Prices are going to rise, probably exponentially, over the next few decades. The reason for that's simple: everything, more or less, has been artificially cheap. The costs of everything from carbon to fascism to ecological collapse to social fracture haven't been factored in — ever, from the beginning of the industrial age....
Collapse
This is the sixth set of notes for a reading group on Marx’s Capital, and includes a Volume I refresher for further reading of Volume II. There are links to earlier posts and texts that may be useful. Marx is probably too taken with a kind of scientism by proposing...
CNN’s David Gergen: The Only Thing That Can Stop Donald Trump From Running in 2024 is a Prison Sentence From the Insurrection, we know that conspiring to commit felonies is also a felony. We know with greater certainty that Trump knew what was going to happen, despite Pence’s resistance and...
There’s no time to lose. The new research led by the French team confirms that whether we like it or not, human civilisation is in the midst of the most rapid transformation of the global energy system we’ve ever experienced. And hanging on for dear life to the old, dying...
Rising seas that inundate coastal properties cause billions of dollars in damage and essentially have bankrupted FEMA. You and I ( the country's taxpayers) fund the National Flood Insurance Program, and the program heavily subsidizes waterfront homeowner's flood insurance most of whom are extremely wealthy. But starting October 1 of this year, those subsidies...
I was born in the 1950s when it was not illegal for black people in the south to vote—it was suicide. Pseudo-laws, tests, intimidation, hoods, ropes, and guns were the anti-democracy tactics of the day. Southern state officials could not legitimately ban black people from voting, so the strategy was...
The Biden Administration is preparing to send millions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to other nations. The FDA has not yet approved AstraZenca’s vaccine for injections in the US, and enough of the three approved vaccines are likely to be delivered before May 31 to jab every American who wants a...
Stupidity adjacent, no Proud Boys or Oath Keepers threw themselves in front of Roger Stone as his office was near a styrofoam plant fire that featured an explosion. No Florida men were injured, but maybe Richard Nixon or Zippy was being targeted. x Roger Stone suggests gas explosion at Florida warehouse...
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that...
Very little is known about rainfall in Antarctica; precipitation falls as snow on the bitter cold ice-covered continent. But during the austral summer of 2013-2014, an Adélie penguin colony near Dumont d’Urville station on coastal Adélie Land experienced “unusual and dramatic rainfall event that occurred on January 1, 2014, and that was...
The usual Cruz hypocrisy, the pot calling the kettle violent. Because the final term of Ted Cruz will feature more nonsense serving corporate energy interests among other contradictions. He’s flailing about today with the latest nominees for DoJ, among other fake outrage. It’s an old tactic, because Cruz loves stirring...
One of the more despicable senators in the US Senate now acknowledges that climate change is real after four years of kissing Trump’s ass as the know-nothing did all he could do to derail the fight against climate change and kill life on the planet. Better late than never, but words...
The Florida Piney Point phosphate plant in Manatee county has been releasing 202 million gallons of wastewater into Tampa Bay since the risk of collapse of the holding reservoir became international news due to a risk of major collapse with flood walls of over twenty feet predicted to inundate local communities and...
No. No. We don’t need infrastructure bills in America . We are fine according to republicans. Well, that state of mind is being changed I bet as I type. (or maybe not according to Republican thinking) Manatee County Florida is under mandatory evacuations and every homeowner can expect higher homeowner...
The sparse number of actual carbon capture and sequestration projects plus weak carbon markets amplify the problems of the climate crisis yet to be revisited, post-Trump. Two heartland examples in North Dakota and Texas show how there are several interlocking problems addressing the climate crisis that must be included in future environmental policy. More specifically...
Ted Cruz tried to slither around the coverage of his holiday in Cancun, including an interview on Hannity to offset a series of lies once social media caught him at the airport. #TedFled because he’s really not all about the accountability or even patriotism considering his role in the insurrection. Cruz's...
Texas is the coalmine canary of failures in the GQP’s industrial policy. The “clusterfuzzle” appears to be only in Texas: perhaps they skimmed on costs and failed in winterizing their plants. The structural failure comes from the anti-federal, deregulatory policy of the Texas grid which reveals itself in the disinformation...
The “Arctic is already under such threat from so many angles, and while production there is expensive, it is also very, very high risk. It requires absolutely the strongest levels of global oversight.” Phoebe Barnard, Professor at Washington’s Conservation Biology Institute Putin’s Russia made history today when the Christophe de Margerie, the enormous...
