toucana

There is an interesting new article in The Atlantic (Feb 24 2025) by Jonathan Rauch entitled ‘One Word Describes Trump’. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/corruption-trump-administration/681794/ The article cites a recent book called The Assault on the State: How the Attack on Modern Government Endangers our Future - by two professors - Stephen E. Hanson and Jeffrey S.Kopstein. This book in turn reaches back over a century to the work of a seminal German sociologist called Max Weber (1864-1920) who is probably best known for his book called The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) Max Weber was interested in how leaders of states derive their legitimacy, and he suggested that it came down to two choices: i. Bureaucratic proceduralism - derived from the rules and norms bestowed by institutions ii. Patrimonialism - in which rulers claim to be the symbolic father of the people. It is the second of these - patrimonialism - which provides the one word epitome of who Trump is, and how his approach to government functions Weber himself in the late 19th century thought that patrimonialism was an obsolete anachronism that was on its way to history’s scrap heap. Its personalized style of rule was too inexpert and capricious to manage the complex economies and military machines that, after Bismarck, became the hallmarks of modern statehood. Unfortunately, he was wrong. One important point made in the article is that the antithesis of patrimonialism is not democracy, but bureaucracy, and bureaucratic formalism - which explains why Trump is so determined to annihilate federal agencies. The other principal point is that patrimonialism suffers from two fundamental weaknesses: i. Incompetence ii. Corruption But corruption is also the Achilles heel of patrimonialism in the author’s opinion:

A new YT video by Sabine Hossenfelder on this subject clarifies a couple of points. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIQSkrGN3G4 The original source of the story was an article by Stephen Chen in the South China Morning Post on 28 February 2025. It was said to be based based on a declassified 2020 PRC geological survey report: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3300360/chinas-thorium-survey-finds-endless-energy-source-right-under-our-feet Uranium-233 is a fissile isotope of uranium, and it can be produced by neutron irradiation of thorium-232 One of the larger practical problems involved in building a viable TMSR (thorium molten salt reactor) is the highly corrosive nature of the molten salt admixture. A table of known thorium reserves from around the world organised by *quantities* (as opposed to alphabetical order) indicates quite how significant this latest discovery might be.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) just paid a $100 billion 'protection fee' to USA. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/13/tech/taiwan-tsmc-us-investment-reactions-intl-hnk/index.html The company said it was the biggest such investment in the US ever made by a non-American firm. TSMC had previously received $3.9 billion in subsidies from USA during the Biden administration to finance the construction of three chip fabrication plants in Arizona under the terms of the bipartisan Chips Act which allocated $39 billion in federal funding to boost domestic chip production. Along with the additional three manufacturing facilities, the new investment also promised two chip packaging plants and a research and development centre to improve the production process technology. The island democracy’s former President Ma Ying-jeou wasted no time in accusing the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of “selling TSMC” to Trump as a “protection fee.” But others appear less concerned. Fred Lin, a finance industry professional, said he believed TSMC came to this decision prudently.

What interests me is the deliberate manipulation of public discourse by MAGA extremists. They inject utterly lunatic policy ideas into every political debate, and do so in an almost bored manner, as if their suggestions were entirely normal and non-controversial: “Let’s invade Canada”, “Seize Greenland”, Turn Gaza into a millionaire’s riviera”, “Abolish the Department of Education“,”Crash the entire Federal system of government” - etc. It’s not normal. All of these are studied and extreme over-plays which are designed to warp the boundaries of public debate out of all recognition, and to confuse casual listeners - in line with the stated MAGA goal of “flooding the end-zone with sh*t ”. I feel it’s really important for those who believe in a working democracy to keep restating the core ethical and legal assumptions about where the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour lie, and to re-centre The Overton Window in order to resist the ‘normalisation’ of neo-Nazi lunacy in public debate. We had our own version of this here in UK back in 2022 during the 49 days of Liz Truss’s tenure as PM (between 6 September and 25 October). She was forced to resign by the economic chaos that ensued from her very first budget. I very much hope that Trump does likewise.

