Hyperlinks 12/17/2023 | bare capitalism

[ad_1]

Affected person readers, I’m afraid it is a little bit of a “director’s minimize” as a result of I turned pressed temporally. I’ll will do some slight slashing and rearranging very shortly. –lambert UPDATE All accomplished!

Observe the monarch on its harmful 3,000-mile journey throughout the continent Nationwide Geographic

Crimson wine complications could possibly be brought on by this intriguing wrongdoer, research finds Fox

In 2024, the Rigidity Between Macroculture and Microculture Will Flip into Battle The Trustworthy Dealer

#COVID19

Pressing Have to Improve Immunization Protection for Influenza, COVID-19, and RSV and Use of Approved/Authorised Therapeutics within the Setting of Elevated Respiratory Illness Exercise Throughout the 2023 – 2024 Winter Season Emergency Preparedness and Response, CDC. Commentary (via):

COVID and flu surge may pressure hospitals as JN.1 variant grows, CDC warns CBS Information. However we’re positive not sporting masks! So there’s a vivid facet.

COVID research: 40% of kids nonetheless infectious after symptom decision Heart for Infectious Illness Analysis and Coverage. Unique.

* * *

A synbiotic preparation (SIM01) for post-acute COVID-19 syndrome in Hong Kong (RECOVERY): a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial The Lancet. From the Summary: “Therapy with SIM01 [10 billion colony-forming units in sachets twice daily] alleviates a number of signs of PACS. Our findings have implications on the administration of PACS via . Additional research are warranted to discover the useful results of SIM01 in different power or post-infection situations.”

* * *

Inhaled SARS-CoV-2 vaccine for single-dose dry powder aerosol immunization Nature. Animal research. From the Summary: “Right here we develop an inhalable, single-dose, dry powder aerosol SARS-CoV-2 vaccine that induces potent systemic and mucosal immune responses…. [T]his vaccine induces robust manufacturing of IgG and IgA, in addition to an area T cell response, collectively conferring efficient safety towards SARS-CoV-2 in mice, hamsters and nonhuman primates.”

Mucosal boosting enhances vaccine safety towards SARS-CoV-2 in macaques (PDF) Nature. From the Dialogue:

Our knowledge show that Ad26 [intra-tracheal (IT)] boosting robustly augmented mucosal humoral and mobile immune responses and offered close to full safety towards high-dose mucosal SARS-CoV-2 BQ.1.1 problem in rhesus macaques. Ad26 IT boosting induced larger mucosal immunity than did Ad26 [intranasal (IN)]and [intramuscular (IM)] boosting for all immunologic parameters evaluated. In distinction, mRNA IN boosting proved ineffective, suggesting that improved formulations will probably be required for efficient mucosal supply of mRNA vaccines.

And:

The lack of the bivalent SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines delivered by the IM route to offer strong safety towards an infection probably pertains to their incapacity to induce strong mucosal immune responses on the portal of entry. Our knowledge show the proof-of-concept that mucosal boosting by the IT route leads to strong mucosal humoral and mobile immune responses and close to full safety towards SARS-CoV-2 Omicron problem in macaques. To one of the best of our information, this diploma of vaccine safety towards SARS-CoV-2 Omicron problem in macaques is qualitatively completely different from what has been reported beforehand with IM delivered vaccines. Adenovirus vectors could also be notably good at inducing mucosal immunity given their biophysical stability and pure mucosal tropism, though different vaccine platforms must also be explored as potential mucosal vaccines. Our knowledge recommend that the event of subsequent era vaccines that shield towards an infection with SARS-CoV-2 and different respiratory viruses could also be possible by optimization of mucosal immunity.

