MrG's Blog & Notes

* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.

[MON 01 APR 24] THE WEEK THAT WAS 13

DAYLOG SUN 24 MAR 24: According to an article published last week in NEWSWEEK.com, during January 2024 nine Chinese banks stopped processing transactions with Russia, even if the transactions are in yuan. This seems anomalous, since China is doing a boom business with Russia, and relations otherwise have never been better.

The trick is that USA started implementing sanctions on Chinese banks doing business with Russia, with the banks then worried about having their financial connections with US and European banks severed. It is likely the Chinese government will figure out workarounds, for example setting up a bank that only does external transactions with Russia, and won't care about sanctions.

DAYLOG MON 25 MAR 24: Since Elon Musk took over microblogging environment Twitter, to rename it "X", it has become completely overloaded with bots and trolls, to the point of becoming unusable. Not surprisingly, advertisers have been dumping X/Twitter. In response, Musk has been going after organizations tracking and reporting on the bot invasion of X/Twitter, in one instance slapping a lawsuit on the Center for Counseling Digital Hate (CCDH) for Musk's loss of advertising revenue.

Today a California court dismissed Musk's lawsuit, saying that Musk -- who fancies himself a "free speech absolutist" -- was attempting to suppress free speech that wasn't convenient to him. Musk has similar lawsuits in progress against other critics; today's decision suggests they'll be dismissed as well.

There is much anger with Musk online, but I feel more sorry for him than anything: he is obviously not quite right in the head, and seems to be progressively getting worse. As far as X/Twitter goes, I dropped in every now and then for a while, but now I've completely given up. There's nothing there of interest that I can't get elsewhere, and the only readers are bots.

DAYLOG TUE 26 MAR 24: It seems unlikely that Joe Biden is sweating the election looming in November, Donald Trump's disintegration being obvious for all to see. However, that's not the same thing as saying Biden is complacent.

As discussed by Asawin Suebsaeng & Adam Rawnsley in ROLLING STONE, one big concern is that Trump will again scream: "ELECTION FRAUD!" -- and try to steal the election, because of course he will. It won't work, but it could cause a lot of trouble. As a result, the Biden Administration is leaving nothing to chance, "war-gaming" a close-election scenario, and setting up a legal infrastructure to make sure Trump doesn't get traction. Will it really be a close election? Doubtful, but no use taking chances.

* Anti-abortion trolls are determined to force a national abortion ban, with the latest exercise to that end being a lawsuit being pressed by troll doctors, focused on the "abortion pill" mifepristone. The doctors claimed that they didn't want to have to deal with the possible complications suffered by female patients.

In the first place, however, the rate of complications is very low; going through a pregnancy is much more hazardous. In the second place, the doctors were under no compulsion to prescribe mifepristone, and more to the point their hesitations about the drug were not and could not be a basis for proposing that it be banned everywhere.

Apparently, even most of the conservative SCOTUS justices take a dim view of this lawsuit, and the court is likely to reject it. However, mifepristone will remain banned in the dozen or so states with tough anti-abortion laws. One wonders if the conservative SCOTUS justices are having second thoughts about overturning ROE V WADE. It was obvious at the outset that doing so would lead to endless trouble -- but clearly not everyone sees that as obvious.

DAYLOG WED 27 MAR 24: Yesterday the container ship DALI, it seems suffering from a steering problem, slammed into a pier of the Francis Scott Key Bridge across Baltimore Harbor, dropping a bridge span. Six workers who had been filling potholes on the bridge are missing & presumed dead.

The word went around on Spoutible that the Troglodyte Right would soon blame the Biden Administration for the accident, to which I added: "And then the conspiracy stories!" The trashflow started faster than I expected. FOX News tried to link the accident to immigration policies, while two Republicans running for office similarly linked it to diversity policies. Trolls Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon suggested a terrorist attack.

The Troglodyte Right -- these days, I wonder if there's any other sort of Right -- was guaranteed to exploit the accident for their smears. Fortunately, I don't think the trolling is getting much traction any more.

