes them easier to treat if they do become sick. You also keep many small herds not one large herd on the farm. This works even with diseases for which there is no pill or potion. It also is required for “grass grazing” management to prevent over grazing and tred down etc.

Remember as I’ve indicated much UK farmland is pasture. Which because it is not suitable for growing anything else and humans can not eat what grows there, necessitates an intermediary step. The “natural” way is by four cloven hoof herbivores.

[1] Having had bacterially triggered sepsis three times in the past few years and remarkably survived very much against the odds it’s something I’m quite twitchy about,

https://sepsistrust.org/about/about-sepsis/

[2] More information about triggers and progression of Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation (DIC) syndrome, can be found at the NCBI Bookshelf website of PubMed of the NLC, in this quite readable “Update” article,

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6710154/

Winter • March 3, 2024 8:11 AM

@Clive

Bird flu in various forms has been around for sometime now.

New variant that behaves differently.

In many cases it’s not actually the virus but secondary infection to opportunistic pathogens in the persons environment.

C19 kills all by itself (pneumonia). Smallpox and flu also don’t need any bacterial help to kill.

echo • March 3, 2024 9:19 AM

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/day-life-failing-state-28742630

A day in the life of a failing state

What one day of emails from a government department told us about the state of the nation

I’ve been calling the UK a failing/rogue state for most of the past decade. There’s others who worked it out for themselves.

Separately, Professor Alice Roberts also totally rinsed Sunak for his speech calling for what is basically a multi-faith theocracy. I agree. The UK tradition of evolving a liberal society doesn’t not need the overinflated ego of the church hijacking it or those politicians who like to hide behind its cloak.

The government have also commissioned a review on a human rights sensitive issue reporting to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. They appointed a known flat earther on the topic. This is not the beginning of a journey but part of a planned endgame. Leading up to this there is also an earlier review for another department which is still ongoing and is largely opaque and is lacking some governance controls. This gimped review is being cherry picked and used as an excuse to force through unlawful none statutory guidance as part of a broader plan to influence public opinion and subvert parliament.

Coincidentally the UK has been peddling a UK-US-CAN international security treaty. But as I keep saying you can have all the tech security in the world but it means zero if there are governance and human rights issues. The US has already gimped NIST because “freedom of speech”. There you go. It’s right there. If you’re not screaming as loudly as when encryption was gimped you have a problem.

https://edri.org/our-work/the-digital-rights-lgbtq-technology-reinforces-societal-oppressions/

The digital rights of LGBTQ+ people: When technology reinforces societal oppressions

And this does rather illustrate the point.

It will escape almost everyone apart from historians and political philosophers but UK state doctrine and EU treaties are security policies. The Burkian doctrine of the state is and contained within its own definition a security policy. The treaties which formed the EU have security written into them as the core principle.

The US especially will not have technical security until it has governance and human rights security and I personally am fed up with this big overgrown child of a nation state not fixing its own problems. It’s also why the geopolitical structures are shifting. The US cannot rely on post-WWII neoliberal-military hegemony but then Russia and China et al at least as currently administered are not the solution either.

And this is why we end up with crap like this:

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/issue/cybersecurity/

In cyberspace, adversaries are growing more sophisticated and outpacing advancements in policy, education, and defense technologies. In an era of great-power competition, it is vital that policy makers and tech experts understand the underlying factors and motivations impacting the field of cybersecurity. With a focus on strategy and foresight, the Atlantic Council shifts attention from singular incidents to better understand larger cyber campaigns.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/the-5×5/the-5×5-the-internet-of-things-and-national-security/

The 5×5—The Internet of Things and national security

The actual important bit i.e. governance and human rights gets maybe 1-3 lines mention out of all of this so the whole thing is a pillar of top down silo mentality scrubbing around in the dirt of known knowns. Come back in ten years it will be the same people saying the same things as it could have been said ten years before that and ten years before that and, yes, it has been observed and said by, actually, the same people.

This is like people trying to fix a problem without checking whether the plug is in and switched on AND there is actually an electricity supply.

JonKnowsNothing • March 3, 2024 9:24 AM

@Clive, @Winter, All

re: Disease transmission in livestock and people

When any group of animals or people are clumped together, the chance of disease spread increases. Cities, corrals or cruise ship-livestock ships, cramp people and animals together. If anyone is sick, others get sick too.

Farmers know this very well. They do not, as a rule, just dump out new members of a herd or flock into an existing herd. They practice recommended procedures to prevent introduction of illnesses, like isolation for a period of time to observe if any of the new animals get sick.

The antibiotic (in previous post) is used to prevent the new animals from getting sick to start with. It reduces the time needed for isolation. Cattle are herd animals, they do not like to be isolated from other cows. Horses survive isolation imposed by humans, but they have a natural group preference too.

The antibiotic does not prevent all illnesses. Antibiotics do not work against viruses.

When trying to dissect the Farm-to-Table problem, it’s pretty difficult to do it Top Down. Even at the farm level, it’s not straight forward, as there are many types of farms, may types of ranches, many different styles of management and animal welfare.

Farmers do not make much money from sick cows.

Within the entire system, whether is plant or orchard harvests to raising livestock there are many different actors in the path to your dinner plate. They each interact like puzzle pieces. You may know what the picture is supposed to look like but you may not know all the pieces in the box.

Large scale farming is not the same as having a backyard pig or a few hens for eggs. When you deal with hundreds or thousands or ten thousand animals on a daily or weekly bases, the pieces are often hard to separate.

Consider: Live animal shipping by sea.

Australia (and others) ship a huge number of live animals by giant cargo freighters to the Middle East and Africa. These ships hold thousands of animals that are packed in so tightly they cannot move and have to endure weeks at sea. Food and water are optional. Sometimes they arrive at their destination alive. Many will die in transit. Once they are off loaded at the distination port they are split up and sold off. Many will be slaughtered immediately.

The rhetorical question is WHY?

Are the Aussie farmers stupid? Are they ignorant of the disease transmission issues when cramping and mingling animals from different herds? Are they oblivious to what happens to the animals that they raised from birth and produced from years of good livestock management?

The folks putting the lamb on the BBQ in Middle East and Africa are part of the explanation, since they are paying for all of this. This is what they want. This is what they buy. They pay for the cramped shipping and the no treatment, no food, no water and the 40C temps inside the boats.

Antibiotics do not prevent viruses. Cruise ships are Petri dishes for people. Livestock ocean transport is a Petri dish for animals.

Winter • March 3, 2024 10:31 AM

@JonKnowsNothing

The folks putting the lamb on the BBQ in Middle East and Africa are part of the explanation, since they are paying for all of this.

Part of the explanation is Halal&Kosher meat. They really want to slaughter the animals themselves.

JonKnowsNothing • March 3, 2024 11:32 AM

@Winter, @Clive, All

re: Part of the explanation is Halal&Kosher meat. They really want to slaughter the animals themselves.

Precisely so.

Every group and culture has a “reason” behind the food choices they make. It’s easy to blame the farmer for those choices. It’s much harder to point out that the choices people make, adds to the Capital Market Decision for what gets grown and sold.

So the decision of people in Middle East and Afrika, drive the poor livestock management of the animals transported there.

There are rules and laws in Australia and New Zealand about live animal transport. In practice once at sea, in international water, those laws do not apply.

In the Farm to Table problem, back tracking from own-slaughter of sheep in Afrika, through an ocean transport system, livestock sales system, livestock ranching sector, Big Pharma, Big Banks, Big Ag, all have their place in the puzzle.