* * *

A Covid Replace Eric Topol, Floor Truths. A lot of good data, regardless of a mini-shout-out to Bob Wachter, particularly the nasal vaccine hyperlinks (which I’m quoting beneath). The ultimate paragraph:

[My] expertise [finally catching Covid] exemplifies how a lot progress that we’ve made alongside the best way. However there are nonetheless 2 completely important goals that haven’t been fulfilled: (1) extremely efficient remedies for Lengthy Covid; and (2) inhalation vaccines to advertise robust mucosal immunity and block infections and unfold, efficient towards all variants. There’s nonetheless a lot work to do on each fronts, however I’m satisfied we’ll ultimately get there. like we did to get the preliminary Covid vaccines (suppose Operation Warp Pace), we’d probably be there by now.

Unmuffling the wording: The Biden Administration is much extra culpable for the present Covid debacle than the Trump Administration. I ponder if Topol will get cancelled for this? Most likely not….

* * *

Superspreading downside solved! TicketMaster (via):

So apparently we’ve got an “inherent threat” doctrine now, invented by TicketMaster’s attorneys. After all, the degree of threat is set by the mitigations the live performance promoters devise or impose. Subsequent, I suppose, “inherent threat” of fireplace doorways being nailed shut.

China?

The Highway to China-Free Provide Chains Is Lengthy. Warning: Legless Lizards Forward. WSJ

The Connections South China Morning Submit. The deck: “That is the newest map exhibiting connections between the Politburo Standing Committee – China’s strongest leaders – and members of the twentieth Central Committee, based mostly on their official work historical past.”

How China’s celebrities turned luxurious style superstars in 2023 Jing Each day

He Haibo says China’s on-line publication of judgments should NOT regress Pekingnology

Myanmar

Insurgent fireplace and China’s ire: Inside Myanmar’s anti-junta offensive Reuters

India

Scent that: The rise of India’s ittar business Al Jazeera

Africa

When economists shut off your water Africa is a Nation

The Nice Arms Bazaar of the Nineteenth Century JStor Each day

Pricey Previous Blighty

‘Alas, poor nation!’: performers affected by lengthy Covid to distribute masks at David Tennant’s Macbeth Bylines Cymru. Wales.

New Not-So-Chilly Battle

Putin proclaims Odessa Russian metropolis, challenges Ukraine’s historic narrative TASS

ISW analyses Russia’s warfare plan as much as 2026, revealed by Bild Ukrainska Pravda. Useful map:

Ukraine could also be getting ready 2024 counteroffensive like Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhnyi had deliberate for summer season 2023 – Welt Ukrainska Pravda. So, at a most, yet one more Zelensky Unit, as Ukraine throws the category of 2024 into the meatgrinder, and that’s it. Possibly Russia desires to go extra slowly, but when Ukraine insists on slaughtering one other tranche, what to do?

* * *

Grind on the sugar manufacturing unit for my mom’s headstone enterprise in Harare Occasions in Ukraine. The About web page isn’t even sketchy, however the writing is excellent. Nicely value a learn.

Syraqistan

7 October has not modified the Center East Engelsberg Concepts. “Elementary change is a good distance off as a result of there are not any two keen events dedicated to breaking the Israel-Palestine impasse.”

* * *

Israeli sniper kills mom, daughter inside Gaza’s solely Catholic church Anadolu Company (WaPo right here). They’re Catholic, so perhaps that may arouse Biden’s well-known empathy.

Hostages had been holding white fabric on stick when Israeli forces shot them lifeless, IDF says Sky Information. Waving a white flag and talking Hebrew. Haaretz:

https://t.co/O8ICrIcHyZ pic.twitter.com/jm7pAMPkEU

— Asaf Ronel (@AsafRonel) December 16, 2023

Not surprising; the IDF is a brutal and silly colonial drive.

* * *

Gantz: If world doesn’t push Hezbollah from the northern border, we’ll Occasions of Israel. The IDF doesn’t have sufficient on its plate?

Israel retains the stress on Gaza as Qatar confirms truce talks Al Jazeera

Biden Administration

Assume tank tied to tech billionaires performed key position in Biden’s AI order Politico. RAND.

Manchin calls upcoming hydrogen tax credit score steering ‘horrible’: ‘We’re combating it’ The Hill. Says the coal proprietor.

2024

Sununu: ‘Chaos and distraction’ would stop Trump from getting issues accomplished if reelected The Hill. Six methods from Sunday?

