DayVectors

* 21 entries including: capitalism & socialism (series); USA clean energy (series); Africa population growth hump (series); inflatable decoys | UK T-650 drone | robot M113; black holes and dark energy; Budanov speaks / Project Veritas dead / fun with crutches / Chucky; race of the AI labs; Russian warships taken out | Trump can't shut up | Gen-Z for Kamala; hoof fungus as a material | printed wood house | sodium-sulfur battery; Feds shut down Qakbot network | Facebook shuts down Spamouflage botnet; Japan & South Korea alignment | US & Vietnam | Trump V 14th Amendment; ant grooming against fungi | fungal toxins | solar fuel production; Kemp defies MAGA | Ukraine drone offensive | dog autism.

[FRI 29 SEP 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (66)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (66): Hillary Clinton, who had been Obama's secretary of state, ran for president on the Democratic ticket in 2016. Her opponent ended up being, after a raucous primary, Donald Trump (born 1946), a New York City property developer, TV celebrity, and energetic self-promoter.

Trump only ran for president as a promotional stunt, intending to cash in on his elevated public stature following the presidential bid with high-paying speaking engagements and other lucrative deals. Presidential campaigns typically can be dirty, but Trump pulled out all the stops, throwing everything he could find at Clinton, and making things up when he felt the need. His primary weapon against Clinton was illegal immigration; in terms of economic policy, he focused on trade deals such as NAFTA that, so he claimed, gave other countries an unfair advantage over the USA. He played to the grievances of working people whose jobs were being off-shored, as well as coal miners whose livelihood was dying as dirty coal power was being phased out. Trump promoted himself to the voters as a business genius; in reality, he had almost no managerial skills, though he was very skilled at promotionalism.

Every circumstance worked against Clinton, and in the end she lost the election -- if by the slightest, Trump losing the popular vote but winning the electoral vote. By all reports, he was shocked that he had won; he hadn't expected to, he had no preparation for being president, he had no interest in the job. Once in office, he spent as little time in the White House as possible, preferring to spend time at his resort complex in Florida and conducting rallies with his fans.

To the extent that Trump had an economic policy, it had three elements:

• Cut taxes for the wealthy, with the Republican-controlled Congress doing so. Although lip service was given to "supply-side economics", it was indifferent rhetoric; Trump did not care if he ran up deficits, and budget deficits began to climb rapidly again. Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress also attempted to kill off ObamaCare, but were only able to hobble it.
  
  
• Adopt protectionist policies, Trump working on the basis that if the other side was happy with a deal, it wasn't a good deal for him. There was considerable hostility towards China in this exercise, which actually was popular with both parties. The same antagonism towards traditional American allies wasn't so popular, and Trump's inclination to buddy up with Vladimir Putin and other dictators did not go over well at all. Trump wanted to hook up with Putin, but could not rescind the sanctions against Russia -- much to the frustration of the Russians, who had conducted an intensive propaganda campaign online for Trump during the election.
  
  
• Cut regulations, with the Trump White House directing that no regulation could be implemented unless one was repealed. Regulation was hardly overturned, however, Trump finding it had substantial momentum. One particular example was the Trump Administration's attempt to overturn California's automotive emission-control laws, which were stricter than the EPA's -- but California couldn't be budged. Similarly, an effort to overturn net neutrality amounted to little, since California and a number of other states passed net neutrality laws of their own.

Trump's hostility towards trade deals like NAFTA had a mixed aspect. He never tired of complaining about America's trade deficit with the rest of the world -- but he never paid attention to the reality that, along with the trade deficit, the USA had a huge surplus in services that more than made up for it. The trade deficit was largely an artifact of econometrics that hadn't kept up with the times.

Although Trump had made a campaign promise to overthrow NAFTA, that isn't exactly what happened. NAFTA was actually replaced in 2020 with the "United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)" -- which was not all that different from NAFTA, instead being an update of it. The USMCA stipulated that:

• 75% of the content of cars must be produced in the USMC bloc.
  
  
• Vehicle parts had to be made by workers bringing in at least $16 USD a hour, that being a clause targeting Mexico's low-cost labor. The deal also required that Mexico implement and adhere to labor reforms.
  
  
• Maintaining low tariffs on agricultural products established in NAFTA in the USMC bloc, while opening up Canada's markets to American dairy, poultry, and eggs.
  
  
• A set of provisions on cross-border "digital trade" that weren't really relevant when NAFTA was passed.

The provision that Mexico implement labor reforms was more or less new. There had long been an argument over attaching such provisions to trade bills, with critics suggesting that such concerns needed to be addressed by other treaties and not burden down trade talks. The case for attachment would get stronger. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 28 SEP 23] WINGS & WEAPONS

* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed in an article from JANES.com "IDET 2023: Inflatable Leopard 2A4 decoys sent to Ukraine" by Nicholas Fiorenza, 26 May 2023), the Ukrainians have been enthusiastic about the use of decoys to successfully confuse Russian invaders. The Ukrainians don't say much about the decoys, but the "International Defense & Security Technology Fair (IDET) 2023" -- held in Brno, Czech Republic, in late May 2023 -- did feature inflatable decoys from the Czech firm Inflatech.

Two such decoys were displayed, including one of a German Leopard 2A4 tank and of a Czech STARKOM communication jammer system -- STARKOM being a module typically mounted on a 8x8 truck. Inflatable decoys of tanks and such are absolutely nothing new, going back to at least World War II, but modern decoys are much more sophisticated. The resolution of these decoys at optical wavelengths is 20 centimeters (8 inches); an optical imager that can pick up better detail than that will see through the decoys. Their thermal infrared resolution is 60 centimeters (2 feet), and their radar resolution is 4 meters (13.1 feet). An ordinary tactical drone will not be able to distinguish them from the real thing at a range of more than 1,500 meters (almost a mile). They are inflated by a power inflator, and take two people 10 minutes to deploy or pack. They won't blow away except in the strongest winds.

* As discussed in a press release from BAE Systems, BAE and Malloy of the UK have collaborated on the development of an extra-large quadcopter drone, the "T-650', which can carry a payload of 300 kilograms (660 pounds) to an operational radius of 60 kilometers (37 miles). BAE in particular envisions the drone as carrying three MBDA "Brimstone II" air to surface missiles, each weighing 50 kilograms (110 pounds). The Brimstone II is a follow-on to the classic US Hellfire ASM, but generally redesigned, being faster and with a longer range, and in particular featuring a precision dual-mode seeker, with both millimeter-wave radar and semi-active radar homing.

* As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("Army Tests Uncrewed M113 Armed With Laser-Guided Rocket Launcher" by Dan Parsons, 20 May 2022), the M113 armored personnel carrier (APC), basically a metal box on tracks, has been in US military use since the early 1960s. It is obsolescent now, but it is getting something a new lease on life as under the US Army Robotic Combat Vehicle program, with old M113s modified for tests and trials.

One such showed up in a technology demonstration at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, featuring a cut-down hull, plus a remote weapons station with a missile launcher. The vehicle belonged to the Artificial Intelligence Integration Center (AI2C), the Army Futures Command office responsible for studying the use of AI to control battlefield systems. The Electro Optic Systems R150 weapon station has a thermal-imaging camera and laser range finder, and can mount a variety of weapons -- in this case, an Arnold Defense four-shot LAND-LGR4 laser-guided weapon system launcher with 70-millimeter advanced precision kill weapon system (APKWS) guided rockets.

It is unclear what technologies or scenarios the modified M113 was testing in Utah, but in the hands of AI2C, it was likely operating with some level of artificial intelligence within the larger exercise. The service has been hunting for uncrewed ground vehicles (UGV) of various sizes and capabilities for years. In most cases the technologies tested are capable of some degree of semi-autonomous operation, but human soldiers remain in the loop at all times with direct control of onboard weapons and sensor systems.

[WED 27 SEP 23] USA CLEAN ENERGY (2)

* USA CLEAN ENERGY (2): The Biden Administration's energy policy is long overdue; the climate crisis is becoming ever more frightening, while the previous administration refused to admit it even existed. The Biden energy policy wisely focuses on goals, mostly leaving the picking of specific technology winners to the private sector. Thanks to the insistence of Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, the tax credits for clean power will shift to a technology-neutral approach. Geothermal advocates are excited, having long felt neglected relative to solar and wind. As Wyden explains: "This ties together markets with choice and competition ... the more you reduce carbon emissions, the more tax credits you earn."

The policy specifies official support for low greenhouse-gas (GHG) hydrogen made from renewables, nuclear power, and fossil fuels with carbon capture. Some environmental activists are hostile towards carbon-capture technologies, on the basis that they help keep Big Oil alive. However, we're stuck with Big Oil for the time being, so we have to make the best of it. UN climate experts say carbon-capture is needed to achieve long-term climate goals. The USA will support all forms of carbon capture, giving America the chance of becoming the global leader in this area. BloombergNEF (BNEF), a research firm, estimates that merely the projects announced so far will propel America to a six-fold increase in its CCS utilization by 2030.

There's talk of "carbon border taxes" to penalize big carbon emitters -- but the Biden Administration seems inclined to soften troublesome protectionist provisions written into the new laws. Instead of going it alone, US trade officials are talking with European trade officials about forming a carbon club of economies that would levy tariffs on steel and aluminum based on the GHG-intensity in their production.

The US Treasury has formulated a schedule of tax credits for electric vehicles. There were fears that the rules on government credits would be too strict, making it hard to obtain the credits for new EV models. In reality, the schedule widened eligibility such that it would make it easier to source some key inputs from countries lacking the comprehensive free-trade deals long enjoyed by Canada and Mexico.

The Biden energy policy is getting off to a good start, but it's only a start. Trying to translate policy into infrastructure is certain to be difficult. One big problem is permitting. BNEF estimates that over a terawatt of power projects are awaiting access to the grid, with renewables making up the lion's share of capacity waiting in the interconnection queues. The big constraint is getting permits for those projects. The general belief is that streamlining permits won't be possible until the elections are over in late 2024. However, there is some support for reform on both the Right and Left.

The Left does worry that the IRA is too weak when it comes to regulation. One environmental advocate believes that enforcing rules rigorously under the existing Clean Air Act would be "the most important thing the administration can do on climate." In any case, tackling climate change is going to be a big job, and it will never be easy. [END OF SERIES]

[TUE 26 SEP 23] BLACK HOLES & DARK ENERGY

* BLACK HOLES & DARK ENERGY: As discussed in an article from SCIENCE.org ("Dark Energy From Supermassive Black holes?" by Adam Mann, 17 February 2023), astronomers have observed that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating. Current theory says it shouldn't be, so they have postulated a "dark energy" driving the acceleration.

Now a research group under Duncan Farrah at the University of Hawaii in Manoa has suggested that dark energy could be linked to the supermassive black holes at the hearts of galaxies. It is not obvious at first sight how the two might be connected, with the reasoning being indirect.

Quantum mechanics suggests that the vacuum of empty space should contain a "vacuum energy", spread throughout the Universe, and exerting a force that opposes gravity -- which fits the definition of dark energy. In 1966, Soviet physicist Erast Gliner showed that Albert Einstein's space-time gravity equations described loci of vacuum energy that couldn't be distinguished from black holes. If that scenario is true, then dark energy would be confined to the interiors of black holes, but that distribution wouldn't be visible on the universal macroscale.