DAYLOG THU 28 MAR 24: Today, President Joe Biden went to New York City for a fund-raising event, also starring ex-presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. It brought in $26 million USD for the Biden presidential campaign, said to be the most ever for a single event.

That was $5 million more than Donald Trump raised in all of February -- and much of what Trump brings in goes to his legal bills. The polls showing Biden as struggling are misleading. I keep saying: "Add 5% to Joe and subtract 5% from Trump in the polls, and they're closer to reality."

* Earlier in March, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its annual "global threat assessment", with one interesting comment buried in the text: "Al-Qaida has reached an operational nadir in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

That was followed by commentaries on how US officials exaggerated the al-Qaida threat for decades, and to what end? Myself, that sounds like "hindsight thinking": nobody knew the future, and they had to go on what they knew. Maybe better to see it as one less problem to worry about.

DAYLOG FRI 29 MAR 24: Ukraine has been confronted with a headcount disparity relative to the Russians, but now the commander of Armed Forces Ukraine (AFU), Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, says that defense reviews shows the shortfall in troops to be less significant than thought.

That presumably reflects the shift away from costly ground offensive operations, with ground forces digging in to block Russian advances, while the Russians are hit with air, sea, and ground drones. Indeed, Ukraine is setting up an independent robot combat arm. Presumably, special operations forces, working with Ukrainian guerrillas, will raise hell in the Russian rear. Increasing AFU frontline headcount is not workable: not only do frontline troops need support headcount, civilian headcount is needed just to keep Ukraine functioning.

There is also the question of whether Russia's troop superiority represents an overwhelming advantage. The USSR lost in Afghanistan even with troop superiority, and Russia is getting hurt far worse in Ukraine.

AND SO ON: It appears that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' war with Disney Corporation has finally come to an end. For those who need reminding, after Disney withdrew political support from DeSantis over his actions against LGBT rights and such, DeSantis retaliated by revoking -- at least in principle -- Disney's self-managed Florida administrative district, in which Disney controlled its own utilities, fire department, and so on, for Disney World.

Setting up Disney's Reedy Creek District had made perfect sense -- who else would want to do it? -- just as attempting to revoke Disney's rights there made no sense at all. DeSantis then went on to install an anti-Disney oversight board, but the outgoing oversight board worked with Disney, in full public view, to make sure the new board had no powers. Dueling legal actions followed.

Now the feud has been generally settled, though it appears the settlement gave DeSantis nothing. The title of a snarky article in the "Above The Law" blog by one Joe Patrice summed it up: "Ron DeSantis Claims Victory Over Disney And All He Had To Do Was Give Disney Everything They Wanted". It works like this:

• The oversight board is now being run by one Stephanie Kopelousos, who has been a Disney ally in the Florida government -- Patrice saying she is "almost certainly just warming her resume to become a Disney or Universal lobbyist down the road."
  
  
• The oversight board's authority has been reset to that it was before the war between DeSantis and Disney began. Furthermore ...
  
  
• The agreement doesn't give the board any control over the administration of the Reedy Creek District, but instead says that it will "rather assist" Disney in its efforts.
  
  
• To cap all that off, until everything gets settled out, Disney is keeping lawsuits against the State of Florida on the back burner, to be put on the front burner if things go south again.

MAGA trolls have of course proclaimed DeSantis won everything, one telling Patrice: "Hey Joe ... Did you see that Ron DeSantis just cleaned Disney's clock?" Oh, these silly trolls! Patrice replied in the essay:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Not all that incidentally, it appears Disney lawyers pointed out to the State of Florida that unilaterally revoking the Reedy Creek District agreement violated the "Contracts Clause" of the US Constitution. Huh? What? I'm reasonably well-read on the Constitution, but that threw me. On investigation, Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution reads:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Ah, I'd read that, but didn't follow the bit about "impairing the Obligation of Contracts". Yeah, I guess that is a show-stopper here. It's about as good as DeSantis trying to push gerrymandered redistricting -- when there's been an amendment in the Florida state constitution forbidding it for over a decade.

