#we are roughly 110 years late

[just-a-lil-anguria]

So in the 1900s, humanity had to face a pandemic (cholera), then King Edward VII of England died (1910), the Titanic sunk (1912) and after taking part to a long conflict (that was initially thought to be a blitzkreig) Russia had to retreat because of an internal coup.

In the 2000s, humanity had to face a pandemic (covid-19), then Queen Elizabeth II of England died (2022), the Titan sunk (2023) and after taking part to a long conflict (that was initially thought to be a blitzkreig) Russia had to retreat because of an internal coup.

History really does repeat itself, huh?

[mariacallous]

On Oct. 20, currency traders saw something that hadn’t happened since June 1990—the Japanese yen to U.S. dollar exchange rate eclipsed 150 to 1.

The yen has seen shocking depreciation over the past year. In January 2021, the rate was 103 to 1, which has been roughly the average exchange rate for the last 30 years. In September 2021, the rate hovered around 110 to 1, and it didn’t surpass 120 until the end of March 2022. But since then, the exchange rate has skyrocketed, only settling back down slightly to 140 to 1, which is about where it sits as of late November. It’s a new status quo for the yen after 30 years of consistency, and economists on both sides of the Pacific say it’s not going back to the old norm any time soon.

“The yen-dollar exchange rate is important to Japan because Japan relies on imports for energy and food,” said Takuya Hoshino, an economics researcher at Dai-ichi Life. “The depreciation of the yen leads to an increased financial burden on households and businesses.” The shift also sinks Japanese wages relative to the dollar, meaning that more Japanese go abroad to work and fewer foreign workers come to Japan. That’s a disastrous trend for Japanese industry, which has been facing severe labor shortages in most major sectors due to a shrinking population and mass migration from rural to urban areas.

On Sept. 22, the Japanese government intervened for the first time in 24 years by buying yen and selling dollars. But a history of failed past interventions is a big reason why the Bank of Japan (BOJ) hasn’t taken aggressive action to defend the yen. “The only time the intervention efforts truly worked was when it was joint interventions with other G-7 nations,” Kathy Lien, a managing director at BK Asset Management, told CNBC. “The Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance have a history of failed interventions—we know it; they know it.”

And while Japan’s government and central bank have adamantly opposed too much intervention in the yen, the wide-ranging economic effects of this plummeting exchange rate status quo have hit Japan’s households hard. They also pose serious underlying questions about the path to renewed competitiveness for Japanese businesses and any hope of better wages for workers.

The core policy issue underlying this year’s depreciation comes from the gap between interest rates in the United States and Japan. Lower interest rates encourage borrowing, which stimulates the economy, whereas higher interest rates restrain borrowing but help curb inflation. BOJ Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda has been stubbornly against raising interest rates, whereas in the United States, the U.S. Federal Reserve has raised interest rates from 0.5 percent to 4 percent so far this year.

This interest rate gap has been the topic of much discussion. Bloomberg opinion columnists Daniel Moss and Gearoid Reidy note that raising interest rates would cause Japan’s pile of debt to surge, causing increased spending plans by the government to get thrown out the window and devastating households. As a result, Moss and Reidy argue that the BOJ is wiser to accept the weaker yen.

On the flip side, per journalist Leika Kihara at Reuters, Japanese policymakers are desperate to revive consumer demand and wage growth in 2023 to match inflation. Boosting Japan’s stagnant wages has also been a core policy objective of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Japan to finally see a positive wage-inflation cycle kickoff,” a source familiar with the BOJ told Reuters regarding a potential increase in interest rates.

Atsushi Nakajima, a consulting fellow at Japan’s Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry, told Foreign Policy that interest rates aren’t the only factor in the spiraling yen. “The increase of costs in Japan’s massive imports of energy as well as food plus the deterioration of Japanese industry’s competitiveness compared to American and European businesses are also affecting the weaker yen,” Nakajima said.

In the past, when the yen became weaker, the weak yen supported economic growth by encouraging exports. “But this time,” Nakajima said, “we’re not seeing as much of this effect because Japanese industry has globalized due to the shrinking market in Japan, so [the weak yen] is a much more of a mixed bag of pros and cons for businesses.” Japanese companies that can take home profits in U.S. dollars see their money go further. But Japanese companies that have big costs in imports are seeing those costs surge.

Put simply, Japan’s import sector is suffering, whereas the export sector is benefitting—only not as much as you’d typically expect. The country’s huge automobile industry hasn’t been able to take advantage of the exchange rate because of constraints on acquiring semiconductors and other necessary components due to lingering supply chain issues from the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, other export sectors like information technology and the microprocessor industry have been able to take advantage. The pandemic-hit tourism sector is also a huge winner, with inbound tourists encouraged to visit and spend more money in Japan thanks to a favorable exchange rate.

In a list of pros and cons for a weaker yen, the cons certainly seem to outnumber the pros this time. The growth in purchasing power in Japan hasn’t kept up with a relatively low inflation rate, meaning that real wages are going down. This trend, combined with a weaker yen, results in a lower quality of life for ordinary Japanese people: The cost of goods is rising, wages aren’t, and the yen now purchases way less abroad than it used to. So far, the Japanese government has lessened the blow on households by pouring 3.5 trillion yen into energy and food subsidies, a hefty budgetary investment that can’t last forever.

“Some companies do have ‘inflation allowances’ that allow them to temporarily raise wages to compensate for price hikes,” Hoshino said. “[But] the increase in prices of necessities and energy makes it harder for personal consumption to increase.”

The weak yen further hurts companies by driving away foreign talent. Hundreds of thousands of foreign workers in Japan from countries like Nepal and Vietnam wire money to their home countries and are now struggling to support their families back home. Industries like food processing, agriculture, and manufacturing already heavily rely on foreign laborers, especially in rural areas. The exacerbated wage difference between Japan and other countries with labor market gaps, such as Germany and Australia, poses a real risk to companies that need these workers.

The government budget is also a victim of a sliding yen. A weaker yen means that foreign currency payments on defense equipment are a lot more expensive. The exchange rate also affects public works and infrastructure projects that rely on imported raw materials. And while the Ministry of Finance has funds set aside to compensate for exchange-rate fluctuations, agencies are already struggling to make ends meet, looking to trim low-priority budget items where possible.

Nakajima pointed out that in some ways, Japan’s economic situation is currently better for ordinary consumers than that of most other developed countries. “There is a rebound in demand after the lifting of pandemic lockdowns and restrictions, so we’re seeing pent-up demand affect the economy,” he said. “The Japanese government also just lifted the restriction on inbound travel, which gives an additional stimulus to the economy.” Those factors, along with new government subsidies to promote domestic travel, combine to stimulate the economy at just the right time.

“A historically weak yen plus the fear of geopolitical risk is good timing for Japan,” Nakajima explained. “The government intends to put trillions of yen to advance high-tech industries, so this kind of support of the government can both reduce future risks and provide better possibilities for growth.”

These major investments offer some hope to help begin correcting Japan’s weakened economic competitiveness. However, many of the problems are more structural. Per a recent study by Takeshi Makita at the Japan Research Institute, the biggest factors for Japan’s decline in business competitiveness are slow-to-react management, a lack of enthusiasm for and understanding about digital technology, and a delayed response to globalization.

“The growth of added value, or productivity, in Japan has been weaker for the last 20 years. The result is that many Japanese companies are seeing their profit margins getting reduced, which means that they can’t raise the wage for employees either,” Nakajima said.

“What is required are reforms that improve Japan’s underlying efficiency,” writes Richard Katz, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. “The Kishida administration is set to issue a five-year plan that could do a lot to improve the situation if lofty goals about income distribution and nurturing startups are turned into concrete policies. Unfortunately, recent conversations with policymakers in Tokyo suggest that, while a few of the necessary positive steps will be taken, they will not be nearly enough to turn the ship around.”

With Kuroda’s refusal to nudge interest rates, for better or worse, the weaker yen is here to stay. And although the current situation for Japanese people on the ground isn’t as bad as it could be given the lower yen, a trend that started under former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s famous Abenomics continues: Ordinary people in Japan are simply getting poorer, even as the economy and corporate profits grow overall.

Employment is high, but wages aren’t going up; interest rates are low, but households hoard their savings; the GDP has grown, but productivity has failed to keep up. And now with the plummeting exchange rate, the cost of food and utilities are spiking.

“I don’t foresee a change in the current situation with the yen in the coming months,” Nakajima said. “My interest is in the measures pushed by the government to improve the competitiveness of Japanese industry. That’s what matters more.”

[jacenbren]

hi! i recently started reading your wormwood-verse series and i am loving it i am absolutely obsessed.

im a bit curious about how the people living at the present time got there? please forgive my curiosity

(also totally feel free to ignore this i would totally get it)

HGGHRHGHFHFHGHHHH I LOVE GETTING QUESTIONS ABOUT MY WRITING OMG IF YOU HAVE ANY AT ALL DONT BE AFRAID TO THROW THEM AT ME *gnaws affectionately on your leg like a feral cat*

Anyway, I’ve got an answer to this question, which might end up being a little long-winded because hrnnggghhh I love infodumping about the lore of my silly gay minecraft fanfics. So here goes:

Something a lot of people tend to forget that the number of humans on the planet is fucking big. Right now, there’s around eight billion human beings walking around here. In the mid-twenty-first century, when the bombs drop in the Wormwoodverse, there’d probably be around ten billion, if our numbers keep going up. To put it in perspective, the approximate number of humans who have ever existed is roughly 110 billion, give or take. That means by the time of the bombs, a little under ten percent of all humans in existence ever up to that point are currently alive and kicking.

That’s a fucking lot.

Then, the bombs drop. Nuclear fallout and resulting parasitic fungi that feed on radiation and mutated insects the size of Chevy suburbans are a bitch, don’t get me wrong, but let’s imagine a worst-case scenario and say 99 percent of all human beings get wiped out in the first few years of nuclear winter. What’s one percent of 10 billion?

Ten million.

That means that in a worst-case scenario like this one where 99 percent of humans get fucking obliterated, around a third of the total population of New York City is still fighting tooth and nail to stay alive. And if you know anything about humans, we are a lot more like cockroaches than we care to admit. As the saying goes, life finds a way.

As for how people would survive? Well, we’ve got options. Of course, we have the man who sleeps with a machete who happens to be a fool every night but one (those crazy doomsday survivalists end up being fucking RIGHT), in-universe government intervention, whether it be secret or not (various world leaders saw nuclear conflict as a very likely threat like in Fallout and built bunkers meant to provide shelter; some were successful, some weren’t), and of course you can’t forget plain ol’ dumb luck (people who were in remote locations when the bombs dropped probably didn’t even realize shit had hit the fan until they went too long without communicays from home, and the Amish probably wouldn’t even bat a fucking eye).

In a nutshell? Humans are notoriously good at surviving and adapting to the various hellscapes we discover or create, and our numbers make it ridiculously hard to Late-Cretaceous-Extinction-Event our asses, even if it’s by our own hand.

Infodump concluded! If you’re willing to put up with my insufferable ramblings feel free to ask all the questions about my writing that you want! I THRIVE on interaction and if I’m stuck in a rut motivation-wise, demanding answers from me might just end up squeezing out a chapter or two of the fic in question :D

[ilearnedthistodaysblog]

#1110 Why are the White Cliffs of Dover white?