This is a testable scenario, however, since the expansion of the Universe should change the mass of the black holes. Farrah says: "If the volume of the universe doubles, so does the mass of the black hole." To follow up the idea, Farrah and his colleagues studied elliptical galaxies, whose cores contain black holes with millions or billions of times the Sun's mass in their centers. They focused on galaxies with little gas or dust floating around between their stars; since a black hole would grow by swallowing up gas and dust, it could be assumed that black holes in galaxies lacking them wouldn't grow much. In addition, gas and dust is depleted from galaxies by the formation of new stars, meaning that a galaxy that at least once had dust and gas should be marked by many younger stars.

By observing ellipticals over roughly 9 billion years, the researchers saw that black holes in the early Universe were much smaller relative to their host galaxy than those in the modern Universe. In fact, they grew by an order of magnitude to the present day. Farrah and his team suggest that the mass increase is due to the fact that black holes are made up of dark energy.

Not everybody has been impressed with the idea; Robert Wald -- a theoretical physicist at the University of Chicago -- says: "What they are proposing makes no sense to me." He questions how an orb of pure dark energy could be stable. He also says the numbers don't seem to add up: dark energy is known to make up 70% of the mass-energy of the Universe, while black holes are a minority fraction of the ordinary matter, which constitutes less than 5% of the universe.

Others are willing to be patient. Cosmologist Geraint Lewis of the University of Sydney says: "At the moment, this is an interesting possibility." -- though he adds that but "there would have to be a lot more evidence on the table if this is even a remotely plausible source of dark energy."

Astrophysicist Niayesh Afshordi -- of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada -- is even enthusiastic: "I'm personally excited about it." It's thinking out of the box, and the idea is testable. He believes that if black holes and dark energy are linked in this way, it would likely have other visible consequences in the Universe, though he's not sure what. The idea may not pan out, but simply determining why it doesn't should yield insights.

[MON 25 SEP 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 38

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the USA this last week, addressing Congress and United Nations General Assembly. The speeches contained no real surprises, but afterwards there were interesting announcements about shipping a relatively small quantity of American ATACMS missiles to Ukraine, and about collaborations between US and Ukrainian defense industries.

More interesting was an interview by the magazine THE DRIVE / WAR ZONE -- an automotive publication with a secondary miltech focus -- with Ukrainian General Kyrylo Budanov, the intelligence chief. Budanov demurred when asked about offensive operations in the Donbas Region, but brightened up relative to Crimea:

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WZ asked if drone attacks on Moscow were part of the overall strategy to stretch Russian air defenses thin. Budanov, laughing, said Ukraine has never acknowledged any attacks on Moscow, and then basically answered YES:

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WZ went on to ask about sabotage groups operating in Russia. Budanov said Ukraine was assisting them, but declined to give specifics, then made an observation:

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Budanov said the FSB, the Russian security service, was under the gun for failing to stop the sabotage attacks. WZ asked him: "Do you think they have a dart board with your face on it in FSB headquarters?" He laughed and replied: "I don't know, I haven't been there."

Ukrainian sabotage operations are completely mysterious. There may not be very much to them -- but as Budanov understands, they don't have to do much damage to ruin Putin's day. WZ went on to ask about the coming of winter and its impact on Ukrainian offensive operations:

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In other words, this isn't a tank war: it's an infantry, drone, artillery, and missile war. Since Russia has much more manpower than Ukraine, Ukraine needs more drones, artillery, and missiles. However, otherwise Ukraine has the initiative on the battlefield, with the Russians on the defensive:

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As far as the vital Kerch Strait Bridge, which links Crimea to Russia, Budanov was direct:

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As far as the weapons being used, Budanov said:

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Neptune is based on the old Soviet Kh-35 cruise missile and has been used since the beginning of the war, though the land-attack version is new. The Ukrainians have plenty of experience in building missiles, and so it is puzzling they would be stalled indefinitely. I suspect we're going to see the use of Neptunes ramp up considerably in the not-too-distant future. [ED: Ukraine later stated that work was being done on a long-range version of the Neptune.]

Rumors having been going around Elon Musk shutting off Starlink satellite communications service to Ukraine during the middle of an operation, Budanov was careful to say that was not really true -- that there had been a shutdown for a month, but otherwise Starlink had proven very valuable to Ukraine. Budanov closed out the interview with appropriately tactful remarks:

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Budanov's comments cut into a meme that's been going around recently: "Ukraine isn't being grateful enough for allied help!" To which I think: "News to me, the leadership is always careful to thank Ukraine's allies." There is some grumbling with Ukrainian rank-&-file that aid isn't arriving fast enough -- which is true in the sense that Ukraine needed everything yesterday. However, they can't get everything, and they can't get it yesterday.

Later that week, the Ukrainians blasted the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol with at least two British-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles. A local started taking a video after the first hit; the video then showed the second missile, perfectly recognizable, screaming in and then producing a thunderous explosion. According to Ukrainian intelligence, the strike was timed to take place during a meeting of senior officers, many of them being injured or killed. Russian reports mention 34 casualties. It was a little surprising that the Russians hadn't abandoned such a visible target.

* In US news, this last week Project Veritas -- a Rightist propaganda operation that tried to "sting" liberal organizations -- has suspended operations. PV had been founded by one James O'Keefe in 2010, and specialized in "ambush" videos where the victims were asked trap questions, with the answers cherry-picked to prove anything O'Keefe wanted to prove. PV also like to infiltrate and subvert target organizations, though that approach got less effective as the notoriety of PV grew.

PV's smear videos resulted in defamation suits against the group, and also court orders to limit the group's intrusive and often fraudulent activities. PV was supported by contributions from Rightist sources; somehow unsurprisingly, O'Keefe lived the high life, with his treatment of PV staff said by them to resemble that of a "power-drunk tyrant". He was dismissed early this year, with the operation living on as a shell, to finally collapse.

It will not be missed. The fall of Project Veritas is another example of the accelerating disintegration of the Right.

* The first Sunday in August, I did something clueless and fell, badly bruising my right hip. That posed a problem in that I couldn't walk, and in fact trying to get around was painful. I could only get around on all fours the rest of the day.

On Monday, I tried to get around with a cane I had on hand and leveraging off tabletops, but I concluded it was no good. Tuesday morning, first thing I did was get on Amazon and look up crutches -- I couldn't drive, so I had to get them shipped to me. I was wondering if I should get tall crutches or elbow crutches, then concluded I should get tall crutches since I was more certain they would do the job. I found crutches that were tall enough for me and got good reviews, so I ordered them.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't get them earlier than Friday morning, so what to do in the meantime? I'd had a brainstorm during the night, thinking that I could use a kitchen stepladder as a walker. I tried a 3-step folding ladder and it worked effectively, though it was laborious, and I couldn't go out of the house with it. I was glad when the crutches arrived Friday morning, since they greatly improved my mobility. I hadn't gone to the supermarket on Tuesday as usual, so I threw the crutches in the car and drove over. While shopping, I put the crutches in the shopping cart and used it as a walker.

That weekend, I got to thinking I should get elbow crutches too, as something of an experiment; they were cheap, and they might be preferable once I was better mended. I ordered them from Amazon and got them on Monday. The tall crutches worked a lot better at the time, but the elbow crutches weren't so troublesome to put in the car, so I used them when I went to the supermarket on Tuesday.

Over the next two weeks, I gradually transitioned from the tall crutches to the elbow crutches. Once I could start putting weight on my right leg, the elbow crutches worked fine and were more convenient than the tall crutches. In the meantime, having been forced to give up my regular exercise schedule, I started doing calisthenics on a pivoting stool for five minutes six times a day.

From that time on, it was incremental improvement. I got to needing only a single crutch; originally, I used it with my right arm, but then counter-intuitively I found it worked better with my left, since it allowed me to lean to the left and better take the load off from my right leg. Gradually, I didn't need the crutch at all, limping slightly but no worries, and got back to a proper exercise schedule. I stayed with calisthenics six times a day, doing a 15-minute session after I got up, five-minute sessions the rest of the day. That was well more than what I started with. In any case, I figure I should be back to normal by early October. If I have leg problems again -- now I've got two sets of crutches on hand.

* In trivial news last week, Mexican police in the city of Monclova arrested a man named "Carlos N" for shaking down people with a knife. Carlos N also had a "Chucky" doll -- from the long-running CHUCKY horror movie series, which has had eight installments since 1988 -- and used the doll as a prop to intimidate his victims. The cops found that amusing, and so one of them was videoed taking Chucky into custody in cuffs, giving him a mug shot, and booking him. She was later reprimanded by her superiors for clowning around. I hope they weren't too harsh with her.

[FRI 22 SEP 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (65)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (65): The idea of using income redistribution to address income inequality raised a storm of protest, one of the big protests being that redistribution was economically inefficient, even counterproductive. The first problem with this is the difficulty of nailing down "efficiency", which can be as troublesome as nailing down "productivity". Certainly, it is not hard to distinguish a lazy and inept business from an energetic and competent one, but trying to reduce the difference to a simple formula is asking for trouble.

As the British economist Anthony Atkinson (born 1944) pointed out, it's very hard to make a connection between income inequality and efficiency. Businesses that pay low wages and have high turn-over -- in effect, treating employees as expendable items -- are not noted for their efficiency, the employees having low morale, and always behind the curve in learning how to do their jobs competently. With any kind of skilled labor that equates to inefficiency, employees never acquiring the skills to do the job well. The worst sort of business environments, where employees are ruthlessly exploited and sacked on minor pretexts, can be extremely inefficient; like slaves, they only do as much as they have to, and since they can't actually handle the unreasonable workload, they work to deceive the management: "They pretend to lead, we pretend to follow."

In other words, the correlation between a harsh business environment and an efficient one is weak at best, representing a failure to understand the rule: "It doesn't matter how hard the work is, what matters is how much gets done." -- and the related rule of: "Work smart not hard." Paying even unskilled labor a decent wage and optimizing the work environment -- notably with automation -- can result in a highly productive and efficient work environment. Think of the introduction of touchscreen ordering systems in fast-food outlets, which not only reduced the load on employees, but were generally seen as convenient by customers. In practice, automation has proven less about getting rid of employees, being more about increasing their productivity.

Even if efficiency could be linked to income inequality, how can that justify astronomical executive compensation? Paying an executive 50 times the minimum wage is one thing; paying an executive 500 times the minimum wage is very much another. On the other side of that coin, how does impoverishing employees improve efficiency? How can employees be efficient if they don't get education, health care, or a decent place to live?

* Another focus of the Obama Administration -- efforts to address climate change and deal with other environmental problems -- was also increasingly addressed by economists, with work from the 1960s evolving into "environmental economics". It wasn't, in itself, a radical idea: as with the mandating of seat belts, the bottom line for manufacturers wasn't necessarily the same as the bottom line of society as a whole, and so governments ended up imposing regulations. There was no "magic of the market" at work, instead there was market failure that had to be addressed by government action.

Environmental regulations were of course nothing new, having started in earnest in the 1960s, and had varying levels of success from that time. It was the emergence of the climate-change crisis that raised the stakes in the effort, since it meant radically reforming an economic system of an entire world that had become dependent on fossil fuels. Economists came up with projections of the economic damage of climate change, which of course varied considerably -- but all agreed that the expense would be astronomical.