Even a few years back, when "Mo'Ron" seemed to be on a tear and driving towards a presidential nomination, I was thinking: "No way will DeSantis ever be president. The handy majority of the USA can't stand him." The humiliating failure of his primary race has now almost completely deflated him, with the previously-tame Florida legislature now less inclined to simply rubber-stamp his foolish culture-war initiatives. I knew he was going to implode, but I'm still surprised at how quick and drastic it happened. Alas, Florida is stuck with him until the 2026 mid-term elections. He's term-limited and can't run again.

[MON 08 APR 24] THE WEEK THAT WAS 14

DAYLOG MON 01 APR 24: On 25 March, after some organizational gymnastics, Trump Media & Technology Group, the main product of which is the Truth Social messaging platform used by Donald Trump, went public on the NASDAQ stock -- with the symbol "DJT", after Trump's initials.

Trump is of course the majority shareholder in DJT, with the initial valuation of the stock giving his holdings a value of billions of dollars. He couldn't cash in right away, the rules saying he had to wait six months after the initial offering -- anti-dumping rules, it seems. There was skepticism that Trump was ever going to make big money out of a stock sale out of DJT, Truth Social having been bleeding red ink all along. Last week, DJT stock peaked, giving Trump's holdings a value of over $6 billion USD -- but now have declined, to less than $4 billion USD.

It is true that "meme stocks" like DJT's -- which trade on other factors besides assessed value -- do tend to fluctuate wildly, and Trump may end up making a bundle off of DJT. Then again, as Trump falls, so will the value of his holdings in DJT. He continues to fall.

DAYLOG TUE 02 APR 24: One Philip Elliot published an essay on TIME.com with the amusing title: "Trump Built His Brand Bashing Obamacare -- Now It's More Popular Than He Is." The Affordable Care Act (ACA or "ObamaCare") was passed in 2010, and did not take the USA by storm.

There were many technical problems with the ACA startup; it was just too big a thing to be done cleanly. The Right became obsessed with overturning the act, with Donald Trump establishing its extinction as a central plank of his 2016 presidential campaign. Having won the election, Trump tried to kill the ACA, and failed. He had to be satisfied with hobbling it. Trump kept talking about a "wonderful replacement" he would introduce for ObamaCare, but his "plan" was never more than thin smoke and mirrors.

Joe Biden, after taking the White House in 2020, worked on revitalizing the ACA -- doing so quietly, a piece at a time. Now resistance to the ACA has all but evaporated. Although the ACA still leaves something to be desired, it helps tens of million of Americans, and the resistance has faded out.

That is not so surprising; there was resistance on the Right to Medicare / Medicaid when they were introduced, but eventually they were normalized. Even Trump is now talking about reinforcing the ACA. Of course, as Elliot appears to realize, Trump says a lot of things. Pay them no mind.

DAYLOG WED 03 APR 24: There's been a lot of frustration over Russia's ability to circumvent sanctions imposed after Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. However, as discussed by CNBC, the sanctions do not and cannot cripple Russia -- they instead make life more difficult for Putin.

Case in point, although Europe has greatly reduced its imports of Russian gas and fuel, India and China continue to buy Russian oil. India, at least, is abiding by the "price cap" of $60 USD established by the US and its allies, limiting how much money Russia can make off exports. The USA understands that India can't just cut off importing Russian oil; India following the price cap is good enough. From India's point of view, why not? Like they want to pay more? Incidentally, diplomatic and trade arrangements between India and Ukraine appear to be agreeable. How China handles oil imports is another question -- but they don't want to pay more, either, and they're holding the good cards.

Not incidentally, there's also been Ukrainian complaints about the Western-source electronics found in dud Russian cruise missiles. It is in reality impossible to stop Russia from obtaining "commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)" electronics; the Russians can easily get them via intermediaries in friendly countries. It's like trying to control, say, pocket calculators. However, the Russians do end up paying a markup.