Folks may have noticed the phenomena of Tractors in the City. It’s global in scope. The reasons are similar although the products or livestock problems will be different.

It would be a prudent undertaking to understand why. There is not a Simple Simon answer.

&ers • March 3, 2024 1:58 PM

@ALL

No further details at the moment.

hxxps://news.err.ee/1609270680/cyber-incident-at-security-firm-hansab-banking-services-working-in-estonia

SID OLUFS • March 3, 2024 3:27 PM

Hi, folks,
On a zoom meeting of a worldwide Buddhist sangha, the following chat message popped up:

“Avril’s otterpilot
Hi, I’m an AI assistant helping Avril Stanley takes notes for this meeting. Follow along the transcript here…… (something from https://otter.ai/u etc)
You’ll also be able to see screenshots of key moments, add highlights, comments, or action items to anything being said, and get an automatic summary after the meeting.”

Opinions? An innocent interpretation might be there is an Avril Stanley and Avril wants to make a contribution. Less innocent is an AI learning engine that wants to expand its expertise and vocabulary. There are nefarious interpretations possible, as well.

Interested in what readers of this blog think.

Sid

Winter • March 3, 2024 4:44 PM

@JonKnowsNothing

Folks may have noticed the phenomena of Tractors in the City.

Complicated indeed, but one factor is that farmers are the least consolidated parties in the agricultural production chain and so they left with the breadcrumbs and can hardly make ends meet. They are squeezed between banks, Agri industry, and supermarket chains.

Obviously, farmerd cannot protest too hard against the parties that squeeze them, so they protest the rest of society to externalize costs (more air and water pollution, more water consumption and soil erosion, more subsidies). But any profit gains for the formers will quickly flow to the other parties in the agri industry.

pup vas • March 3, 2024 5:29 PM

Ask Microsoft: Are you using our personal data to train AI?
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/microsoft-ai/

=We had four lawyers, three privacy experts, and two campaigners look at Microsoft’s new Service Agreement, and none of our experts could tell if Microsoft plans on using your personal data – including audio, video, chat, and attachments from 130 products, including Office, Skype, Teams, and Xbox – to train its AI models.

If nine experts in privacy can’t understand what Microsoft does with your data, what chance does the average person have? That’s why we’re asking Microsoft to say if they’re going to use our personal data to train its AI.=

Microsoft is very sly company with zero trust to everything they do.

Clive Robinson • March 3, 2024 5:47 PM

@ Winter, JonKnowsNothing, ALL,

Re : Simple is as simple does, complex is hedge to hide behind.

“Part of the explanation is Halal&Kosher meat. They really want to slaughter the animals themselves.”

It’s much wider than that and it’s a malignant part of a minority of humans.

Put simply it’s the same “Machismo-Man” nonsense Putin and other “strong-men” moronic but vasically cowardly authoritarians want to enjoy with staged “I’m a hero” style nonsense.

Put simply they want to wallow in “blood and guts” but are always to cowardly to meet an equal so they stage it.

So for them in the modern age it’s bring the “enforced idiots to the party rallies”, in earlier times the “compelled faithful to the church”. For the vainglory of the leaders via what are originally “Blood Rituals” organised as “spectaculars” to “bring forth the beast” only we call them “show trials” and similar today. They are nothing to do with justice but control of the masses through fear by public display of pain.

But worse, in all this there is the compulsory “child abuse” of normalisation by indoctrination whilst the young childs mind has no defences. For those that try to break away there is the leadership dictated mental torture of ostracism and enforced privation, or show trial.

We’ve discussed this just a little while back with regards “Banishment” and “Excommunication” that few actually understand these days, except by the reports on “cults”. But political entities of a certain type “get off” on this so are avidly seeking to do the same through enforced electronic communications And so the control of infrastructure such as your ability to hold exchangeable worth/value stored safe from them (think what bank/debit/credit cards are compared to cash[1]). Likewise the basic necessities of heat/light/water that come via utilities (think what Smart Meters and remotely controlled white/brown goods give them compared to quite common ways of less than half a century ago[1]).

Those who sensibly don’t want to be stage managed by such faux-nonsense get subjected to sneak attacks of “Might is Right” authoritarian followers in the dead of night etc, some become the disappeared, for others it is worse. The authoritarian followers that do this as “guard labour” are basically “Dark Pentad” types that are by definition mentally deficient. That is they lack the qualities that make humans the success they are in building equitable and open societies. For such people to be like this is often surprisingly to others that are not similarly mentally deficient. Often they mistake the drivers, because actually it is not about money and power –they are just tools– but about status and control and through those the ability to inflict pain and suffering, hence the blood rituals.

To try to hide this, the leaders claim it’s complex implying it is beyond your comprehension and that they can not be held responsible. Mostly it’s not at all complex and what complexity there is usually falls to a “divide and conquer” process that brings it to non complex simple systems amenable to analysis, understanding and reasoned control.

Where you see those providing solutions claim “it’s complex” and they arm wave, it often means that they are actually selling “snake oil” by which they benefit but you loose.

Take a good look at AI specifically LLM and ML technology, it’s “complexity” is actually not complexity but simplicity scaled up. Each individual part is simple and fully understandable and likewise the interaction between the vast number of parts are understandable and amenable to certain types of mathematics. It’s why we know that AGI is actually snake oil as is AI currently. And that “complexity” is being used to hide the fact that it’s become a “Bubble Market” based on “Pump and Dump” techniques to separate those who have an excess of wealth from it via basic old fashioned Con Artist techniques.

The trick to finding working solutions to alleged complex issues is to find the choke points of control and thus be able to control the system no matter how it scales.

Putin knew that selling cheap energy would get people addicted, it’s what drug dealers do. He also knew that no matter how complex and massively scaled the Nations energy infrastructure was, there was a simple choke point of control, which was the gas tap he ensured he had control over, thus had nearly full leverage to control the Nation.

Farming is in essence no different. What you see for instance is the centralisation of abattoirs that then give both corporates and governments “choke points” of control. I use it as an example because it is easy to see. But farming has lots of these choke points of control, and if you look carefully you can see corporations snd governments amalgamating them thus increasing their ability to control both the farmers and consumers for their “benefit” that would otherwise not be there.

As the old saying has it,

“There is strength in diversification”

It’s actually one of, if not the most fundamental, rule of nature that gives us evolution, thus resilience.

Beneath it, is the chaos of a myriad of independent entities or parts. However as with Brownian motion and similar, if you apply bounds as choke points, at the right places the system is amenable to easy if not trivial control.

Such control if used as “fitness functions” in essence gives you “evolution”. The system moves in the chosen direction and out of chaos comes the order of coherence. Stochastic becomes apparently
intelligible at some lower level (but lacks the higher levels that give rise to reason and science[2]).

[1] Basically cash is stored value you hold, plastic is an authentication token for access to your value that they hold and control. They stop access and no matter how much stored value you think you have they’ve taken it away from you. Likewise access to light and heat from the flick of a switch is accessed by the controlled Smart Meter and controlled devices. In the past that you used to control via gas,oil,wood etc as stored energy under your control not their forces of “suasion” that are part of the “Guard Labour” defending the leaders not the people. We’ve seen this with Putin “turning off the Gas” in the middle of winter for political control of other Nations leaders, it’s something Germany had to learn the hard way just recently and quite a few of the smarter Germans have woken up to this, sadly others have not and blame their own politicians…

[2] I’ve gone through this in bits explaining how LLMs are in reality just DSP systems seeking what is a form of resonance but with increasing complex multidimensional spectrums based on large vector spaces. LLM’s are “matched filters” and ML makes them “adaptive matched filters”. What is missing from this explanation so far is the “fitness functions” and how they are derived. For true intelligence to be possible the AI has to be able to fundamentally work out desirable fitness functions to do this it has to be able to fully independently come up with goals. It can in our physical world only do that with independent physical agency and the ability to measure and asses multidimensional objects with freedom and agency in multidimensional spaces.

