Links 12/6/2022

Links 12/6/2022 1

Cat Squeezes His Big Body Into Long Narrow Tube Laughing Squid (resilc). Big mainly fur body.

#COVID-19

Science/Medicine

What patients find at long COVID clinics: rejection, outdated therapies, and unanswered questions Popular Science (resilc)

Long ICU Stays Lead to Extended Misery for Many Covid Survivors Bloomberg

Pfizer seeks FDA greenlight for bivalent COVID dose in kids under 5 years ars technica

Asia

China’s Xi unwilling to accept western vaccines, U.S. official says Reuters. Resilc: “The USA USA magic bullet…..only a million plus dead.”

Finance/Economy

People still afraid of catching COVID-19 are costing the U.S. economy billions of dollars MarketWatch (resilc)

Climate/Environment

EVs Could Take a Hit From Swiss Plan for Power Shortages Barrons (resilc)

How chemists are tackling the plastics problem MIT Technology Review (David L)

China?

The Distorted View of Taiwan from Washington Daniel Larison (resilc)

US Risks Stoking Inflation If Carbon-Linked Tariffs Hit China Bloomberg

South Korea tipped to tack to US, putting strategic ambiguity behind it South China Morning Post

European Disunion

EU must ‘take action’ against US – von der Leyen RT

New Not-So-Cold War

Ukraine war latest: Russian missile strikes force emergency power shutdowns BBC. Mercouris had said up to 300 cruise missiles could have been deployed, which would have been >3x as big as Russia’s largest grid strike. This looks instead to be another “routine” big hit. Alexander Mercouris suggests that a Ukraine drone attack on Russia’s Engels airbase, which may have damaged 2 Russia bombers (Mercouris compares them to B-52s and says they’d be easy to repair) was an attempt to disrupt this attack. Reader Lex and yours truly think the timing of the Russia attack was retaliatory. Note the Engels airbase is way away from the border, making the odds high the drone was launched from within Russia (there was a Ukraine drone attack on a second air base, within reach of the border, which seems much less consequential in damage and security terms). But Slavynagrad says this was no drone: https://t.me/Slavyangrad/23720

Ukraine – Crimea Bridge Repaired, No Ammunition, Drone Attacks In Russia Moon of Alabama (Kevin W)

Sanctions to stay, if Russia ‘dictates’ terms of peace in Ukraine — Scholz TASS (guurst). I suspect Russia has priced that i

U.S. Altered Himars Rocket Launchers to Keep Ukraine From Firing Missiles Into Russia Wall Street Journal

Harsh Weather Germany’s Plans LNG Terminals Bloomberg (guurst)

Russian Cruise Missiles Were Made Just Months Ago Despite Sanctions New York Times (marku52). archive.ph is your friend!

SCOTT RITTER: Merkel Reveals West’s Duplicity Consortium News (Alice X)

Europe’s Energy Crisis Is Reshaping Geopolitics OilPrice (resilc)

The transfer of ZNPP to a third party is out of the question, the Russian Foreign Ministry said RIA Novosti. Key statement: “We proceed from the fact that only we are able to ensure the physical and nuclear safety of ZNPP.” I was extremely skeptical of the talk of the IAEA brokering a deal re ZNPP…since it’s all been coming from the IAEA. I should have stuck my neck out and said so. There has apparently also been an IAEA proposal of Russia pulling tanks and armored vehicles out(but leaving infantrymen in) if Ukraine stops shelling. I don’t see why if I am Russia I believe that since no one outside Russia has been willing to acknowledge the obvious, that Ukraine is firing on the plant. If Russia feels the need to indulge this sort of thing, I would drag the talks out, since facts on the ground are likely to be different by spring.

….and new modeling suggests that a 10% rise in real energy prices is associated with a 0.6% increase in deaths over a typical winter season – that equates to over 100,000 extra deaths of elderly people across Europe in the coming months.

Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Right-wing propaganda disguised as historical scholarship — Part Three WSWS

The Perpetually Irrational Ukraine Debate Foreign Policy

The Inevitable Winner of the War in Ukraine American Conservative (resilc)

Syraqistan

Benjamin Netanyahu accuses Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz of sedition Jerusalem Post (resilc)

Iran abolishes morality police after protests, official claims Alarabiya News (Kevin W)

Assange

Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg was Wikileaks’ secret back-up BBC (furzy)

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Amazon is offering customers $2 per month for letting the company monitor the traffic on their phones Business Insider (Kevin W)

Risky Online Behaviour Such as Piracy ‘Almost Normalized’ Among Young People, Says Study Guardian

Imperial Collapse Watch

The Manifesto Dark Mountain Project (amfortas)

Trump

Senate Republicans turn on Trump over suspend-the-Constitution talk Politico (Kevin W). Hoo boy. Bye bye 2024.

Our No Longer Free Press

New Zealand Plans to Make Facebook, Google Pay for News Wall Street Journal (David L)

Meta’s Threat CNN (furzy)

Why Faulty Streetlights Are Turning Cities Purple — and Why It’s Worrisome Business Insider (resilc)

How Jared Kushner Lost at the World Cup in Qatar Intercept (resilc)

North Carolina county under curfew after power station attack, FBI investigating Reuters (resilc)

Tesla’s Berlin Hub Can’t Hire Enough People, or Keep Them Wired. Resilc: “The Tesla scam is over too. It’s just another car company now.”

Police State Watch

Hertz Agrees to $168 Million Settlement Over Bogus Stolen-Car Arrests Jalopnik. Kevin W: “They could have got people shot.”

Florida man restrained by officers in jail died by strangulation, autopsy finds Guardian (resilc)

The Bezzle

I Accidentally Interviewed SBF And He Hated It YouTube (flora). This alone makes clear that a serious prosecutor will make mincemeat of SBF if there is ever a trial because multiple ex employees will contradict SBF’s “I knew nothing/data was not on the dashboard” blather. At the same time, it also becomes evident that SBF is a complete sociopath. He does not rattle and his vocal timber stays even when he’s called out on obvious fabrications. Mind you, defendants do not have to testify and their lawyers strongly advise them not to, but SBF has provided tons of consistent testimony in these interviews. A DA could do a compilation and have ex-employees debunk the key bits. SBF has such a big ego and is convinced he is the smartest guy in the room (that is why he is talking to the media now) that he’d be champing at the bit in court about needing correct/clarify his earlier statements.

Sam Bankman-Fried Says He Will Testify Before Congress On FTX Collapse The Verge

Bankman-Fried claims new FTX CEO’s testimony is “false” Forkast. SFB seriously thinks he can win a credibility fight?

Crypto Exchange Gemini Trying To Recover $900 Million From Crypto Lender Genesis Reuters

‘Huge, Missing and Growing:’ $65 Trillion in Dollar Debt Sparks Concern Yahoo! Finance (Kevin W)

Class Warfare

Student loans as a strategy for social control Boing Boing (resilc)

Your Creativity Won’t Save Your Job From AI Atlantic (David L)

California FAST Act goes to a vote after restaurant industry petition gathers one million signatures Nation’s Restaurant News (Kevin W)

An ATM at Art Basel publicly ranks its users by their bank account balance NPR (David L)

New York Mayor’s Plan to Round Up Homeless People Is a Trauma-Inducing Horror Truthout ZOMG, this is a completely reversal of long-standing New York state law, where people can be incarcerated only for 72 hours (the drunk tank drying out…..) unless they are a danger to themselves or others (see the layperson version from the classic Michael Clayton starting at 3:00).

Antidote du jour. Cliff V’s pensive kitten:

Links 12/6/2022 2

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