DAYLOG 04 APR 24: I'm something of a student of scams, and I was a bit surprised to discover one I hadn't heard of before: the "car wrap" scam. The scammers contact a mark, often a student, and offer big money to put ads on the mark's car.

If the mark bites, the scammers send a way too big, and bogus, check, getting money from the mark in the confusion of "correcting" the error. Apparently the scammers also will charge hidden "fees" to help rip off the mark. I'd be tempted to play along for fun -- but don't EVER talk to a scammer!

* In my efforts to learn Japanese, I liked to decipher anime clips downloaded from Youtube. It's not easy sometimes to make out what the characters are saying, & getting a transcription would help. There was a transcription plug-in for Firefox, but it doesn't work any more.

There are plenty of transcription services online, but all I found were for pay. I searched again today, and found "Notta" -- which is also a paid service, except it does offer 120 minutes of free transcription a month, which is like 4x more than I need.

I logged into Notta via Google and transcribed a video right away. Sometimes I win one. The transcription doesn't work perfectly; one issue is that Japanese is loaded with "homophones", or different words that are phonetically identical, giving opportunities for confusion. Not surprisingly, the transcriber may not get what was said phonetically right, though it will be close. In either case, I get clues, and the transcription is still a big leg up.

DAYLOG FRI 05 APR 24: Reports from the Ukraine War indicate that Ukrainian drones performed coordinated attacks on Russian airfields, with the Ukrainians claiming destruction of or substantial damage to a number of Russian major combat aircraft.

Of course, the "fog of war" applies, with conflicting reports from the two sides, and many unanswered questions about the attacks. How big were the drones, how much damage can they do? Were they "stealthy", to confound air-defense radars? Were jammer drones included? And then there's the question of whether the Russians have, like the Ukrainians, started to turn out good decoys in quantity. We should get OSINT (open-source intelligence) satellite imagery soon to clear some things up.

One thing is clear: it was obvious from reports of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia from early in the year that the Ukrainians were only getting started, as this new wave of attacks demonstrates. By summer, the campaign should be in full swing.

Incidentally, videos are starting to show up of Ukrainian ground drones in action. One video showed a four-wheel drone with fat tires carrying two 120-millimeter mortar rounds to perform a kamikaze mission on a small bridge. Another video showed a smaller tracked drone creeping up to a Russian trenchline, dropping an explosive charge into it that went off with a fair bang, and creeping back to Ukrainian lines again.

AND SO ON: One of the number of inconsequential things that happened this last week was the disbandment of the "No Labels" movement. No Labels wanted to field a centrist candidate for the presidency to push back on the toxic "hyperpartisan" political environment currently existent in the USA -- but after sinking like $70 million USD into the effort, they announced they couldn't come up with a candidate, and were giving up. The death of ex-Senator Joe Lieberman, the most prominent No Labels backer, at the end of March appears to have been the last straw.

There were worries among Democrats that No Labels would only skim off votes for Joe Biden and help Donald Trump win the election, but No Labels never could get off the ground. First, the extremism in American politics is almost completely on the Republican side; there are some extreme Democrats, but they aren't the norm. Second and more importantly, No Labels didn't understand that, as I've said before, the Center has shifted Left in the 21st century -- with approval of DEI, LGBT and reproductive rights, climate-change action, and in general responsible government now being Centrist positions. No Labels had nowhere to go.

In the same vein, Disney Corporation has been noisily criticized by the Right as being too "woke", but in a recent interview Disney CEO Bob Iger commented:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

I replied on Spoutible that Iger was saying, in effect: ~"If we have a message in a movie, it's just one that gratifies our target audience."

The MAGA Trolls scream: "PANDERING!!!" They don't understand: "The customer is always right." The Trolls don't realize, don't want to realize, how the Center has shifted Left.