What to do about it, then? The main drives were towards renewable energy, electrification, non-carbon-based fuels, and energy efficiency. There was some push towards increased use of nuclear power, based on claims that renewables couldn't do the job. However, nuclear power was generally seen as environmentally "dirty"; its defenders claimed that the environmental hazard was exaggerating -- though those who took a closer look at it were at least put off by the reality that nuclear power projects had often proven expensive losers, that all along nuclear power had over-promised and under-delivered. Renewable solar power, in contrast, was readily scalable, with small inexpensive installations capable of being scaled up dramatically, with the price-performance curve dropping rapidly in the 21st century.

Governments needed to be supportive of technological innovation, though it wasn't necessarily simple to do. The Obama Administration had backed a solar-power tech manufacturer named Solyndra, with loud criticisms of the administration when the company went bankrupt. The failure of Solyndra, however, hardly demonstrated a fatal flaw in administration policy: all venture capitalists back a few dogs, swallowing the losses knowing they're likely to win big sooner or later. As defenders pointed out, if the administration didn't have a few failures, it wouldn't be trying hard enough.

To work, the technology drive had to be backed up by government policy in setting regulations, backing research, and subsidizing producers -- often by awarding them lucrative government contracts. Two schemes were devised to complement regulation:

• Carbon taxes, meaning imposing a surcharge on, say, gasoline for vehicles to deal with the emissions they produced. There was much enthusiasm for carbon taxes at one time, but it faded from consumer resistance: few liked the idea of tax increases, and so governments backed away from carbon taxes.
  
  
• Emissions trading, in which permits to produce emissions were bought and sold. A company that is able to reduce emissions could sell emissions credits and make a profit; a company that couldn't reduce its emissions so easily could buy credits until it got its emissions under control. It wasn't a new idea, and it had demonstrated some effectiveness. Emissions trading leveraged off the "magic of the market" instead of top-down government regulations to get things done. It was, however, heavily criticized by environmentalists, who didn't like the idea of buying rights to pollute, and who suspected that emissions trading was just sleight of hand, a cover for doing nothing.

Barack Obama left office in 2017. At that time, environmental policy, indeed all policy that could reasonably be called liberal, ran into severe turbulence. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 21 SEP 23] SPACE NEWS

* Space launches for August included:

[02 AUG 23] USA WP / ANTARES / CYGNUS 19 (NG 19) -- An Orbital Sciences Antares booster was launched from Wallops Island off the coast of Virginia at 0031 UTC (next day local time + 4) to put the 19th operational "Cygnus" supply capsule, designated "NG 19", into space on an International Space Station support mission, carrying 3,785 kilograms (8,345 pounds) of cargo. It docked with the ISS two days later. The launch also included three CubeSats, to be deployed from the ISS later -- including "DUPLEX", "SeaLion" and "ProSat 1". The booster was in the "Antares 230+" configuration, with two RD-181 first stage engines and a Castor 30XL second stage. This was the last flight of the 230+ configuration, and likely the last flight of a Western booster with Russian engines.

[03 AUG 23] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 4C / FENGYUN 3F -- A Long March 4C booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0347 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Fengyun 3F" polar-orbiting weather satellite for the China Meteorological Administration.

[03 AUG 23] USA CC / FALCON 9 / GALAXY 37 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0500 UTC (local time + 4), to put the "Galaxy 37" geostationary comsat into space for Intelsat. It was built by Maxar and based on the SSL-1300 satellite bus, with a C-band payload. G33 was placed in the geostationary slot at 127 degrees West longitude.

[07 AUG 23] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-8 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0241 UTC (next day local time + 4) to put 22 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The Falcon 9 first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship.

[07 AUG 23] RU PL / SOYUZ 2-1B / GLONASS-K2 13L (COSMOS 2569) -- A Soyuz 2.1b booster was launched from Plesetsk at 1319 UTC (local time - 4) to put the first GLONASS-K2 navigation satellite into orbit. It was assigned the series designation of "Cosmos 2569".

[08 AUG 23] USA VB / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-20 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Vandenberg SFB at 0357 UTC (next day local time + 8) to put 15 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.

[08 AUG 23] CN TY / LONG MARCH 2C / HUANJING 2F -- A Long March 2C booster was launched from the Chinese Taiyuan space center at 0250 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Huanjing 2F" AKA "S-SAR 02" radar remote sensing satellite into orbit.

[10 AUG 23] CN JQ / CERES 1 / RIDESHARE x 7 -- A Ceres 1 booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0403 GMT (local time - 8) to put seven rideshare satellites in orbit, including "Diwei Zhineng Yingji 1" AKA "Henan Ligong 1"; four "Xi'an Hangtou" satellites; "Xiguang 1 01"; and "Xingchi 1B". The flight was called the "Lucky 7" mssion.

[10 AUG 23] RU VS / SOYUZ 2-1B / LUNA 25 (FAILURE) -- A Soyuz 2-1b booster was launched from Vostochny at 2310 UTC (local time - 4) to send the "Luna 25" lander probe to the Moon. The lander crashed.

[11 AUG 23] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-9 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0517 UTC (local time + 4) to put 22 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The Falcon 9 first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship.

[12 AUG 23] CN XC / LONG MARCH 3B/E / LUDI TANCE-4 01A -- A Long March 3B/E booster was launched from the Chinese Xichang space center at 1726 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "Ludi Tance-4 01A" SAR radar satellite into inclined geostationary orbit.

[14 AUG 23] CN XC / KUAIZHOU 1A / HEAD 3A to 3E -- A Chinese Kuaizhou 1A (KZ1A) booster was launched from Xichang at 0532 UTC (local time - 8) to put five HEAD 3 AIS ship-tracking satellites into low Earth orbit.

[17 AUG 23] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-10 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0336 UTC (previous day local time + 4) to put 22 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The Falcon 9 first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship.

[20 AUG 23] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 4C E / GAOFEN 12-04 -- A Long March 3B/E booster was launched from Jiuquan at 1745 UTC (day local time - 8) to put the "Gaofen (High Resolution) 12-04" civil optical remote sensing satellite into Sun-synchronous low Earth orbit.

[22 AUG 23] USA VB / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 7-1 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Vandenberg SFB at 0937 UTC (local time + 8) to put 21 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The booster stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship.

[23 AUG 23] RU BK / SOYUZ 2-1A / PROGRESS 85P (MS 24 / ISS) -- A Soyuz 2-1a booster was launched from Baikonur at 0108 UTC (local time - 6) to put a Progress tanker-freighter spacecraft into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) supply mission. It docked with the station two days later. It was the 85th Progress mission to the ISS.

[23 AUG 23] NK / CHOLLIMA 1 / MANLIGYEONG 1 (FAILURE): -- North Korea launched a Chollima 1 booster at 1850 UTC (local time - 9) to put the "Manligyeong 1" military surveillance satellite into orbit. The payload did not make orbit. A launch attempt in May had also been a failure.

[23 AUG 23] NZ / ELECTRON / ACADIA 1 -- A Rocket Labs Electron light booster was launched from New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula at 2345 UTC (next day local time - 13) to put the "Acadia 1" SAR radar-imaging satellite into orbit for Capella Space.

[25 AUG 23] CN JQ / CERES 1 / TIANQI 13 & -- A Ceres 1 booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0459 GMT (local time - 8) to put the "Jilin-1 Kuanfu 02A" Earth remote sensing satellite into orbit.

[26 AUG 23] USA CC / FALCON 9 / SPACEX CREW DRAGON ISS 7 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0727 UTC (local time + 4). The crew consisted of NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, the spacecraft commander; European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, piloting the spacecraft; Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, flying as a mission specialist, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov, also a mission specialist.

[27 AUG 23] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-11 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0105 UTC (previous day local time + 4) to put 22 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The Falcon 9 first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship.

[31 AUG 23] CN XC / LONG MARCH 2D / YAOGAN 39-01A:C -- A Long March 2D booster was launched from Xichang at 0736 UTC (local time - 8) to put the secret "Yaogan 39 Group 1" payloads into orbit. It was a triplet of satellites and may have been a "flying triangle" naval signals intelligence payload.

[WED 20 SEP 23] USA CLEAN ENERGY (1)

* USA CLEAN ENERGY (1): As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("America's Chance To Become A Clean-Energy Superpower", 5 April 2023), the USA still remains hooked on the oil habit -- but bit by bit, glimmers of the light of a post-oil future can be seen.

Welcome to Woodbine, a small town in southeastern Georgia, north of Jacksonville across the Florida border. One of its most prominent landmarks is the Dollar General store -- but it is also home to Plug Power, which provides warehouses operated by Walmart and Amazon with forklifts run on hydrogen. The company building one of the world's largest facilities to make liquid hydrogen.

The plant is full of electrolyzers that crack water into hydrogen and oxygen; in full operation, it will keep 10,000 hydrogen forklifts running. Sanjay Shrestha, Plug's chief strategy officer, says local officials helped with site selection and permitting, he explains, but the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) -- a climate-focused law passed by Congress in 2022, has had "a transformational impact" on the prospects for clean hydrogen.

Ali Zaidi, the White House's national climate adviser, knows that as well: "We're seeing people make bets on America even ahead of where our ambition might have been." Since President Joe Biden took office, thanks to three recent laws -- the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the CHIPS Act, and the IRA -- firms have announced about $200 billion USD in investments into a range of green technologies from batteries and electric vehicles (EVs) to renewables and hydrogen.

Jennifer Granholm, America's secretary of energy, argues that the country is well on its way to becoming "a global energy superpower". Green energy, for now, isn't the most of it. America's oil exports hit a record high in 2022, while its exports of liquefied natural gas helped rescue Europe during the Russia-induced energy shock of the past year. Joe Biden doesn't believe fossil fuels are the future, but necessity means they are the major players for the time being.

Biden's approval of Willow, an Alaskan oil project, won praise from Republicans, and condemnation from environmental activists. His encouragement of fossil fuels is guarded, however: the fine print of the BIL and IRA offers subsidies for decarbonization technologies, including carbon capture & sequestration (CCS) and hydrogen made from fossil fuels.

Although Granholm was inclined for a time to scold oil executives as climate villains, she's refined her pitch, pushing innovation to seek to deal with climate change while aiding fossil-fuel exploitation. She says: "We have provided a suite of carrots to make the United States irresistible." It seems to be working, with energy firms around the world ramping up plans to invest in the USA -- though quietly expressing doubts about the Biden Administration's industrial policy, and some of the strings Congress has attached.

The IRA's climate-related provisions provide some $369 billion USD in tax credits and other direct government funding over the next decade for energy and infrastructure. Private investments are likely to greatly boost that number for decarbonization efforts. It isn't tilting at windmills: in 2022, power generated from renewable energy surpassed the total generated from coal for the first time. The unsubsidized costs of wind and solar are falling below the cost of coal generation, and tax credits for their deployment will soon give them an additional boost.

The IRA doesn't face political opposition, either. Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, says that, despite noisy complaints from Republicans in the House of Representatives, he is "not hearing from Republicans in the Senate that they want to completely repeal it in 2024", in part "because Houston benefits as much as Chicago, if not more".

A report by Climate Power, an advocacy group, reported that over 100,000 new jobs were announced in 31 states between the passage of the IRA and the end of January 2023, with the lion's share of the 90-plus clean-energy projects in conservative states. Red state Georgia came in top with over $15 billion in investment. Bryan Fisher of RMI, a clean-energy non-profit, says that more than 75 decarbonization projects worth a billion or more are under development in Texas and Louisiana, thanks to BIL and IRA incentives. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 19 SEP 23] AI LAB RACE

* AI LAB RACE: As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("The Race Of The AI Labs Heats Up", 30 January 2023), enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI) technology has been at a high level for years, and in fact is growing. The biggest excitement as of late was over "ChatGPT", an unusually intelligent chatbot, created by a startup named OpenAI, obtaining millions of users almost overnight after its introduction in November 2022.