Why are the White Cliffs of Dover white? The White Cliffs of Dover are white because they are made of white chalk, which is a type of limestone. The White Cliffs of Dover are a very famous symbol of the UK. During the Second World War they were often sung about because when pilots crossed over them, or when sailors or soldiers on ships saw them, they knew that they were safe. You can see the White Cliffs from France when the weather is good and the sight could have made British people fighting in France long to be home.  The cliffs stretch for 13 km with the town of Dover in the middle of them, hence their name as the White Cliffs of Dover. They are 110 m tall at their highest point. There is no way of knowing when the cliffs were first named, but they and the town of Dover have existed for a very long time. Archaeological digs in and around Dover show that people have lived there since the Stone Age and there was an Iron Age settlement. Julius Caesar tried to land at Dover, but the white cliffs were too easily defended and he sailed on. The Romans, and numerous people since, then used the cliffs themselves for defense. Dover became a very important port and the Dover Calais ferry route is probably the most used route between the UK and mainland Europe. It is 42.4 km and 1,831 people have actually swum across. The first person was Matthew Webb in 1875. So, why are the cliffs white? Well, they are not pure white. They have streaks of black flint, but they are white enough to be seen from a long way away. They get their color from chalk, which is a type of limestone and is actually made deep under the sea. The chalk that the White Cliffs are made of was formed between 100 and 66 million years ago during a period called the Late Cretaceous. Chalk is a sedimentary rock, which means it is made from accumulated sediment pressed together under high pressure. The chalk that became the White Cliffs was made from the shells of a microscopic algae called coccolithophore. These algae were single celled organisms, but they produced a series of tiny plates made of calcium carbonate to cover and protect themselves. Each plate was only about 2 to 25 micrometers, which is tiny. A human hair is between 17 and 180 micrometers across, to give you an idea of scale. When the algae died, they sank to the bottom of the sea with their calcium plates. The algae biodegraded, but the calcium plates didn’t and they started to build up. Because they are miniscule and because the sea is so large, they didn’t build up very quickly. Estimates are that they built up about 1 mm every two years. That isn’t a lot, but over time it starts to add up. 1 m every 20,000 years. Over 34 million years, the sediment built up and as it did, the weight from the sediment on top became immense and it crushed the underlying sediment down. The pressure shaped the sediment into chalk. And this is the chalk that formed the White Cliffs of Dover. So, how is chalk formed under the sea part of the White Cliffs? When the chalk was formed, millions of years ago, Britain and most of Europe was under a deep sea. Then, two things happened. The tectonic plates that carry Africa, India, and Europe collided and several mountain ranges were formed, including the Alps and the Himalayas. This mountain building period pushed the chalk that would form the White Cliffs of Dover up and out of the sea. Then, quite a lot later, there were several ice ages and sea levels dropped, uncovering even more of the cliffs, leaving what we can see today. The cliffs are very beautiful, but they are made of chalk, which is a very soft rock. Erosion is a big problem with the cliffs. They are eroding at a rate of roughly 2.5 cm a year. The rate used to be slower, but stronger storms have sped up the rate. The cliffs are not going to disappear any time soon because they are quite thick, but the buildings that are on top of them and near to them may have to be moved. Interestingly, there are also a large number of tunnels that were dug into the cliffs. The first ones were dug during the Napoleonic wars to make canon escarpments, and the later tunnels were built during the Second World War. You can visit them. And this is what I learned today. Photo by Valentin Onu: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-cliffs-of-dover-27658730/ Sources https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/kent/the-white-cliffs-of-dover/history-of-the-white-cliffs-of-dover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Cliffs_of_Dover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_orogeny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccolith https://www.carmeuse.com/na-en/references/case-studies-success-stories/what-calcium-carbonate-limestone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover https://www.dovermuseum.co.uk/Information-Resources/Articles--Factsheets/White-Cliffs-of-Dover.aspx Read the full article

[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 7mar24

from the trashy reddit

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What happens when you embarrass the powers

[On 1mar24] FBI agents escorted a handcuffed Steve Baker, an investigative reporter at The Blaze, following his reporting on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The FBI issued a signed arrest warrant ordering Baker to self-surrender Friday to a Dallas courthouse relating to his presence at the riot, according to Baker’s Twitter thread from Tuesday. He worked as an independent journalist at the time and said he did not commit any property damage and only entered the U.S. Capitol building after the Senate and House were evacuated, according to Baker’s Oct. 2, 2023 piece on the matter.*** In January, attorneys representing Baker told The Blaze that the Justice Department could be organizing a “retaliation” against him over breaking two “greatly embarrassing” stories about the DOJ.***

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Can't find enough pr0n in Dakota?

A group of four Republicans in the South Dakota state Senate Judiciary Committee killed a bill Thursday that would require pornography sites to implement an ID check for age verification. The four Republican senators, Michael Rohl, Helene Duhamel, Michael Walsh, and David Wheeler, provided the four votes necessary to prevent HB 1257 from advancing to the floor of the Senate. But Republican state Rep. Bethany Soye told the Washington Examiner in an interview that there will be an effort next week to “smoke out” the bill and force a floor vote in the Senate.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2898673/south-dakota-senators-put-the-pornography-industry-first

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If we treat them as Bullet Attracting Persons, I'm all in!

REDUXX @ReduxxMag Kentucky Senator Karen Berg argued in favor of "child sex dolls" for "minor attracted persons" during a meeting of the Judiciary Committee yesterday. Berg's comments were made during the debate of HB 207, which would prohibit the possession and importing of child sex dolls.

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Staging a death?

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Welcome to reality, Oregon

CNN — Lawmakers in Oregon have overwhelmingly passed a bill that would make possession of a small amount of certain drugs a misdemeanor in the state, moving to re-criminalize substances like fentanyl roughly three years after the state became the first in the nation to de-criminalize the possession and personal use of all drugs. The measure, HB4002, now goes to Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk for her consideration. Kotek has not publicly said whether she supports the measure, though in late January the governor joined local officials in declaring a fentanyl state of emergency in downtown Portland. Asked about the governor’s next steps regarding the legislation, Kotek’s office did not indicate whether she would sign it but said any changes to Measure 110 “would have to pass the balancing test of concrete, measurable improved outcomes for individuals who are struggling with addiction and accountability.” Under the measure, offenders could face up to six months in jail, or, in place of criminal penalties, elect to undergo drug treatment.*** https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/01/politics/oregon-legislature-drug-bill-re-criminalize/index.html

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Austin hasn't been real Texas for some years

AUSTIN, TX — Early last December, a billionaire named Daniel Lubetzky, who had moved to Austin, Texas, from New York City during the pandemic, hosted a meeting of civic leaders and businesspeople in the city. The number one subject on everyone’s mind was Austin’s troubling crime rate. According to FBI crime statistics, as of October 2023, crime was higher in the Texas capital than the average number of murders, aggravated assaults, and robberies in the rest of Texas—and the nation. Violent crime, for instance, was nearly 40 percent higher in Austin than the national average. Meanwhile, since 2021, felonies were being knocked down to misdemeanors, criminals were avoiding jail time altogether, and victims were feeling ignored by the system. The number of criminal cases waiting to be prosecuted had reached an astounding 7,000. The group agreed that one person in particular was to blame: Travis County district attorney José Garza, a 44-year-old former workers’ rights attorney. Garza swept into office after the Black Lives Matters protests, backed by groups funded by George Soros. Like other Soros-supported DAs across the country, including George Gascón in Los Angeles, Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, and Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, Garza promised to make the criminal justice system more humane—eliminating most drug possession prosecutions, calling for fewer and shorter sentences, holding the police to account. But this progressive agenda simply hasn’t worked.*** Given that Austin is a Democratic stronghold, the real race for DA will be decided on Tuesday, when the primary is held. In blue cities across the country that elected progressive prosecutors post-George Floyd, the pendulum is already swinging back. Virtually all progressive prosecutors elected in 2020 are facing a backlash from citizens upset at their leniency towards criminals. The policies of San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin proved so unpopular that he was recalled in 2022. In Los Angeles, DA George Gascon is facing 11 opponents, all of them vowing to reverse his reform agenda. In Austin, this race will signal whether Democrats in the Texas capital have also had enough of the progressive criminal justice reforms that have become a pillar of the party. *** When I later asked Garza for a source for his data, he pointed me to crime statistics compiled by the Austin Police Department. Sure enough, many crimes were down between 2022 and 2023. But if one took 2021 as the starting point, the year Garza became the DA, all the major crime categories had increased substantially, including murder, aggravated assault, and arson. And, as several Sylestine supporters pointed out to me, some of the less severe crimes, like burglary and larceny, were likely down because Garza’s office wasn’t prosecuting them.*** But try telling that to the victims of sexual assault and other violent crimes—especially women who say Garza’s policies actually deprived them of justice. Victim advocates can cite plenty of examples: there was the case of Santos Celso-Flores, who participated in a gang rape of a 13-year-old girl, got out on a $40 bond, and then, back on the streets, allegedly raped two more teenage girls. Or Richard Adeyemi Williams, who in a fit of rage repeatedly raped and strangled his ex-girlfriend. After pleading guilty, Williams spent 90 days in prison, and received a “deferred adjudication” from Garza’s office, meaning the crime will be erased from his record after five years.  In June 2021, Lynn Isaak became one of Austin’s crime victims, attacked by a predator named Antonio Cordero Rios during her morning run. Though she fought him off, her leg was shattered; she says she will never be able to run again. And after Rios was arrested, other women came forward to say he had done the same to them. But instead of taking Isaak’s case to a jury, Garza cut a plea bargain with Rios, allowing him to accept 10 years’ probation in lieu of jail time.***

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Ok, let's put both of you in jail

Athens, Georgia's Democrat Mayor Kelly Girtz held a press conference Wednesday morning aimed at tamping down righteous outrage from residents of his city following the murder of Laken Riley allegedly carried out by Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela.  However Mayor Girtz thought things would go, he probably didn't expect to be shouted down by his own constituents who are rightfully outraged at the violent murder of a nursing student near the University of Georgia campus — and the city policies they see as contributing to the tragic slaying of a young woman.  "Responsibility for this crime rests solely upon the perpetrator," Girtz said in his efforts to deny responsibility as reporters sought an explanation for the fact that multiple illegal immigrants were found in Ibarra's residence — apparent evidence that Athens was at least a safe haven for those unlawfully in the United States.  When Girtz attempted to excuse his own policies from any culpability and dismiss the idea that his leadership had seen the introduction of "sanctuary city" policies in Athens, residents weren't having any of it.  Shouts of "You're a liar" erupted from attendees at the mayor's press conference. Others held signs declaring "BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS," "STOP LYING," and "Make Athens Safe Again." *** As Fox News Digital noted in its report on the overwhelming show of disapproval for Girtz's leadership, "protesters have demanded Athens-Clarke County revoke a 2019 resolution in which the government welcomed 'people from all lands and backgrounds,' including illegal immigrants" — a resolution signed by Mayor Girtz in August 2019.

Mayor Girtz's "insane" display got even worse, as our friend Mary Katharine Ham noted of the city leader's complete misfire of a press conference:  https://twitter.com/i/status/1762905345574252836

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Good toon

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Georgia v. Trump case update

A Georgia prosecutor has offered to testify that another witnesses' testimony was wrong about Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' relationship with prosecutor Nathan Wade. Willis is leading the case against former President Donald Trump, who has been charged with 2020 election interference in Georgia. In a Monday court filing, Cindi Lee Yeager, a co-chief deputy district attorney for Cobb County, Georgia, said Terrence Bradley, Wade's former divorce lawyer, told her Willis and Wade's relationship began earlier than they stated, Newsweek reported. Bradley last month said under oath he did not know or could not remember when Willis and Wade's relationship began. The filing said Yeager claimed on Friday that Bradley had told her that Wade and Willis met and started their romantic relationship in 2019, and Willis had told Bradley to keep it quiet.*** The filing added that Yeager "watched Mr. Bradley's testimony before the Court and became concerned as a result of the fact that what Mr. Bradley testified to on the witness stand was directly contrary to what Mr. Bradley had told Ms. Yeager in person," Newsweek reported.*** https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/georgia-prosecutor-testimony/2024/03/05/id/1155990

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How unsavory!

Bartender Haleigh Cauley detailed the “nasty” incident allegedly involving Hailey Bieber’s older sister, Alaia Baldwin Aronow — and a used tampon. “It was a hot mess,” Cauley told Us Weekly exclusively on Friday, March 1, after news broke that Aronow, 31, had been arrested for assault. Cauley was bartending at Club Elan in Savannah, GA, on Saturday, February 24, she says, when security informed her that there “was an intoxicated female” — who has since been identified as Aronow — and two friends in the employee restroom. She remembered asking the three women to leave — noting they couldn’t be in the employee restroom — before noticing that there was vomit in the bathroom sink. “Her friends said she needed a minute and she said, ‘I need to change my tampon,’” Cauley told Us of Aronow. “She proceeded to stay in the bathroom. I told her again she had to leave and she said, ‘I’m changing my tampon, do you want to see it?’ And flings it up and it smacks my face.”*** https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/bartender-recalls-alaia-baldwin-used-155214715.html

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Royal Pedophilian

A Royal Caribbean cruise employee has been arrested after allegedly setting up hidden cameras inside passenger bathrooms to spy on young girls. Arvin Joseph Mirasol, 34, a citizen of the Philippines, was arrested Sunday after a guest aboard the Symphony of the Seas cruise ship found a camera in her bathroom on Feb. 25. The guest, who was staying in a room with her sister and mother, found the hidden camera when she reached under the sink to grab a roll of toilet paper and found the camera "affixed to the counter underneath the sink," the probable cause affidavit said.*** Once the ship docked, Homeland Security Investigations, Customs and Border Protection and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office were alerted and spoke with security and Mirasol. His electronics, including his phone, an SD card, camera, and USB stick, were investigated that same day. On the USB stick, law enforcement discovered "numerous videos of naked females undressing" as well as child pornography, the criminal complaint affidavit said. One video showed Mirasol himself installing a camera into a guest room's bathroom. Mirasol admitted in a post-Miranda interview to taping a video camera in guests’ bathrooms when he worked as an attendant and said he'd pleasure himself after retrieving the camera and viewing its footage, the affidavit said. “Mirasol revealed that he has been placing these cameras in the bathroom since he started working on Symphony of the Seas around December 2023,” the filing said.*** https://www.yahoo.com/news/royal-caribbean-cruise-employee-arrested-174528194.html

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Bomb threat at Home Depot?