One Ronald Alexander replied by listing the billions made by Disney's many hit movies, concluding: "Seems like the films the [MAGA Trolls] call WOKE have made Disney rich."

I answered back that I was reminded of the old story about a bank robber, who was asked: "Why do you rob banks?"

He explained: "Because that's where the money is."

[MON 15 APR 24] THE WEEK THAT WAS 15

DAYLOG MON 08 MAR 24: The "538" website ran the results of a poll of voter attitudes towards reproductive rights.

1: "Should abortion be legal?" 70% said YES, up > 10 points from 2015.

2: "Do you approve overturning ROE V WADE?" Only 36% said YES.

3: "Are reproductive rights important to your vote?" 51% said YES.

4: "Should IVF be legal?" 67% said YES.

5: "Should abortion pills be readily available?" 71% said YES.

In short, support for reproductive rights runs ~2:1 against opposition. It was a little surprising that only half the population said RR was a big deal to them; how exactly that slices out the other stats is not clear.

NPR also had a surprising statistic: only 14% of the US population are white evangelicals, down from 25% in the 1990s. I thought they had been still growing. I knew Trump was an inflection point towards decline; it looks like they're going down faster than I thought they were.

DAYLOG TUE 09 MAR 24: Congress is coming back in session after Spring Break, with the major item on the agenda being to pass a Ukraine aid package. House Speaker Mike Johnson seems inclined to do so, obtaining Democrat support to counter the obstruction of the House MAGA Caucus.

The question is being asked: "Why do the House MAGA want to block Ukraine aid?" Surely they must see that appeasing Putin is a bad idea in all respects. In reality, of course, they just don't care. Trump wants to sell out Ukraine, that's good enough for them.

So why does Trump want to sell out Ukraine? Easy, he's sending up a flare to Vladimir Putin. Trump is in big trouble, and Putin's tried to help him in the past. It's a Trump transaction: "Help me, I'll give you Ukraine." It won't work, but Trump is desperate.

There is nothing stranger in Trump's agenda than his kissing up to Putin. Partly Trump honestly like tyrants, but it seems more that Trump thinks the Russians will always help him. The pathetic part is that the GOP has, to a degree, gone along & bent over for Russia as well. The fact that the Russians only back Trump to tear down the USA is not an issue to Trump at all.

DAYLOG WED 10 MAR 24: I've got Amazon Prime, but I've never watched any Amazon video series for long. However, I'm seeing enthusiastic send-ups of a video series based on the FALLOUT games series. I've never played FALLOUT, but the videos do look like fun.

And "fun" is the operative word here. The series would be guaranteed to be bad if it pretended to be serious, but it seems to be over-the-top and darkly humorous. I can hang with that. I've been mildly curious about the HALO video series too -- but not gonna pay for rental yet, even though it's cheap.

Popular video series based on games appears to be a coming thing, overturning the stereotype of video-game movies as lame, and replacing super-hero movies in the top spot. Incidentally, there's a video from SNL floating around that re-imagines MARIO BROS as a grim post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama.

Yes, some of us geezers are into video games. Hey, we've been playing them since they were invented. I only have time to play short games, though. I really like racing games.

DAYLOG THU 11 MAR 24: GIZMODO had a review of music trax generated by the UDIO GAI music generator ... they were all weak, but some were fun. Case in point, a Garth Brooks sendup titled: "Wow I Didn't Know That", dedicated to ignorant rednecks everywhere:

   ! When they say drinking turpentine ain't where it's at,
   ! And insurance fraud is a Federal crime,
   ! Wow, I didn't know that,
   ! You're telling me now for the first time.
   ! Well look here, this is all news to me,
   ! What else do you think this could possibly be? 

I also liked the line: "And Twitter ain't a legitimate pastime?" Then there was the folk ballad "Netflix Nights Serenade":

   ! Under the spell of tales untold, 
   ! In every plot twist, bold and bold, 
   ! Together, our dreams unfold,
   ! Through highs and lows, it's you I adore, 
   ! On Netflix nights, it's love we explore. 