&ers • March 3, 2024 6:18 PM

@ALL

hxxps://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68457087

hxxps://www.dw.com/en/germany-confirms-bugging-of-bundeswehr-ukraine-war-talks/a-68424687

1&1~=Umm • March 3, 2024 6:40 PM

Hawaiian Punch:

The drink or the game?

ResearcherZero • March 3, 2024 9:22 PM

@Clive Robinson

How dare you cast aspersions in the direction of such a reputable outlet as “The Daily”!

They even included an image of a little man in a boat so that you would know where to direct your frustrations. At least these people are doing their bit:

‘https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-02-cdc-gastrointestinal-sickness-luxury-cruise.html

[pauses to scratch anus while waiting at the buffet]

685 million cases worldwide, causing around 200,000 deaths. 200 million cases among children under 5 years. Producing roughly 21 million cases of vomiting and diarrhea in the U.S. alone, with more than 450,000 emergency room visits annually due to such cases. About 1 in every 15 people will be infected by the norovirus in the US this year.

(up to 48 hours for symptoms to appear, infectious for up to two weeks)

‘https://www.cruisemapper.com/wiki/1056-cruise-ship-norovirus-outbreaks

[coughs into hands and again scratches anus]

At least those of us with enough money can afford to be good and useful “weapons”, and are just getting started at spreading the latest Covid variant from port to port. La di da.

(the latest strain, at least anecdotally, seems to be making some quite ill) 😷

May better evade the immune system and could be more contagious due to extra spike.
https://www.today.com/health/coronavirus/jn-1-covid-variant-symptoms-rcna129344

[sound of sewerage line exploding somewhere within the ship due to fecal blockage]

Oh good, the line to the buffet is moving again… service à la française!

–

newstoday[.]com

‘https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/news-farm-impersonates-60-plus-major-outlets-bbc-cnn-cnbc-guardian/

–

Tailored messaging campaigns orchestrated and funded by the Kremlin are targeting governments and regions abroad. If such messages are picked up and legitimised by mainstream press or political figures, it can result in large dividends.

‘https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/undermining-ukraine-how-russia-widened-its-global-information-war-in-2023/

“Such collaboration is not limited to the amplification of pro-Russian narratives—in fact, campaigns which boost local authoritarian narratives may be of greater concern for democracies. These efforts may include ideological support, technical assistance, direct amplification, and funding.”

‘https://www.ned.org/deepening-the-response-to-authoritarian-information-operations-in-latin-america/

miniature spider “Russaphobia” cameras

“Look how your Bene Gesserit propaganda has taken root.”

https://dfrlab.org/2024/02/21/pro-russia-network-spreads-propaganda-and-disinfo-in-latin-america/

–

“The collaboration between private firms like Haimai and the Chinese government underscores the growing sophistication of Chinese influence operations.”

‘https://www.thestockdork.com/report-identifies-more-than-100-chinese-websites-imitating-local-news-sources-across-30-nations/

Mimicking local news outlets in 30 different countries:

“Ephemeral disinformation is designed to elude detection. With the evidence disappearing from the source websites not long after having been published. At the same time, the seeded message could be picked up and amplified by mainstream or social media, making the narrative stay even if the original source had been removed.”

“A volume of this magnitude points to the possibility that the process was automated.”

Times Newswire also uses a simple WordPress template as its main structure. Additionally, it utilizes the same page builder plugin (WPBakery) used by PAPERWALL.

https://citizenlab.ca/2024/02/paperwall-chinese-websites-posing-as-local-news-outlets-with-pro-beijing-content/

The websites hosted on those domains were all similar in structure, layout, and content, with generic political, crime, and entertainment articles interspersed with a relatively high amount of news related to China, or even directly derived from Chinese news organizations.

‘https://decode39.com/8109/network-fake-china-news-websites-italy/

ResearcherZero • March 3, 2024 10:03 PM

human exhaled bio-aerosols in buildings

‘https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1285393/full

Approximately 75% is made up of water. Although this differs from person to person, around 25-54% of the organic material is made up of microbes, such as bacteria and viruses.

“Vegetarians have a higher water content in their stools. Those who consume less fibre and more protein have a lower water content. Fibre has a high water-carrying ability and makes our stools more bulky, increases the frequency of bowel movements and makes the process of passing bowel motions easier.”

‘https://theconversation.com/your-poo-is-mostly-alive-heres-whats-in-it-102848

Fresh air has long been seen as a key to dealing with bacteria and viruses.

“The tiny droplets that carry the virus can not only remain suspended in the air for more than eight minutes, they can also travel several metres.”

‘https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54599593

JonKnowsNothing • March 3, 2024 11:51 PM

@Winter, All

re: one factor is that farmers are the least consolidated parties in the agricultural production chain and so they left with the breadcrumbs and can hardly make ends meet

In the Farm to Table problem, dissecting this aspect of farming creates a whole new layer showing how precarious the entire modern farming system is.

A MSM report claimed some “new farmers” were going to avoid the Factory Farm Model, because they don’t raise livestock.

So the question is: Is it even possible to avoid the Factory Farm Model?

Technically, unless these folks are very able subsistence farmers, retaining knowledge long lost to modern humans who have a modern education, the answer is NO.

It is not just the process on the visible aspect of farming but descends right into the microbial layers of dirt. The dirt we don’t pay too much attention to until it becomes toxic.

Everything depends on the dirt. Everything. Our entire existence depends on the dirt. But dirt is not just dirt, there’s a whole lot of things that make it up. Things taken out, things put in, things mixed together.

What is under the topsoil is inert. It won’t grow anything.

There’s only 10 inches of topsoil on the planet and not every location has viable topsoil.

Gives eating a baked potato or having a packet of french fries a whole new perspective.

===

ht tps://en.wiki pedia.org/wiki/Top_soil

Topsoil is the upper layer of soil. It has the highest concentration of organic matter and microorganisms and is where most of the Earth’s biological soil activity occurs.
Topsoil is composed of mineral particles and organic matter and usually extends to a depth of 5-10 inches (13–25 cm).

ResearcherZero • March 4, 2024 3:10 AM

@JonKnowsNothing

We are running out of water on one of our blocks, which has always had water. So every day someone has to drive all the way there to check the pump and back (about 120km).

Average rainfall here has decreased by 28%. In some countries the decline is double that.

There is so much topsoil blowing away in summer during plowing it looks like smoke from a wildfire. Future rainfall projections for the wheat belt show a strong declining trend.

“because of their ancient and weathered nature, Australian agricultural soils are particularly susceptible to degradation processes such as erosion, compaction, salinization, acidification, and contamination, which ultimately lead to fertility loss, desertification”

‘https://theconversation.com/australias-soils-are-notoriously-poor-heres-how-scientists-are-working-to-improve-them-216640

–

Timothy Burke charged for embarrassing Fox News and Tucker Carlson with material found in public sources.

‘https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/journalist-timothy-burke-indicted-federal-conspiracy-charge-rcna140061

“Hacking is not simply obtaining information that someone would rather you not.”