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Die, Eagles, die! Oh, uh...

Police say eight Philadelphia high school students waiting to board a city bus after classes Wednesday were wounded by gunshots from suspects who jumped from a car and opened fire, the fourth shooting on the transit system in as many days. The previous three shootings each involved a fatality. At least one student was critically wounded at the bus stop, a 16-year-old who was hit nine times, Kevin Bethel, the city's police commissioner, said at a news conference. The others were in stable condition. Bethel said the Northeast High School students, ranging in age from 15 to 17, were waiting for the bus around 3 p.m. when three people emerged from the car, which was waiting at the scene, and fired more than 30 shots. Police then received numerous 911 calls about a "mass shooting on the highway near Dunkin Donuts," in northeast Philadelphia, according to police spokesperson Tanya Little.*** https://www.newsmax.com/us/philadelphia-bus-mass-shooting/2024/03/06/id/1156268

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Let's see if she'll roll on Baldwin

A jury convicted a movie weapons supervisor of involuntary manslaughter on Wednesday in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer by actor Alec Baldwin during a rehearsal on the set of the Western movie “Rust.” The verdict against movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed assigns new blame in the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October 2021 after an assistant director last year pleaded no contest to negligent handling of a firearm. Baldwin, the lead actor and a co-producer on “Rust,” was indicted by a grand jury in January on a charge of involuntary manslaughter. He was pointing a gun at Hutchins on a movie set outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza. Prosecutors at a two week trial alleged Gutierrez-Reed unwittingly brought live ammunition onto the set of “Rust” while flouting basic industry gun-safety guidelines. The involuntary manslaughter charge against Gutierrez-Reed carries a maximum penalty of 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine. The defendant was ordered immediately after the verdict too be taken into custody by deputies after the verdict was read in the court. Gutierrez-Reed, a 24-year-old on her second feature film as armorer at the time of the 2021 shooting, had pleaded not guilty before trial to involuntary manslaughter and evidence tampering at the trial held in downtown Santa Fe.*** https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/closing-arguments-trial-baldwin-shooting/2024/03/06/id/1156267

The defense apparently presented and argued evidence that fault for the homicide belonged to Baldwin.

***

Didn't peel say something about "To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment."

Hundreds of National Guard troops began flooding city subways Wednesday as part of a crime-fighting plan suddenly unveiled by Gov. Kathy Hochul following a series of attacks underground. The governor defended the major show of force — not seen since the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks — as an “even better” way to help New York City “solve this crisis.” “These brazen heinous attacks on our subway system will not be tolerated,” Hochul declared from the MTA’s Transit Rail Control Center in Midtown, pointing to last week’s random slashing of a train conductor and other recent acts of violence. In total, 750 National Guardsmen and 250 state and MTA cops will help the NYPD patrol “the city’s busiest transit stations” and check commuters’ bags, Hochul said – adding the initiative came after meetings with Mayor Eric Adams, MTA officials and the NYPD last week. The announcement of her “five point plan” to combat transit crime came the day after Adams — who was noticeably absent from the gov’s press conference — had already revealed the NYPD would be enhancing bag checks and stepping up its presence in the system.*** https://nypost.com/2024/03/06/us-news/gov-hochul-to-deploy-1000-national-guardsman-state-cops-to-carry-out-bag-checks-in-nyc-subways/

***

[jcmarchi]

Destroy All Humans Remake Developer Black Forest Games Reportedly Lays Off 50 Employees

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/destroy-all-humans-remake-developer-black-forest-games-reportedly-lays-off-50-employees/

Destroy All Humans Remake Developer Black Forest Games Reportedly Lays Off 50 Employees

Black Forest Games, the studio behind the recent Destroy All Humans! 1 and 2 remakes, has reportedly laid off about 50 people. This news comes from Kotaku, which learned from a source with knowledge of the situation that these layoffs were announced yesterday, January 24, and that more information about them would be provided next week. 

Game Informer has reached out to Black Forest Games and will update this story if it learns more. 

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Kotaku writes that its source says creative directors and most, “if not all,” of the managers at Black Forest Games will keep their jobs following the layoffs. At approximately 110 employees as of last year, 50 job cuts would equate to a roughly 50 percent reduction in staff at the studio. 

Last August, publisher THQ Nordic, which is owned by Embracer Group, revealed that Black Forest Games was developing a game based on the popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles graphic novel, The Last Ronin. It’s unclear if these layoffs will affect its development. 

These job cuts join a string of other disheartening 2024 layoffs, which total more than 5,500 in just the first 25 days of the year. Microsoft is laying off 1,900 employees across its Xbox, Activision Blizzard, and ZeniMax teams, Outriders studio People Can Fly laid off more than 30 employees this week, and League of Legends company Riot Games laid off 530 employees this week, too.  

We recently learned Lords of the Fallen Publisher CI Games was laying off 10 percent of its staff, that Unity would be laying off 1,800 people by the end of March, and that Twitch had laid off 500 employees. 

We also learned that Discord had laid off 170 employees, that layoffs happened at PTW, a support studio that’s worked with companies like Blizzard and Capcom, and that SteamWorld Build company, Thunderful Group, let go of roughly 100 people. Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive also reportedly laid off 45 people, too. 

Last year, more than 10,000 people in the games industry or game-adjacent industries were laid off. 

In January of last year, Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees amidst its ongoing $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which it completed in October. 

Striking Distance Studios, the team behind 2022’s The Callisto Protocol, laid off more than 30 employees in August of 2023. That same month, Mass Effect and Dragon Age developer BioWare laid off 50 employees, including long-time studio veterans. The following month, in September, Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios laid off roughly 45% of its staff, and Fortnite developer Epic Games laid off 830 employees. 

In October of last year, The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog laid off at least 25 employees, and Telltale Games also underwent layoffs, although an actual number of affected employees has not yet been revealed. Dreams developer Media Molecule laid off 20 employees in late October.

In November, Amazon Games laid off 180 staff members, Ubisoft laid off more than 100 employees, Bungie laid off roughly 100 developers, and 505 Games’ parent company, Digital Bros, laid off 30% of its staff. 

In December, Embracer Group closed its reformed TimeSplitters studio, Free Radical Design, and earlier in the year, Embracer closed Saints Row developer Volition Games, a studio with more than 30 years of development history. A few weeks before the winter holidays, Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering owner Hasbro laid off 1,100 employees. 

The games industry will surely feel the effects of such horrific layoffs for years to come. The hearts of the Game Informer staff are with everyone who’s been affected by layoffs or closures.

[Source: Kotaku]

[calcbench]

Watching Netflix Numbers

Everyone loves to talk about Netflix ($NFLX), either because you want to gab about some great new show you discovered (Kaleidoscope, people!) or you want to complain that there’s nothing on Netflix (us, immediately after finishing Kaleidoscope).

So when the company filed its 2022 annual report the other day, we decided to take a look at the two numbers behind those concepts: total content liabilities Netflix has, for programs it has committed to purchasing; and total number of paying subscribers.

Figure 1, below, shows what we found over the last five years. Fascinating to see that content liabilities (in blue) plunged in 2020 and 2021, presumably because film production shut down during most of the pandemic. When life and art began returning to normal in late 2021, those content liability numbers started to climb again.

On the other hand, subscriber growth — which is the most important factor to determine revenue, let’s remember — is chugging upward (in red) at a pace that’s steady, but by no means brisk. Total paying subscribers stood at roughly 110 million at the start of 2018. It was 230.7 million at the end of 2022, an increase of 108 percent. If you squint, you can see that the pace of subscriber growth increased in 2020 while we were all confined to quarters, but since then subscriber growth has decelerated.

One can see the strategic choices that emerge from these trends. Either Netflix trims its commitment to future programming; or it accelerates subscriber growth massively with, um, pixie dust or something; or it fiddles with its pricing options to raise more revenue from existing subscribers and the new subscribers trickling in over the years to come.

Indeed, Netflix has already started to pursue that third choice, with its idea of a low-cost subscription offering that includes advertising. The company launched that subscription product in November, reportedly to lackluster interest so far. (Netflix hasn’t broken out that advertising tier as a separate operating segment, nor does it report advertising revenue as a separate line item.)

So the other choices are fewer major commitments to content in the future (Bridgerton fans will riot if Netflix goes that route) or ramping up subscriber growth massively. Since just about every household in North America that wants Netflix already has Netflix, that also means said subscriber growth will need to be driven by global markets.

Something to think about when you see all those foreign shows in your feed.

[cryptidcalling]

Nobody knows how Firbolg age scales and it’s THROWIN’ ME OFF. I initially got confused because people kept calling Caduceus Clay “Mentally a teenager” which confused me. 30 is adulthood for Firbolg, so if he’s between 80-100 shouldn’t he be older mentally? I kept looking, and then I was seeing people say he’s mentally anywhere from 20-25. Young, but definitely not a teenager. So here’s my shitty math trying to work things out. Keep in mind I’m rounding a lot of numbers here for simplicity. This isn’t a college essay, it’s an DND Bisexual doing math on Tumblr. This isn’t supposed to be perfect; The idea is to help people understand the mental ages of Firbolg for the sake of aging their own OCs. 

Tl;wr: Here’s a link to a google spread sheet of the ages. 

If you wanna see my thoughts (and disclaimers in the hopes CR fans aren’t gonna get mad at me), see below the cut!

In a lot of fantasy media I know, fantasy races tend to get through childhood faster than humans do. For example, let’s say a human is fully mature at 18 and live on average for 82 years. That means roughly 22% of a human life is spent as a child. The only confirmed numbers we have regarding Firbolg ages is that 30 is adulthood and they live on average for 500 years. That means roughly 6% of a Firbolg life is spent as a child. If we wanted things to be more proportional, 110 would be the adult age for a Firbolg. But that’s not where we are. Where we are, there’s a lot of gap we need to fill, so we have to slow things down mentally. Firbolg spend a lot less time being children, so they need to spend a lot more time being adults. 

Here’s another age to consider, which is being elderly. 65 is considered elderly for a human. So a human will spend roughly 22% of their life being elderly. This is the same amount of time spent being a child. So I’m going to apply that same logic to Firbolg and say that they’d spend 6% of their life being elderly. This would make any Firbolg the ages of 470 and above elderly. One more easy anchor point to find is mid-life, 41 and 250. 

So here’s our numbers so far laid out:

-18 = 30

-41 = 250

-65 = 470

Now, that’s an even 23 years up and down for a human and 220 up and down for a Firbolg. When doing my math the sides got a little out of count because I didn’t want to be working with decimals, but with a bit more dividing, subtracting, adding, and rounding we can roughly get the chart seen above. The process was basically a repeat process of subtracting, dividing, and adding. For example;  250 - 30 = 220. 220/2 = 110. 30 + 110 = 140. 250 + 110 = 360. 

110/2 = 55. 30 + 55 = 85. 85 + 55 = 140. 140 + 55 = 195.

So on and so forth until I got to adding my 3/2 (rounding and adjusting to avoid decimals) on the human side. 

So THAT is my comprehensive Firbolg age chart. It’s obviously not perfect, and I’m sure a much better mathematician could easily explain all the millions of ways I goofed it up, but I think it’s better than working from raw fractions due to how disproportionate early and late life are between races. 

And before anyone gets upset: I am NOT trying to argue that people are wrong about Caduceus’ mental age. 1: This is a fantasy world. The math between mental age and lived years isn’t important, you can make it whatever you want. You’re playing pretend and you can pretend however you want. 2: Caduceus is a character from a STORY. The hypothetical numbers are not nearly as important as how he is shown in that story. Cad is meant to be a young man leaving his home and seeing the world for the first time, adjusting his worldview as he does. It’s about learning to grow up as a young adult and realizing what your parents told you, and what you’ve experienced in your niche part of the world, isn’t always true when applied to the big picture. Cad’s relative age matters with how his story is told, not technical numbers. The discussion of his age is just what made me question the age chart. 

What I saw most often was the simple division of 250 = 42, 125 = 21. I just didn’t like the logic that 3 years for a human would suddenly equal 90 years for a Firbolg, only for the next 21 years to equal another 125. That’s not slowing the rate of of mental aging, that’s slamming a brick wall and then running around it. So the numbers I came up with just seem more evened out to me. 

Anyways, I hope at least one person find this helpful!

[jeannereames]

1) I think it was Plutarch’s account, that after Hephaistion’s and Krateros’s famous clash, Alexander eventually reconciles them by telling them he loved them most of all men. Will you be expanding on Alexander’s and Krateros’s relationship in your future DwtL books? I remember you briefly touched upon them in Rise. Or like, is there any historical evidence that elucidates what their dynamic was like beyond/including the whole philobasileus thing?

Who Was Krateros (and what will I do with him in DwtL)?

