Crows Perform Yet Another Skill Once Thought Distinctively Human Scientific Americans

Swarming bees stir up their own electric fields Science

Fed raises rates another 0.75 point, hints hikes could slow in future Axios

The inflation narrative is fabricated, as is the response Tax Research UK

The Hidden Cause of Economy-Wide Inflation? Marshall Steinbaum, The Sling

Despite Recession Fears, 18.5% of U.S. Workers Are Searching for a New Job Morning Consult

Maersk Achieves Record Quarter While Warning of Recessionary Signals Maritime Executive

Climate

Climate change will make rainbows more likely ZME Science (Rev Kev).

Wildfire smoke alters immune cells, promoting inflammation Wildfire Today

The Insect Apocalypse Is Coming to Your Neighborhood Bloomberg

TPC Group’s Port Neches plant leaked chemicals, then exploded. Now they want Houston to trust them. One Breath Partnership

The Gomeroi people have fought Santos’ Narrabri Gas Project for a decade. They hope a novel climate change argument could help them win ABC Australia. From September, still germane. Drillling 850 wells over “aquifers of the Great Artesian Basin — the largest and deepest artesian basin in the world, and the only source of fresh water through much of inland Australia.” What could go wrong? Oh, and on aboriginal land.

New documents reveal corrosion, leaking in coal seam gas wells, raising contamination fears ABC Australia

#COVID19

The End of Evusheld The Atlantic. Not addressing transmission turns out to be a problem. Who knew?

China?

Global bankers ‘very pro-China’, says UBS chair FT

We don’t want to decouple from China, but can’t be overreliant Olaf Scholz, Politico

China’s 20th Party Congress: The Implications for CCP Norms The Diplomat

iPhone assembler Foxconn shifts production from China Covid-hit plant FT

TikTok says staff in China can access UK and EU user data BBC

We are not the only country with terrible communication on Covid:

Myanmar

Big banks face scrutiny over business with Myanmar lender Al Jazeera

After Repeated Crackdowns, Myanmar Junta Officially Bans The Irrawaddy The Irrawaddy

The Koreas

The popularity of the Korean oegugin (foreign) influencer is on the rise. But there is a dark side to this pop-nationalism The Conversation

Supreme Court Orders Reparations for Sex Workers Serving US Military The Blue Roof

Syraqistan

With 86% of votes tallied, Netanyahu on cusp of election victory Al Mayadeen

Saudi Arabia courts Australian miners for $170 billion plan Mining.com

Dear Old Blighty

Rishi Sunak to review pledges made in Tory leadership contest FT. Commentary:

New Not-So-Cold War

Senior Defense Official and Senior Military Official Hold a Background Briefing US Department of Defense:

DOD is conducting hands-on training with the Ukrainian Armed Forces on U.S. best practices so they can provide better data, for example, from sites close to the front lines that U.S. personnel cannot visit.

And then fourth, to verify this data, U.S. personnel have recently resumed on-site inspections to assess weapon stocks in country whenever and wherever the security conditions allow.

Boots on the ground, eh?

Who’s afraid of US troops in Ukraine? Indian Punchline

Will Biden Gamble on a Ukraine Coalition? The American Conservative

Biden Administration Again Plants False Nuclear Scare Stories Moon of Alabama

Russian Retreat in Ukraine Exposes Collaborators—and the Finger-Pointing Begins WSJ

Russia rejoins deal on wartime Ukrainian grain exports AP

More than Half of Tankers Which Have Been Loading in Russian Ports in the Last 6 Months, Were Controlled by EU, G7 of Allied Countries Hellenic Shipping News

Fears of neo-Nazis in military ranks after ex-soldier’s passport cancelled The Age

How Pre-WW II Ukrainian Fascists Pioneered Brutal Terror Techniques; Later Improved By CIA, Now Ironically Taught to Descendants Covert Action Magazine. From June, still germane.

Bolsonaro backers call on Brazil military to intervene after Lula victory Reuters

The Supremes

“Originalism Is Intellectually Indefensible”: Eric Foner on the Enduring Myth of the Colorblind Constitution Balls and Strikes

Our Famously Free Press

How to Inoculate against Midterm Misinformation Campaigns Scientific American. The last sentence should be the starting point. not the ending.

Healthcare

‘This Is Our March 2020’: Children’s Hospitals Are Overwhelmed by R.S.V. NYT (Rev Kev).

The Bezzle

Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, to attend International Symposium on Blockchain Advancements (ISBA) 2022 as Keynote Speaker Benzinga

The Death of Crypto Has Been Greatly Exaggerated, Again Institutional Investor. Fraud always has a place.

Banks detected a record $886 million in ransomware payments in 2021 American Banker

Imperial Collapse Watch

Geopolitics is the biggest threat to globalisation Martin Wolf, FT. Commentary:

Is the IMF fit for purpose? Guardian

Class Warfare

Your Boss Is Spying on You. The NLRB Might Stop It. Gizmodo

Beyond financialisation: the longue durée of finance and production in the Global South Cambridge Journal of Economics. From the Abstract: “Seen from the South, we argue that although there has been expansion of financial motives and practices the ‘divorce’ between the financial and the productive economy cannot be considered a new empirical phenomenon having occurred during the last decades and even less an epochal shift of the capitalist system. The tendency for finance to neglect the needs of the domestic productive sector has been the structural operation of finance in many parts of the Global South over the last 150 years.”

Bristling with Barricades London Review of Books. Paris, 1848.

Observing many researchers using the same data and hypothesis reveals a hidden universe of uncertainty PNAS. From the Abstract: “We coordinated 161 researchers in 73 research teams and observed their research decisions as they used the same data to independently test the same prominent social science hypothesis:…. In this typical case of social science research, research teams reported both widely diverging numerical findings and substantive conclusions despite identical start conditions. Researchers’ expertise, prior beliefs, and expectations barely predict the wide variation in research outcomes. More than 95% of the total variance in numerical results remains unexplained even after qualitative coding of all identifiable decisions in each team’s workflow. This reveals a universe of uncertainty that remains hidden when considering a single study in isolation. The idiosyncratic nature of how researchers’ results and conclusions varied is a previously underappreciated explanation for why many scientific hypotheses remain contested. These results call for greater epistemic humility and clarity in reporting scientific findings.”

The Intelligence of African Hunters, and the Ignorance of Popular Hereditarians Traditions of Conflict

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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This entry was posted in Guest Post, Links on by Lambert Strether.

About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.