Microsoft, which has just invested $10 billion USD in OpenAI, likes what ChatGPT has to offer -- which includes generating text, images, music, and video that seem to be have been created by humans. In early 2023, Google published a paper describing a similar system that can generate music from a text description of a song, while it is reported that Chinese search giant Baidu plans to incorporate a chatbot into its search engine in March.

AI has long gone through cycles of promise and disappointment, and it is not yet clear if ChatGPT and its rivals really are game-changers. However, it is clear that the generative AI models that underlie them are changing the game for the tech industry and its high-powered corporate research labs. These rival research & development (R&D) labs -- sometimes part of big tech firms, affiliated with them, or run by independent startups -- are engaged in a high-stakes race for AI supremacy.

There's nothing all that new about corporate research-and-development (R&D) organizations, the classic example being Thomas Edison's Menlo Park lab in New Jersey. After World War II, America Inc invested heavily in basic science in the hope that this would yield practical products. DuPont (a maker of chemicals), IBM and Xerox (which both manufactured hardware) all housed big research laboratories. AT&T's Bell Labs produced, among other inventions, the transistor, laser and the photovoltaic cell, earning its researchers nine Nobel Prizes. However, from about 1980, corporate R&D increasing focused on supporting product development, with fundamental research handed back to universities.

Universities advanced AI technology to the point where it caught fire, and now a wide range of organizations are back in the game. Startups such as Anthropic and Character AI have also built their own ChatGPT challengers. Stability AI, a startup that has put together an open-source consortium of other small firms, universities and non-profits to pool resources, has created a popular model that converts text to images. In China, government-backed outfits such as the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) are dominant.

However, all the big recent advances in AI around the world have been generated by corporate labs, in good part because they have so much computing power on hand. Amazon, whose AI drives its Alexa voice assistant, and Meta, which scored a hit recently when one of its AIs beat human players at "Diplomacy", a strategy board game, respectively produce two-thirds and four-fifths as much AI research as Stanford University, which has a strong computer science department. Alphabet and Microsoft turn out substantially more than Stanford -- and that's not including DeepMind, Google Research's sister lab which the parent company acquired in 2014, and the Microsoft-affiliated OpenAI lab,

It's not easy to determine exactly who's ahead in the global AI race. Chinese labs are seen as leaders in computer vision, Meta's "Diplomacy" player, Cicero, is seen as top of the class in use of strategic reasoning and deception against human opponents. DeepMind's AIs have mastered the game of Go, and have made great strides in determining protein configurations. At present, however, the focus is on "generative AI", with the Microsoft-affiliated ChatGPT the prime example. Google, however, is getting ready to introduce a competitor that beta evaluations show is perfectly competitive.

It's actually not that easy to maintain a lead in AI research, because it's so open, with the community of researchers trading and arguing with each other. Yann LeCun, Meta's top AI wonk, says: "Nobody is ahead of anybody else by more than two to six months." Nonetheless, small leading-edge firms like OpenAI are nimbler than big players such as Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta, and their momentum is likely to increase as they attract more talent and get more recognition. They have more resources, but within a few years, the sheer size of models will hit diminishing returns as they run low on training materials.

The capital flowing into generative-AI startups, which in 2022 collectively raised $2.7 billion USD in 110 deals, suggests that venture capitalists are betting that not all the value will be captured by big tech. AI tech is expanding rapidly, and it's not possible to see who the winners will be when it finally settles out.

[MON 18 SEP 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 37

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: While the grind of the Ukraine War continues, Armed Forces Ukraine scored a spectacular win this last week with a strike on the Russian Navy base at Sevastopol in Crimea, hitting a landing ship and a KILO-class submarine with cruise missiles. The soundtrack of a video taken by a citizen had the missiles hissing in at high speed, their flight ending with thunderous explosions. Other videos showed the warships burning through the night. Assessments suggest they are out of action for a long time, possibly permanently; they were both in drydock, and the drydocks were presumably badly damaged as well.

AFU media releases hint that the attack on the two vessels was directed by Ukrainian special operations forces, who swam into the area. It is thought that the strike was performed by air-launched British Storm Shadow missiles, but it may have been Ukrainian Neptune missiles. They've already been used on two Russian S400 Triumf surface-to-air missile sites in Crimea to good effect. Apparently there's three more S400 sites in Crimea waiting for their turn.

The Neptune uses Global Positioning System / Inertial Navigation System (GPS-INS) guidance for its cruise flight. GPS is easily jammed and the backup INS isn't accurate enough for targeting, but the antiship version of the Neptune uses a radar seeker for precision terminal attack, while the surface-attack version uses an infrared imaging seeker with target recognition capabilities.

The attacks on Russian assets in Crimea seem to be escalating. Images appeared of a Russian missile ship under tow -- which is not in itself strange, since warships are often hauled around harbors by tugs, but the missile ship's stern had settled and clearly had taken on water. The excitement is only getting started. That may be true for the war in general, with AFU ground forces ramping up the push against Russian lines in hopes of making a breakthrough before the muddy season sets in. Even if that doesn't happen, will the fighting even really down through the winter? Mobility will be limited of course, but given more long-range weapons, the hammering of the Russians will continue without a letup.

* Donald Trump is facing four separate trials, the most serious one being for his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election. As always, Trump has loudly protested against the legal action against him and denounced everyone associated with it -- with the result that people like Judge Tanya Chutkan, in charge of the trial, needs security protection. Special Counsel Jack Smith of the DOJ, who is driving the prosecution of Trump, has submitted a filing to Judge Chutkan accusing Trump of witness intimidation -- which, incidentally, carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.

As the saying goes: "Trump has the right to remain silent, but not the ability." He's been warned. What happens next? Does Judge Chutkan slap a gag order on Trump? Seems likely. Will he comply? Probably not. What then? Does he go to jail? He may want to in order to throw out appeals to delay his trial. That, however, may be overestimating Trump, who is incapable of thinking things out. He just likes to make a mess of things, all the time. It's worked for him before. It doesn't seem to be working for him now.

* Victor Shi, a politically-active senior-class student at UCLA, has become something of an advocate of young "Generation Z" voters. In a recent essay on MSNBC.com ("Kamala Harris Could Be Biden's Secret 2024 Weapon", 16 September 2023), Shi suggested that the conventional wisdom on Vice President Kamala Harris -- that she's a liability to the Biden Administration -- should be and can be turned on its head.

It's not surprising that Harris has a bad rep, since she's so heavily targeted by the Right. The smears could, possibly, be from the fact that the fact she's an Indo-Jamaican female -- though the Right will say it's because she's a "socialist", or something equally nonsensical. However, there are calls elsewhere for Biden to drop Harris from the 2024 election ticket. Of course, that's just not going to happen. As Shi says:

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Biden's advanced age gives his vice-presidential pick particular importance; in a sense, the Democrats are offering two presidents for the price of one. I never saw her as my first pick, but I have no problems with the idea of President Kamala. As has been said, the worst potential Democratic presidential candidate is far better than the best Republican one. I definitely like the idea of taking all the Right's hating on Kamala and turning it back on them.

Incidentally, Shi has become one of the handful of "early adopter" commentors on Spoutible, the moderated answer to X/Twitter. It necessarily takes time to bring up a social media service, both in terms of scaling up computing resources to handle a growing user base and adding features -- Spoutible has just added a news feed, by the way, which is welcome. Chris Bouzy, the mastermind behind Spoutible, thinks that the service will start building up momentum next year as Democrats get on board to push towards the November election. Vic Shi, who also maintains a presence on X/Twitter, seems well-suited to leading young new users to Spoutible.

[FRI 15 SEP 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (64)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (64): One of the other concerns of the Obama Administration, and yet another outgrowth of the Reagan Era, was income inequality. In the 1970s, the top 1% of America's earners controlled less than a tenth of the country's wealth; by Obama's time, it was a fifth. This increasingly awkward disparity led to the "Occupy" movement that began in 2011, in which camp-in protests were performed in cities around the world, with the slogan: "We are the 99%!" The pattern was set by the "Occupy Wall Street" protest that camped out in Manhattan. The authorities were patient for a time, but finally shut down the camps in 2012. The movement evaporated.

The Occupy movement didn't amount to much more than theatrics, but the problem of income inequality was real. The issue was addressed in a 2014 book published by French economist Thomas Piketty (born 1971) titled CAPITAL IN THE 21ST CENTURY, which asked such questions as: "How did the rich get so rich?" -- and: "What, if anything, should be done about it?"

Karl Marx would have said that the rich got so rich by exploiting the workers; Joseph Schumpeter would have said that they did so by being bold, innovative, and lucky. Simplistic economics merely suggested that people were paid according to what they contributed to production: unskilled labor wasn't paid much, skilled labor was paid more, while smart captains of industry made the big money.

The problem with the simplistic answer was that it was absurd to believe astronomical concentrations of wealth reflected the productivity of the wealthy: they weren't that productive by any measure, and it was hard to measure the productivity of any one person anyway. That was part of what Obama meant when he said: "You didn't build that!" -- implying that the success of any one individual or group was dependent on a greater context.

Piketty understood that executive compensation heavily depended on company culture, a reality that had become obvious in the days of Jack Welch. Companies proclaimed they were "generating shareholder value", with company boards of directors then rubber-stamping big bonuses for chief executives. Why not? By expanding rewards for senior corporate officials, those on the boards could expect the rewards as well. The payouts could be blatantly absurd, with deposed CEOs sometimes being granted fat severance benefits, called "golden parachutes" -- even when they were being let go for poor performance. With taxes being heavily cut in the Reagan Era, corporate executives could expect to hang on to their gains -- all the more because most of the compensation was in stock options and such that weren't, in themselves, taxable. The result was the accumulation of billionaires.

Piketty observed another, very simple, reason for the grand accrual of wealth, which he called the "historical law of capitalism". He noted that the rate of return on wealth was generally greater than the overall growth rate of the economy: if wealth grew at 10% a year while the economy grew at 3%, then wealth would expand 7% faster than the output of the economy. Wages, in contrast, tracked economic growth -- and so the wealthy acquired a growing slice of the pie. Piketty determined that this process had been at work in the USA since the 1970s.

Other economists challenged Piketty's assumptions, but even when the criticisms were valid, there was still the problem of growing inequality. Some economists didn't really think it was really a problem: isn't a society better off to have wealth that is unequally shared than, as was the case with communism, poverty that is equally shared? That was a disingenuous question: a communist society was an oligarchy, with the Party in control of resources and the people living in poverty. The rise of an overbearing capitalist oligarchy was unlikely to fare much better.

The answer, the only answer, to the problem of inequality was "redistribution": tax the rich and subsidize the poor. That was easier said than done, Obama finding out that many Americans regarded "redistribution" as a dirty word. It was certainly tricky, the goal of "bringing down the wealthy" not being the same as "elevating the poor", and with the wealthy vigorously defending their interests. Obama repeatedly insisted that he didn't want to loot the wealthy, he just wanted them to pay their "fair share" -- reflecting another awkward reality of inequality, that the wealthy acquired a range of tricks to protect their wealth, and could end up with lower effective tax rates than the middle class. It was the old issue of governing for both the haves and have-nots, seeking a balance between the two. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 14 SEP 23] GIMMICKS & GADGETS

* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed in an article from THEVERGE.com ("Meet The Mushroom That Could One Day Replace Plastic" by Justine Calma, 22 February 2023), the "tinder bracket fungus" or "hoof fungus", formally known as Fomes fomentarius, is not well known -- but its fans think it has a big future, being potentially useful as a biodegradeable material to replace non-biodegradable plastics.

