‘It’s hard to be satisfied with just one’: What’s driving the black market for butterflies in Asia? Channel News Asia
Some Squirmy Stowaways Got to the Arctic. And They Like It There. NYT
Parma sues Kia, Hyundai over wave of car thefts Cleveland.com (Carla). Carla comments: “Cities suing companies for producing and selling problematic goods — hhhmmm… could become a trend.”
Climate
Study Shows Methane Leaks Put Climate Risk From Gas ‘On Par With Coal’ Common Dreams
‘Giant Methane Factories’: Hydropower Has Long Been Touted as Clean Energy. But Is It? Inside Climate News
* * *
Land temperatures in Spain surpass 60C as deadly heatwave sweeps Europe Independent 140 for those following along at home. That’s a lot.
Riding through the heatwave: When rights can be the difference between life and death Gig Economy Project
New Paper Links Climate Change to Shrinking Brain Size in Humans Science Alert
#COVID19
Covid damage is cumulative:
The more often you get COVID, the higher your risk of complications.
Get added protection with an updated vaccine today.
Find free updated COVID vaccines at https://t.co/jDq2UIHFmT. #WeCanDoThis pic.twitter.com/NQWN1XlnLu
— HHS.gov (@HHSGov) July 14, 2023
Non-pharmaceutical interventions are cumulative too, in a good way, but the Biden adminstration’s policy of mass infection without mitigation remains firmly in place. Meanwhile, the famous graphic for the “Swiss Cheese Model” has been upgraded:
A friend @Elemmett2 showed me a new version of the Swiss cheese model of layered protections
Love the inclusion of the “misinformation mouse” who chews holes in the layers of cheese/protections 👌
Brilliant 👏 I will think of these minimising propagandists as vermin from now on pic.twitter.com/Gl962amq9x
— Sue J (@SMpwrgr) July 15, 2023
Now With Added Realism!™
COVID restrictions are gone, but some still covering up overseas Stars and Stripes. And in Japan:
Japan seems to be headed for yet another wave, which is already serious in Okinawa. It is tempting to think that countries that focused on controlling the virus early on are now paying the price, but the price of letting it rip pre-vaccines was vastly higher. pic.twitter.com/lXe3CYBvq6
— TRG (@TRyanGregory) July 14, 2023
How Reliable is Megahit? USMortality. The deck: “A Quality Control Study of the Tools Used to Discover the SARS-CoV-2 Genome” W-a-a-a-y above my paygrade; the author is a Silicon Valley Engineer. Readers?
China?
‘An Act of War’: Inside America’s Silicon Blockade Against China NYT
Though delivered in the unassuming form of updated export rules, the Oct. 7 controls essentially seek to eradicate, root and branch, China’s entire ecosystem of advanced technology. “The new policy embodied in Oct. 7 is: Not only are we not going to allow China to progress any further technologically, we are going to actively reverse their current state of the art,” Allen says. C.J. Muse, a senior semiconductor analyst at Evercore ISI, put it this way: “If you’d told me about these rules five years ago, I would’ve told you that’s an act of war — we’d have to be at war.”
If the controls are successful, they could handicap China for a generation; if they fail, they may backfire spectacularly, hastening the very future the United States is trying desperately to avoid.
* * *
Did Xi Just Save the World? Adam Tooze, Foreign Policy. The deck: “In a little-noticed speech this week, China permanently changed the global fight against climate change.”
US envoy John Kerry heads to China to restart climate talks Channel News Asia
* * *
China’s curb on metal exports reverberates across chip sector FT
Barry FitzGerald: Two explorers who can take a slice of China’s ionic pie Stockhead. Rare earths.
Myanmar
What Americans Don’t Understand About the Conflict in Myanmar The Diplomat
China’s Metastasizing Myanmar Problem United States Institute of Peace
EU rejects Myanmar’s diplomatic role and says it still doesn’t recognize generals AP
European Disunion
French authorities ban protest against police violence in Paris France24
Dear Old Blighty
UK formally agrees to join major Indo-Pacific trade bloc, marking largest post-Brexit deal Independent. The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
The NHS is ‘not serving its purpose’ and needs to ‘cooperate with private sector’, says Tony Blair Sky News. Just like the antelope needs to “co-operate” with the lion gnawing its vitals.
Britons are ‘pulling their own teeth out with pliers’ because they can’t access NHS dentists Sky News. Reversion to the mean….
Why the OBR’s view of the economy is so wrong Funding the Future
New Not-So-Cold War
Moscow says attacks on Russian nuclear facilities could spill over to Europe Anadolu Agency
* * *
Minefields are biggest obstacle to Ukrainian counter-offensive Ukrainska Pravda. Who knew?