Democrats en Déshabillé

Playbook: Senate staffer out after intercourse tape scandal Politico. “The video, which Rodgers reviews was shared in a bunch chat with homosexual males in politics, reveals two males having intercourse in what seems to be Hart 216, the cavernous room that has performed host to Supreme Court docket nominees, the 9/11 Fee hearings and former FBI Director James Comey’s blockbuster 2017 testimony on Donald Trump.”

Spook Nation

US Congress pushes warrantless wiretapping choice off till April subsequent yr The Verge

The Spy Who Dumped the CIA, Went to Remedy, and Now Makes Unbelievable Tv Wired. “One-time CIA agent [guffaw].”

Advertising Firm Claims That It Truly Is Listening to Your Telephone and Good Audio system to Goal Advertisements 404 Media

Antitrust

Lina Khan’s Tough Yr New York Journal. Commentary:

Enshittification: A Monopoly Story Cory Doctorow, Actual Progressives Substack. Attention-grabbing, however the introduction is deceptive. “[Doctorow] explains one other time period, ‘acidification,’ which describes the pathology of this decay and the inevitable consequence when platforms will not be regulated.” Not within the transcript, nevertheless.

Epic Video games chief involved Google will ‘get away’ with app retailer expenses FT

Digital Watch

Google Guarantees Limitless Cloud Storage; Then Cancels Plan; Then Tells Journalist His Life’s Work Will Be Deleted With out Sufficient Time To Switch The Knowledge TechDirt

Obama Legacy

The Obamas’ “Rustin”: Enjoyable Methods You Can Do on the Previous Adolph Reed, Nonsite.org. “Malicious presentism” from The Wizard of Kalorama™. Nicely value a learn.

Well being Care

‘Massive’ TB outbreak could have an effect on 800 individuals who had been incarcerated in Washington state KOMO (PI). United States.

Provide Chain

A number of New Main Incidents In The Crimson Sea Naval Information

MSC and CMA CGM Droop Crimson Sea Transits as US and UK Down A number of Drones Maritime Government. Commentary:

‼️Lengthy publish on world choke factors since Yemen’s Houthis have been focusing on vessels within the southern Crimson Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait in assaults that the Iran-aligned group says goal to assist the Palestinians as Israel and Hamas wage warfare.

Round 80% of world commerce is… pic.twitter.com/ihgv9jfeSl

— Velina Tchakarova (@vtchakarova) December 15, 2023

Panama Canal transits plunge as bigger ships are turned away Freight Waves

Our Famously Free Press

Masha Gessen’s Hannah Arendt Prize has been canceled due to their essay on Gaza Literary Hub. Over this essay. Commentary:

What Hannah Arendt stated concerning the nation-state of Israel was way more damning than something Gessen wrote.

1) Arendt from Jerusalem in 1955:

“On high of that, they deal with the Arabs, these nonetheless right here, in a means that in itself can be sufficient to rally the entire world towards Israel.” pic.twitter.com/gkqM5XsAUY

— Samantha Rose Hill (@Samantharhill) December 14, 2023

Gessen feedback:

You’d suppose, with all the eye to the Arendt Prize debacle, I might be inundated with media calls/texts. You would be fallacious. Not one German journalist has reached out for remark. One US journalist did. All reporting has occurred with no enter/response from me. Inaccuracies pile up

— masha gessen (@mashagessen) December 14, 2023

Zeitgeist Watch

The language of emojis Michael Smith, Crying within the Wilderness

Promoting Citizenship New Left Assessment

Imperial Collapse Watch

Probability Grows of America Abandoning Nuclear Triad: Would ICBM Funds Be Higher Used Elsewhere? Army Watch

US Army to Display screen All New Recruits for Coronary heart Circumstances Below Should-Move Annual Protection Invoice Army.com. ‘Tis a thriller!