I’ve always found it curious that, in most novels about Alexander’s conquests, Krateros tends to be a distant secondary character in contrast to others around Alexander, especially Ptolemy—despite the fact Krateros was more powerful than Ptolemy, and powerful at an earlier date.

I suspect it owes to the fact Ptolemy went on to found a dynasty and write a history. Modern writers feel as if they know him better. By contrast, Krateros died just two years after Alexander. So although he tends to have a better reputation among modern historians (which, I think, is not well-deserved), he’s never really received thorough treatment in much the same way (and for much the same reason) as Hephaistion.

He died too soon to become a major player among the Diadochi. But that means the people we know best from the era of the Diadochi were NOT the most prominent men at Alexander’s court. So don’t be surprised when Krateros pops up as an important secondary figure in the series with a more conspicuous role than Seleukos, or Antipatros, or Antigonos, who all long outlived him.

In part, that importance owes to Hephaistion’s role as protagonist. If pressed to name the chief protagonist of Dancing with the Lion, Alexandros or Hephaistion…it’s Hephaistion.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about future plots and spoil it—but if Krateros winds up Hephaistion’s bête noire, he doesn’t start that way. The details of their falling out is a driving point of the Long Plot (e.g., the plot across books, part of the overall tragedy of Alexander’s story). I’ll just say that, when I first saw Hamilton, the Musical, a lot of the Hamilton-Burr dynamic resonated because it reminded me of my vision of Hephaistion and Krateros.

Don’t overextend that, but it gives a general idea.

We have some hints that suggest, at least at first, Hephaistion and Krateros weren’t enemies. They may not have been bosom buddies, but I don’t think they were enemies.

I have a clear personal view of each man, based on the historical texts. Hephaistion’s personality I laid out in the first two novels. He can be touchy about his honor and how he’s viewed, and is 110% loyal to Alexander, but not a suck-up. The two just generally see things the same way, and will continue to do so (except in matters of religion, which does come to a head in one particular event I’ll not spoil). Yet in how to run the empire and how to Persianize the court, they’re on the same page and Hephaistion is deeply involved in court procedural renovations. This accords with what the sources tell us. Hephaistion followed Alexander in the changes, which is typical of how ancient sources would present it. Me, I’d argue he didn’t just “follow,” he helped Alexander come up with it. He understood the problem/hurdle as Alexander did and was a party to the solution of blending the two courts.

My Hephaistion is proud, and wants to be recognized for his contributions and ideas. He resents it when anybody suggests he’s just a “yes-man.” And no, that’s not because they were/are lovers. It’s because sycophancy is an easy way to insult your rival. 😉Nothing makes him angrier than being called a “flatterer.” His friendship with Alexander will go through highs and lows (because that’s human), but he remains mostly certain of his place at Alexandros’s right hand. That doesn’t mean he won’t get jealous, because he definitely has a jealous bone (which I think I pretty clearly established in Rise). Yet as time goes on, he settles down and his clashes with others stem from a failure by those others to recognize his place. Yet he understands his place—and ambitions—differently. He can act jealous and touchy, but not for expected reasons. My Hephaistion (and I stress this is not the historical person) just isn’t that interested in commanding others or occupying high office for itself. The kleos of it: glory He wants to help Alexandros make his new empire work, and gets really impatient with all the other “idiots” who can’t see what needs to be done to achieve that. He has ambition, but it’s north/north-west of typical.

Krateros is also pretty clear in my head, both as a fictional character but also how I think he was historically. He, too, is a deeply ambitious, and very capable. My fictional Krateros’s vicious ambition stems from being the “poor cousin” to Perdikkas and the Orestian royal house, needing to prove his place, not just get it as a right of birth—although he also gets it as a right of birth because he is not a commoner. In short, he has the resentment and envy of second-tier gentry, but the drive to succeed in Philip’s (and then Alexander’s) army where ability is recognized too. (I’d note that, after ATG’s death, Krateros [along with Ptolemy] joined Antigonos’s rebellion against Perdikkas as regent of the kings…which is why he died in battle fighting Eumenes, who was on Perdikkas’s side. Yet this is notable because he was almost certainly from Orestes…and thus, related to Perdikkas. We can debate who was higher born, but I think it was Perdikkas.)

Anyway, Alexandros recognizes both his ability and sympathizes with his drive to succeed because it’s similar to his own: the need to prove himself to his father, as prince.

That’s the fictional background of my Krateros, but the historical man was good at what he did, and knew it, and expected to be recognized for it among his peers: to stand first among them. Ergo, he was viciously competitive to rivals, but charming and charismatic otherwise.

How does that work? To those well above him in the power structure, he’s respectful and seeks their approval in order to receive advancement. So, for instance, he’s devoted to the kings (Philip, then Alexander) because they are Givers of Good Things (promotions, land, loot). He would have been a young officer under Philip, making him roughly the age of Ptolemy, Philotas, Nikanor, Koenos…maybe Kleitos (although I think Kleitos was a bit older), just as Leonnatos, Perdikkas, Seleukos and Hephaistion were coevals of Alexander.

So he couldn’t and wouldn’t challenge the “old men”: Parmenion, Antigonos Monophthalmos, Antipatros, etc. He even seems to have been an understudy to Parmenion. For instance, at Issos, he was in charge not just of his brigade but the whole left wing under Parmenion’s general command. He wanted to impress Parmenion and earn his support—not antagonize him.

Likewise, he had no reason to lord it over his infantry battalion, who would have been no threat to his ambitions. He needed them, in fact. By being chummy with them, he was far more likely to secure their loyalty—not unlike Caesar later.

It was those men who were rivals for positions he wanted who drew his special ire. Krateros would never get Parmenion’s spot while the old man lived, but Parmenion was old. Krateros could wait. After Issos, I expect Krateros saw himself as Parmenion’s natural successor. Yet Krateros was also unlikely to get Parmenion’s spot as long as Philotas lived. If we have only a sketchy idea of ranking order in the army, the whole Philotas Affair tells us/suggests the position of commander of the Companion Cavalry was the #2 position after Parmenion’s slot as viceroy to Alexander. Krateros may have served under Parmenion in charge of the army left side at Issos…but Philotas was still above him in the food chain.

Nikanor (Parmenion’s middle son) may also have been a hurdle, as commander of the Regular Hypaspists (as opposed to Royal Hypaspists), but he was younger than Philotas. Thus, Krateros would have started by removing Philotas, only worrying about Nikanor after—and as it turned out, Nikanor died of disease in late 330, deleting himself from the picture.

Our histories seem united on Philotas as arrogant and pushing his place: an obnoxious little brat, if also a perfectly capable commander. Ergo, Philotas provided Krateros with the perfect target, one unlikely to have staunch defenders.

So Krateros systematically went after him as early as the Egyptian sojourn, and possibly even earlier. Plutarch doesn’t always get things right, so we must be cautious about this, and Badian wanted to make the spying of Krateros part of Alexander’s big conspiracy against Parmenion’s family. Not at all. I think it was Krateros’s attempt to target the man he saw as chief rival.

At that point, Krateros would have regarded Alexander’s cohort as “the boys.” They didn’t have major offices, although were rising to some key junior commands. For instance, Hephaistion apparently commanded the “agema” (later term but good enough for this) of the Hypaspists. That’s the king’s own unit, who acted as his personal bodyguard in battle and actually ran with the cavalry squadron (!, yes in full armor). They would have been composed almost entirely of aristocratic young men: e.g., former Pages. So that’s a plum command for Hephaistion…but he didn’t command a whole SECTION of the army, like Philotas and the Companions.

Hephaistion, Leonnatos, Perdikkas, Seleukos…they weren’t a threat to Krateros. He could be friendly to them, may even have cultivated Hephaistion especially, for his unique access to the king. You may be thinking, Man, he sounds like a user! Well, yes. That’s how the Macedonian court functioned, although I think Krateros was more ruthless, and successful, than most.

Then he got an unexpected gift-horse: the Dimnos Conspiracy and Philotas’s casual (and deeply stupid) dismissal of the warning about it. Krateros went right for the jugular.

I want to make a point that I also made in “Crisis and Opportunity: the Philotas Affair…again.” We absolutely must resist looking backwards from the outcome to ascertain motives. When the scared Pages finally approached Ptolemy, who then went to Alexander and the other Friends, NOBODY knew what the outcome would be. It was not planned. It really was a crisis.

Yet Krateros saw opportunity in the crisis, and as a successful field commander, ran with it. So I see him, not Hephaistion, as the architect of the accusation against Philotas. HE had the most to gain (he thought), and if Plutarch can be believed in this, it wasn’t the first time he’d tried to bring Philotas’s snarky words and bad behavior to Alexander. As alluded to above, he’d paid Philotas’s mistress to report to him what Philotas said during “pillow talk” as early as Egypt. Now it could be (and quite probably was) that he saw Philotas’s bragging and claims to victories as a real threat to the king. (Kinda like shadow presidents in Mar-a-Lago.) People can have more than one motivation. They can even have a “good” motivation (protecting Alexander’s pride and reputation) alongside a “bad” motivation (making Alexander resentful of Philotas). Alexander’s pride was touchy too. 😉 Even if he blew off Krateros’s accusations at the time, we can imagine he was still stung. Seeds successfully planted!

We must, however, be careful not to read the final results back into the assumptions of the people at the time. Hindsight 20/20 and all that. I do NOT think Krateros believed this would result in Parmenion’s removal/death, although I do think he wanted to get Philotas arrested and executed.

Also, I do NOT believe Hephaistion had any idea he was about to be elevated to command of half the Companion Cavalry. He’d have had no reason to think he’d be leapfrogged over older, loyal men, such as Krateros…or Kleitos, who wound up as his co-commander.

Hephaistion’s motivation? Friendship. In “Crisis and Opportunity” I stressed it was friendship to Alexander, but I’ve also come to think that Krateros may have talked him into it, so also friendship, or at least alliance, with Krateros, who knew he could rile Hephaistion’s blood. He wanted that sheen of authentic anger. I want to quickly add that Koenos joined in with the torturers because he feared going down with the ship, as he was Philotas’s brother-in-law.

All this neatly explains why it was Hephaistion to whom Philotas appealed during his torture. Not because he orchestrated it, but because he had the least reason of the three to want Philotas out of the way. He was in it for passion and so, might then be moved to pity. Krateros was all-in from the outset, and Koenos had to be to save his own neck from Philotas’s arrogant stupidity.

So Philotas was convicted, executed, and then Alexander felt he must also execute Parmenion because he was sitting on Alexander’s all-important supply lines during a major operation. That is not a pretty picture and must be acknowledged as much. Philotas Did a Dumb, and lost his life for it. Extreme, but he dug his own grave. Parmenion was flat-out murdered. Realpolitik does not excuse the death of the man who’d sided with Alexander, put him on the throne, then advised him so capably.

In any case, from Krateros’s point of view, this was terrific. Philotas was out of his way, and so was Parmenion. Honestly, I doubt he wanted to see the old man dead instead of honorably retired, but it still cleared the way for him.

Then an astonishing thing happened!

Krateros didn’t get the Companions. Hephaistion did. And Kleitos. Of the younger generation, Hephaistion had just leap-frogged right over the heads of Krateros and all his cohorts. (Again, I think Kleitos was older; there’s no evidence of Krateros being at public odds with him.)

Just imagine how angry Krateros was!

The snotty little upstart! Who the hell did Hephaistion think he was?

So yeah, Krateros got what he wanted: Philotas out of the way. And in the process, he shot himself in the foot.

Plutarch tells us exactly why Alexander made the choice he did: nobody should have that much command authority henceforth, even his best friend. But he did want a man loyal to him in that position. I would not be at all surprised if—crisis past—Alexander recognized Krateros’s maneuvering for what it was…and didn’t indulge him. He wasn’t about to give out promotions for the backstage take-down of a fellow officer.

By the Battle of the Hydaspes against Poros in India (almost three years later), Krateros served the same position as Parmenion: hold the main army while Alexander leads the attack. Yet in between, Alexander had rearranged units. Even the Companions had not only been split, but divided further into six Hipparchies. Hephaistion’s was primary, but only the first of six. He was no longer overall commander. And that would have happened had Kleitos lived or died, as Kleitos had been reassigned as satrap in Baktria. Dividing the Companions had just been the initial sally to a more comprehensive reorganization and power redistribution.

Ergo, if Krateros had power, it would never be equal to Parmenion’s, and it seems to have been deliberately delayed after the Philotas Affair. Krateros dared not get mad at Alexander. Again, as king, Alexander is above these status wars, and the Giver of Good Things.

Another complication for Krateros: Parmenion’s death had angered Parmenion’s loyal men, some of whom Krateros had commanded…and Krateros had been part of Parmenion’s downfall, however indirectly. Wouldn’t it be convenient if he could shift the blame to Hephaistion?