Nearly a third of the Bradley armored vehicles the US provided Ukraine may have already been lost or damaged Business Insider
Pentagon Dragging Its Feet Over F-16 Gifts To Ukraine Moon of Alabama
* * *
The art of vassalisation: the new middle kingdom of the United States Pearls and Irritations
Russia says it foiled assassination attempts on top media figures Al Jazeera
Thousands of Russian officials to give up iPhones over US spying fears FT
Syraqistan
Anti-overhaul protest to shift from ‘disruption’ to ‘paralysis’: Media Al Mayadeen
2024
Biden stability beats Trump volatility in 2024 match-up, experts suggest Guardian. And speaking of stability v. volatility–
Biden nibbles a little girl’s shoulder on the tarmac at Helsinki-Vantaan International Airport in Finland Daily Mail. This dude needs an intervention.
The Supremes
Senators Ask Billionaire Paul Singer and Power Broker Leonard Leo for Full Accounting of Gifts to Supreme Court Justices ProPublica
The Bezzle
Crypto giant Binance lays off more than 1,000 employees, says report Business Standard
Digital Watch
On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? (PDF) Bender, Gebru, McMillan-Major, Shmitchell, Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. Still germane. Perhaps embedding conventional wisdom into unaccountable and unmaintainable black boxes, “code is law”-style, is the whole point?
NY Lawmaker Uses AI to Write Housing Bill That Does Little to Help Renters Gizmodo. So, working as designed?
Creepy catfish or useful co-pilot: Can AI help with dating app success? Sky News
* * *
Big Tech Is Watching You as You Drive The New Republic
Screening Room
Hayao Miyazaki’s Final Film, Renamed ‘The Boy and the Heron,’ Picked Up by GKIDS for North American Distribution Hollywood Reporter. Review.
How J. Robert Oppenheimer Was Influenced by the Bhagavad Gita Literary Hub
Fa fa fa fa fashion
Musical interlude:
To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick, by Alden Wicker, Explores Public Health and Fast Fashion Teen Vogue
China’s Shein hit with RICO, a law used for organised crime Al Jazeera
On the The Lendbreen Tunic:
The Lendbreen Tunic was found chilling in a crumpled up ball in the Norwegian mountains because the earth is melting, and the ice going away revealed it. It’s roughly 1700 years old, is made of wool, and has what we would think of as a very basic construction. pic.twitter.com/wmG26A31OU
— Cora Harrington (@lingerie_addict) July 15, 2023
And:
That is an ASTONISHING amount of labor. For exactly 1 item of clothing. It is mind-boggling. I’m over here feeling like my head will explode if I think too hard about it. We have no real point of comparison for that type of work today (except maybe, haute couture, sorta kinda).
— Cora Harrington (@lingerie_addict) July 15, 2023
Fascinating er, thread.
Travel
Surge at Sea: Alarming Increase of Norovirus Outbreaks on Cruise Ships SciTech Daily
Cruise line apologizes after dozens of whales slaughtered in front of passengers NBC
Sports Desk
Beware the Pickleball Industrial Complex Jezebel. The deck: “Pickleball has enjoyed a public image as the people’s sport. It’s also considered ‘a venture capitalist’s dream.’ I suggest you run.”
Zeitgeist Watch
Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness. WaPo. The Jeff Bezos Daily Shopper is the last place I would look for coverage of this topic. Granted, I’m not sure where the first place would be; probably something fringe I don’t know about yet.’
The Invention of “the Male Gaze” The New Yorker
Media Driving ‘Fast Car’ Off Cliff Rod Dreher’s Diary. Even a blind pig finds a truffle every so often. Commentary:
As Luke Combs’s hit cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” dominates the country charts, it’s bringing up some complicated emotions in fans & singers who know that Chapman, as a queer Black woman, would have an almost zero chance at that achievement herself: https://t.co/7pCIMW5F0N
— Emily Yahr (@EmilyYahr) July 13, 2023
“Fast Car” was a single from Tracy Chapman, which sold 20,000,000 copies worldwide. Couldn’t WaPo get the CIA to do some basic OSINT for them?
How Books Taught Europeans to Smoke JSTOR Daily. Social contagion?
Class Warfare
Disney CEO Bob Iger Cackles with Investors about AI Replacing Jobs Lee Fang. If DeSantis had a lick of sense, he’d pivot to this.
A Review of OUTLIVE Eric Topol, Ground Truths. “The bigger picture issue is that the full package that Attia presents, what he and his colleagues provide in their clinic, is not affordable except for the most affluent individuals.”
The Job Where Being a Good Colleague Pays $22 Million a Year WSJ
In Search of Van Halen’s Brown M&Ms Snack Shack
Antidote du jour (via):
Bonus antidote:
The beautiful opalescent nudibranch (Hermissenda opalescens), one of the most colorful species of sea slug, filmed off the coast of California by Aron Sanchez-Baranda. pic.twitter.com/1WZa0zU8D7
— Wonder of Science (@wonderofscience) July 7, 2023
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.