Finally, last and definitely least, is "Ding Dong Dang It's Taco Time!", easily one of the most inane commercial jingles ever made:

   ! Do you like tacos?
   ! Yeah, we like tacos!
   ! Do you like lettuce,
   ! Cheese, and salsa?
   ! Ding dong dang, it's taco time!
   ! Yeah, taco time!
   ! Ding dong dang, it's taco time!
   ! Tacos for you and me! 

I must admit that it made me think of thawing out the family-sized package of frozen enchiladas I have in the freezer. Give me a week or two. Udio is in open beta right now, I'll have to try to cook up some "Retro-Wave" -- electronic music in 1980s style.

DAYLOG FRI 12 MAR 24: As mentioned earlier this week, I was surprised to see that evangelical Christianity is in decline in the USA. I used MS Copilot to get a survey, with the following results:

1: The percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has fallen from 71% in 2014 to 65% in 2021, while the percentage of those with "no religious identity" has risen from 15% in 2016 to 21% in 2020. Notice the rapid decline more or less matches the rise of Trump.

2: As for white evangelicals, they are crashing, shrinking from 23% of Americans in 2006 to 14% in 2020, faster than the norm for religions in the USA. Their share of the population has decreased by 37% during this period.

Trump was elected exactly at the time when the demographics were tilting against Right extremism. Although not all white evangelicals supported Trump -- younger ones often didn't -- the majority did, which was their big mistake. Backing a criminal is accelerating their decline.

AND SO ON: ECONOMIST.com recently ran an essay by Feng Yujun, a professor of international relations and an expert on Russia, with the interesting title: "Russia Is Sure To Lose In Ukraine", the essay starting with:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Feng says four factors are determining the war:

• [1] The extraordinary level of resistance and national unity shown by Ukrainians. The war has, instead of weakening Ukrainian nationalism, strengthened it.
  
  
• [2] The broad international support for Ukraine. There has been some wavering in support, but that appears to be temporary.
  
  
• [3] The intensely technical and industrial nature of the war, which demonstrates Russia's weakness in those sectors.
  
  
• [4] The difficulties Russian President Vladimir Putin has in directing the war. He is diplomatically isolated, and as a tyrant is in an information cocoon, people being reluctant to give him unbiased intelligence -- just as he is reluctant to accept inconvenient realities. Fearing rivals, Putin also makes sure nobody in a position of authority has the stature to challenge him. Ukrainian leadership is more flexible and effective.

Feng says the consequence is clear:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

The comment about the US in Afghanistan brings up the similar defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Russians have suffered far worse in Ukraine than they did in Afghanistan -- and even if they prevail on the battlefield, they'll be fighting Ukrainian guerrillas indefinitely. As far as Russian nuclear threats go, nobody takes them seriously. The USA made some fuzzy-muddled statements about going nuclear in Korea, with such negative feedback from allies that it wasn't done again. There were no such threats from the Americans in their wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Add to Putin's woes flowing from his invasion of Ukraine is that it has created political instability in Russia, and also suggested to post-Soviet states that had been agreeable to the Kremlin before the invasion that Russia presents a threat to them. They are now distancing themselves from Moscow in various ways. Putin has also managed to revitalize NATO, with the countries in the alliance raising their defense spending and bolstering Eastern Europe -- and, in a sharp rebuff to Putin's attempts to bully them, accepted Sweden and Finland as members.

Feng makes a particularly interesting comment about the UN:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Feng makes even more interesting comments about China:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

This is putting a very positive spin on Beijing -- China's desire to "resolve disputes peacefully" doesn't seem to apply to Taiwan and China's other neighbors -- but it isn't entirely propaganda either. China is holding all the cards in its dealings with Russia, and is not invested in Putin's war in Ukraine. Beijing can take a relatively impartial view of the matter.