So Hephaistion was now the chief man “in his way.” Plus (fair or not) Krateros resented him for getting the plum assignment, may have convinced himself that Hephaistion used the opportunity to sweet-talk Alexander into giving it to him. Even if he didn’t believe that, he could still have spread the rumor. It was advantageous, displacing soldier’s anger over Parmenion’s death onto Hephaistion. And it would rile up his own battalion/soldiers with indignation on his behalf.

“Stop the steal!” *smirk*

It all exploded in India. We’re not told when, but I suspect sooner rather than later—before the Malian catastrophe. My best guess is after the Hydaspes, possibly while everyone was relaxing for a while in Poros’s kingdom. Bored soldiers are gossipy soldiers, and get restless and pick fights.

Gregor Weber in his analysis “The Court of Alexander the Great as Social System” (Alexander the Great: a new history, 2009) suggested that Alexander encouraged such rivalry among his Hetairoi and Friends, and uses the H. and K. squabble as a peak example. To some degree, that’s true. Competition was endemic to the Macedonian court because it was endemic (maybe EPIDEMIC) to Greek society more broadly. Macedonian kings (not just Alexander) would have encouraged competition as a way of choosing the best officers. The Hetairideia I described in Dancing with the Lion—the Festival of the Companions with competitions—was a real thing. I made up a lot of the details, but we hear about it under the Antigonids, by which time it involved mock battle. But it was said to have been much older. There very well may be ties between the Hetairideia and the original Macedonian “Olympics” at Dion. E.g., the latter may have grown out of the former, but it’s all too vague to know.

Anyway, competition was natural and encouraged at court, but I disagree with Weber about Alexander encouraging THAT particular competition between Hephaistion and Krateros. Weber reads the clever “philobasileus/philalexandros” as encouraging. I see it (and Plutarch’s wording suggests) just the opposite. He was trying to lower the temperature in the room. It didn’t work.

We simply aren’t told enough about the swords-drawn brawl to understand what led up to it. E.g., who started it, as Alexander put it. I don’t mean (and don’t think Alexander meant) who pulled his sword first. He meant who STARTED it. I tend to read that “I’ll kill you both, or at least the one who started it,” as a veiled threat to Krateros. He would have damn well known who started it. He was telling Krateros in that public reconciliation, “Knock it off, dickhead, or else.” And I expect that’s also what he told him in their private meeting/confrontation.

There is more to this, but I’ve said all I want to, for the moment. Again, I’m working on Krateros and Hephaistion at present for a book chapter in a collection, and I’ll also be doing more on them both for a monograph. So I’ll just end with my take on the Indian conflict.

[ravynfyre]

Storytime!

So seeing a post on here just reminded me of a Firehouse Adventure that I sadly missed, but heard AAALLLLL about when I got back from vacation.

Some years back, the firehouse I was at was on a hill, and situated up that hill roughly 50-70 yards from an intersection:

Now, the fun thing about the street, as you can see from my MS Paint map up there, is that it angles at the intersection. Also, *both* directions of Street C *and* Street B were hills that went uphill from the intersection. Street A was also a hill, but it was a much gentler one for that first block than the other two streets were.

Now, about a week before this happened, we had an earthquake, which is very much NOT typical for this area. Like... we *never* have them that we can feel. This becomes relevant later.

Late one evening, say, about 2 am, after all the bars finally close down for the night, this random gentleman decided that his libations had improved his driving skills, and he had a fast car and a lot of liquid courage in his veins. Not a good combo. Trust me. So he decides to play Gran Torismo in real life and began running through town in his car going between 70-80 miles an hour, with a few little forays into the 100mph category.

By the time he made it to Street C, coming from the top of the map, it was closing in on 2:30, 2:45ish, and the cops had already gotten calls about this gent, and were already out looking for him. Street C is a very long street, and, up until it hits the Street A/B intersection, straight as an arrow. According to the accident reconstructionist, they believe he was doing about 110 when he hit that intersection.

Now. The other ^fun^ thing about that intersection, is that it is "paved high". Meaning that since Street A and B meet and maintain a straight line, and there's a very gentle slope from A, they gave THAT street priority when it came to keeping it *level*. So there is this big ass *dome* of pavement if you are driving down Street C, so you can never take that intersection at the posted speed limit, or you risk catching air. (Remind me to tall all y'all about the time I caught air in a 36,000 pound firetruck. LOL!)

The speed limit? 35mph. Which, those of you playing the home game, should be able to deduce is considerably *less* than the 110 they think this dude was doing when he hit the intersection. Because "hitting the intersection" is not exactly purple prose here.

That dome in the pavement launched his car into the air, so he was unable to steer to the left to follow the street. He came down the first time in the driveway of the first business. Hitting the other side of that *launched* him back into the air and he landed almost on the other side of the coffee house's driveway. By that time, he'd plowed through the coffee house sign, and some small bushes, too, and those impromptu flying lessons had *fucked* his steering assembly.

Somehow, by the grace of some unholy god, his car MISSED the big tree planted in front of our firehouse. Or, rather, missed a *direct* hit, and merely glanced off of it. That ricocheted him back *toward* the firehouse, but, again, *someone* was looking out for this guy, because instead of hitting the firehouse dead on, he basically clipped the front corner of the building, then bounced off the first rig bay door, scraped down the building, and came to a rest right in front of the second rig bay door, which is where the primary in service truck was kept.

Bricks from the front corner of the firehouse that he *obliterated* were found along the back wall, and the rig actually took some damage from flying masonry. If I had not had to work at a different firehouse the last shift before my vacation, my gear would have been hanging in that corner, and would have been, likewise, *obliterated*.

So, here's where the earthquake becomes relevant. One would think that having a car play Wrecking Ball into the corner of our firehouse would have made something of a big ruckus. Should have woken up the guys sleeping in the bunk room, right? Well, sorta. They heard it and felt the building shake a little, but then all of them assumed that it was just another earthquake, and when nothing happened after a minute, they all went back to sleep. It wasn't until ten minutes later when PD rolls up to the car that is now *burning* in front of our bay door, and has Dispatch call the guys to tone them out to their own driveway, that they dragged out of bed.

What happened to the driver? He met the cops who were looking for him on the curb. Walked (stumbled) right over to them and, reportedly, said, "Yeah. That's my car. Yeah, I was driving it. And yeah, I'm drunk."

He had a few scratches from shattered glass. But otherwise else? Unscathed.

And that, my chilluns, is the story of the Night The Firehouse Rocked.

[bufomancer]

The Ethics of Betta Sororities

Betta sororities, made up of several female domestic bettas living in the same aquarium, are popular amongst those who want lots of bettas, but have limited space. The safety and ethics of these setups are hotly debated. There are quite a few studies out there on social behavior in domestic bettas, but they largely have not been applied to current discussions about betta sororities. Here, I intend to do exactly that with five papers that I believe are relevant.

The History of the Betta

Domestic bettas have been popular pets for hundreds of years. They’ve been linebred in captivity since at least the 19th century. Initially, they were selected for increased aggression and used for betta fights. It was soon discovered that they could be bred into a wide variety of colors, patterns, and fin types. Nowadays, they’re primarily kept for their beautiful appearance.

There are several species of Betta in the splendens complex. Domestics are considered to be B. splendens, but they were also hybridized with other members of the complex. In particular, hybridization led to the rise of ‘dragonscale’ bettas, noted for their thick iridescence. In the wild, they inhabit shallow, sluggish streams. After mating, males guard the eggs until the fry hatch, but the female may not be actively involved. The male stops looking after the fry after hatching.

Splendens complex bettas that are relatively unchanged from their wild forms are typically kept communally, it’s common to see one male with one or several females. Multiple males are rarely if ever kept together past sexual maturity. Aggression in these setups can happen, but they are also frequently successful. Betta species that are not in the splendens complex are rarely kept singularly.

There’s not much out there on social behavior in wild B. splendens, but we know that males will perform aggressive displays when they come across other males. Typically, these altercations last only a few seconds, with the loser swimming off mostly unharmed. Domestic betta fights in captivity can last for an hour, with the loser injured or dead.

While wild-type bettas can often be kept communally, that does not necessarily translate to domestic strains being safe with conspecifics. After all, they were extensively linebred for increased aggression. So we can’t use that alone to justify betta sororities- if they can be justified at all.

Next, we’ll go through some papers individually, discussing methods and findings. These will be pretty long, since several papers are behind paywalls and I want everyone reading to have a pretty good grasp on what the papers said without necessarily needing to shell out money. That said, I highly recommend reading the papers individually since my summaries are still just summaries. 

Ichihashi, Ichikawa, and Matsushima (2004)

[paper found here]

In this paper, domestic bettas were reared in four different conditions and then their agonistic behaviors were compared. All fry studied were from the same spawn. At 6 weeks, 110 unsexed juveniles were separated into 4 different housing conditions. In Group 1, 50 fish were put into 12.5x20 cm tanks, with a water depth of 6-9cm. There were 5 fish per tank, for a total of 10 tanks. Group 2 fish were housed individually but could see the group 1 fish through their aquarium walls. Group 3 fish were housed individually but could see other group 2 fish through the aquarium walls, but not Group 1 or 2 fish. Group 4 fish were housed individually and could not see other fish. There were 20 fish each in groups 2-4. Once the fish were sexable, there were 18 males in group 1, 13 in group 2, 8 in group 3, and 9 in group 4. The females were not used for the study.

Some questions I have so far about the study and its ability to be applied to home aquaria: Were the tanks barren, or did they contain any decor/substrate? The tanks for the communally raised fish were under a gallon each. Plus, because only the males were studied, how applicable is this information to female bettas? In a betta sorority, the tanks are typically around 10-20 gallons, and with at least some decor. In an aquarium with more room to avoid tankmates, and decor for hiding, might fish act differently?

Next, males were matched and tested for agonistic behaviors. They were placed in a 20x30x15cm aquarium separated into two sections. The water was changed after each session. A male was placed in each section and allowed to acclimate for 30 minutes, then the partition was removed and video was recorded. Three behaviors were identified and recorded: butt-or-bite (strongly butting or biting the other fish with its mouth), chase, and gill cover erect (colloquially known as flaring). 16 males from group one, and 8 males each from the other groups, were tested. A male from groups 2-4 was randomly matched with a male from group 1 for testing.

All of the males in group 4, who were kept totally isolated, won their fights, and additionally would continue to attack even after the loser submitted. The other groups won roughly half the time.

Later, some of the group 2 males were placed in group 4 conditions, and vice versa, to compare the effects of late isolation and late socialization. Later isolation tended to increase win rate without significant effects on agonistic behaviors. Later socialization did not decrease the win rate.

Now, this is all focused on male bettas, and therefore may not directly translate to behavior in female bettas. However, this paper suggests there may be a socialization period for young bettas, seeing as the communally raised individuals seemed to be less aggressive, and late socialization did not produce more docile bettas. This means a betta sorority made up of females raised isolated and later put together likely has a lower chance of success than those raised socially.

Goldstein (1985)

[paper found here]

This paper is all about creating stable communal populations of the domestic betta. An L shaped aquarium, with each arm 229x38x51cm, was created. A 31x76cm plexiglass window was placed in the center of each arm. Day one, one male was introduced to each arm of the tank. If the loser of the initial fight was not completely intimidated within 2 days, a third male was introduced. If it was, it was removed and replaced. After the male population was at three for 2 days, a female was introduced, with the same removal criteria. A second study was performed with 10 contests of 20 males in a 6.5 liter aquarium to obtain baseline data.

Of the sixteen males involved, six died and three were removed. The maximum stocking was 10 males and 10 females, which within three weeks had to be reduced to 7 males. 

As this chart shows, most aggressive encounters were between two males. Transient displays, but not true fights, were recorded among two females, and among males and females. Combat lasted much longer for the males in the small tank than in the L shaped tank. Mouth locking behavior was much less common in the L shaped tank than in the small tank. Aggression was usually initiated by newly added males, not the current residents.

Here are the questions I have: Why were there no tests with solely females, or one male and multiple females? How might these results change if performed in a similarly sized, but rectangular aquarium, as opposed to the L shape? The paper mentions that all the fish were roughly the same age and from the same supplier, but were they from the same spawn, or different ones? Did the supplier raise the fry communally or isolated?

One interesting observation was that the males did not appear to occupy distinct territories within the tank, instead, they traversed the whole aquarium. It seems aquarium size most likely affects aggression, since fights were shorter and less intense in the larger tank versus the smaller tank. Also, one pair of bettas spawned in the L shaped tank, and both the male and female guarded the territory of their bubble nest until the fry hatched. Typically, female bettas are not said to be actively involved with guarding the nest, so that was certainly interesting! A stable social hierarchy was said to be created, but the author cautions against broadly applying the results of laboratory conditions to all bettas.