The seizures also caused Burke to be locked out of his email, social media, banking and other important accounts. According to Rasch, federal prosecutors asked that Burke waive his Fifth Amendment rights and provide the passcode to his cellphone so it could be cloned. Burke refused.
https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/fbi-raids-home-office-of-independent-journalist-on-hacking-allegations/

–

“You can avoid being pilloried, but only if you either play the game with those who wield the power, or are too stupid to understand the game being played.”

‘https://www.salon.com/2024/02/24/joe-biden-gives-the-media-a-desperately-needed-lesson-about-donald/

At least 30 journalists and news organizations were summoned into courtrooms to identify their source or turn over reporting materials.
https://pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/members-of-the-press-charged-with-committing-acts-of-journalism-in-2023/

Reporters should be in prison remarked Trump: “These people should be executed. They are scumbags.”

‘https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-asked-chinas-xi-to-help-him-win-reelection-according-to-bolton-book/2020/06/17/d4ea601c-ad7a-11ea-868b-93d63cd833b2_story.html

Taking the freedom of the press for granted is a sure way to lose it.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-politico-reporter-jail-truth-social-b2266340.html

ResearcherZero • March 4, 2024 3:17 AM

‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-04/penny-wong-warns-against-conflict-tensions-south-china-sea/103543328

(Warning: Facetious use of aeronautical themes)

No longer an option to turn off automated functions – such as MCAS – without also turning off the thumb buttons used to control the stabilizer.

“I’m very pessimistic,” says the Naval War College’s Goldstein. “Getting back to normal would be very difficult”

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/23/959683134/what-trumps-declassified-asia-strategy-may-mean-for-u-s-china-relations-under-bi

GregW • March 4, 2024 8:47 AM

@Winter
Re:Abraham It’s hard to reconcile the notion that Abraham failed the test and God never spoke to Abraham again with a) the fact he is described as spoken to a “second time” after the sacrifice (gen 15:22), b) the words God actually said which were words of commendation and blessing not rebuke and correction and c) the later blessings described as Abraham’s in the ensuing text. The passage may contain deep tensions, but that way of resolving them is not something I would expect from any serious monotheistic religion.

echo • March 4, 2024 8:51 AM

I watched a video of Sergei Brin admitting the Google AI image thing wasn’t tested before release. I heard all the excuses and was surprised they let something like that out but not a straight admission like this. If that’s not insulting enough one of the younger men in the room was wearing a “joke” t-shirt of a woman’s naked torso. Not only is this really quite vulgar but uninvited and sexually harassing and demeaning. Whether it’s Mr Billionaire Dadbod or Friday Night Drunk behaviour from Mr No-Mark what where they thinking? Like, they didn’t???

I’m sorry but I have seen and experienced enough of this kind of behaviour in-person the first time around and to still be indirectly or directly putting up with it years later? And all the shocked faces from men or indignant stumbling when the subject is brought up? Oh give me strength!

Like I keep saying – security without human rights is not security. And I really don’t care what men have to say about it. That boat sailed some years ago and this can kicking doesn’t wash.

Winter • March 4, 2024 9:02 AM

@GregW

a) the fact he is described as spoken to a “second time” after the sacrifice (gen 15:22),

I just follow some scholars, eg, Erich From and the link [1]. My knowledge of the bible is insufficient to say whether or not God spoke to Abraham again after this. In this part of Genesis, God does not speak to Abraham anymore after he tries to kill his son. It is only an angel who speaks.

‘https://www.rutgers.edu/news/exploring-ultimate-sacrifice-gods-command-abraham-sacrifice-his-son

men this and men that • March 4, 2024 9:16 AM

@echo

“And I really don’t care what men have to say about it.”

Were this to be true, you wouldn’t be gushing post after post about men, “white men” and “sausages” and so forth.

If you have a such a grievance about “white” and/or “men” please find another blog.

Oh, and it’s quite convenient how you can go on and on about gay this and women that and men this and men that but anyone who dares level with you gets their post deleted.

“Cheeky” indeed.

fib • March 4, 2024 9:20 AM

@ ResearcherZero

Made me laugh. A raw imagery of how things work in the real world.

Cheers 🙂

JonKnowsNothing • March 4, 2024 11:16 AM

@ ResearcherZero

re: We are running out of water

Yes we are.

Semi-technically the water is not where is used to be.

There is a lot of water on the planet, but a limited amount of water that is useful to humans and human endeavors. How we chose to use this limited resource, that previously was considered unlimited and universal in scope, has a lot to do with Tractors in the City.

Like dirt, water is highly charged political, economic and emotional topic.

There are 4 things that farmed items need:

Dirt
Water
Sunlight
Something that can grow under those conditions

It doesn’t matter if you grow in in open land, in a greenhouse, or in a lab environment, you need all of the above. None of these are unlimited, not even Sunlight, because our polluted atmosphere (aka smog) is impacting the quantity and quality of light needed by the plants.

The Tractors in the City are warning signs, but most people just see the Deere.

===

ht tps://e n.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_deere

Deere & Company, doing business as John Deere, is an American corporation that manufactures agricultural machinery, heavy equipment, forestry machinery, diesel engines, drivetrains (axles, transmissions, gearboxes) used in heavy equipment, and lawn care equipment.

luke spooning leia wearing a wookie mask • March 4, 2024 1:26 PM

Windows Kernel bug fixed last month exploited as zero-day since August

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/windows-kernel-bug-fixed-last-month-exploited-as-zero-day-since-august/

Patched six months after initial report

It’s M$……. would you expect anything less?

JonKnowsNothing • March 4, 2024 2:39 PM

All

re: ROBOBanker coming Soon(tm)

In yet another claw back scheme, this one is using AI to scan the bank accounts of people applying for benefits and their relatives and their landlord’s bank accounts.

It is not exactly clear what they are scanning for because nearly every benefit scheme already has a direct link to the claimant’s bank accounts and savings accounts for every financial institution. So they have all the transactions and full access to query at-will.

This version is a fully automated AI program that will scan for (fill in the blank).

[ROBOBanker AI will] also trawl the private banking data of people related to welfare claimants including partners, parents and landlords.

It would seem that the point of ROBOBanker is to cross connect financial data with unrelated transactions of other people.

Consider:

A landlord has 100 apartments for rent. A person rents one of those apartments. That person is on a benefits scheme. The ROBOBanker scans their personal financial data. ROBOBanker also connects and scans the landlord’s financial data and as a by product ROBOBanker gets surveillance for the accounts of 99 other renters.

You don’t really need 6 handshakes, 2 or 3 are more than adequate.

===

HAIL Warning

ht tps://www.theguardi an.com/society/2024/mar/04/ministers-urged-to-scrap-plans-for-surveillance-of-benefit-claimants-bank-accounts

Plans for automated surveillance of millions of bank accounts to catch welfare cheats
The net would also trawl the private banking data of people related to welfare claimants including partners, parents and landlords.

http s://en.wiki pedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

U.S.-sized population without social structure, “it is practically certain that any two individuals can contact one another by means of at most two intermediaries.
perhaps for the whole world’s population, probably only one more bridging individual should be needed.

vas pup • March 4, 2024 5:58 PM

How breathing could unlock your phone
https://www.dw.com/en/india-how-breathing-could-unlock-your-phone/video-68419219

“Researchers at an Indian university are working on innovative technology that
could become one of the safest biometric authentication systems. And it could
end up have other uses, too.”

vas pup • March 4, 2024 7:20 PM

@ALL – good to know!

