Why Australia bottles up its air
Reading
Alex Williams recently wrote “What Is ‘Core PCE Services Ex-Housing’ Anyway?,” which dissects the measure that the Fed is using to get a handle on “underlying” inflation. The most interesting bit (for me) is that about 1/4 of this measure is an imputed price index, based on wages. This means that this component will track wages (giving a convenient analytical relationship) by definition.
The logic of following this measure is that the Fed convinced itself that the core (ex-food and and energy) personal consumption expenditure is the best measure of “underlying” inflation, but it turns out that the housing part of that has construction issues (too smoothed to pick up current events), and so they wanted to strip that out of the measure.
The helpless and their power-ups Why do people believe what they do? Why are conspiracy theories so attractive? Slate’s John Ehrenreich examines the persistence of the Wuhan lab leak theory behind the emergence of COVID-19. Yes, “Running Man” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)* is one of the first to suggest it. But in the end, why did the story take off on the right when most scientists find the disease’s animal origin more plausible? For one, Ehrenreich suggests, the lab leak theory plays into the right-wing distrust of “experts” and elites. Plus: People also generally prefer simple, straightforward stories that give them a sense of control over complex ones filled with ambiguity and complexity that foster a sense of helplessness. The lab-leak story is simple. Short version: Someone in a lab in China doing research on deadly viruses screwed up. The actions to take are clear: Blame China. Demand reparations. Tighten up regulation of laboratories doing research on disease-causing microbes. Bar gain-of-function research that alters viruses to make them more deadly.
“This is what makes Ron DeSantis so dangerous, quite frankly,” he said.
Conservatives are ready to die for gas stoves. Yes, you read that correctly: They aren’t...
The timing of a Blinken interview and a RAND paper release points to elite splits over Ukraine. Sadly the warmongers are still in charge.
Your next infection could be the one that permanently disables you. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 26th January 2023 You could see Covid-19 as an empathy test. Who was prepared to suffer disruption and inconvenience for the sake of others, and who was not? The answer was often surprising. I can think, for […]
The question is what will? McKay Coppins presents a gallery of Republican donors and operatives eager to see Donald Trump gone before he can do more harm to the Republican Party. What’s left of it anyway. They just lack the guts to take on Trump and his (proven violent) cult members frontally. Their strategy is to hope Trump, 76, just dies. As his mother did at at 88 and his father at 93. Plying him with hamburgers and fried chicken may be a sounder plan. Former Michigan Republican congressman Peter Meijer “termed this strategy actuarial arbitrage.” Other Republicans hope indictments will take Trump out of the picture. Not a good plan either (The Atlantic): Michael Cohen, who served for years as Trump’s personal attorney and now hosts a podcast atoning for that sin titled Mea Culpa, grudgingly told me that his former boss would easily weaponize any criminal charges brought against him. The deep-state Democrats are at it again—the campaign emails write themselves. “Donald will use the indictment to continue his fundraising grift,” Cohen told me. They are hoping for a deus ex machina to appear.
The poetry of Alex Dimitrov stays in the present. It’s the essence of contemporary. A living voice, an urbane voice, overstimulated and sweet and stylish and aware. To say it’s talkative is only to highlight the point, and point to its tradition, which is very old, older than the New York poets who embodied it, James Schuyler and Frank O’Hara and others: it’s as old as the intimate cutting voice of Catullus or the troubadours of Galicia. New York is not so much the subject of Dimitrov’s work—particularly true in his latest collection, Love and Other Poems—so much as its raison d’être. Even a poem like “New York,” a catalog of places in New York the speaker has cried in, is a love poem to “the best city to cry in.” Dimitrov’s voice is casual, open aesthete, open-hearted in a way that doesn’t forgo acid worldliness. No one could call his lines naïve, and yet they record—almost can’t help themselves—moments of awe, happiness, painful clarity, or, the beauty of true feeling, up or down. In that sense, Dimitrov is a first-class artist of the art of feeling, of giving a mood a shape in language.
Wars, conflicts, and other crises have left more than 30 million children displaced from their homes in the world today. More than 10 million children are refugees or asylum-seeking. “Whatsoever You Do to the Least of My Brothers You Do unto Me”
As the former PM continues to deny he sought financial advice from the BBC's now Chairman, guidance from his civil servant at the time has contradicted this, reports Josiah Mortimer
On 13 January 2023, the London-based organisation Index on Censorship named Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador its Tyrant of the Year for 2022. ‘While competition was tough, one leader surged ahead, by a mile in fact,’ insists the accompanying text, which goes on to recite a series of justifications for the designation, including violence […]
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Your eyes dance, and you gesture wildly as you tell me and two others about a recent rock climbing trip. Unfortunately, this seems to have all the makings of a multi-minute anecdote. But one thing keeps me from walking away: the opportunity to top your story with one of my own.
The moment you uttered the phrase “rock climbing,” it was over. I got the gist of things right then and there. So while you go on and on about a multi-day ordeal on a mountain range and some sort of bear encounter, I mentally retrieved a story from years ago that will eclipse everything you’re sharing right now. The bear thing may prove hard to outdo, sure, but I’ll get it done, even if it takes some light embellishing.
Though it’s been about ninety seconds since I tuned you out, I smile encouragingly and slightly shake and nod my head at what I assume are the appropriate times. It’s the polite thing to do, and I’m a polite guy. Despite these efforts, closer scrutiny of my face would reveal that my smile is all mouth, and my eyes betray a desire to fast-forward you.
With the former Prime Minister again dominating the news with claims of alleged nuclear threats from Vladimir Putin, former diplomat Alexandra Hall Hall puts his record on Ukraine under the spotlight
I was 28 when I first got a maid. She wasn’t even my maid. My partner and I spent a year renting a flat in Mexico City from friends-of-friends, a well-to-do family who were abroad, and who paid their maid to keep coming while we stayed at their place. So she was taking care of […]
Maya Esslemont and Sian Norris reveal how crime victims are struggling to access the financial support they are entitled to
Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia have refused to send weapons to Ukraine, despite pressure by the US and EU. Latin American left-wing leaders have urged peace with Russia and called for neutrality in the West’s new cold war.
The post Latin America Refuses To Send Ukraine Weapons, Despite Western Pressure appeared first on scheerpost.com.
Dissident commentary about Ukraine that was still published in major Western news outlets in 2014 is entirely gone because these publications have turned to full-fledged war propaganda.
The post Caitlin Johnstone: What the MSM Can No Longer Say appeared first on scheerpost.com.
How overclassification fails us and harms national security.
The post The Original Sin Is We Classify Too Much appeared first on scheerpost.com.
When numbers are a mixed bag, deciding whether to frame them positively, negatively or neutrally is a deliberate editorial decision.
The post As Unions Gain 273,000 Members, Media Opt for Gloomy Headlines appeared first on scheerpost.com.
- by Aeon Video
What should our norms be regarding the publishing of philosophical work created with the help of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT or other forms of artificial intelligence? In a recent article, the editors of Nature put forward their position, which they think is likely to be adopted by other journals: First, no LLM tool will be accepted as a credited author on a research paper. That is because any attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, and AI tools cannot take such responsibility. Second, researchers using LLM tools should document this use in the methods or acknowledgements sections. If a paper does not include these sections, the introduction or another appropriate section can be used to document the use of the LLM. A few comments about these: a. It makes sense to not ban use of the technology. Doing so would be ineffective, would incentivize hiding its use, and would stand in opposition to the development of new effective and ethical uses of the technology in research. b. The requirement to document how the LLMs were used in the research and writing is reasonable but vague.
- by Sarah Chaney