In the wild, F. fomentarius might look like a horse's hoof growing out of a tree trunk; humans have long used it as tinder for starting fires -- hence its nicknames. Pezhman Mohammadi -- a senior scientist at VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, who has led research on the fungus -- believes it could also be used to create a new class of ultra-lightweight high-performance materials.

The interesting feature of the hoof fungus is that it has three layers with distinct properties:

• There's a tough outer crust that could be used to make impact-resistant coating for windshields, for example.
  
  
• There's a soft middle layer that feels good on the skin and could replicate leather.
  
  
• The third inner layer is similar to wood.

The research team used advanced imaging techniques and mechanical strength tests to study each layer and assess their potential uses. Mohammadi and his team have already created a prototype set of headphones using the thread-like structure, called mycelium, that makes up a fungus. The fungus is not ready for commercial use yet, one big issue being "farming" it; it might prove useful to genetically tweak to make it more useful and easier to raise. So far, however, the research hasn't found any show-stoppers.

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("3D-Printed Home Made From Forest Products Is 100% Recyclable" by Nick Lavars, 23 November 2022), 3D-printed houses are increasingly nothing new. However, researchers at the University of Maine (UoM) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, along with Maine Housing and the Maine Technology Institute, have now developed the "BioHome3D", which is a printed home made out of wood.

The home's 3D-printed walls are made of wood fibers and natural resins sourced from Maine's local forest product industry, as are its floor and roof. The home, which has a floor area of 55.7 square meters (600 square feet), was fabricated in four modules by a giant indoor printer at UoM, assembled on a prepared site at UoM, and wired for electricity in a few hours by a single electrician. It was wired with sensors to determine how well it stood up to the elements.

Dr. Habib Dagher, executive director of the University of Maine's Advanced Structures and Composites Center, comments:

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* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Cheap Sodium-Sulfur Battery Boasts 4x the Capacity of Lithium-Ion" by Nick Lavars, 08 December 2022), an international research team has demonstrated a new sodium-sulfur battery design that offers a fourfold increase in energy capacity compared to a typical lithium-ion battery.

The new device is a variation on the class of "molten-salt" batteries, which have been around for decades. They are attractive because they rely on commonly-available materials, and potentially have good performance-price ratios. Typically, they rely on a sodium-sulfur chemistry and keep their electrodes at high temperatures to maintain the electrolyte in a liquid molten state. The new battery design, developed by a research team out of China and Australia, is claimed to provide greatly improved performance at room temperature instead.

Dr. Zhao Shenlong -- of the University of Sydney, and research lead on the project -- and his colleagues were focused on addressing some of the limitations of current sodium-sulfur batteries, most significantly their short life cycles and limited capacities. By using carbon-based electrodes and modifying the reaction chemistry, they came up with a sodium-sulfur battery with a capacity about four times that of a lithium-ion battery. The battery demonstrated good stability, retaining around half of capacity after 1,000 cycles. Zhao says:

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[WED 13 SEP 23] MISSING THE PEAK (2)

* MISSING THE PEAK (2): The education level of girls also makes a big difference in fertility rates. In Angola, for instance, women without any schooling have 7.8 children, while those with college education have 2.3. Educated women tend to have a better shot at good jobs, meaning they have options beyond being mothers, and can also better hold their ground with husbands when considering family size.

Studies have shown that a stall in Africa's fertility decline that took place in the 2000s may have been due to the delayed effect of cuts in spending on education in the 1980s, when many African economies were in crisis. The rapid fall in more recent years may be partly due to the huge push to improve girls' schooling in the past few decades.

Economists have traditionally been inclined to believe that poor families have more children to ensure that some survive to look after their parents in old age. However, that may be less true now. Zainab Abubakar, a 30-year-old charcoal-seller and mother, wrapped in a blue hijab in the outskirts of Kano, has two kids but does not want any more: "The cost of living is high."

That is not an isolated sentiment. When the economy in Nigeria went south between 2013 and 2018, the number of women wanting no more kids jumped from 19% to 25%. As the costs of raising children rise, more parents worry about being able to educate them. When asked why she doesn't want more kids, Abubakar says: "We are trying to make our children productive." Even rural Nigerians are evaluating the trade-off between having many poorly-educated kids, or not so many kids with better futures.

Leadership is also increasingly pushing population control. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni used to tell students: "Your job is to produce children." Now he warns Ugandan women that lots of pregnancies will "weaken your bodies, and many children are not easy to manage and nurture." In Nigeria, funding for family planning is thin, but President Muhammadu Buhari has set up a "National Council on Population Management" -- underlining "the urgency to address Nigeria's sustained high fertility rate, through expanding access to modern family planning".

In the past, many African politicians were suspicious that Western efforts to promote family planning were a trick to keep African countries from growing populous and strong. Such beliefs are less common these days. However, Western environmentalists have pushed a dubious meme of their own, saying that overpopulation in Africa presents an environmental threat, particularly by contributing to climate change.

OK, that's got a seed of truth in it, in that more population on the Earth means a greater environmental burden, and typically African nations haven't been good to their environments. However, Africa's contributions to greenhouse-gas emissions per capita are much smaller than those of the developed world -- and in fact, Africa isn't overpopulated. Sub-Saharan Africa has an average of 48 people per square kilometer, which is much lower than Britain (277), Japan (346) or South Korea (531). Of sub-Saharan Africa's five most populous countries, all are below Britain's density. Indeed, it is not entirely clear that high growth rates in African states are really a danger.

Of course, it is clear that lower population growth has substantial benefits. Fertility drops usually mean wider gaps between births and fewer teenage pregnancies: both help reduce risks to a mother's health. In addition, falling fertility rates mean there are more working-age adults relative to the number of children. With fewer mouths to feed at home, each child is more likely to get enough food, as well as books and uniforms for school -- with governments being more generous to children as well.

One of the factors in declining fertility is women working paying jobs. That means a bigger workforce, which should be a boost to prosperity. The faster fertility rates fall, the bigger the impact. A 2017 study by Mahesh Karra and David Canning of Harvard University and Joshua Wilde of the University of South Florida estimates that lowering the fertility rate by one child per woman in Nigeria could almost double income per person by 2060. The issues remain of African governments pursuing development goals that can give both men and women good jobs. [END OF SERIES]

[TUE 12 SEP 23] QAKBOT CANCELED / FACEBOOK TAKEDOWN

* QAKBOT CANCELED: In early September, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), working with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and international partners, announced that they had dismantled the "Qakbot" botnet. Qakbot is a banking trojan that enabled further attacks on a victim's network for hackers willing to buy access and then deliver their own malware, notably for ransomware. US officials said Qakbot has helped to facilitate more than 40 ransomware attacks over the past 18 months alone, generating $58 million USD in ransom payments.

The effort was named "Operation Duck Hunt", with the FBI and its international partners penetrating Qakbot infrastructure located in the United States and across Europe. The DOJ also announced the seizure of more than $8.6 million USD in cryptocurrency from the Qakbot cybercriminal organization, which will be made available to victims.

The FBI said it redirected the botnet's network traffic to servers under the US government's control, allowing the Feds to take charge. The FBI used the botnet to order Qakbot-infected machines around the world into downloading an FBI-made uninstaller that disconnected the victim's computer from the botnet.

The FBI said the operation had identified about 700,000 devices infected with Qakbot as of June 2023, including more than 200,000 located in the USA States. 700,000 was only a small part of the botnet.

Some of the systems the FBI got access to included the Qakbot's stack of virtual machines for testing malware against popular antivirus engines, and Qakbot's servers for running phishing campaigns named after former US presidents -- working on the assumption that political-themed emails are likely to get opened. The FBI said it was also able to identify Qakbot wallets that contained crypto stolen by Qakbot's administrators.

According to the FBI and findings by US cybersecurity agency CISA, Qakbot uses a network of tiered systems -- named "Tier 1", "Tier 2", and "Tier 3" -- to control the malware installed on infected computers around the world Tier 1 systems are ordinary home or business computers, infected with Qakbot, that have a "supernode" module linking them into the botnet. Tier 2 systems are network servers intended to covertly direct Qakbot traffic, while Tier 3 is the command and control server running the botnet.

The FBI was able to obtain Qakbot encryption keys, to then command Tier 1 machines to replace their supernode modules with an FBI-developed module, which had the Tier 1 computers then communicate to an FBI server, instead of to Tier 2 systems. That done, the infected computers were commanded to download an uninstaller that cleaned out Qakbot. Unfortunately, that didn't get rid of malware installed with the help of Qakbot, but it prevented more malware from being downloaded via Qakbot.

The Feds have been getting more proficient at taking down malware networks. In 2021, they carried out the first-of-its-kind operation to remove backdoors planted by Chinese hackers on hacked Microsoft Exchange email servers. In 2022, the FBI disrupted a massive botnet used by Russian spies to launch powerful and disruptive cyberattacks designed to knock networks offline, and, earlier in 2023, knocked another Russian botnet offline that had been operating since at least 2004.

* FACEBOOK CRACKDOWN: In related news, as discussed in an article from THEVERGE.com ("Facebook Cracks Down On Global Disinformation Campaign" by Justine Calma, 29 August 2023), social media giant Meta reports it removed down thousands of accounts in "what appears to be the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world." The "Spamouflage" operation, as it was named, targeted more than 50 platforms, not only including Meta's Facebook and Instagram, but also X/Twitter YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit.

Spamouflage put a positive face on China and Chinese actions in Xinjiang Province, where the government in Beijing has been accused of human rights violations against the Uighur ethnic minority. Other posts criticized the USA, Western foreign policies, as well as reportage seen as critical of China. The operation targeted many regions, including the USA, Taiwan, Australia, the UK, and Japan. Meta was able to trace it back to "individuals associated with Chinese law enforcement", and it's not really new; Meta has been trying to suppress Spamouflage since 2019. Over time, it has infiltrated ever smaller targets, such as Australian local forum MELBOURNECHINESE.net.

Meta found clusters of fake accounts that seemed oddly coordinate, as if they were all being posted by a group working particular hours with a lunch break. They would spread similar content across multiple platforms, with headlines like: "US Bombing Of Nord Stream Is First Step In European Destruction Plan".

Meta took down a total of 7,704 Facebook accounts, 954 Pages, 15 Groups, and 15 Instagram accounts. Meta adds that none of it got many followers, only acquiring "spammy pages whose inauthentic following likely came from fake engagement farms." The fake followers were from places such as Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Brazil that weren't target locations for the disinformation campaign -- providing another hint that trolling is past its peak, having become repetitive and uninteresting. Meta says Spamouflage was the biggest disinformation campaign it tackled, though it wasn't the only one. Impersonating news outlets was a key tactic many of these campaigns share.

[MON 11 SEP 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 36

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Back on 18 August, US President Joe Biden hosted a summit meeting at Camp David with Japan's prime minister, Kishida Fumio, and South Korea's president, Yoon Suk-yeol, as a piece of America's Indo-Pacific strategy. There actually never has been a summit of the leaders of these three countries before, one issue being that South Koreans still hold a grudge against Japan from the days of being a Japanese colony, and don't perceive the Japanese as exerting themselves to be apologetic over the matter. However, Japan and South Korea are both confronted with a belligerent North Korea and Chinese bullying -- with the Russian invasion of Ukraine enhancing the perceived threat of war. Both countries increasingly have a shared strategic vision with the USA.

