Zoozve — the strange ‘moon’ of Venus that earned its name by accident Space.com
America now has a high-pressure economy FT
Legal Theory Lexicon: Interpretation and Construction Legal Theory Blog
Climate
NOAA Coral Reef Watch extends alert scale following extreme coral heat stress in 2023 NOAA. We’re gonna need a bigger scale.
Climate change is making it more dangerous for kids to play outside, report finds The Hill
Generating Electricity…and Uncertainty JSTOR
#COVID19
Happy anniversary:
Vaccination, testing, clean air: COVID hasn’t gone away – here’s where Australia needs to do better The Conversation. The Australasian College for Infection Prevention and Control is doing way better than CDC’s HICPAC.
How to Stop Airborne Diseases Joey Fox, It’s Airborne. “If you know how it spreads, you know how to stop it.”
Altered mitochondrial respiration in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (preproof) Mitochrondion. From the Discussion: “Mitochondrial dysfunction has been extensively studied in acute SARS-CoV-2 infection…. This dysfunction is partly due to the extensive viral targeting of mitochondria and mitochondrial proteins…. Any persistent reservoir of the aforementioned SARS-CoV-2 antigenic agents could account for both the findings herein and the inflammatory state of PASC [Long Covid]…. In combination, these understandings lead to a probable second hypothesis from this work: that reservoirs of viral RNA and proteins in [the cells in the bone marrow known as human hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSC)], upon HSC differentiation, remain in [peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC)] and lead to altered PBMC mitochondrial function through immune activation, sustained inflammation, and the symptoms seen in PASC. Thus, the longevity of PASC would be relative to the extent of HSC viral infiltration and related to the risk factor of viremia levels. As such, this study presents a novel cellular mechanism under the currently hypothesized mechanisms of long COVID pathogenesis.” SARS-CoV-2 reservoirs in bone marrow? That doesn’t sound good at all. Commentary:
The table is taken from an article produced under the NIH’s RECOVER initiative, which squandered a billion dollars laying the groundwork for survey instruments while not even looking for biological markers, let alone treatment.
China?
China will not fall into ‘trap’ of war in Taiwan Strait: former envoy Cui Tiankai South China Morning Post
India
How AI is used to resurrect dead Indian politicians as elections loom Al Jazeera.
Syraqistan
Israeli strikes hit Rafah after Biden warns Netanyahu to have ‘credible’ plan to protect civilians AP. Joe, good job:
The German Foreign Office gets queasy:
Already, the suffering in #Rafah is unfathomable. In an extremely confined space 1.3 million people are seeking shelter from the fighting. A large-scale IDF offensive in Rafah would be a humanitarian catastrophe in the making. The people of #Gaza cannot vanish into thin air. 1/2 https://t.co/ORgOBYJXdc
— GermanForeignOffice (@GermanyDiplo) February 10, 2024
Why Israel Is Winning in Gaza Edward Luttwak, The Tablet
Egypt threatens to suspend key peace treaty if Israel pushes into Rafah on its border, officials say CNBC
Explained: Israel’s plans to invade Rafah, and why US, others have criticised it Indian Express. “[P]ermanent demographic changes” is a terrific euphemism for genocide.
What are the impacts of the Red Sea shipping crisis? Hellenic Shipping News. Tankers, apparently, remain unaffected.
How the Red Sea Became a Trap Foreign Policy
The Red Sea Crisis Proves China Was Ahead of the Curve Foreign Policy
Middle East–China Trade Prospects Remain Robust Despite Red Sea Crisis RAND
Israel need to sell record amount of bonds this year to fund war: Officials Business Standard
European Disunion
Germany’s Days as an Industrial Superpower Are Coming to an End Bloomberg
New Not-So-Cold War
Zelenskyy’s new top commander has a reputation as a ‘butcher’ Politico
Zelenskyy appoints 4 new military commanders Anadolu Agency
Former CIA Analyst Issues Warning to Zelensky Newsweek. George Beebe, director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Outgunned and exhausted: what hope for Ukraine if US military aid dries up? Guardian
Maybe Russian intelligence isn’t so bad:
Ever since mid-2022 the Russians have consciously pursued a “long war” strategy in Ukraine, seeking to grind down the AFU and exhaust NATO’s ability to fuel the war while building their own capabilities. It has largely succeeded.