The bank is watching you’: This is what happens when you deposit too much cash

into your bank account !!!
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/bank-watching-happens-deposit-too-110400404.html

“All federally-regulated banks are required by law to report major money
transactions to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, which is a
bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

While there is “no general prohibition against handling large amounts of
currency,” according to FinCEN, banks are still required to report all currency
transactions (deposits, withdrawals, exchanges of currency or another payment or transfer) over $10,000 in a single day (by or on behalf of one person) through >what is known as a Currency Transaction Report (CTR).

If you walk into a bank and withdraw more than $10,000 or you deposit
[$10,000], it’s just a report that gets sent,” Dean explained. “It’s not like
you’re doing a crime or anything; it’s tracking more than $10,000 in currencies
transacted through a bank.”

CTRs are required under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and they were established, per FinCEN, to “safeguard the financial industry from threats posed by money
laundering and other financial crime.”

To comply with the CTR law, financial institutions must collect certain
information from you, including your Social Security number and a copy of your
driver’s license or other government-issued ID.

Several commenters on Alexis and Dean’s video asked what would happen if they
tried to avoid the $10,000 CTR threshold by depositing just under that amount in cash or breaking their deposits down into smaller chunks.

That is called “structuring” and it could trigger your bank into filing a
Suspicious Activity Report (SAR).

“Structuring” could occur through something as simple as selling your car for $15,000 and then depositing the cash in two $7,500 batches on the same day — one in the morning and one in the afternoon — to two different bank employees.

If you’re found guilty of “structuring,” you could face civil and criminal
penalties, including imprisonment for up to five years and a fine of up to $250,000.

Alert the presses • March 4, 2024 7:33 PM

When did that start?

Dear Arsonist, No Earth Atmosphere Without Forests • March 4, 2024 8:06 PM

I’m still holding out for more articles published or linked here on how to prevent so many problems or infos on how to persuade “bad actors” to switch to more profitable, less dangerous, and more accommodating forms of self-expression (rather than malicious hacking and harmful antisecurity hobbies).

I know some of us perpetual commentators surely might have some thorny new ideas on how to stave off some of The Onslaught.

Serious, what gives?

Meanwhile, my cynicism has me believing that each and every hostile bad act seems to be of the same brainchild family as every other form of sabotage lately, including unneeded wars risking loss of everything and everyone.

Please don’t propagate malware if you don’t have to.
And I’ll try to quit doing dangerous or damaging things too.

Happy New Year, 2067.

echo • March 4, 2024 11:55 PM

@vas pup

It was worth mentioning. Thanks for that. I read both before and wondered if anyone would notice it.

https://www.southavewomensservices.com/comparing-combination-and-progestin-only-birth-control-pills/

Just for an FYI: The pluses and minuses of combination versus progestin only pills are a thing.

I had a long ramble about discrimination and doctors bungling risk analysis and some technical and public policy stuff but it soaked up too much bandwidth even for me.

Ismar • March 5, 2024 2:28 AM

As 2 of my posts were deleted from this thread, this would be my last post on this blog.
As one last thing I Would like to say that, regardless of how much I would like to be optimistic, I think that this time next year we will not be doing well at all and would like to remind the reader to prepare for a completely different world by then .

echo • March 5, 2024 6:15 AM

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/03/switch-emulator-makers-agree-to-pay-2-4-million-to-settle-nintendo-lawsuit/

Switch emulator makers agree to pay $2.4 million to settle Nintendo lawsuit
Yuzu devs shut down emulator they now say is “primarily designed” to break DRM.

Something for the legal-technical people to chew over depending on jurisdiction, and anyone who wants to have a ding dong between Neo-liberalism and Marxist Feminism since Neo-Capitalism was elbowed out of the way.

Mentioned for anyone interested in it. I used to be once to a point but the nice blue sky and sun is honestly more appealing today.

ResearcherZero • March 5, 2024 6:51 AM

‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-04/cranbrook-school-coed-boys-school-culture-four-corners/103516686

Funding, reputation, lawyers, offender protection, victim blaming — and after a long list of other concerns — student welfare.

Virtute enim ipsa non tam multi praediti esse quam videri volunt

“Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/cranbrook-school-council-member-steps-aside-20240301-p5f95w.html

[a cloud covering the sun] — [a lamp being snubbed out] — [a closed book] — [diagrams of various knots]

‘https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13153109/ABC-Cranbrook-doco-legal-threats.html

“But an angle to Milligan’s story that shouldn’t be lost amid its other alleged outrages is how the weird hangup of gendered segregation hangs over not only Cranbrook and the glorified rowing academies of the St Posho’s private sector, but persists around the Australian school system in general.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2024/mar/05/the-abcs-cranbrook-investigation-shows-why-australia-needs-to-turn-its-back-on-single-sex-cultures-built-on-exclusion

Clive Robinson • March 5, 2024 8:34 AM

@ ResearcherZero, ALL,

With regards Cranbrook in Australia.

“Few are those who wish to be endowed with virtue rather than to seem so”

Begs the question,

“What is virtue?”

It’s actually the viewpoint of an observer.

A female teacher was told that as she was young and attractive she was going to receive attention.

Whilst that is true, is it her fault or the fault of those that look at her and behave that way they do?

Because the obvious solution is the school stops employing staff that are female, young and attractive. Then that particular problem would not arise but many others would.

There is also a less obvious question of,

“What the parents are paying for?”

At the end of the day, they are paying for “advantage” which is a form of “self entitlement” which if taught at to earlier an age causes significant life long developmental issues.

But I’m sure that the Headmaster and the senior staff are aware of what many of the parents are actually paying for (narcissistic sociopathic behaviour).

Thus the “Upton Sinclair” observation arises,

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

(The same by the way is from my experience of the modern world true for quite a few women as well, which specially in conservative politics, which suggests it is an entitlement / greed / status issue more than a gender issue).

echo • March 5, 2024 11:25 AM

https://howardleague.org/news/howard-league-urges-ministers-to-move-girls-out-of-wetherby-prison/

Howard League urges ministers to move girls out of Wetherby prison

Under the Tories standards haven’t just not improved but fallen. Not a surprise I know. While their public facing comments addressed the adult population a former head of UK prisons and the current Victim’s Commissioner are unhappy with the Tories. This is against a background tax cuts for the rich and public services falling to pieces so healthcare and social support and other services which may help prevent ruined lives or help with rehabilitation evaporate.

Inspectors visited the prison, which holds boys and girls as young as 15, in November and December 2023. They discovered that children had been forcibly stripped and subjected to pain-inducing restraint by staff without adequate oversight or accountability. They twice found all-male teams of officers forcibly restraining a girl to remove her clothing to prevent her self-harming.

The kinds of problems which impact the adults estate are bad enough. That this is happening in the children’s estate is really not on. The Tories haven’t done anything since they got into power 15 years ago.

https://howardleague.org/events/spotlights-international-womens-day/

Join us on Thursday 7 March as we lift the lid on women’s prisons. Our panel will share their expertise and answer your questions about the reality of life for women in prison.

[…]

We will mark International Women’s Day by speaking to women who have been to prison and work with women in prison, to better understand the realities of life for women behind bars and to discuss the routes to long-overdue change.

[…]

Book your place for this free event, on Thursday 7 March, 1pm to 2pm, online via Zoom.

After the Tories the UK needs to same moral force as the great social reformers and Post War Settlement.

echo • March 5, 2024 11:46 AM

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7f09fded915d74e62280be/PU1546_Review_into_the_pre-release_of_Budget_information.pdf
HM Treasury
Review into the pre-release of Budget information

This tracks how the security of budget information has been handled from 2005 to the present.