Received this e-mail today U.S. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I. VT): U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D. NY) & U.S. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I. VT) Democrats promised the American people that if we won both races in Georgia and took control of the Senate,...
A glacial landslide scar, all that remained of a previous piece of ice that had collpased, is believed to have triggered a new landslide that slammed into and triggered part of Nanda Devi glacier to collapse. When the rocky debris slammed into the Himalayan glacier’s much larger remnant, it sent rock and ice down a valley...
As Climate Crisis returns to the new US administration agenda, negative emissions technologies (NETs) may find their implementation hindered by neoliberal financialization. An earlier ACM story showed how Steve Keen’s critique of Nordhaus’s use of discounting climate change demonstrates that orthodox economics is incapable of accelerating innovation especially in...
The best explanation of short selling (as it applies to GameStop) that I've read pic.twitter.com/o9ZL5HqsKf — John M. Cunningham (@jmcunning) January 28, 2021 1/2Short selling means borrowing shares and immediately selling them. When the price goes down, they buy them back for cents and return them to the lender. This...
Eunice Foote was born in NY state in 1819. She had gone to university at the Troy Female Seminary (N/K/A Emma Willard School), where she was encouraged to attend a nearby college to study science. It was there where she learned her scientific skills for her free-thinking experiments. In fact, she was not...
We’re not even at the Silly Season yet, even as we’re reminded of the predictions of Harold Camping about the end of the world in 2011. But DHS has taken it seriously by keeping troops in DC until Mid-March. Accordingly the nutters are casting about for prophetic revisions to maintain...
“Pena que a cavalaria brasileira não tenha sido tão eficiente quanto a americana, que exterminou os índios” “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.” Jair Bolsanaro via Correio Braziliense newspaper Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsanaro, may face charges for crimes against...
It’s not the Bastille. Trump did incite a riotous mob to disrupt the legislative branch. People died. Trump got excited about the chaos he’d caused. The last day of Trumpstock. x White House officials were shaken by Trump's reaction to a mob of his supporters descending on the Capitol today....
Antarctica researchers have become alarmed by a new finding that shows sub-glacial lakes under the Thwaites glacier are draining a significant amount of water to the bedrock under miles thick with ice. Once the lake water reaches the bedrock, it lubricates the glacier enough to create frictional heat at the bed...
But there are 40-odd cinder cones of once-active volcanos clustered near the bucolic town of Boring, just east of Portland Oregon. These, and the related lava flows, are part of the Boring formation. I live off this map to the left (west of Beaverton). I am intensely interested in this Boring...
The Independent writes on the intensification of melting on the Antarctic peninsula. Last year's melt season was the highest in forty years of satellite records. Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf experienced its highest rate of melting since records began 40 years ago from 2019-2020, a new study has found. The unprecedented melt at...
Trumpist anti-certifying efforts for the remaining states seem a fools’ errand but Trump and Giuliani seem to be the best fools for it. Regardless, they are chasing some version of an apocalyptic conclusion. x And Bannon talking about it openly on his insane Alex Jones-level podcast. — S.V. Dáte (@svdate) November 18,...
Time after time, succeeding presidents have followed less than stellar Republican administrations feeling obligated to bestow forgiveness. Richard Nixon masterminded a crime, known to every police drama watcher as B&E, breaking and entering. Nixon was disgracefully relegated to the dustbin of history, but that dustbin was a mansion off the...
Trump has just fired Esper. By tweet, of course. x I am pleased to announce that Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defense, effective immediately..— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020 x …Chris...
Jo Biden had offered 20 billion to preserve the Amazon. It was ridiculed denied by the Trump of the Tropics, Jair Bolsonaro. Perhaps a similar offer to the nations involved in Africa would be a rational response and likely considered. It’s worth a try. I highly suspect this diary will...
If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze — Joe Biden Vice President Joe Biden’s climate plan has received rave reviews across the planet. Many have hope that the United States carrot and...
Looking more like pathological Trump is going full scorched earth, not caring whether his “Trump checks” will get to potential voters. The economy will likely tank (more), now that Trump wants to give winning Dems more grief for the Blue Tsunami. And then there’s the super-spreader candidate for SCOTUS. Trump says he told...
He’s never dropped his naive belief in herd immunity perhaps because he had someone take his statistics tests in college. A quarter-million dead soon means that by the time a vaccine comes to the general public, minus a “flu season” there will still be a quarter-million dead from COVID-19. And...