But…
Why did the Russians think it would work?… pic.twitter.com/LKPTpSgvES
— Armchair Warlord (@ArmchairW) February 11, 2024
Syncretic Past New Left Review
Galician Nationalism: Ukraine’s Disaster: Part One Michael Basta, Understanding Russia. Part two.
Global Elections
Pakistan Plunges Into Political Chaos Madras Courier
Indonesia Elections 2024: Pollsters see Prabowo first-round knockout, but analysts say Anies, Ganjar still in the fight Channel News Asia
Practice of vote-buying looms large over Indonesian election Straits Times
Balancing Act Makes Indonesia an Emerging-Markets Darling John Authers, Bloomberg
Biden Administration
Massive Ukraine, Israel aid package overcomes key Senate hurdle as 18 Republicans vote with Democrats NY Post
2024
‘Just so despicable’: Senate Dems inflamed by Hur report Politico. Hur was appointed by [genuflects] Obama’s failed Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. Hur is also Korean, so objectively a “Person of Color.”
Super Bowl
Patrick Mahomes rallies the Chiefs to second straight Super Bowl title, 25-22 over 49ers in overtime AP
Chiefs’ Travis Kelce gives cryptic explanation for tantrum, Andy Reid bump FOX
Shot:
Chaser:
Here are the top five commercials from the Super Bowl The Hill
The Bezzle
AWS and Blockchain Tim Bray. Amazing.
Anxiety, Mood Swings and Sleepless Nights: Life Near a Bitcoin Mine NYT
Amazon steers consumers to higher-priced items, lawsuit claims Reuters. The “Buy Box” a.k.a. “Mom’s Place.”
Inside the Underground Site Where ‘Neural Networks’ Churn Out Fake IDs 404 Media
Digital Watch
Google’s and Microsoft’s chatbots are making up Super Bowl stats TechCrunch
Sam Altman’s chip ambitions may be loonier than feared The Register
At least they didn’t throw the robot car up in a tree, like what happened to e-scooters:
BREAKING: An autonomous Waymo vehicle is intentionally set on fire in Chinatown, according to SF Fire. Firefighters said they got reports around 10 people were involved.
Waymo said “a crowd surrounded and vandalized the vehicle, breaking the window and throwing a firework … pic.twitter.com/6QN2jTppRu
— Gia Vang (@Gia_Vang) February 11, 2024
Screening Room
Combustible Cinema? The Nitrate Film Issue JSTOR. I don’t know why they went to all the trouble of setting film on fire when they could have digitized everything onto obsolete storage media using unreadable proprietary data formats.
Groves of Academe
The Loss of Things I Took for Granted Slate. Yikes:
Defeating the open conspiracy to deprive students of physical access to books will do little to counteract the more diffuse confluence of forces that are depriving students of the skills needed to meaningfully engage with those books in the first place. As a college educator, I am confronted daily with the results of that conspiracy-without-conspirators. I have been teaching in small liberal arts colleges for over 15 years now, and in the past five years, it’s as though someone flipped a switch. For most of my career, I assigned around 30 pages of reading per class meeting as a baseline expectation—sometimes scaling up for purely expository readings or pulling back for more difficult texts. (No human being can read 30 pages of Hegel in one sitting, for example.) Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding.
2024 – 5 = 2019. Just blueskying here, but smartphones started to became ubiquitous in 2007-2008.
Manufacturing
Bill Gates-backed solar upstart cancels US factory in reshoring gut check S&P Global
Boeing
The Hole In Boeing’s Inspection Program The Lever
Our Famously Free Press
Over Three Decades, Tech Obliterated Media Kara Swisher, New York Magazine
B-a-a-a-d Banks
UBS Loses to Whistleblower in Wide-Reaching Supreme Court Decision WSJ
Imperial Collapse Watch
“The Great Defiance: How the World Took on the British Empire” by David Veevers Asian Review of Books
Guillotine Watch
Private equity chiefs enjoy $40bn gain in share value as assets surge FT
Class Warfare
Demographic transition is just specialization and trade Interfluidity (SC), which seems to have a big project going on.
Antidote du jour (via):
Bonus antidote (via):
Double bonus antidote. You may be asking, “Why so many owls?” Note the hash tag:
The Super Bowl of Minerva flies only at dusk….
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