Back in the day any release of information would have been a resigning matter. Before the last budget Kwarteng was having lunch with chums who very likely played the market on the basis of this information. Hunt is now trialing information to see how it plays with the media in what may become a very much denied May general election.

lurker • March 5, 2024 12:19 PM

@Dear Arsonist
“more profitable, less dangerous, and more accommodating”

Can we have more than two of these … ?

ResearcherZero • March 5, 2024 11:12 PM

@Clive Robinson

That is why they left it out of the school motto I guess. No sense in having any virtue.

Disturbingly, I know a lot of the toffs. I was in a lot of clubs and organisations. We do have a veneer of sophistication, but we are some backwards pieces of crap here. Most of us.

Rape, and protecting rapists is both common practice for Australian institutions, and school related activities. It happened all the time and still does, even the school debating scene was plagued by rape and abuse every year. Sports, gymnastics and swimming especially, and wrestling, the seminary. The Scouts of course, and other groups.

Bleeding rectums. Convict style brutality. Repeated harassment, abuse and retribution.
Murders, kidnappings, disappearances, lots of funerals. There are less shootings now.

“We don’t do things like that anymore,” they would say. “We take these matters very seriously!” Then they would house the offending predator across the road from the school.
It happened nearly every year. Following a semi-investigation/cover-up, the victims, who were sometimes hospitalised, would then be completely skewered by the school, the police, then by the legal system. All the responsible adults of course completely ignored it all.

CNN quoted a 2017 government inquiry as finding a “serious failure” by Australian institutions to protect the most vulnerable. (like the inquires before it)
https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/how-christopher-saunders-former-aus-bishop-committed-a-string-of-sex-crimes-13740726.html

50 years later, little has changed. It’s a ‘Good ‘ol boys club’, with lawyers. A lot of drugs are imported and consumed is this country. Vast quantities of the stuff. There is this giant industrial fog machine machine, just pumping it out across the continent.

Keeping everyone subdued. Crushing any urgent optimism, and lowering any sense of alarm.

‘https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-27/beaumaris-primary-inquiry-scratches-surface-of-paedophile-crisis/103503912

Keep calm, and carry on.

‘https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/05/2003405462/-1/-1/0/CSI-ZERO-TRUST-NETWORK-ENVIRONMENT-PILLAR.PDF

–

@JonKnowsNothing

“Several Chicago suburbs likely are losing more than 40% of water. And some Georgia systems are losing more than 80% of their treated drinking water.”

There is no comprehensive accounting of water loss nationally, and no federal regulations requiring communities to control it.

‘https://apnews.com/article/water-loss-infrastructure-broken-pipes-poor-neighborhoods-2d747180d294ba62cdbf0906f9305802

ResearcherZero • March 5, 2024 11:38 PM

@Clive Robinson

You can’t publish the serious details in Australia. We do not have a free press protected by law. Suing someone for revealing something proven in a court of law using factual and physical evidence, or suppressing such details, is completely normal practice.

We aren’t just talking about mere comments or perceptions. Rather, aggravated physical assaults. Other appalling behaviour, that would enrage even the hardest nut on the tree.

It’s the reason why so many kids ended up jamming heroin behind the church.

ResearcherZero • March 6, 2024 1:29 AM

Found something that can be printed:

“in the absence of orders, go find something and kill it”

A variation of a saying widely used throughout the civilian population. According to the minister, the humour would “not be understood by those who haven’t served” in the military.

‘https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/06/nt-police-minister-brent-potter-racist-antisemetic-posts-satire

In Western Australia, the 1927 Royal Commission into the killing and burning of Aboriginal bodies in the Forrest River massacre found police were brutal in effecting arrests.

The goal was often to move Aboriginal people off the land by whatever means necessary to ensure European colonisation could take place.

‘https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/docs/digitised_collections/remove/93281.pdf

In the real world, there are no bright lines between criminal corruption and serious misconduct…

“This problem will continue to exist until governments are prepared to recalibrate the relationship between self-interest and the public interest.”

https://www.hrlc.org.au/news/2023/8/28/report-whistleblower-laws-are-failing

“There will be abuses of authority, millions (perhaps billions) of dollars skimmed off in crooked scams, cases of mismanagement and malpractice, sexual assault, abuses of human rights, countless innocent victims, and a few good people who know what’s going on but are too afraid to speak out. We can be sure that across Australia there are scandals that remain hidden in both government and the corporate world, concealed by the corrupt, the unethical and the powerful.”

The laws that protect both whistleblowing and media freedom – two of the mechanisms essential to a working democracy – are manifestly failing.

‘https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-s-still-dangerously-secretive-and-it-s-our-democracy-that-s-at-risk-20230911-p5e3o2.html

ResearcherZero • March 6, 2024 3:42 AM

“Truth is deeply related to this notion of communicative care and permanence. The world has epistemic value because it has a real history, and we understand that we are part of its history. …This is radically different from the escapism of living in a fake or simulated world.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-of-consciousness/202402/digital-escapism-and-the-miracle-of-cave-art

“interpersonal trust appears to be a foundation for which to form cooperative behavior on—so to implement joint projects aimed at promoting tacit knowledge exchange. …. It is obvious that without trust people are reluctant to share knowledge, as evidenced in a number of studies.”

Here, interpersonal trust refers to “willingness to subject to another party’s deeds on the basis of expectations that this party would accomplish certain activities important for a principal regardless of the ability to control the said party.”

However, this definition can be further developed because one can define interpersonal trust as an individual’s confidence in, and reliability on (or of) others if there is willingness to act on other individuals decisions.

‘https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/11100/3/KNOWLEDGE_EXCHANGE_AND_THE_TRUST_INSTITUTION.pdf

“The results showed that both vertical trust and horizontal trust are positively related to knowledge donating and knowledge collecting. Contrary to knowledge collecting, knowledge donating is significantly related to idea generation, which is highly correlated with idea realization. There is no direct relation between knowledge sharing behavior and idea realization. Knowledge donating mediates the relationship between vertical trust and idea generation.”

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/EJIM-04-2020-0134/full/html

Winter • March 6, 2024 3:58 AM

@ResearcherZero

“interpersonal trust appears to be a foundation for which to form cooperative behavior on…

No Trust, No Society.

Clive Robinson • March 6, 2024 5:13 AM

@ Winter, ResearcherZero, ALL,

“No Trust, No Society.”

Which is what George Orwell talked about in “1984” from his experiences back during WWII.

In essence destroy trust in the citizens view of each other and give faux-trust from the State Agencies. Thus the “State Apparatus” becomes society and control is nearly 100% a totalitarian’s “dark pentad” cravings forefilled.

Winter • March 6, 2024 6:00 AM

@Clive

In essence destroy trust in the citizens view of each other and give faux-trust from the State Agencies.

Free market fundametalism, neo-cons, and social media all destroy trust between people and between people and institutions.

The response from those who “trust no one” is to flee into fascism and gang culture (which are the same).

JonKnowsNothing • March 6, 2024 12:30 PM

All

A while back I put up a post about who has the right-power to rename things. Yesterday was an election day in California and one of the items on the local list was about who gets to name things.

recap:

The Federal Government can name any federal lands, buildings whatever they want. Recently, there have been some name changes of military bases named after Civil War Confederate persons. Also the renaming of geographical features, removing names deemed derogatory.
The State Government can name any state lands, buildings whatever they want. Some geographical features changed names that were deemed derogatory. A law coming into effect gives the State the right to rename any city or town or district.