Elwood and Rainey (1983)

[paper found here]

Finally, a study all about female bettas, specifically. This paper aims to determine if female bettas can form stable dominance hierarchies. Groups of 4 fish each were placed into five aquariums, 28x20x18cm each with a water depth of 12cm. The groups were visually isolated. Groups 1 and 2 were bred in the lab, 3-5 were from a breeder. The tanks were empty except for a gravel substrate. Groups 1 and 2 were observed for 15 minutes per day, on nine days over a two week period. Groups 3-5 were observed for 15 minutes per day on five days over a two week period. Three activities- attack, display, and eating- were recorded.

Questions so far! These tanks are less than 2 gallons each, so can this be effectively extrapolated to large aquaria? They are also empty, so how would results change in a heavily planted aquarium? Why were groups 1 and 2 from a different source than 3-5? Why were they observed for different amounts of time? Are the fish from the same spawn as the other fish in their tank? Were they raised isolated or communally?

Based on the observations made, a rank order was assigned to each fish in each group for each observation day.

I really recommend reading this whole paper to really get how they were calculating the hierarchy and day-to-day concordance.

So, conclusions. A noticeable and relatively stable social hierarchy seemed to be created. The most aggressive fish was not necessarily the most dominant, which fits with similar observations in male splendens. The top ranked fish engaged in the most mutual displays with the second ranked fish, and the least with the bottom ranked fish. The bottom ranked fish was more likely to flee than to return displays. A social hierarchy may have been created, but aggressive displays were still present. The study lasted only two weeks, in small and barren tanks, among fish who may have been related. If you change any of those factors- longer term study, larger and heavily decorated tank, unrelated fish, etc- the results could differ.

Snekser, McRobert, and Clotfelter (2006)

[paper found here]

In this study, male and female bettas were presented with a single male, a single female, or a group of three females. All fish were roughly the same age and obtained from the same supplier. The testing tank was separated into three sections. The focal fish were placed in the middle section, where they could choose to view either of the end sections, but not both at once.

Immediate questions: Were all the fish related? Were they raised socially or communally? Why were they never presented with multiple males, only multiple females? The focal fish and the test fish could not directly interact, only view each other. So this has little bearing on interactions between multiple fish in the same, undivided aquarium.

As we can see in these charts, females preferred viewing a single female or three females over an empty chamber. They preferred the empty chamber to the single male, and the three females over both the single male and the single female. Males preferred viewing one female, three females, and one male to the empty chamber. They preferred three females to a single female, and a single male to three females. However, we can also see that there were documented aggressive displays for all of these testings. The females performed fewer aggressive displays, but they were still there.

So… the fish regularly preferred viewing other fish to the empty chamber, and larger groups to a single fish, but they performed aggressive behaviors and they could not physically interact with the other fish. This paper is interesting, but does it actually mean anything when it comes to a sorority setup where the fish can freely physically interact with each other?

Blakeslee, McRobert, Brown, and Clotfelter (2008)

[paper found here]

This study is similar to the one above, but this time focused on female bettas only. It seeks to determine if group size and body color have an effect on social partner preferences. Of the 160 fish used, 130 had wild type coloration, and 30 were white with pink fins. They were obtained from a local fish shop. The same type of three chambered aquarium used in the previous study was used for this one. For 30 days prior to the preference testing, individuals were separated by color into either 75 liter aquariums with 15-20 individuals, or 1000mL plastic cups held in a larger aquarium.

The fish consistently preferred the other fish to the empty chamber, and large groups of similar fish to small groups of similar or dissimilar fish. The brown striped fish did not show a marked preference when presented with the choice between one similar fish or several dissimilar fish.

Some questions- Were all of the brown fish from the same spawn? Were all of the white fish from the same spawn? Were the brown and white fish both from the same spawn? What if they were presented with related similar fish versus related dissimilar fish? Or related dissimilar fish versus unrelated similar fish? Why were the white fish not tested after individual housing, or against empty chambers? Were aggressive behaviors noted? How would these results change if the fish were allowed to physically interact rather than only see each other?

There’s a lot of questions with this one. Unlike the previous study, there’s no chart detailing any aggressive behavior. Just because a fish would rather see the other fish than be alone, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re playing nice!

Conclusions

None of these papers provide sufficient evidence in support of communal betta tanks, especially under more typical home aquaria conditions. Lack of injury is not the same as lack of stress. Stress and appeasement related behaviors such as fin clamping, pale colors, stress stripes, etc were minimally mentioned in these papers if at all. Betta sororities in the aquarium hobby tend to be in 10 or 20 gallon tanks, and with at least /some/ decor and hides. These papers tend towards keeping them communally in much smaller tanks, with no decor whatsoever. Would bettas in a larger and better decorated tank feel emboldened knowing they can more easily avoid threats? Are these fish truly in a stable social hierarchy, or is it closer to learned helplessness? When there are physical items in the tank and not just an empty water column, are they more likely to defend a specific territory?

In particular, I would be interested in data on related versus unrelated fish. In all of these papers, fish used were obtained from the same supplier and were likely all from the same spawn. Are they more likely to tolerate conspecifics who are related to them? Many people have reported more success with communal betta tanks when they are fry from the same spawn that were never separated. This leads to more questions- what about unrelated fry raised together, or related fry raised isolated and then reintroduced?

More research is certainly necessary to truly understand the sociability of domestic bettas. In the meantime, if you love bettas and want more than one in the same tank, a pair of a nondomesticated species such as imbellis, smaragdina, and so on would be a much better decision.

[newstfionline]

Saturday, August 21, 2021

Landlords look for an exit amid federal eviction moratorium (AP) When Ryan David bought three rental properties back in 2017, he expected the $1,000-a-month he was pocketing after expenses would be regular sources of income well into his retirement years. But then the pandemic hit and federal and state authorities imposed moratoriums on evictions. The unpaid rent began to mount. Then, just when he thought the worst was over, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a new moratorium, lasting until Oct. 3. David, the father of a 2 1/2-year-old who is expecting another child, fears the $2,000 he’s owed in back rent will quickly climb to thousands more. The latest moratorium “was the final gut punch,” said the 39-year-old, adding that he now plans to sell the apartments. Most evictions for unpaid rent have been halted since the early days of the pandemic and there are now more than 15 million people living in households that owe as much as $20 billion in back rent, according to the Aspen Institute. A majority of single-family rental home owners have been impacted, according to a survey from the National Rental Home Council, and 50% say they have tenants who have missed rent during the pandemic. Landlords, big and small, are most angry about the moratoriums, which they consider illegal. Many believe some tenants could have paid rent, if not for the moratorium. And the $47 billion in federal rental assistance that was supposed to make landlords whole has been slow to materialize. By July, only $3 billion of the first tranche of $25 billion had been distributed.

Student loans (WSJ) The Biden administration announced it will wipe out $5.8 billion in student loans held by 323,000 people who are permanently disabled. This means the Education Department will discharge loans for borrowers with total and permanent disabilities per Social Security Administration records. Currently there is $1.6 trillion held in student loan debt, much of which could be eliminated through executive action.

New England preps for 1st hurricane in 30 years with Henri (AP) New Englanders bracing for their first direct hit by a hurricane in 30 years began hauling boats out of the water and taking other precautions Friday as Tropical Storm Henri barreled toward the Northeast coast. Henri was expected to intensify into a hurricane by Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Impacts could be felt in New England states by Sunday, including on Cape Cod, which is teeming with tens of thousands of summer tourists. “This storm is extremely worrisome,” said Michael Finkelstein, police chief and emergency management director in East Lyme, Connecticut. “We haven’t been down this road in quite a while and there’s no doubt that we and the rest of New England would have some real difficulties with a direct hit from a hurricane.”

Booming Colo. town asks, ‘Where will water come from?’ (AP) “Go West, young man,″ Horace Greeley famously urged. The problem for the northern Colorado town that bears the 19th-century newspaper editor’s name: Too many people have heeded his advice. By the tens of thousands newcomers have been streaming into Greeley—so much so that the city and surrounding Weld County grew by more than 30% from 2010 to 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, making it one of the fastest-growing regions in the country. And it’s not just Greeley. Figures released this month show that population growth continues unabated in the South and West, even as temperatures rise and droughts become more common. That in turn has set off a scramble of growing intensity in places like Greeley to find water for the current population, let alone those expected to arrive in coming years. “Everybody looks at the population growth and says, ‘Where is the water going to come from?’” [one local professor] said.

Everything’s Getting Bigger In Texas (AP, CNBC, Forbes) Texas has long been a popular destination for newcomers, thanks to cheaper land and housing, more job opportunities, lower taxes, and fewer regulations. There’s also the great weather, food, schools, and medical facilities, the abundant resources and year-round recreation and outdoor activities, artistic and cultural events, fairs, festivals, music venues, and the diverse and friendly people—you know, just to name a few. Texas has always been a business-friendly environment, which has certainly not been lost on tech and financial companies headquartered in strictly-regulated and high-priced states like California and New York. There are 237 corporate relocation and expansion projects in the works in Texas just since the pandemic hit. Tech giant Oracle moved its headquarters to Austin in late 2020; Tesla is building its new Gigafactory there, and Apple will have its second-largest campus there as well. Both Google and Facebook have satellite offices in Austin, and the file hosting services company Dropbox will be leaving San Francisco for Austin. Recently, the global real estate services firm CBRE and multinational financial services behemoth Charles Schwab moved their headquarters from California to the Dallas area. Hewlett Packard’s cofounders were two of the original grandfathers of Silicon Valley, who started their company in a Palo Alto garage in 1939. Now, the corporation is moving its headquarters from San Jose to Houston. And the number of mega-wealthy individuals who’ve moved to Texas are too numerous to mention. It’s not just big cities like Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio that are seeing an influx of people—bedroom communities are growing by leaps and bounds as well—places like New Braunfels, located in the Texas Hill Country, Conroe, 40 miles north of Houston, and McKinney, just 30 minutes up U.S. 75 from Dallas.

‘Bracing for the worst’ in Florida’s COVID-19 hot zone (AP) As quickly as one COVID patient is discharged, another waits for a bed in northeast Florida, the hot zone of the state’s latest surge. But the patients at Baptist Health’s five hospitals across Jacksonville are younger and getting sick from the virus faster than people did last summer. Baptist has over 500 COVID patients, more than twice the number they had at the peak of Florida’s July 2020 surge, and the onslaught isn’t letting up. Hospital officials are anxiously monitoring 10 forecast models, converting empty spaces, adding over 100 beds and “bracing for the worst,” said Dr. Timothy Groover, the hospitals’ interim chief medical officer.

Grace heads for a second hurricane hit on Mexican coast (AP) Hurricane Grace—temporarily knocked back to tropical storm force—headed Friday for a second landfall in Mexico, this time taking aim at the mainland’s Gulf coast after crashing through the country’s main tourist strip. The storm lost punch as it zipped across the Yucatan Peninsula, but it emerged late Thursday over the relatively warm Gulf of Mexico and was gaining energy. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Grace’s winds were back up to 70 mph (110 kph) early Friday and were expected to soon regain hurricane force. It was centered about 265 miles (425 kilometers) east of Tuxpan and was heading west at 16 mph (26 kph). The forecast track would take it toward a coastal region of small fishing towns and beach resorts between Tuxpan and Veracruz, likely Friday night or early Saturday, then over a mountain range toward the heart of the country and the greater Mexico City region. Forecasters said it could drop 6 to 12 inches (15 to 30 centimeters) of rain, with more in a few isolated areas—bringing the threat of flash floods, mudslide and urban flooding.

“Self-determination 1, Human Rights 0” (Foreign Policy) Most Latin American governments offered little official support to the U.S. War in Afghanistan when it began in 2001. At the time, Venezuela put forward a blistering critique of meeting “terror with more terror,” and then-Cuban leader Fidel Castro said U.S. opponents’ irregular warfare abilities could draw out the conflict for 20 years. Over the weekend, as the Afghan government collapsed and chaos engulfed Kabul’s airport, today’s leaders of Cuba and Venezuela echoed their critiques while foreign ministers of other Latin American countries diplomatically issued statements of concern about Afghanistan’s humanitarian needs. Chile and Mexico made plans to accept Afghan refugees, and several countries signed on to a joint international statement protecting Afghan women’s rights. To many in Latin America’s diplomatic and foreign-policy communities, the dark events in Afghanistan confirmed the importance of the principle of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs. The extended U.S. presence in Afghanistan was “the same mistake as always: trying to build democratic states through the use of force,” Colombian political scientist Sandra Guzmán wrote in El Tiempo. Many Latin Americans stressed that methods other than military interventions should be used to work toward human rights, even as they acknowledged how challenging it can be to make progress. “Self-determination 1, human rights 0 #Afghanistan,” tweeted Uruguayan political scientist Andrés Malamud after Kabul fell.