Keaton actually broke his neck while performing this stunt during the filming of Sherlock Jr. in 1924, but didn’t know until over a decade later, when a doctor took an x-ray for a routine medical insurance check-up, and spotted the healed fracture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHoT_Qch7jE

In the early 1990s, an american political scientist called Joseph Paul Overton (1960-2003) popularised a concept that became widely known as ‘The Overton Window’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Overton_Window Also known as the ‘window of discourse’, it represents the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at any given time. It is visualised as a vertical axis divided into what one political commentator Joshua Terviño called ‘the six degrees of acceptance’ : - unthinkable - acceptable - sensible - popular - policy The hypothesis is that politicians and lawmakers typically attempt to act freely only within a window that is seen as ‘acceptable’. The problem is that not only do the parameters of these windows shift and expand over time as societal values and expectations evolve, they can also be manipulated by the output of mainstream media, social media, and the advertising based algorithms which underpin them. Extremists such as the MAGA cult and Project 2025 are aggressively seeking to move what was once seen as ‘unacceptable’ into the realms of ‘sensible’ and ‘policy’. This is a progressive process where the accomplishment of each step preps the next - rather like a pawn promotion race in chess, or an oshi [押し] ‘push’ move (if you happen to be a Japanese Go player). In the light of the first 50 days of the second Trump administration, it is instructive to see what sharply upward flexions of the Overton Window are currently being pushed by its spokesmen in various press briefings to date: - The annexation and subjugation of Canada as the 51st state of the USA. - The annexation of Greenland and its mineral resources as an American dependency. - The American seizure of Gaza, and the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from its territory. - The forcible seizure of the Panama Canal zone by the USA. - The abandonement of aid to Ukraine, and its military defeat by Russian aggression. - A US abandonment of its NATO membership and legacy obligations to western European security. - The abandonment of Taiwan to an invasion by mainland China. - A total political and economic isolationist retreat by the USA behind high tariff trade barriers. - A wholesale destruction of the apparatus of almost all federal goverment spending programs. - The destruction of Social Care, Medicaid and VA support programs. - The closure of the Department of Education - A sustained attack on the integrity of the judiciary as an independent arm of government. - The summary abolition of the US presidential electoral system and term limits. If you think the last item is a stretch, then re-read what Trump told a caucus of Christian voters last year on 26 July 2024: footnotes: - ‘The Overton Window’ (2010) was also the title of a ‘faction’ thriller by conservative commentator Glen Beck. - The photo below is from the film ‘Steamboat Bill Jr.’ (1928) and was said to have been the most dangerous stunt that Buster Keaton ever performed on film. The entire frontage of a cyclone damaged building collapses into the street on top of him, but he survives because of a fortunately placed window.

The Calvin and Hobbes take on DEI - one of the most succinct

Below is another full video of Claude Malhuret’s 8:32m speech on YT as originally delivered in French. There is an English translation in captions, but I would recommend turning on the French auto-subtitling and YT transcript, in order to catch some of the nuances that a number of the English translations missed. For example - in one early passage at 0:43 elapsed where the simultaneous English translation said “…hard to translate", what the French actually said was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unSSHfIs3U0

Part of a recent viral anti-Musk guerrilla poster advertising capaign on London Transport’s Underground tube trains and bus shelter poster sites, organised by the dissident ‘Everyone Hates Elon’ group in UK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNJ2PpbXXuk

A sunrise photo of the TOL animals awakening - taken just a few minutes ago by my wife who often goes out there at dawn.

You could hardly make this up, but it appears to be true ... According to this AP report, one of the very first of over 26,000 images flagged for immediate deletion by the Defence Department is this photo of Captain Paul Tibbets standing in front of his B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay which dropped the first atomic bomb in history on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. https://apnews.com/article/dei-purge-images-pentagon-diversity-women-black-8efcfaec909954f4a24bad0d49c78074

I had already corrected that typo before you posted.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/french-politician-claude-malhuret-rips-elon-musk-as-a-jester-high-on-ketamine/

There are a number of other sources for this news item, some of them pay-walled, but this one seems to be both accessible and reasonably accurate https://discoveryalert.com.au/china-discovers-limitless-energy-source-thorium-sparking-global-interest-2025/ Basically the Chinese authorities claim to have found a 1 million tonne deposit of thorium at the Bayan Obo Mining District complex located in Inner Mongolia, not far from Baotou City ( 包头市 ). They claim that this could supply China’s enegy needs for the next 60,000 years. The discovery is said to be part of an extensive geological survey that has mapped 233 thorium-rich zones across the country. Thorium (Th - 90) is a naturally occurring radioactive element that offers a much denser energy yield - up to 500 times more than conventional Uranium 232. Thorium fuel can be used in tandem with an advanced molten-salt-reactor (MSR) technology. In MSRs, thorium is blended with lithium fluoride and heated to approximately 1400°C. This molten mixture is then bombarded with neutrons, triggering nuclear transmutation that leads to the creation of uranium-233, a fissile isotope capable of sustaining a continuous nuclear reaction. One of the foremost challenges lies in the extraction and processing of thorium. The complex nature of mining and refining thorium requires state-of-the-art technology and significant capital investment.