Election Outcome:

On the rename list are things below State Ownership. This is to apply to cities and towns that have names deemed derogatory. There are not many cities in this category but enough to irk people and so a name change will be Soon(tm).

Locally, the county put up an option to amend the county rules to allow the county to rename items in the county.

This amendment failed. The county did not get enough votes to alter the rules. The renaming rights remain with the State.

So.. it might seem that the concert is over but… Now for the popcorn…

Feds can rename Fed Stuff
State can rename State Stuff
State can rename City Stuff
The Fed and/or State cannot rename Business Stuff.

The area has had a Federal rename of the geographic area to

Yokuts Valley, California. (1)

This encompasses all the mountains and geographical features in the area, such as named lakes, are now located in Yokuts Valley.

The population area continues to use the unpopular name and that’s where popcorn is heating up. The State will now rename this location.

So heat up the popcorn to see what name the State will designate for this population center.

The State can now rename the town, but they cannot rename the businesses.

===

ht tps://en.wik ipedia.org/wiki/Yokuts_Valley,_California

note: the article has been sanitized and presumes that the area name has always been named Yokuts. The area was never named this historically. This name was selected by the (Federal) United States Secretary of the Interior department United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN).

ht tps://en.wi kipedia.org/wiki/Yokuts

Yokuts is both plural and singular; Yokut, while common, is erroneous.

note: English rules are going to be applied to this name. S is plural, no S is singular. The place is going to be called Yokut using English applied grammars. It is perhaps something the rename committee did not consider. They also did not consider how similar this name is to another epithet in English. We get 2 new epithets for the price of 1.

lurker • March 6, 2024 12:32 PM

Lost the touch?

From 2026, the European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP) will introduce new testing rules that will require vehicles to have physical controls for basic functions like turn signals and windscreen wipers to earn a full five-star safety rating.

‘https://sg.news.yahoo.com/europe-tells-automakers-buttons-knobs-183006390.html

Watch as the makers try to sidestep this with haptic feedback screens.

lurker • March 6, 2024 2:44 PM

Photoshop vs. Gimp vs. AI
Ai wins hands down, orders of magnitude faster, cleaner, and you don’t even need to know or care “is it art?”

‘https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68471253

Clive Robinson • March 6, 2024 7:39 PM

@ Bruce, ALL,

Re : More on AI in China war from US Authorities.

In steadily worsening trade relations instigated by the US on China, there has been a new development,

“Ex-Google engineer charged with stealing AI secrets”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68497508

(Note that under the current UK Government the BBC has become noticeably biased toward UK current political incumbent nonsense. The nonsense is due to the unmitigated failure of Brexit and similar so treat much of the artical as potentially faux-news).

Quotes from the US Justice Dept and FBI political appointees that are really quite biased,

“US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on Wednesday that Linwei Ding was seeking to enrich himself by covertly working for companies that were “seeking an edge in the AI technology race”.

“The Justice Department will not tolerate the theft of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies that could put our national security at risk,” Mr Garland said.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Mr Ding’s alleged actions “are the latest illustration of the lengths” companies in China will go to, “to steal American innovation”.”

Apparently what Mr Ding was uploading to his computer was his “own work” that he was still working on. That is the theft the Justice department claims was work Mr Ding had not just produced but that he was still developing[1].

It will be interesting to see how this current pre Presidential Election political grandstanding plays out.

[1] In the UK such grandstanding is not allowed before or during trials under the very valid principle that you are “Innocent untill proven guilty” and that for fair trials to be possible they should not be pre-prejudiced by statements let alone grandstanding by either side.

Clive Robinson • March 7, 2024 5:45 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

And you thought self driving cars were a concern… How about vehicles more than 250ft in length and well out of sight over the horizon?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68486462

“Autonomy, robotics and remote operation, along with artificial intelligence, will transform all transport sectors. Maritime will be no different and experiments are under way around the globe.”

The world as we know it is deeply dependent on marine shipping and it’s dirty, dangerous and disturbing at the best of times. It’s also needed a lot of bodies on vessels that require basic “life support” that takes up one heck of a lot of space thus cost. So cutting from 50-100 bodies down to none is seen as highly desirable[1] by many in the industry.

So the civilian maritime industry has started in on this and taken a page out of the US Military “Home for Supper” manual for it’s Drone pilots stationed out side of Las Vegas[2]. Though being civilian based in Europe and UK it’s a little more worker friendly.

However my concern is there is a lot of mass and momentum in a fully laden cargo vessel they really do not “stop”[3] for several minutes and considerable distance even if you put them in “crash stop” reverse. The usual way in real emergencies is a tight turn, that is throw the wheel over, so the side of the vessel goes broadside on to the direction of travel / danger (but this can result in a “broach” like condition which is very undesirable).. But it’s a risky manoeuvre at the best of times with large long vessels, and not something you want to do with “time delays” in the loop.

[1] Having an entirely unmanned vessel is currently not possible for various international treaty reasons. Technically it would be an “abandoned vessel” which makes a curious case for “piracy v salvage” something that is likely going to play out in court in the not to distant future due to “dragged anchors” and “sub-sea cables” and compensation.

[2] The drone pilots apparently live in Las Vegas and drive against the traffic for their day gig in a “shipping container” at Creech US Air Force Base to the North West of “the strip”,

‘https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38506932

[3] Rather than type it all in,

‘https://knowledgeofsea.com/stopping-distance-turning-circle-ships-manoeuvring/

JonKnowsNothing • March 7, 2024 9:01 AM

@Winter, @Clive, All

re: Farm to Table / Farm to School

A MSM report on a Farm to School program where the students run a farm cooperative growing different types of foods and then distributes and sells the produce to the local community, and to the local school system.

The program is successful in many ways but not financially. It does not make a profit. In Western Economic views this is Not Good. The program is dependent on additional funding. Such funding can be erratic and can dry up leaving the program, the students, without the working capital needed to grow the next harvest.

In the article it also details many of the difficulties “small producers” have gaining access to a larger market. The Barrier to Entry problem.

if you want to incorporate traditional corn into the lunch program, you need to source it from a producer who grows it and processes it a certain way, usually at a [US Department of Agriculture]- or state-certified facility, plus that producer needs to be able to supply a large-enough quantity
The federal governing body outlines how specific ingredients count toward meal-pattern requirements in child nutrition programs, a process called crediting. … how do you credit stinging nettle greens – a leafy green you can use just like spinach – since they are not outlined in the USDA crediting guidelines?

The program by all other markers except money, is a success. The future of the program may be questionable because the cost of operating and working capital is very large. You need a lot more of everything if you are feeding a school or town or city.

this year’s farm-to-school costs – encompassing equipment, salaries and fringe benefits – totaled nearly $320,000, while funding from government and donor sources came in around $120,000, resulting in a budget shortfall. [the school district made up the shortfall]

When people see Tractors in the City, it is likely they have no idea of the costs involved in providing food. There is a disconnect between what you buy in the market and what it costs to produce food. There are a lot of middle-companies all in the line between the fields and your kitchen.

$320,000 USD provides some food for the community and school for 1 season. This is the cost of a house in the USA. If they are able to expand the program, they will be spending the cost of 2 or 3 houses each growing season on improving their food options.

Each season, the working and operating capital has to be found: Farm to School or Farm to Table.