South Korea and Japan have been drawing closer together. Under Moon Jae-in, Yoon's Left-wing predecessor, security co-operation stalled and intelligence sharing dried up as Japan and South Korea bickered over Japan's colonial-era misconduct -- much to the pleasure of the Chinese and North Koreans. However, since Yoon took office in 2022, South Korea has downplayed old grudges and sought cooperation. In May 2023, Kishida made the first official visit by a Japanese leader to Seoul, in more than a decade.

The three countries' armed forces are working together again; American, Japanese and South Korean defense ministers met in June and pledged to begin sharing intelligence about North Korean missile launches in real time. Trilateral discussions have broad scope, covering security issues across East Asia, and likely beyond: neither Japan nor South Korea are supplying arms to Ukraine, but they are sympathetic, and South Korea is helping drive a massive arms buildup in Poland, clearly meant to counter Russia.

Chinese officials have been pushing to restart high-level trilateral talks between China, Japan, and South Korea, which have withered in recent years. Rahm Emanuel, America's ambassador to Japan, says: "This is what summit envy looks like." Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, attending a recent forum in Qingdao, petulantly told Japanese and South Koreans there: "No matter how blond you dye your hair, how sharp you shape your nose, you can never become a European or American."

There are clearly limits to cooperation: Japan and South Korea have a lot of toxic baggage in their historical relationship that can't be just wished away. When a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer visited a South Korean port, there were complaints that it was flying the old "rising sun" flag as in World War II, though that's normal for the JMSDF. There are also differences in strategic vision:

• South Korea is focused on North Korea as an adversary, while Japan sees China as the most significant threat.
  
  
• South Korea does not want to antagonize China and is not comfortable with Japan's overt backing of Taiwan.

There are also differences of opinion relative to America's nuclear umbrella. Nonetheless, for now the relationship between the two countries is deepening, with the Biden Administration working to see that it continues to.

Incidentally, not surprisingly young South Koreans don't worry as much about old grudges as their elders. A Korean comedian named Kim Kyung Wook has a stage alter-ego named "Tanaka-san" who has gone viral there, being an "ambassador" of sorts for Japan, playing up Japanese pop culture, singing Japanese pop tunes -- often speaking "Japanrean", a mix of Japanese and Korean. He's got hundreds of thousands of followers on YouTube, and apparently sings with prominent K-pop groups at times. Also incidentally, there isn't a more stereotypical Japanese name than "Tanaka".

* In closely related news, on 10 September Joe Biden went on a state visit to Hanoi. That in itself is not such news; five US presidents have gone to Vietnam, starting with Bill Clinton in 2000, when Clinton re-established diplomatic ties.

However, the two countries' relationship has been defined to this time as a "comprehensive partnership". Biden's meeting with Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, resulted in an upgrade, to a "comprehensive strategic partnership". Of course the target of the partnership is China, with Biden attempting to set up security initiatives around China's periphery -- and Vietnam trying to push back against Chinese encroachment in the South China Sea, as well as harassment of fishing boats and oil-and-gas exploration vessels in Vietnamese waters. America lifted a ban on arms sales to Vietnam in 2016, and has since sold it two patrol cutters; more defense initiatives may come out of this trip. After also strengthening its military relationship with the Philippines, the USA may be planning to challenge China more vigorously in the South China Sea.

The USA is, along parallel lines, also interested in nurturing economic ties with Vietnam, as part of the move towards "de-risking" foreign trade, meaning seeking alternatives to China. Vietnam has become a linchpin in global supply chains, and the USA is its biggest export market. Vietnam has a growing production base with a bright, young workforce, making it a prime candidate for "friendshoring", which means American investment. Chipmaker Intel has poured over $1.5 billion USD into Vietnam.

America also has plenty of green tech to offer, and Vietnam wants it -- having ambitious climate goals, plus an interest in getting away from labor- or resource-intensive industries. In addition, Vietnam would like alternatives to Russian weapons the country has traditionally obtained, which have become hard to get as Russia flounders in Ukraine; not only does Vietnam want weapons from the USA and America's allies, it also wants to build up its domestic arms industry.

There's only so far that US-Vietnam collaboration can go. Vietnam has a poor human-rights record, and the Americans will feel compelled to protest, if quietly, when abuses occur. The Vietnamese are also reluctant to antagonize China, since the two countries are major trading partners. Of course, China has complained bitterly about American overtures to Vietnam, but Chinese and Vietnamese have always been inclined to feud, the Vietnamese are used to it. The Vietnamese want to balance between the two camps -- or even, possibly, become intermediaries, reducing frictions between China and the USA.

* Donald Trump is attempting to run for President of the United States, with the tacit campaign pitch of: VOTE FOR ME TO KEEP ME OUT OF JAIL. That's not very persuasive, and as of late it's running into an obstacle: the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution.

The three "Reconstruction Amendments" -- the 13th, 14th, and 15th -- respectively banned slavery; guaranteed voting rights of adult males; and banned racial considerations in voting rights. The 14th Amendment also has an interesting clause that denies the right of those guilty of insurrection against the US government to hold public office.

There's been interest in using the 14th Amendment to keep Trump off the ballot in 2024 ever since his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Nothing much has come of efforts to that end so far, with a Federal judge in Florida recently rejecting a lawsuit along those lines, citing lack of standing by the plaintiffs.

A case filed in Colorado state court by the "Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics in Washington (CREW)" seems to have better chances. The plaintiffs are six Republican and unaffiliated voters who say they want to protect the rights of voters "to fully participate in the upcoming primary election by ensuring that votes cast will be for those constitutionally qualified to hold office."

It appears that standing isn't a problem with this lawsuit -- but will it pass muster in the courts? The problem is that there is so little precedent to say how the courts will judge. It doesn't seem that Trump needs to be convicted of insurrection: the goal of that clause in the 14th Amendment was to prevent ex-Confederate officials from regaining US offices, and none of them had been convicted of insurrection. The 14th Amendment gambit seems like a long shot, but not as much as it did. We'll just wait and see what happens.

Incidentally, it doesn't seem there's any Democratic backing for the CREW lawsuit. It appears the Democrats want Trump to run. It's not hard to figure out why.

* I have by-month archives of my blog postings going back almost 20 years, and every month I skim through four archives -- correcting spelling mistakes and such, making (very) minor changes when seems necessary, occasionally cutting some text that no longer makes sense, and sometimes adding update notes to articles.

The most important part of the task, however, is just to refresh my memory. It's interesting to see what was going on, and then see what happened later. I was going through early 2014 early this month, and came across comments on one Ian Doescher of Portland, Oregon, who made a splash at the time by writing up the original STAR WARS trilogy as Shakespeare plays. I got to wondering what Doescher had been up to since then; on checking Amazon, it turns out he's not only covered later STAR WARS movies, but diversified in his Shakespeare adaptations as well:

• William Shakespeare's AVENGERS
  
  
• Horror Collection: FRANKENSTEIN, JEKYLL & HYDE, DRACULA
  
  
• William Shakespeare's CHRISTMAS CAROL
  
  
• Get Thee BACK TO THE FUTURE!
  
  
• Much Ado about MEAN GIRLS
  
  
• The Taming Of The CLUELESS

I was a little surprised that Doescher could keep on with "retro-Shakespeare" and not run out of steam. He didn't; it's nice to see someone doing what he obviously likes doing, and making a go of it. Incidentally, he also wrote the first volume of a series titled MACTRUMP, published in 2019. He hasn't written later volumes; either it fizzled, or Doescher is waiting for the rest of the story to play out to the end. Aren't we all?

Also incidentally, one of the lessons discovered in going back through old blog archives is that the USA took a sharp turn in 2016, with the landscape shifting dramatically. Life since then is clearly not the same as it was before.

[FRI 08 SEP 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (63)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (63): The Great Recession, and the gradual recovery from it, was the backdrop to the Obama presidency. In the aftermath of the financial shock, there was considerable thought given to why it had happened, and how to keep it from happening again. One of the most influential thinkers in that process was an American economist named Hyman Minsky (1919:1996). He'd been gone for more than a decade when the Great Recession started, but many felt he had understood the underlying mechanisms that led to the crisis.

Minsky was essentially a Keynesian, believing that capitalist economies inevitably go through business cycles. He took an unorthodox view of Keynes, stressing aspects of Keynesian thought that the mainstream neglected. One of them was that investments take place in profound uncertainty. It was all very well and good for corporate bosses to present tidy long-range plans for business development, with economists sometimes swallowing the bait, but the bosses were really just making bets in a very complicated game that wasn't at all easy to predict.

Even assuming rational expectations, anyone setting up a new business has no real idea of whether it will fly or not. Business research organizations can help reduce uncertainty, but cannot come anywhere near eliminating it. People don't take big chances unless they are optimistic, and if business conditions are bad, optimism is in short supply. Even given good business conditions, they may not last. Keynes suggested that it was availability of money that allowed entrepreneurs to take chances of the future. However, traditional economic theory was more focused on making, buying, and selling products and services, with money simply being an intermediary. Minsky believed that the role of money in economic transactions was, so to speak, being short-changed.

Banks traditionally provided loans to entrepreneurs and others investing in their futures. Initially, banks are cautious about who they lend to, worrying about the risk of a loan to a creditor, checking credit history. Over time banks, finding money coming in steadily from loans, become more daring, not worrying so much about risk. Competing with other banks, they devise new kinds of loans, for example only requiring the creditor to regularly pay off interest and not the principal. When the loan finally comes up for repayment, the banks extend it.

Up to the 2007 crash, banks increasingly granted housing loans on that basis. The underlying assumptions were that interest rates wouldn't rise -- if they did, the banks were stuck with inadequate returns -- and housing prices would keep on appreciating -- meaning the creditors would have the resources to ultimately pay off the loan. From the level of daring, the banks then went to reckless, handing out loans indiscriminately to highly risky or "subprime" creditors, and not even asking for interest payments. House prices kept rising, in part because of the free money driving the market.

Minsky identified this financial hysteria as a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid scheme, a bubble. To compound the risk, housing loans were used as the basis for securities that were then bought and sold like other securities, with their risk level greatly understated. In 2007, the bubble burst and the house of cards collapsed.

In response to the crisis, governments turned to Keynesian stimulus. The problem there was that, if a government pumps money into the economy to keep it afloat, the economy isn't going to turn around right away and government deficits will inevitably rise. While the USA held the course, European governments weren't all so enthusiastic, turning towards austerity measures. The results were in some cases disastrous. Greece, faced with insolvency, was told by the European Union that financial help wouldn't be forthcoming unless the Greek government cut spending. The government accordingly did so, with the economy and public services suffering accordingly. In the depths of the crisis, a quarter of Greeks were out of work.