If you are taking a higher level exam in maths, physical chemistry or biology then there is very little that is subjective in the assessment taking place. Your answers are either right or wrong. If you get more than a certain percentage of the answers wrong, then you will fail the exam. The same is true if you are taking a viva-voce language test - you can either speak the language and perform translation accurately in it or you can’t. Ditto if it’s a history exam or an economics term paper. You either know the factual basis of the subject well enough to write an reasoned and well informed paper - or you don’t. If you are an engineering apprentice in a trade with a high premium on practical experience and in-field training, then the same applies. You will be judged on your proven ability to do the actual job in hand. To anyone who lives in the real world and has real life experience of training, mentoring and assessing students and apprentices, there is no great mystery about any of this.

And how would you assess work performance, professional competence, or individual learning progress without a test or metric of some description ? Karmic vibration ? Body aura ? Telepathy ? Or do think that just any random person who pleases should be allowed to rock up and become a brain surgeon, or an airline pilot, or an engineer running a large nuclear reactor ?

This is the most detailed reporting I can find: https://therecord.media/hegseth-orders-cyber-command-stand-down-russia-planning The scope of this instruction is unclear

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSMC) is the largest company in Taiwan, and the most valuable semiconductor company in the world. Taiwan’s worldwide exports of integrated circuits amounted to $184 billion in 2022, and accounted for 25% of Taiwan’s GDP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC The status of TSMC as a world leader in Fabless manufacturing, operating as a ‘pure play’ company specialising in the semiconductor foundry industry, has in the past given Taiwan what some critics call a “Silicon Shield” against the threat of invasion or blockade by China. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250225-trump-s-chip-tariff-threats-raise-stakes-for-taiwan As Taiwan produces more than half the world’s chips, and most of the really advanced ones too, there has always been strong bi-partisan support in the US Congress for Taiwan - to protect it as a critical part of the global IC supply chain, and to prevent those resources from being expropriated by China. A week ago Trump announced tariff plans that would include a 25% levy on imported chips which are used in everything from smart phones to missiles. The problem here is that TSMC don’t ship that large a proportion of their output directly to the USA. They are a semiconductor foundry business who supply chips in bulk to other manufacturers in every part of the world - including Apple who actually do much of their product assembly in China. A key factor would be whether levies are applied only to chips being shipped to the United States, or also on chips in finished products. Trump’s tariff plans are predicated on “redressing trade imbalances” and “encouraging companies to move manufacturing back to the United States”. As it happens TSMC has been opening up new semiconductor foundries around the world - including one in Arizona in 2024. But it’s a slow process that takes years to accomplish. The real dilemma that TSMC faces however, is that moving their semiconductor foundries out of Taiwan and into other countries dilutes the value of the “Silicon Shield” that has helped to discourage China from invading Taiwan in recent years. Moving their foundries to the USA could simply encourage Donald Trump to throw Taiwan under the bus by allowing China to invade it. The other part of Trump’s plans for Taiwan seem to involve the usual gangster-style grift of demanding that the Taiwanese “pay” for the “protection” they receive from the United States.

The trifecta would have been FDR saying to Churchill - "Why aren't you wearing a suit ?"

People living near Lands End Cornwall UK have been advised to buy earplugs due to a lighthouse’s broken fog alarm https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdelld75wgro The Longships Lighthouse has been sounding a loud beep every 13 seconds for the last week after a visibility sensor malfunctioned. Trinity House who manage all of England's lighthouses say they are aware of the fault, but are waiting for a spare part to arrive. The lighthouse which dates from the later 19th century has been unmanned ever since automation was installed in 1988. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longships_Lighthouse The previous pneumatic supertyfon foghorn was removed at the same time, and replaced with an electric audio emitter linked to a visibility sensor. An article in Ocean Navigator explains how these work:

Just when you thought the limits of self-parody had been reached… https://news.sky.com/story/trump-shares-ai-video-of-gaza-vision-featuring-golden-statues-bearded-belly-dancers-and-netanyahu-on-a-sunbed-13317241