Feng concludes, very correctly, that a cease-fire won't happen. That would simply allow Putin to refit and re-arm, encouraging to start new wars at his convenience. Ukraine and her allies know this; neither side is interested in a halt to the fighting. The war will continue until Russia accepts defeat and withdraws. That may take more years, but it will happen. Russia cannot win this war.

[MON 22 APR 24] THE WEEK THAT WAS 16

DAYLOG MON 15 APR 24: Here in Colorado, I had voted for my/our representative in the House, Joe Neguse, and was prepared to do it another time. However, Colorado went to a bipartisan redistricting commission a few years ago, and in 2021 there was some reshuffling.

It turns out Loveland is now in the 4th District, covering about the eastern third of the state. My/our representative had been Ken Buck, but he quit, with a special election coming up in June, with the Republicans favored to win.

That will be followed by the general election in November. It turns out the likely Republican candidate will be the obnoxious Lauren Boebert, being faced by Democrat Ike McCorkle, a rather solid-looking ex-Marine.

4th District definitely leans Republican, but Boebert couldn't have a more unsavory reputation; I will of course vote for McCorkle. I checked his campaign pledges, True Blue all the way. Marines in favor of LGBT rights? The world has changed.

Incidentally, I was curious just what percentage of the land area of Colorado District 4 took up, so I asked MS ChatGPT. It actually looked up the areas and then did the calculation: 30.8% -- color me impressed. GAI chatbots are going to get even smarter than that.

DAYLOG TUE 16 APR 24: Fareed Zakaria just released an op-ed video on the decline of religion in America and the corresponding rise of extreme Right politics. Once the USA was unusually religious compared to other developed countries, but from 2007 the numbers began to fall dramatically.

Now the USA ranks 12th in religosity among them. This decline has been paralleled by the political radicalization of religion, without exception in the Right direction. Donald Trump now runs his rallies as revival meetings. About 75% of voting evangelicals chose Trump in 2020.

That leads to the question of what will happen in the USA after Trump. Once Trump is taken off the game board, his influence will vanish abruptly and completely. Those who elevated him will instead try to forget him. How that will work out remains to be seen.

* I have a bigtime sweet tooth, and so it is alarming to find out that chocolate prices are inflating rapidly. There are several reasons why, but the biggest one appears to be climate change: it's hurting the cacao growers in West Africa badly.

So, I wonder, is anybody working to come up with another option? Yes they are, for example California Cultured of Davis, California. They grow cacao cells in culture, not cacao plants. They're doing the same with coffee.

Skeptics point to genetic modification work on the cacao genome to come up with cacao trees more resistant to climate change. That's interesting, but it takes five years for a cacao tree to mature. California Cultured and others think they can produce cheap chocolate in the near future.

DAYLOG WED 17 APR 24: Trump is now in the midst of his New York "hush money" trial. First item of interest out of that is the number of protesters who showed up outside the courtroom: a few dozens. Second item of interest is that Trump nodded off during the proceedings.

A lawyer friend of mine, of long acquaintance, suggested that Trump's sleep habits are not consistent with a courtroom schedule. Trump is said to be "short sleeper", only getting by with a few hours of sleep -- but whether that's true or not, he's not used to normal work hours.

A jury trial, as my friend pointed out, is very laborious for both lawyers and client, and they can't get a lot of sleep. That's not surprising; they can't prepare for everything the prosecution throws at them, and have to build a lot of their case on the fly.

Trump, as further pointed out, is not at all suited to standing trial. Although energetic -- at least he was at one time -- he's never done regular plodding work, and he's a loose cannon, "a control freak with no control". Worse, he's gone old and decrepit. Trump is, or at least was, a master of flim-flam, but the labor of even sleazy lawyering is beyond his grasp. He is the client from Pandaemonium, the capital of Hell. It is unlikely he will win this case. He might hope for a hung jury, but that's a long shot.

DAYLOG THU 18 APR 24: The House is (finally) moving (slowly) towards a Ukraine / Israel / Taiwan aid bill, or rather a set of bills. Florida Dem House Rep Jared Moskowitz couldn't pass up the opportunity to counter-troll House MAGA troll Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG).