The Self-Checkout Even the Haters Will Love WSJ. RFID chips. “The irritating factor about traditional self-checkout is that it merely . It adjustments who’s doing the labor, but it surely doesn’t change the labor that must be accomplished.” I’ve helpfully underlined capital’s enterprise mannequin in the US for the final forty years. Completely in paradigm!

Class Warfare

Cracks within the robust labor market are beginning to present Axios

New King County milestone: One-quarter of residents born outdoors U.S. Seattle Occasions. An alert reader throws this over the transom:

Anecdata confirms what I discovered once I was doing demographic work on Disproportionate Minority Contact with the justice system as a prosecutor in a top-20 U.S. jurisdiction.

At the moment I used to be additionally concerned as an “ally” within the massive native LGBTQ+ PAC. Circa 2011 I used to be seated with a then-police chief, who had been my pal’s faculty housemate. He complained to me bitterly that Obama was secretly coming to city 3-4 instances a yr to gather checks from Tech Titans looking for to certify extra H-1b visas, particularly Indians. The chief was getting warmth as a result of when Obama showed-up all his cops obtained pulled off their beats, however he couldn’t inform the general public why requires service weren’t being answered.

My demographic work confirmed that in a county of approx. 1.9 million, there have been layered-on 1 / 4 million H-1b’s from India alone (PLUS China, Taiwan, Ukraine, Russia, and so forth), whereas my Employees Comp Insurance coverage investigations confirmed {that a} substantial portion of them had entered underneath clearly fraudulent certifications of “want.” In the meantime 50-percent of U.S. STEM grads weren’t employed of their subject of research 3 years out from commencement.

I’m satisfied that there’s a enormous disconnect between the overall inhabitants and the PMC political elite over immigration. We’ve been constructing our home in an space the place most building staff are nonetheless white individuals — however up right here they present little or no hostility towards Mexican immigrants, who they often see as hard-working and keen to be taught the trades. There’s nonetheless a necessity for guide labor and the PMC obsession with coaching the native-born inhabitants to code has made this want extra urgent than ever (I as soon as picked a struggle in a book-signing line with Joseph Stieglitz over his “Allow them to eat coaching” idiocy).

Nonetheless, I’ve had various experiences the place I’ve seen well-to-do Indian and Chinese language immigrants driving BMW’s and Acuras behaving badly towards service suppliers who they transparently view as “inferiors” on the premise of caste or class. Additionally, I usually fly between Seattle and California on what I jokingly name it Alaska Airways Flight H-1b as a result of it’s crowded with immigrant tech staff misbehaving as a consequence of their lack of cultural literacy and their evident sense of privilege (primarily not queueing, an excessive amount of baggage within the overhead bins, not masking, not powering-down laptops, and bringing massive take-out meals onto small airplanes and demanding that flight employees eliminate the trash). Simply earlier than I retired an Indian-immigrant Tech Titan was murdered by a gang after he had employed a number of Oakland prostitutes to behave as concubines in his gated Monte Sereno (Silicon Valley) mansion. Bellevue WA (Microsoft) has a HUGE downside with “high-end” escorts and their pimps. Loads of my new furnishings has been delivered by self-professed “Ukrainians” who’re clearly ethnic-Russian draft-dodgers who obtained out when the warfare began.

In each Seattle and California I’ve watched because the “white center class,” Hispanics, and Blacks had been pushed-out of the housing market, additionally inflicting extreme impacts on visitors and well being care supply. It’s most likely “higher” land-use to show a 3-4 bed room single-family house into a casual condominium home, however no person requested the era of People who took “a hen in each pot and two vehicles in each storage” without any consideration, nevertheless mistakenly. It’s the identical damaged guarantees that adopted the Civil Rights Act.

This does appear to be driving middle-class voters away from the Democrats, though not essentially into the arms of the Trumpers. It will possibly’t be emphasised sufficient that Hillary seems to have misplaced in 2016 as a result of 9-10 million 2008 Obama voters didn’t show-up for the election.

US homelessness up 12% to highest reported degree as rents soar and coronavirus pandemic help lapses AP

North Pole Elves Win Huge with Escalating Strike Labor Notes