===

HAIL Warning

htt ps://www.thegua rdian.com/us-news/2024/mar/07/native-american-school-decolonizing-foodways

In the Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation, teens learn about nutrition and build tribal sovereignty by farming for their school and community
Macy [Nebraska, USA] is considered a food desert, with no grocery store and just a gas station serving the north-eastern Nebraska town of approximately 1,000 residents. The village also has some of the highest poverty and unemployment rates in the state. To address these overlapping issues, Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation’s farm-to-school initiative began as a state-funded Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG) program, designed to equip youth with employable skills and improve their success in education and their future careers. It was the students’ idea to develop a community garden where they’d log their work hours.
[they] grow and harvest more than 25,000 plants each season, including cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, onions, sunflowers, pumpkins, beans, corn, squash and, yes, eggplant. They prepare and preserve that produce in the school’s culinary department to be served in the cafeteria’s fresh salad bar, sold at the local farmers’ market or dished up at a new cafe in town (Macy’s first). There’s also an outdoor classroom on campus, where naturalists, elders and other knowledge keepers impart traditional Indigenous knowledge.

Clive Robinson • March 7, 2024 3:13 PM

@ JonKnowsNothing, Winter, ALL,

Re : Business or education?

“The program is successful in many ways but not financially. It does not make a profit. In Western Economic views this is Not Good.”

Making a profit is actually the least important reason to do something…

It’s only in certain somewhat backward types of places where “profit” is considered the only reason to do something (you would think the “Financial Crisis” should have got that message through).

The reason it’s a lunatic view –and it is– is how can everything make a profit in the long term?

The economy like the Earth is supposed to be a bounded zero sum game. That means that as you approach the limits of stored resources then for every winner there has to be a looser.

If there is not then there is an issue building which either redresses the balance or causes a downwards spiral.

The trick we try is the so-called “Value Added Chain” where you take a resource, and by applying energy and time you increase the utility of a resource. That is you smelt and beat iron to make tools that have greater utility than just “banging the rocks together”.

What is not apparent to many is the compensatory effect called “inflation” where the “financial wealth” increases but the actual real value does not. Those who spend their financial wealth as fast as possible on real value items get to keep the real value. So a ton of coal might have cost $100 a decade ago, and it’s financial value might be $300 today. Whilst the fiscal value has gone round like a taxi odometer, the real value of the ton of coal all things else being equal is the same as it was a decade ago.

But profit, wealth and value are just a small fraction of what society gets.

If in that decade I work out how to make an engine that turns coal into mechanical energy double it’s mechanical energy out, then I reduce the waste but also in effect double the amount of future work a ton of coal can do by making the process “more efficient”.

Obviously there are limits on how efficient you can make any given process but it does increase the return on effort.

One thing that appears not to be bound in anything close to the same way is knowledge.

Education and what goes behind it almost always improves a process. But how to measure it?

Using something as crude as the capitalist notion of “profit” almost immediately shows up it’s limitations and effectively what kind of con-game it is. However measuring how society benefits not just now but in the longterm is difficult. But the forward progress of society and generally the improvement in the human existence is generally a good indicator that education does indeed make a significant return.

This has led some to question if knowledge in the form of information that is understood, has meaning to a process, and thereby gives benefit, is actually “bound” or not…

For various reasons I assume it is bound, but that we are so far down the curve we can not realistically see limits. Hence “life long learning for all” can in our time limited perspective always show benefit (way more than the capitalist notion of profit can).

ResearcherZero • March 7, 2024 5:27 PM

Poor guy. Perhaps he just misunderstood what personal space is. I never saw Harvey act physically appropriately myself. With the phone maybe. I do remember him needing assistance with briefly almost drowning in the ocean one day. But he kept coming back up. Pity.

Don’t act inappropriately towards very young girls at the beach. Early primary school age.

‘https://apnews.com/article/weinstein-appeal-rape-new-york-metoo-31e8c864564e7553fd5aa85a9d1e3725

We could clamp the AI assistant onto your leg, and it would explain appropriate behaviour.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/16/us/james-dolan-harvey-weinstein-sexual-assault-lawsuit/index.html

–

“Jeffrey was giving us $200 apiece for every one that we brought over,” he said. “I would get friends that I went to school with and I would take them over there and introduce them, and then I would just leave.”

He said Maxwell would also call him occasionally, “asking me to get girls.”

‘https://apnews.com/article/jeffrey-epstein-documents-prince-andrew-harvey-weinstein-1e20f426af0c610db7963cdaf85c209f

ResearcherZero • March 7, 2024 6:12 PM

“Mr Sampson’s failure to disclose the matter to the current school council – have led to an irrevocable breakdown of trust between the headmaster and the school council.”

‘https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/08/cranbrook-school-principal-nicholas-sampson-resigns

ResearcherZero • March 7, 2024 9:31 PM

@JohnKnowsNothing

Does anyone feel like picking fruit for free? I could pay you in all the fruit you can eat.
I would even be willing to throw in a couple of avocados, maybe some corn and a juicy plum.

“Supermarket has now written and advised all the growers on the mainland that they will be reducing their purchase price down to $1 per kilogram.”

‘https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/farmers-fear-commercial-retribution-in-supermarket-contracts-20240307-p5fak5

Clive Robinson • March 7, 2024 11:32 PM

@ ResearchZero,

Re : Poor Guy…

You might find this a bit of a head scratcher,

‘https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/07/rupert-murdoch-elena-zhukova-engagement

It’s said that you have to be mad to tolerate Rupert “the bare faced liar” Murdoch even as a member of the family brood…

Apparently Wendy Deng went “out the tree” as for Mick Jagger’s Ex well little has been said publicly…

There is an old song from England by British “King of skiffle” singer Lonnie Donegan called “My Old Man’s a Dustman”. In it there is a line about a retired old garbage conveyor / purvey or getting married and being asked why and replying

“Well, when you get to my age it helps to pass the time”…

There is also the old saying about[1],

“There’s no fool like an old fool.”

That has several meanings some of them really not nice about dirty old men and their sexual proclivities, and if there is one thing that can be said about Murdoch and his brood of liers they really are not nice and foolish apparently falls very close to the tree every time.

[1] Some say it originates in the Bible in Ecclesiastes 4:13,

“A poor but wise youth is better than an old but foolish king who will no longer accept correction.”

Will Miss Whiplash stand to the right the old boy requires correction is just one thing that’s been rumoured in the past. Also of Maxwell senior, apparently though he liked to be the “whip hand”.

JonKnowsNothing • March 7, 2024 11:46 PM

@ResearcherZero, All

re: Isengard bids 5

“Isengard bids 5” is a tag line in the MMORPG game Lord of the Rings On Line.

In game play there is an eviction of a farming family. An auction is held to sell off all their property. The townspeople bid up the prices to help pay off the family debts. If the family cannot pay off all their debts they will become slaves.

Sauruman’s bid is used to counter all higher offers, and the family becomes slaves.

Who would dare challenge the might of Isengard.

The application of the phrase “Isengard bids 5” is very apropos of the problems of ordinary farmers. They really have little or no choice in where they can sell, to whom they can sell and the price they will get.

When considering the Farm to Table problem, there are many different types of farmers, running many different farming methods and systems. The ones suffering are the “smaller farmers”, who many not be that small when considering their working and operating capital, but they are far smaller than Big Ag Global Consortiums.

Big Ag dictates to all the down level suppliers, exactly what they will get, how much they must contribute and all the terms of the production contract. Take it or Leave it.

This is how most products and animals are raised for Name Brand products.

Big Food Processing Business does the same thing for their boxed products and canned labeled items on the store shelves.

Both Big Ag and Big Food Processors can negotiate with Markets, Big Box Stores and Outlets for better price exchanges.

Small Farmers cannot do so. They are left with

Isengard bids 1

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