Afghanistan war unpopular amid chaotic pullout (AP) A significant majority of Americans doubt that the war in Afghanistan was worthwhile, even as the United States is more divided over President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and national security, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Roughly two-thirds said they did not think America’s longest war was worth fighting, the poll shows. Meanwhile, 47% approve of Biden’s management of international affairs, while 52% approve of Biden on national security. The poll was conducted Aug. 12-16 as the two-decade war in Afghanistan ended with the Taliban returning to power and capturing the capital of Kabul. Biden has faced bipartisan condemnation in Washington for sparking a humanitarian crisis by being ill-prepared for the speed of the Taliban’s advance.

The U.S. Blew Billions in Afghanistan (Bloomberg) The rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s government to the Taliban fueled fears of a humanitarian disaster, sparked a political crisis for President Joe Biden and caused scenes of desperation at Kabul’s airport. It’s also raised questions about what happened to more than $1 trillion the U.S. spent trying to bring peace and stability to a country wracked by decades of war. While most of that money went to the U.S. military, billions of dollars got wasted along the way, in some cases aggravating efforts to build ties with the Afghan people Americans meant to be helping. A special watchdog set up by Congress spent the past 13 years documenting the successes and failures of America’s efforts in Afghanistan. While wars are always wasteful, the misspent American funds stand out because the U.S. had 20 years to shift course.

Western groups desperate to save Afghan workers left behind (AP) The Italian charity Pangea helped tens of thousands of Afghan women become self-supporting in the last 20 years. Now, dozens of its staff in Afghanistan are in hiding with their families amid reports that Taliban are going door-to-door in search of citizens who worked with Westerners. Pangea founder Luca Lo Presti has asked that 30 Afghan charity workers and their families be included on Italian flights that have carried 500 people to safety this week, but the requests were flatly refused. On Thursday, the military coordinator told him: “Not today.” Dozens of flights already have brought hundreds of Western nationals and Afghan workers to safety in Europe since the Taliban captured the capital of Kabul. Those lucky enough to be rescued from feared reprisals have mostly been Afghans who worked directly with foreign missions, along with their families. European countries also have pledged to evacuate people at special risk from the Taliban—feminists, political activists and journalists—but it is unclear exactly where the line is being drawn and how many Afghan nationals Western nations will be able to evacuate.

[billehrman]

The Opening Trade Revisited

The Reopening Trade Revisited

The Delta variant, Hurricane Ida, shortages, and supply line issues are penalizing growth in the third quarter but not our view of the other side. It may ensure higher growth in 2022 than previously estimated as governments boost spending from previous plans and monetary authorities remain overly accommodative longer, with the Fed postponing tapering until next year. We expect our economy to regain momentum in the fall and the global economy to pick up steam next year. Recent economic data points here and abroad confirm the near-term slowdown, but the solid underlying longer-term fundamentals have not changed.

The financial markets continue to hit new highs, but there has been constant rotation from growth to value and back to growth again. We believe that the next move will be back to value/economically sensitive companies as governments react to the slowdowns by accelerating spending plans, mainly infrastructure, while monetary bodies maintain their overly accommodative policies longer delaying tapering, pointing to the recent pause in growth. While we will continue to own an outsized technology position as we are still in the early innings of elevated spending levels as companies must boost productivity to control costs and remain globally competitive, we have begun to add to economically sensitive/value companies who will benefit from accelerating global growth and trillions of new infrastructure spending. Liquidity trends remain strong, so we would take advantage of any corrections by adding to positions.

The key to the economy reaccelerating remains to getting our arms around the Delta variant by vaccinating all the unvaccinated. It appears that Dr. Gottlieb may be right as the number of cases/deaths is peaking in the south, where the outbreak occurred first. Unfortunately, cases/deaths are still increasing in the North and West, but he expects them to peak in a few weeks. More than 5.39 billion doses have been administered across 182 countries at a rate of roughly 41.6 million per day. In the U.S., 372 million doses have been given so far at an average rate of 918,000 doses per day. It will take less than five months to vaccinate 75% of the world population fully. Moderna filed for U.S authorization for a booster shot, indicating that it raised antibody levels 40-fold in clinical studies. We expect the FDA to approve booster shots within a few weeks, and Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J will have over 7 billion doses available worldwide to handle everyone and all contingencies. Even if a new variant pops up, we expect vaccine modifications could be completed very quickly. We see no reason that vaccines should not be mandated for all, as we have done in the past for other pandemics.

While we did not hear from Fed members this week, they face challenges ahead. In the last few weeks, the economy has softened considerably as the Delta variant spread. Also, pandemic unemployment benefits end in September for 7.5 million people. They will not even discuss tapering until the delta variant spike is under control and they see the impact of reduced government support on spending. While we do believe that most of the inflationary pressures will be transitory, shortages and supply line issues may extend well into 2022, testing the Fed’s resolve.

We are getting more confident that the $1 trillion-dollar plus traditional infrastructure bill will be on President Biden’s desk within a month as it will be political insanity for Pelosi and the Dems to hold it hostage to the $3 trillion plus social infrastructure bill after all the damage caused by Hurricane Ida. Here is what is included in the traditional infrastructure package: $110 billion for roads, bridges, and major projects; $39 billion to modernize public transit; $66 billion for passenger and freight rail; $65 billion for broadband infrastructure; $17 billion for ports; $25 billion for airports; $7.5 billion for zero and low emission buses and ferries; $7.5 billion for electric chargers; $65 billion to rebuild to grid plus another $50 billion to make it more resilient; and $21 billion to clean up Superfund and brownfield sites. The House will address the larger bill under reconciliation. And suppose Democratic Senator Joe Manchin sticks to his guns, urging a “strategic pause” on the $3.5 trillion bills wanting a far smaller reconciliation bill that America can afford and needs to spend. In that case, it is dead in the water as is. We expect a far smaller bill with less tax bite to keep America competitive and the entrepreneurial spirit alive.

Economic data points have been a mixed bag over the last few weeks: employment rose only 235,000 compared to an estimate close to 750,000; TSA airport screenings dropped to the lowest level since March as travel and fares are dropping; high-frequency charts show a weakening economy from Delta; pending home sales fell 1.9%; the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey fell to +9 from +25; airline booking for Labor Day is 19% below 2019 levels; consumer confidence fell to a six month low, and total productivity increased by only 2.1% while manufacturing productivity increased a more robust 8% in the second quarter.  On the other hand, U.S manufacturer's gauge of factory activity rose to 59.9 as the backlogs index increased to 68.2; the new orders index stood at 66.7; unemployment insurance claims fell to 340,000, and construction spending increased by 0.3%.

Economic data points abroad also show weakening trends due to the Delta variant, shortages, and supply line issues. China’s weakness stood out as the government took extreme actions to eradicate the virus: the non-manufacturers purchasing managers index fell to 47.5 in August from 53.3 with specific weakness in services down to 46.7; the manufacturers' index slipped 49.2, down from 50.3. In addition, Japan’s August Manufacturing PMI fell t0 52.7 while confidence in the Eurozone economy dropped to 117.5 as order books deteriorated and retail sales weakened. On the other hand, Europe’s factory backlog hit a record high as companies struggled to meet demand due to shortages and supply line constraints. India’s economy grew 20.1% in the second quarter but has slowed since then due to covid such that growth forecasts have been reduced to 9.5% for the fiscal year ending March 2022. Finally, Australia’s final Markit Manufacturing came in at 52.0 vs. 56.9 last month.

Investment Conclusions

Global growth has slowed over the last month due to the outbreak of the Delta variant, shortages, and supply line issues. We believe that governments and monetary authorities will respond quickly to support their economies just as the variant peaks. Growth, on the other side, will be more robust than initially projected. The market remains one step behind emphasizing growth over value/economic sensitivity. It is time to rotate again and invest in the re-reopening trade, as we did late last summer. We will continue to hold most of our tech positions as we remain in the early innings of above-average tech spending that we discussed last week. We also added to defense positions after Afghanistan.

The time has come for our government to pass a much-needed traditional infrastructure bill that strengthens the very core of America and rewards investment/risk-taking.  If we have learned anything from the pandemic, we need to shorten supply lines and support research to remain an economic powerhouse. And we must always be there for our friends.

[midnightactual]

Critical Analysis & Tactics I (CAT-1): The Hollowfication Incident

How strong is Yoruichi? That’s actually a very involved question. I’ve decided to create a series of articles detailing my thoughts on the matter by looking at military incidents and confrontations involving her. This is the first, and you may consult the others at your leisure:

CAT-2: The Central 46 Trial Breakout

CAT-3: Yoruichi vs. Byakuya

CAT-4A & B: Yoruichi vs. Soifon

CAT-5: Yoruichi & Soifon vs. Aizen

CAT-6: Yoruichi vs. Yammy

CAT-7: Yoruichi, Kisuke, & Isshin vs. Aizen

CAT-8: Yoruichi & Co. vs. Yhwach

CAT-9: Yoruichi vs. Askin

I’ve talked about this topic before (here) but I’d like to investigate it again from a different angle while also discussing what really happened on the night of the Hollowfication Incident. I think the five pages above tell you something very important about her strength, particularly the bottom-left one. These are from chapter -103 and are Yamamoto’s orders after Kensei, Mashiro, and the upper officer corps of the 9th Division (the Muguruma Commando Unit) go “missing”. (I’ve omitted Kisuke’s interruption as it doesn’t reveal much that’s pertinent to this discussion.) We learn an awful lot from these orders and it’s worth going through it all in some detail in order to get to my point.

Since the is is a long post, let me put the conclusion here up front: Yoruichi is much stronger than the average Taichō of the Gotei 13.

01. I would, quite aside from these pages, first like to remind the reader that nominally the Gotei 13, Onmitsukidō, and the Kidō Corps are equal in their status of reporting to Central 46. The Onmitsukidō and the Kidō Corps do not report to the Gotei 13. This means that accordingly, the Captain-Commander (Yamamoto), the Supreme Commander (Yoruichi), and the Corps Commander (Tessai) are technically co-equal in official stature; you might regard them as roughly equivalently ranked, being like the Joint Chiefs of Staff of their respective branches. (Jūshirō’s shock and Shunsui’s comment that Tessai’s presence indicates, “This is turning into a big deal,” is proof of that.)

Yamamoto, by virtue of seniority over the other two (and Yoruichi’s dual-hatted command within the Gotei 13) still commands their respect (as evidenced by Tessai addressing him formally and Yoruichi heeding his orders without question) and might be thought of as being like a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a result. I’m not arguing at all that Yoruichi and Tessai are equal in strength to Yamamoto, as they plainly are not. However, you would expect by virtue of these positions that they would be more powerful than run of the mill Taichō, and I believe this sequence of events proves that.

02. Notice in the second page that Yamamoto says that 5 Taichō will be dispatched to deal with the situation. This does seem to be an accurate translation by Viz as the red characters, 隊長 (taichō) and 五 (go), do indeed mean “Captain” and “five”.

He will then proceed to name (on page 3) Rose, Shinji, and Love, and then to indicate Tessai and Hachigen (on page 5). Thus: even though he is the Lieutenant of the Kidō Corps, Hachigen’s equivalent rank in the Gotei 13 would be Captain! He is a Taichō-level combatant, which fits in well with his performance alongside Soifon against Barragan. That he is actually lower ranked than Tessai despite this tells you that Tessai is likely notably stronger (which is subsequently borne out). Shunsui is the one to suggest that Tessai be substituted with Lisa, to which Yamamoto agrees.

03. Agreeing to this fits into Yamamoto’s other behavior. Let’s talk about him first. The important thing to understand about Yamamoto is that we perceive him very differently as a character (because of our point of view) than how the characters themselves perceive him in-universe. To your average reader, he probably seems staid, close-minded, overly conservative, dispassionate, and stubborn, precisely because he supports (and substantially built!) the status quo. However, he is supposed to be the most experienced, wise, and powerful Shinigami there is. And, in fact, he is.

Consider things from Yamamoto’s perspective. Things in the Gotei 13, the Seireitei, and Soul Society as a whole have worked for over 2,011 years as of TBTP. (The graduating class of about 1956, which Renji, Momo, Kira, and originally Rukia were part of, is definitively established as the Academy’s 2066th graduating year, meaning the Academy was founded circa 110 BC.) That compares quite favorably to the longest continuously extant human state, the Pandyan Empire, which lasted for about 1,850 years. The runner up is the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire which lasted 1,123 years by itself (add 499 more if you want to count the whole Roman Empire too, as the Byzantines themselves would’ve). That’s pretty good. It tells you something: Yamamoto’s system works (largely because he guarantees its continuation through his own personal power).

And Yamamoto generally conducts himself rather cautiously and methodically. He doesn’t like change, spontaneity, or impulsivity, regardless of how justifiable it may or may not be. (These are all things Ichigo initially represents.) And actually, as a soldier, that is probably exactly the kind of commanding officer you would really want to serve under: one who doesn’t take wild risks which might get your ass killed. People respect Yamamoto not just for his strength, but because he’s actually good at what he does.