The ascent of the finance industry into fantasy land did not happen overnight; it was partly a result of a long economic boom out of the Reagan era, with the financial industry gradually acquiring players who were less like traditional bankers and more like high-rolling gamblers, seeking a big score in the markets. It also led to distrust of the banks and Dodd-Frank. More broadly, the 2007 financial crisis led to distrust of the Western liberal-democratic social order, paving the way for the ascent of Rightist leaders who exploited the unrest for their own advancement. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 07 SEP 23] SCIENCE NOTES

* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Arms Race Between Ants & Fungi Has Echoes Of THE LAST OF US" by Claudia Lopez Lloreda, 10 February 2023), the recent TV series THE LAST OF US, based on a video game, postulated an apocalypse in which humans were infected with a lethal fungus that turned them into zombies. Fungi, in reality, are a relatively minor threat to humans, and never turn them into zombies -- but there are fungi that do such things to ants, which is where the video game came from. It turns out that ants have evolved behaviors to fight back. Ants, of course, live in colonies -- with one of the social behaviors of worker ants being grooming of other ants to deal with parasites.

Researchers at the Institute of Science & Technology Austria were curious to see if the grooming helped ants fight fungi. The researchers focused on the Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) -- a small, brown species native to South America. In the wild, these ants live with a wide range of pathogens, and are often infected with multiple fungi at once. The scientists infected the ants with six different types of related fungal pathogens in the lab, then observed the consequences over multiple ant generations.

When the ants were isolated, one of the six fungus strains usually won out, burrowing into the ant, killing it to use its corpses to produce spores. The other five fungus strains died out. However, when ants were allowed to congregate, the six types of fungi fought it out, with none being a clear winner.

The fungi also appeared to be evolving to become less lethal. Further experiments revealed the pathogens were releasing less of a molecule called "ergosterol", which made them visible to the ants. The less ergosterol the fungi produced, the less the insects groomed each other. Over the longer run, the fungi may adapt to evade grooming, though then it is plausible that ants will groom on the basis of other cues.

* In somewhat related news, as discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("How Fungi Make Potent Toxins That Can Contaminate Food" by Deborah Balthazar, 20 October 2022), moldy food is unappetizing at best, toxic at worst. Fungi and fungi-like organisms known as water molds are estimated to ruin a third of the world's food crops each year. Now researchers have found that deleting a single protein can deactivate some fungal toxins, with clear implications for food safety. Research now shows that removing a single protein can deal with the toxins.

Some kinds of fungi generate "mycotoxins" that can spoil foods and damage health. Aflatoxin, a type of mycotoxin, has been implicated in liver cancer. Ozgur Bayram of Maynooth University in Ireland and his colleagues investigated, and found a group of proteins involved in the mycotoxin elaborate production chain. Genetically modifying the fungus Aspergillus nidulans to remove just one of the proteins derails the production path and prevents the toxins from being made.

Bayram says the newly identified proteins act like a key to start a car; without the key, the car won't start. Bayram and his team identified the proteins in A. nidulans, showing that four proteins come together to make the key. The researchers genetically engineered the fungus to delete each protein in turn. They found that when any of the four proteins are missing, the key does not start mycotoxin production. Bayram says that another study, not published yet, shows that deleting the same proteins in A. flavus, a closely related protein, similarly derails toxin production.

* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Sun-Powered Water Splitter Produces Unprecedented Levels Of Green Energy" by Robert F. Service, 4 January 2022), there's been a lot of work on "solar-to-fuel (S2F)" technologies as of late.

There has been a lot of work on S2F, but developing a practical way of doing it has proven troublesome. In S2F, traditionally the high-energy end of the solar spectrum has been used to do the work of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen. The difficulty is that the lower end of the spectrum in the infrared can't do the job, meaning about half of the sunlight is useless. Solar water splitters try to get around the problem in two ways:

• Photoelectrochemical cell (PEC): An electrolytic cell, with two anodes immersed in an electrolyte. One electrode absorbs sunlight, using the energy to split water molecules via a catalytic surface, with hydrogen gas produced at one electrode and oxygen produced at the other.
  
  
• Monolithic photocatalytic cell (MPC): A single photosensitive semiconductor plate in water, with the plate absorbing sunlight, and splitting water molecules via a semiconductor coating.

PECs can convert up to a quarter of sunlight's energy into hydrogen fuel, but the corrosive electrolyte tends to degrade the electrodes. MPCs are only about 3% efficient, since the hydrogen and oxygen is generated in the same place, meaning it is inclined to recombine. More could be produced with a larger semiconductor plate, but the plate is expensive.

Researchers led by Zetian Mi, a chemist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, came up with an improved photocatalytic arrangement. They obtained a flat fresnel lens the size of a house window to focus sunlight on their water-splitting semiconductor element. The intense sunlight then generated electrical charges in the semiconductor that were passed to nanosize metal catalysts peppered on top, which then carried out the water-splitting reactions.

Mi's team also raised the temperature of the water being split to 70 Celsius (160 degrees Fahrenheit). The combined changes allowed the researchers to convert 9.2% of the Sun's energy into hydrogen fuel, about three times more than had been obtained previously.

Todd Deutsch, a water-splitting expert at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, says that the efficiency is now within striking distance of the 10% target likely needed to make these devices commercially viable. However, Deutsch points out that more work needs to be done, in particular devising a practical scheme to separate out the oxygen and hydrogen -- complicated by the fact that, in large volumes, the two gases together form an explosion hazard. Mi is optimistic about the potential of the effort, and adds that the scheme works with seawater, if not quite as efficiently, meaning water supply is unlikely to be an issue.

[WED 06 SEP 23] MISSING THE PEAK (1)

* MISSING THE PEAK (1): As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("The World's Peak Population May Be Smaller Than Expected", 5 April 2023), population is on a general decline in developed countries -- but not in sub-Saharan Africa, it still seems to be booming. Across the African continent, the leadership is grappling with the issues of how to educate, employ, house and feed a population that the UN expects to grow from around 1.2 billion people now to 3.4 billion people by 2100. In Southern Europe, nationalists pump up fears of waves of tens of millions, hundreds of millions of Africans fleeing across the Mediterranean to find a better life. Across the developed world, Across the rich world, environmentalists worry the impact on the climate and planet of another two billion people.

Not so many have noticed that, as of late, new data suggests that Africa's birth rate is falling much more rapidly than anticipated. The continent's population is still growing rapidly, but it is now appearing that considerably less than 2 billion people will be added by 2100. Jose Rimon II of Johns Hopkins University says: "We have been underestimating what is happening in terms of fertility change in Africa. Africa will probably undergo the same kind of rapid changes as East Asia did."

Estimating population growth is a tricky business: as the saying goes, predictions are always difficult, particularly of the future. The UN's population projections are widely seen as the most authoritative, in part because they are conscientiously revised as new data becomes available. The UN population report for 2022 featured considerably lower estimates for sub-Saharan Africa than those of a decade earlier. For Nigeria, which has Africa's biggest population -- numbering about 213 million people -- the UN has reduced its forecast for 2060 by more than 100 million people, down to about 429 million souls. The UN projection for Nigeria's population in 2100 is about 550 million people, which is about 359 million less than the estimate from a decade ago.

However, the UN estimates may not be tracking just how rapidly African fertility is falling. A UN-backed survey from 2021 found that the fertility rate had fallen from 4.6 children per woman from 5.8 CPW only five years earlier. Similarly, a survey by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) said the fertility rate was 4.8 in 2021, compared to 6.1 in 2010. Surveys found birth rates also dropping in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Gambia, and Ghana.

These findings suggest that birth rates are falling at a similar rate to those in some parts of Asia, when that region saw its own population growth rates slow sharply in a process often known as a "demographic transition". However, there doesn't seem to be any slowdown in countries like Angola, Cameroon and Congo, not all demographers are convinced that Africa's overall birthrates are falling so fast. Tom Moultrie of the University of Cape Town says: "When you see a precipitous decline in fertility, your starting-point is that something is wrong with the data." Nonetheless, there's enough data to suggest the decline is real.

One difficulty is that it's not so easy to sort out the reasons for the decline. It is demonstrably true that fertility rates are much lower for urban women, who typically have 30-40% fewer children than rural women. In Ethiopia, Kenya, and Malawi, declines have been strongly associated with more use of contraception, often thanks to government encouragement. In Malawi and Kenya, the majority of married women use modern contraception such as the pill or injectables, while in Ethiopia about 40% do. The use of such contraceptives is clearly lower in West Africa, but it's been strong enough to help account for the fertility drop. In Nigeria, contraception use has gone from 11% to 18% in the five years, while in Senegal it has doubled to 26% in the past decade.

African religious leaders have traditionally been opposed to family planning, particularly when it's promoted by outsiders. That is also changing. Shuaib Mukhtar Shuaib -- a Muslim cleric in Kano, Nigeria -- says: "There is no verse in the Holy Koran where Muslims are forbidden from controlling, planning or restricting the number of children they have." Idris Sulaiman Abubakar -- a gynecologist in Kano's biggest public hospital -- is more concerned with scaremongering by Nigeria's lively and popular video industry: "They'll bring a story-line that the woman's reproductive system was damaged because she uses pills." [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 05 SEP 23] UKRAINE PRINTS CANDY BOMBS

* UKRAINE PRINTS CANDY BOMBS: As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Ukraine's Latest Weapons In Its War With Russia: 3D-Printed Bombs", 1 August 2023), it is well-known that Ukraine's attack drones often carry small munitions -- early on, often based on 40-millimeter projectile grenades, with a plastic tailkit. A munitions-maker in Kyiv, a fellow who goes by the name of "Lyosha", says they left much to be desired. The grenades were lethal enough when fired in dense volleys, but had to be very well targeted when used singly.

In the spring of 2023, Lyosha and a group of friends, working in their homes, designed an improved small munition, over twice as big, which they called "Zaychyk (Rabbit)". The Zaychyk's casing is 3D-printed, to then be filled with C4 plastic explosive and steel shrapnel. Lyosha says it could cut through wooden planks "like butter".

There's a lot of similar warlike experimentation in Ukraine. Trying to maintain a flow of factory-made munitions is troublesome -- and they don't tend to be "right-sized" for drones, either too small or too big. Any means of increasing the supply of munitions, and tailoring them for drones, is welcome.

There's no shortage of explosive filler, and 3D printers are readily available. Lyosha and his friends print the casings of about 1,000 "candy bombs," as these improvised explosive devices have been called, a week -- but the military wants them to make 1,500 a day. Another group, the "Druk (Print) Army", made more than 30,000 candy bombs in four months; their leader, "Swat", says production is increasing.

It's not just Ukrainians making candy bombs either, with a network named "Wild Bees" operating in other countries. Janis Ozols, the founder of the Latvia chapter of the Wild Bees, estimates that at least 65,000 bomb casings have been shipped from Europe since November 2022. Ukrainian customs waves the components through, registering them as "children's toys" or suchlike.

Along with being available and tailored for drones, the candy bombs are cheap. Emanuel Zmudzinski, a Wild Bees volunteer in Lodz, Poland, makes the components -- nose cone, body, and tail fin -- for a 27-centimeter / 10-inch model called the "Big Egg" for less than the equivalent of $4 USD. 3D printing also allows candy bombs to be produced in a range of sizes, fitting the drones that will carry them.

The candy-bomb makers have learned how to make their munitions more lethal. They tried using small nails for shrapnel, but the blast tended to vaporize the nails. They tried using scrap metal, but the scrap pieces would often fly up or into the ground. Using ball bearings was optimum, since they were blasted out in a ring around the candy bomb, though ball bearings are relatively hard to get. "Diuk", a Ukrainian serviceman on the front lines, says 5-kilogram (11-pound) candy bombs can take down exposed infantry 20 meters (65 feet) from where they land. Some of the candy-bomb makers have developed simulation software to help determine the effectiveness of the munitions, and use ChatGPT to find engineering hints.