Moskowitz is pushing two amendments, the first to appoint MTG as "Vladimir Putin's Special Envoy to the US Congress." He references MTG's efforts to block Ukraine aid, and also hits her use of disinformation from the "Strategic Culture Foundation", a Kremlin loudspeaker.

Moskowitz also has an amendment to rename MTG's Capitol Building office the "Neville Chamberlain Room", after history's most famous appeaser. Moskowitz says: "We can just make it official."

MTG has been pushing amendments of her own, for example requiring that Ukraine close all (imaginary) bio-laboratories and provide incriminating information on Hunter Biden. She is also telling those who are pushing for Ukraine War funding to go fight there. One Rebekah Maciorowski replied online: "I did." -- with a photo of herself sitting in AFU camo fatigues, wearing a trident patch.

* As far as Trump's court dates go, it appears President Biden has passed down the word: SAY NOTHING ABOUT THE MATTER. Trump really wants to play the "political interference" card; better not let him. Trump's generating all the bad publicity he deserves without any help.

DAYLOG FRI 19 APR 24: ECONOMIST.com had an essay: "Ukraine Is Ignoring US Warnings To End Drone Operations Inside Russia". With my reaction being: Ridiculous. There's no evidence the USA has said any such thing.

It is true that the USA has a strictly hands-off attitude towards Ukrainian attacks on Russia proper, but it is obvious that destroying Russian infrastructure weakens the Russian war effort. As far as Russian retaliation goes, they're already throwing everything at Ukraine.

I can only think that this is propaganda being leaked to undermine Ukraine on the battlefield. However, it is also possible that these stories are intended to distance the Americans from Ukraine drone attacks. In any case, they're not for real.

* There was a buzz on Spout today about 20 April, elevated with the hashtag #420. Wot? OK, Google Is My Friend; it turns out 20 April is a stoner celebration day. Not being a stoner, I can readily admit ignorance. I guess "buzz" and "hashtag" are the right terms here.

DAYLOG SAT 20 APR 24: Regarding the comments about the USA criticizing Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure yesterday: I got a tipoff on BlueSky of SecDef Austin indeed saying the USGOV had some issues with that.

There is, in short, some basis for claims the USGOV has problems with Ukraine on Russia attacks. However, on going through the video of the SecDef talking about the matter, he said USGOV thinks it more effective for the AFU to hit Russian military targets -- airbases and such. Make sense. In any case, the USGOV has no problem in principle with AFU attacks on Russia.

Attacks on Russian oil infrastructure could make life more difficult for European NATO nations, making support of Ukraine more difficult. The "oil price cap" imposed by NATO already constrains Russian oil profits. India & China seem to be abiding by the cap ... of course, why pay more?

* Later on Saturday, the House of Representatives finally got around to passing the long-delayed assistance package for Ukraine / Israel / Taiwan. It still has to go through the Senate; Joe Biden says he'll sign it the moment he gets it from the Senate. High-profile Democratic House Member Eric Swalwell, of California, released a missive saying the Ukraine aid was the right thing all around:

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Passing the supplemental funding bill is a win, but the situation in Ukraine is critical at this time. The Russians are engaged in a big push to score a significant win by 9 May, Victory Day, and it's going to be a race to get munitions to Ukraine fast enough. Three things are needed immediately:

• More long-range surface-to-air missiles to destroy Russian strike aircraft dropping devastating oversized KAB glide bombs.
  
  
• More anti-drone defenses to neutralize Russian drones, with interceptor drones hopefully arriving in numbers.
  
  
• Delivery of quantities of the Surface-Launched Small Diameter Bomb II, which will be able to defy countermeasures and destroy Russian assets all over the occupied region of eastern Ukraine.

If the Russian offensive is broken, it seems likely the Russians will have lost their last chance. Increasing production volume of new and superior weapons mean the scales will steadily tip against them. How long it will take to send them back home remains to be seen, however.