Links 11/19/2022 | naked capitalism

Hybrid ‘Brolar Bears’ Could Spread Through The Arctic as The Planet Warms ScienceAlert (Chuck L)

Sheep flocks operate as a type of ‘collective intelligence’ and elect temporary leaders to guide them while moving ZMEScience (Dr. Kevin)

What is the Boundary Waters worth? Counties and Forest Service disagree Wilderness News (Chuck L)

NASA’s Webb Catches Fiery Hourglass as New Star Forms NASA (lyman alpha blob)

FBI, Air Force Agents Mysteriously Raid House of Guy Who Runs Area 51 Blog Gizmodo

‘New’ weight of Earth revealed RT (Chuck L)

“Anna’s Archive” Opens the Door to Z-Library and Other Pirate Libraries Torrent Freak (Mark G)

The Union Pacific Silvis Heritage Donation Move – Departing Cheyenne YouTube (resilc). For train fans.

The Dengue Virus Has Been Found in Arizona Gizmodo (David L)

Our Earth, shaped by life aeon

The Dirt on Pig-Pen Elif Batuman, Astra (Anthony L)

What makes us dance? It really is all about that bass NPR (David L)

Michael Wood · Cage in Search of a Bird: Kafka’s Worlds London Review of Books (Anthony L)

Michael Dirda on why we should read the classics and old, forgotten books Washington Post (Anthony L)

#COVID-19

Science/Medicine
RAT COVID TESTING:
It’s so important that you swab the inside of your cheek (especially at the level of your upper & lower molars), under your tongue and the back of your throat before you swab your nose. Sensitivity of available RATs increases significantly with this approach.
— Christopher Leighton MD, FRCPC (@ccleighton) November 16, 2022
Washington Post backs Republican-led witch-hunt against scientists WSWS
Asia
Chinese city of Guangzhou struggles to rein in record Covid outbreak Financial Times

Climate/Environment

The carbon conundrum: Plotting emissions, as COP27 enters its final week chartr (resilc)
California Releases Sweeping New Climate Action Plan to Reach Carbon Neutrality KQED (David L)
Experts explain slowing ocean currents PhysOrg (David L)
Vertical Farming Needs to Grow More Than Salad Wired (resilc)

China?

Currently reading Elbridge Colby’s “Strategy of Denial” since it’s becoming a very influential book in the US.
Most striking to me is that the book is based on the premise that China is a threat to the US.
But the explanation for why that is is incredibly insane.
Small 🧵
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) April 16, 2022
China’s new satellite-hunting radar aims to blind US Asia Times
China Tops US To Take Research Crown At Global Chip Conference Nikkei
🇸🇦💰🇨🇳It is reported that during the last Airshow China-2022 exhibition in Zhuhai,SA signed contracts with China worth 2 billion USD for the acquisition of a line for the assembly of the TB001 unmanned aerial vehicle (including technology transfer) and 300 Caihong-4B UAVs pic.twitter.com/2RQBcdoJRn
— AZ 🛰🌏🌍🌎 (@AZgeopolitics) November 19, 2022
No hope in improving China-UK ties if London continues to provoke Beijing’s bottom line Global Times

Old Blighty

Higher taxes look to be here to stay, says IFS BBC (resilc)
UK opposition parties to table amendments to delay deletion of 4,000 EU laws Guardian

New Not-So-Cold War

🇷🇺🇺🇦 Situation in the Zaporozhye Direction until 11:00 on 19 Nov 2022(30 minutes ago)
▪️ The AFU command continues to concentrate forces in forward positions for a likely offensive against Melitopol. According to residents in the region, 25,000 to 40,000 troops pic.twitter.com/503c3hJxkt
— AZ 🛰🌏🌍🌎 (@AZgeopolitics) November 19, 2022
>Ukraine. Military Summary And Analysis 18.11.2022 YouTube. 10 Russian soldiers trapped by Urkaine forces urged by Ukraine to surrender. They did and were then machine gunned in cold blood per videos posted by Ukraine. Russian MoD analyzed them, said soldiers shot in the back of the head. Russia promises retribution, including v. Zelensky.
Why a Diplomatic Solution to the Ukraine War is Getting More and More Elusive CounterPunch. Resilc: “Vicky Nuland sez nooooooooooooooowayyyyyyyyyyyyyy.”
* * *
Ukraine says half its energy system crippled by Russian attacks, Kyiv could ‘shutdown’ Reuters
Poland will not invite Ukraine to co-host missile strike investigation DefenseNews. Kevin W: “Because they saw what happened when the Ukraine co-hosted the MH17 investigations?”
* * *
Trump’s former Treasury secretary calls G-7 Russian oil price cap ‘the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard’ CNBC
* * *
NYT, Again. Andrei Martyanov. Some back of the envelope calculations to debunk the never-stops-being-flogged “Russia is running out of missiles” story.
Will Biden Sell Advanced Drones to Ukraine? Intercept (resilc). Wowsers, very captured piece. The US is considering selling/provided downgraded Grey Eagle drones. As Brian Berletic explained, the official reason is that we are afraid Russia will capture one of them. He says the even more likely reason is that it won’t perform well due to Russian signal jamming and other reasons. The magic Turkish Bayrakters didn’t.