Some of the candy bombs can be used against armored vehicles. A metal cone is inserted into the front of a bomb to form a "hollow charge", in which the explosion is focused forward in a jet that punches through armor. Even munitions weighing about half a kilo (a pound) can be effective if dropped onto the top of a vehicle, where the armor is thin.

Diuk, the Ukrainian soldier, estimates that there's about 200 different sorts of candy bombs in service. The lack of standardization is a nuisance, Ozols of the Wild Bees saying that the groups are in communication to standardize their work.

[ED: As of late, videos show that Ukrainian drone-dropped bombs pack a bigger punch than those based on 40-millimeter grenades, which were the norm early on. The large number of candy bombs made leads to the question of where the Ukrainians are getting enough drones to carry them. Could Taiwan be supplying them? If so, it's being kept very secret.

Incidentally, larger Ukrainian drones can carry warheads from the classic Russian rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), with the warhead screwed onto a tailkit instead of a rocket. The RPG bombs are murderously effective against armor. Also incidentally, not all the candy bombs are printed. There was a video of a drone dropping a set of candy bombs on an abandoned Russian tank. The Ukrainians will recover damaged Russian combat vehicles if they can -- but if they can't, they destroy it so the Russians can't recover it either. In any case, a keen-eyed watcher focused the video on one of the candy bombs, to show that it was a plastic Coca-Cola bottle, it seems loaded with some incendiary liquid, with fins glued on plus some sort of fuzing mechanism.]

[MON 04 SEP 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 35

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Fani Willis -- Democrat district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, which includes Atlanta -- made waves recently by indicting former president Donald Trump and 18 Trump accomplices for attempting to steal the 2020 election. Of course, Trump's Republican defenders in Georgia government are not happy with Willis, leading to the creation of the "Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission", which has the power to remove local prosecutors from office.

It was signed into law by Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. The law allows for removing a prosecutor for "willful misconduct" or "conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the office into disrepute," among other reasons. It is generally believed to target Willis. One of its main backers, Republican Georgia State Senator Colton Moore said a month ago: "I'm not going to sit back and watch as radical Left prosecutors politically target political opponents."

Moore and others have called for Kemp to call a special session of the legislature, clearly to derail Willis. Kemp wouldn't call a special session in December 2020 to help overturn election results, saying he didn't have the authority. This last week he said he wouldn't call a special session now either, again claiming he didn't have the authority, explaining more specifically there was no justification for doing so:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

The governor warned fellow Republicans that a focus on punishing people for, say, refusing to say an election was stolen -- instead of focusing on things like cutting taxes and boosting economic development in the state could lead to a repeat of the party's losses in the January 2021 Senate runoffs, and the 2022 Senate race that helped give Democrats control of the chamber. Of course, offering a grossly unqualified candidate like Herschel Walker for the US Senate didn't help, either.

In any case, Kemp said: "That is the way you win races, that is the way you move forward. Things like cutting taxes, doing $2 billion dollar tax rebates, suspending the gas tax ... not focusing on the past or some grifter scam that somebody's doing to help them raise a few dollars into the campaign account."

It is encouraging to see prominent Republicans defy MAGA and Trump, and hopefully we'll see more of it as Trump's difficulties intensify. It is true that Kemp has not concealed his annoyance with Trump, and has consistently feuded with him -- so Kemp's defiance might be taken with a grain of salt. However, Liz Cheney also said that she would do all in her power to prevent Trump from being the GOP nominee in 2024, and if he was, she wouldn't be a Republican any more. The GOP primary next year will be very interesting. It is hard to see how nominating a convicted felon, as Trump is very likely to be by then, will be a good idea. One way or another, that's just not going to work.

In loosely-related news, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has attempted to push through a redistricting scheme to dilute the power of black voters in the state. Florida Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh has now rejected the new redistricting, saying the lawmakers have to come up with a map that doesn't violate the state constitution. It turns out that in 2010 Florida voters passed the "FairDistricts Amendments" to deal with gerrymandering, which stipulated:

• Districts must not be drawn with intent to favor incumbents or political parties.
  
  
• Districts must not be drawn to diminish voting rights of racial and language voters.
  
  
• Districts must be compact, follow local boundaries and be as equal in population as feasible.

That would seem to be unambiguous: NO GERRYMANDERING. DeSantis has claimed the FairDistricts Amendment violates the Federal Constitution -- "Good luck with that, Ron!" Several other states that have attempted to gerrymander the black vote have been told by the judiciary to try again, with conservative justices joining in the call. It appears the affected legislatures are balking -- "Good luck with that, too." If the legislatures won't change their redistricting plans, the courts may find someone who will.

* Ukraine, having suffered from Russian aerial bombardment from early in the war, is now ramping up its drone attacks on Russia in return. Thomas C. Theiner -- ex-Italian Army artillerist, now a commenter on the war -- outlined the purposes of the drone strikes:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

I'm wondering how much help Ukraine is getting with the drones. Ukraine's allies won't provide weapons for attacks on Russia, but they can provide technical assistance. Presumably, Ukraine gets intelligence on Russia from its allies, with a fair amount of that from "open-source intelligence (OSINT)", as from civilian surveillance satellites.

In the meantime, the ground war plods on. A video that appeared on X/Twitter had a Russian soldier and his squaddies crowing about having captured a Ukrainian Bradley infantry fighting vehicle. The video then transitioned to the same soldier, kneeling with his hands tied behind his back, being asked by his Ukrainian captors: "How old are you?" "I'm 19." It took me a bit to figure out what was going on."

The unsettling context for that video was that it was likely some of his squaddies were no longer among the living. Some of the Ukraine War videos on X/Twitter are ghastly: one taken by a drone graphically showed Ukrainian troops methodically gunning down Russian defenders in close-quarters trench fighting. Another video showed a young Russian in despair over being sent into combat with inadequate weaponry and no support. I had to reply: "Just surrender, Ivan! Please! You don't need to die. We don't want you to die."

I'm not overly worried about the slow pace of the Ukrainian offensive myself. The Russians are being pressured all along the line, they're on the defensive, and sooner or later they will break. Not everyone is so patient, with complaints about America's "failure" to support Ukraine, and claims that the two countries are at odds over the war. I'm vocal on X/Twitter about alleged quarrels between the two countries, saying: "There is no daylight between the USA and Ukraine on the war." They may have energetic discussions, but they will always come to an agreement. I have a strong suspicion that those playing up alleged disagreements are working for Putin, or at least are foolish tools.

* ARSTECHNICA.com had an article by one Beth Mole, concerning vaccine paranoia among dog-owners -- with a poll showing over half distrusted vaccines, and well over a third thought they caused "dog autism". Mole replied: "For the bazillionth time, vaccines do not cause autism, and dog autism is not a thing." Dogs can have behavioral problems -- I've run into a few who clearly weren't wired right -- but nobody has ever clinically defined "dog autism". This led to the following exchange on X/Twitter:

Bill Beatty / @mistabill: Vaccines cause Pawtism?

Wily_Coyote (MrG) / @gv_goebel: That's so bad -- it's good!

Also in the domain of the absurd, "right-to-repair (RTR)" laws are all the rage these days. RTR is about pressuring manufacturers, notably Apple, to allow customers to repair their products, instead of forcing the customers to either have the manufacturer do the repairs, or to buy a new product. Manufacturers are grudgingly caving in -- but the Church of Scientology (COS) has protested, claiming that RTR shouldn't apply to devices that require special training and qualification to use.

It doesn't take too much thought to figure out where the COS is coming from. "$cientology" claims to train people, through expensive courses, to reach a higher state of mental acuity known as "clear". How do people know if they are "clear"? Why, through an (expensive) device known as an "E-Meter", which shows how "clear" they are. What is "clear" is that the COS does not want anyone getting inside an E-Meter, since the contents may prove a disappointment.

[FRI 01 SEP 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (62)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (62): In foreign policy, Barack Obama continued to work on improved links with China. When Xi Jinping (born 1953) became President of China in 2010, there was little expectation that he would change Chinese policy dramatically, but in time it became more obvious that he intended to reinforce Chinese Communist Party control over the country, and was more inclined to see the USA as an adversary. As far as Russia went, the Obama Administration came to see Russian President Vladimir Putin as a kleptocrat and international troublemaker.

In both cases, Obama Administration policy was to let China and Russia know America's displeasure when necessary, but to then find areas of agreement. As far as American allies went, the Obama Administration pursued comprehensive trade deals across the Atlantic and the Pacific, most notably working on a "Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)" alliance. Public response to the TPP was mixed.

Commercially, the Obama era saw personal computing go mobile, with the introduction of the pocket smartphone and the larger tablets. Of course mobile phones were nothing new, and text messaging wasn't new either. However, smartphones were really pocket computers, and could use "apps" to obtain all sorts of services. Coupled with faster wireless networks, smartphones became increasingly common.

The smartphone enhanced the development of the "gig economy". It wasn't really anything new in itself; from the Reagan days companies had been hiring short-term workers on contracts to supplement or sometimes replace regular employees, one of the motivations being that the contract workers got few or no company benefits. Companies like "Uber" and "Lyft" turned private car owners into taxi drivers, pickups being coordinated by smartphone apps, while "Airbnb" allowed private homeowners to offer short-term lodging. The gig economy was seen as the outset as revolutionary, expanding employment and services, but over time the drawbacks became more obvious: the business models tended towards the dubious, and those implementing the services began to seem more like corporate contract workers, being shorted on benefits. Local and state governments also ended up having problems with the unregulated commerce, with these services gradually looking more like mainstream businesses.

There was also a push towards "crowdsourcing", which in general terms was the support of projects by interested citizens of the general public. It was not really a new idea, going back centuries, but in the internet era it became methodical. Typically, a small startup company would solicit funds for development of a new product by promising to deliver that product to investors when it was ready to go. Startups working on, say, a new social-media website could leverage off "equity crowdsourcing", in which shares of the company were sold directly to the general public to obtain funds. While crowdsourcing obviously presented considerable opportunities for fraud, it generally worked well enough -- largely because most people who bought into crowdsourced schemes took them with a grain of salt and didn't expect that they would always work out.

The smartphone had a particular impact in the developing world -- through cheap phones called "feature phones" that weren't very smart, with small displays and simple apps with text-only interfaces, with data communications through text messages. The feature phones were powerful enough to enable applications such as "microbanking" and "microlending", providing financial services to people who had long been too poor and too disconnected to make use of them. The feature phones also supported apps to report on market and weather conditions, while helping families communicate, with the phones often used to send financial "remittances" from family working elsewhere back home. Electronic funds transfer also helped limit corruption in places where it was common, by making sure that money got to the people it was supposed to go to.

One particular technical innovation in the Obama era stands out: the introduction of "Bitcoin" in 2009. Bitcoin was a purely digital currency based on cryptological technology, not under the control of any central bank, with Bitcoins "mined" by a laborious computational process. Its advocates believed it a declaration of independence from government-backed currencies. In reality, it was rarely used for financial transactions except by criminals on the underground "dark web". The point of Bitcoin was that, since it wasn't under the control of a central bank, there was no control over its value, which made it an ideal tool for speculation.

Fortunes were rapidly made and lost as the value of Bitcoin -- and other "digital currencies" -- soared and crashed in "pump & dump" operations. Unlike other speculative frenzies of the past, Bitcoin went through repeated cycles, soaring to peaks and then crashing, over and over again. It was a financial perpetual-motion machine, fueled by the promotional opportunities presented by the internet. [TO BE CONTINUED]