Syraqistan

Mohammed bin Salman: Saudi leader given US immunity over Khashoggi killing BBC (resilc)
Israel deploys remote-controlled robotic guns in West Bank Associated Press (David L)

Imperial Collapse Watch

America’s Suez Moment American Conservative (resilc)
A Smoldering Fuse James Howard Kunstler (Li). On Ukraine and FTX. The usual great phrase-making.
The G20 is dead. Long live the G20 Indian Punchline (Kevin W)
Pentagon has no idea how much military equipment it left in Afghanistan Task and Purpose

Trump

Special counsel Jack Smith to oversee criminal investigations into Trump BBC. Kevin W: “A former war crimes prosecutor?”
Fmr. Pres. Trump Gives Statement on Special Counsel Appointment C-SPAN
Trump Posted Classified Satellite Imagery On Twitter As President NPR

187 Years Later, Congress Thinks About Seating a Cherokee Delegate New Republic (resilc)

Abortion

Anti-abortion groups seek to overturn FDA approval of abortion pill Politico

Our No Longer Free Press

15 Automakers Elon Musk Could Have Bought Instead Of Twitter Jalopnik (resilc)
Elon Musk begins reinstating banned Twitter accounts, starting with Jordan Peterson and the Babylon Bee The Verge (Li)
You can vote on whether to reinstate Trump on Twitter, but poll closes soon, I think as of Noon PST: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593767953706921985
The best people are staying, so I’m not super worried
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022
We’ll know in not all that long if Musk is blustering. But he has enough $ and profile in this that he pretty much has to make it work, even if that means redeploying a lot of coders and code minders from Space X and Tesla.
Democrats’ Trust and Favorability in Twitter Plummets Following Musk Take Over Gizmodo (Kevin W). I like the new Twitter much better. On the stuff I follow, signal to noise ratio has improved.
Elon Musk’s chaotic reign boosts Twitter — and its smaller rivals Financial Times
However, this is not well thought out:
New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.
Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter.
You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2022

Inflation/Supply Chain

New Englanders Are Fed Up With High Energy Prices OilPrice (resilc)

The Bezzle

Pregnant Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for multimillion-dollar blood testing fraud conspiracy Daily Mail (Li)
Bubbles Aren’t Just For Stock Markets Ian’s Blog (resilc)
FTX boss accused of using offshore funds after bankruptcy RT. Headline buries the lede. SBF et al claim Bahama authorities made them transfer crypto post bankruptcy filing to a wallet controlled by Bahama.
Is Effective Altruism to Blame for Sam Bankman-Fried? New York Magazine (Jules). There was a lot of upset in comments on Water Cooler yesterday when IM Doc worked out that the FTX Foundation was the sole funder of a so-sloppy-as-to-not-be-reliable study that was widely touted study that found ivermectin to be ineffective. FTX had famously pledged to give 1% of its net fees to charity, via the FTX Foundation. Bankman-Fried’s family is part of elite medical academia. There is normally no money for clinical trials for old off-patent drugs. There was moral panic among the Biden Administration and Team Dem over ivermectin, particularly over the possibility that it would reduce vaccine takeup. So this is really not any surprise.
After FTX, Crypto Exchanges Struggle to Convince Customers They’re Safe Bloomberg

Justice Department Said To Investigate Ticketmaster’s Parent Company New York Times

How America’s top real estate agent sells 16 homes every day The Hustle (resilc)

Class Warfare

Security guards at Doha World Cup park claim they are paid just 35p an hour Guardian (resilc)
60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck heading into 2022 holiday CNBC (resilc)

Antidote du jour. Robert H: “Picture from bird watching friends near D.C.”

And a bonus (Chuck L):