04. Before we talk about what his orders actually are, I want to make a brief digression here to make a point: only Taichō-level combatants actually matter in the Gotei 13 in terms of military calculations. This is firmly established by the Soul Society arc. Byakuya says this in chapter 162 about bankai:

The key takeaways:

Members of the Great Noble Clans are stronger than everyone else (making people like Yamamoto, Retsu, Aizen, and Kenpachi extreme anomalies)

Even members of the Great Noble Clans only rarely achieve bankai (which, given a Shinigami generation is much longer than a human one, is saying something)

People who achieve bankai are uniformly important to Soul Society

You know who has bankai? Renji, a Fukutaichō who just achieved it and had used it in open combat against Byakuya, a feat which everyone with spiritual sense should’ve detected at the time given it, as Yoruichi notes elsewhere, makes one 5 to 10 times stronger. (Recall how on the Senzaikyu Bridge, everyone felt Ichigo’s approach even though he didn’t have bankai yet.) So Renji’s feat should be very impressive and important, right? Not to Yamamoto. In chapter 153, he already told us:

Renji is expendable. He could be killed and replaced without issue. Yamamoto then goes on to even further establish that Fukutaichō are comparatively useless by effortlessly crushing Nanao with his reiatsu alone in chapter 155. In short, Yamamoto does not rate bankai by itself. (The sole exception to this attitude by Yamamoto is perhaps toward his own Fukutaichō, Sasakibe.) It should also be extremely self-evident that Taichō-level combatants can have an extremely wide separation in power from one another, and I’m not going to substantiate that assertion here because we’d be here all day. So, when we talk about what happens during the Hollowfication Incident, let’s do so with a sense of clarity that only Taichō really matter in Yamamoto’s calculations.

05. Having established that, let’s return to the pages and talk about Yamamoto’s orders and how he’s positioning his forces on this particular night. A summary:

1st: Yamamoto - defense

2nd: Yoruichi - standby

3rd: Rose - deployed

4th: Retsu - defense

5th: Shinji - deployed

6th: Ginrei - defense

7th: Love - deployed

8th: Shunsui - defense

9th: Kensei - MIA

10th: n/a - office unfilled

11th: Kiganjō - no orders

12th: Kisuke - no orders

13th: Jūshirō - defense

The Gotei 13 had 12 Taichō at the time, as the 10th Division’s had died and not been replaced yet. Kensei was at this point MIA, thus putting them at 11. Including Tessai and Hachigen (as noted earlier) bumps them back up to 13. This tells us why the Kidō Corps was brought in: to bring the Gotei 13 back up to full strength during this crisis.

Yamamoto directly assigns his oldest and most experienced subordinates (Shunsui, Jūshirō, and Ginrei) to the defense of the Seireitei. His orders to Retsu to stay and his own continuing presence mean that indeed all the oldest and seemingly strongest Taichō are allocated to defense and garrison duty.

Rose, Shinji, and Love are deployed (along with, initially, Tessai and Hachigen) to investigate.

Kiganjō and Kisuke aren’t issued orders, presumably because both are considered unreliable. Kisuke is there, if late, but is effectively dismissed after his outburst regarding Hiyori.

Yoruichi is designated as the only flexible element in this plan. Before I return to this final point, I want to address some lingering matters and then explain to you what this deployment actually means.

First, It’s notable that Yamamoto’s assertion that Retsu is “too important” is a reflection of her healing abilities and their importance to a potential wartime situation. (Note that Kisuke, in chapter 227, dismissed Orihime from the war effort against Aizen by saying that 4th Division, particularly Retsu, more than equaled her abilities.)

Second, the substitution of Lisa for Tessai (at Shunsui’s suggestion) is not a reflection on Lisa’s power (remember: Fukutaichō don’t matter, and Lisa didn’t have bankai at this time anyway). It’s suggested because of the risk of sending Tessai and Hachigen together. It’s presumably approved because of the seeming overabundance of force in the deployed unit.

What do I mean by that? Think about it this way: a Taichō and his subordinates go missing. While that is (very) concerning, consider the ways in which it is likely to happen. Is it likely to be a Hollow? Almost certainly not. It suggests an ambush. Which in turn suggests a coordinated military strategy. By whom? Unknown. So, how do you respond? You respond in force, but there is probably such a thing as too much force. After all, what is likely to take out 4 Taichō, let alone 5? Not a lot. So the difference between 4 and 5 doesn’t much matter, and substituting Lisa for Tessai is fine. The deployed force should still be overkill either way.

It also retains Tessai for defense, and Yamamoto’s real concern here is revealed by his allocation of a preponderance of forces to the Seireitei: he seems to believe this is a diversion in preparation for an attack on the Seireitei itself. Thus, through action and inaction alike, he commits 4 Taichō to deployment and retains 9 for defense. He is overwhelmingly interested in defense against possible follow-ups and believes he has likely still committed excessive force to deal with whatever Kensei’s situation is.

06. Thus, finally, we come to Yoruichi’s role in this plan as the the only mobile auxiliary force. Let me state my premise first, then I’ll substantiate it: Yoruichi is the only possible backup the deployed force has, meaning she and she alone is their lifeline in the event something goes wrong—this fact alone tells you she is more powerful than the deployed force as a whole. In other words, Yoruichi is stronger than Kensei, Rose, Love, Shinji, Tessai, and Hachigen put together.

Bold claim, I’m sure! What evidence do I have to support this assertion? I tell you it’s simply obvious using conservative tactical logic, studying their military disposition, and understanding the political situation.

Tactical logic first: suppose for a second that there was an unknown criminal incident in a local big box store like Walmart, Home Depot, or whatever you like. A squad car’s worth of cops (2) went in. They then stopped responding to central. So, backup is ordered and now four times as many cops go in (8). What if they stop responding? Would you send in another 2 cops? Or 8? Or even 10? No. You would likely send in at least 20–30, if not just the local SWAT team. It doesn’t make sense, after having lost so many elements already, not to escalate radically, just as sending 8 guys is a radical escalation from sending 2. You don’t send 2, then 8, then somewhere between 2 and 10 yet again. You’re throwing away limited forces for no gain at that point.

Yoruichi is the SWAT team. The fact Yoruichi alone was the potential reinforcements for the deployed group tells you that one of two things is true:

Yoruichi is stronger, unto herself, than the deployed group, or...

Yamamoto was prepared to simply sacrifice the deployed group if the situation went bad, and their backup, for no gain

Military disposition second: given Yamamoto is already working with a diminished and very finite force, with possibly 2 out of 13 Taichō down, (2) does not make a lot of sense given his character. (Again: note how he reserved Retsu and Tessai out of strategic concern.) What is the benefit? It is worth noting here that after the defection of Aizen, Gin, and Kaname a century later, the Seireitei also adopted a conservative and defensive posture (but more on this later).

Political situation third: doing this also wouldn’t make a lot of sense given the state that the Gotei 13 was in as a whole at the time, which Shunsui and Jūshirō helpfully expounded upon in chapter -108:

Long story made short, the Gotei 13 was in a period of upheaval and turmoil at the time—a period of weakness. Sacrificing your military assets when you are weak is not particularly intelligent.

We can thus recast our two earlier possibilities as follows:

Yoruichi is in fact incredibly strong, or...

Yamamoto is a military idiot who wasted forces for no good reason, despite the fact he is supposed to be extremely militarily competent

I know which of those two my money is on. But I’m also not done yet in proving it.

07. Let’s be very clear here that the events of the Hollowfication Incident were the most extreme losses we know of that the Gotei 13 ever suffered in terms of assets that actually mattered. The Gotei 13 lost a grand total of 8 Taichō-class combatants that night (Yoruichi, Kisuke, Tessai, Hachigen, Shinji, Rose, Love, and Kensei). Their strength was reduced from 14 acting with the Kidō Corps to 6. That’s 57.12% losses. From this perspective, it was a much worse disaster than Aizen’s defection or the Wandenreich War in terms of outcome. The loss of both the Supreme Commander of the Onmitsukidō and the Corps Commander of the Kidō Corps was especially grievous.

It’s also worth pointing out that as far as Central 46 was concerned the Hollowfication Incident was a conspiracy orchestrated by Kisuke, Tessai, and by proxy Yoruichi. Given the losses, it can only be read as an attempted coup, and other than Aizen’s murder of Central 46, was a much more serious event than even Aizen’s defection.

This raises a simple question: Why didn’t Central 46 demand Yoruichi, Tessai, and Kisuke be hunted down?

The first and most obvious answer is that numerically the forces to do so while maintaining the defense of the Seireitei simply did not exist. Only Yamamoto, Retsu, Ginrei, Shunsui, Kiganjō, and Jūshirō were left. Kiganjō was plainly unsuited for such a mission. Retsu would be even more critical after such losses and would never be sent. Ginrei, Shunsui, and Jūshirō were exactly the ones tasked with securing the Seireitei and could be thought of as the ‘minimum’ needed to do that. And finally, it’s unlikely that Yamamoto himself would go, even though he later states to both Shunsui and Jūshirō in chapter 154 that:

Put simply: Yamamoto didn’t have the manpower to chase them. (And Yamamoto would make a very similar decision after Aizen’s defection, choosing not to pursue him, Gin, and Kaname to Hueco Mundo, which he likely regarded as being a giant trap he could ill afford to take loses from; he learned from the Hollowfication Incident!)

But that isn’t the only answer, because even when he later did after the Gotei 13 was reconstituted, he wasn’t interested in tracking them down. This is surely not because they were just written off as dead (as Byakuya implies on the Senzaikyu Bridge) given the enormity of the accusations against them. The Gotei 13 didn’t give up on tracking down Ginjō and Xcution for far less; it isn’t in the business of forgiving or forgetting.

Maybe Yoruichi choosing to spare Central 46′s lives factored into that decision (see here) but if it did, doesn’t, “She might come back and kill us all and there’s nothing we could do to stop it,” tell you she’s very strong?

And if that didn’t affect the decision-making process, what did? I’ll tell you plainly: Yamamoto did not have confidence that any team he could afford to send out was likely to beat Yoruichi, Tessai, and Kisuke—and he didn’t think much of Kisuke. That should also tell you that Yoruichi is very strong.

The Urahara Shōten crew was allowed not only to escape but to live in peace not just because of whatever actions that might have taken to protect themselves, but because a military confrontation with them was simply too risky. And a major component of that risk must, logically, be that Yoruichi is extremely strong.

The anime-only Reigai Uprising filler arc is exactly that—filler—but it is known that Kubo was at least consulted for the filler arcs. And during that filler arc, in episode 319, Yoruichi’s Wiki entry notes the following:

She fought three Shinigami captains and four lieutenant-level and above opponents at the same time with Hakuda without receiving any notable damage.

All of the above is in my opinion convincing evidence that although this feat is non-canon, it would be very plausible for it to happen in canon. That’s how strong Yoruichi is. That is why she is the designated threat barometer (see here) for the latter half of the series. Yoruichi is not arrogant. This whole sequence is designed to tell you as much.

P.S. Since I'm also vaguely talking about this: yeah, Yoruichi didn't beat Askin. But you know what? Mayuri didn't beat Pernida, Shunsui didn't beat Lille, and Byakuya, Tōshirō, Kenpachi, and the rest didn't beat Gerard. None of the Sternritter were beaten by their primary opponents. And, for the record, Yoruichi did better against Askin than Ōetsu did, without a ridiculously overpowered zanpakutō and with a much stronger Askin, as Yhwach hadn't yet absorbed the Soul King and powered up the Sternritter when Ōetsu confronted them. Just sayin'...

[joecial-distancing]

July Roundup

Lifestyle:

I’ve been getting back into running this summer. It’s been about 4 years since I’ve done any serious running, and I have been made painfully aware of the differences in my body at age 29 compared to 25. My knees hurt more, I need to attend to stretching much more seriously than I used to. I’m coming at the task with better self-knowledge than last time, though; I know how far and how fast I’ve been capable of pushing, and I find an enormous amount of comfort and strength from that familiarity. 

I’ve also been applying to jobs, a process which started as nauseatingly daunting, but has gradually settled into just a regular chore of the week (ideally chore of the day, if I’m to keep up with new years resolutions). Getting a resume mushed into a satisfying shape has felt nice, as has getting together a form cover letter that I know hasn’t hurt my chances of getting my foot in doors. Annoyance Boxes checked off, and the rest is getting familiar with the rest of the grind. Interviews have been and will be the same process.

Games:

I’ve also been playing a lot of Sekiro. I’ve always “liked” Fromsoft games, but it’s been rare that I’ve been able to justify the time investment. There’s an appeal in the structure, endless chances to bash myself against a problem until it clicks, being able to run drills when stuck or inadequate (and there is a hook in the inadequacy; nothing frustrates me more than being unable to Just figure out a solution, or requiring too much time to get there. I have a tense relationship with time and deadline pressure. Impatience is one of my greatest vices). So with school finished, I’m diving into this as a treat to myself. The systems are fun, and the camera is so fucking awful that I get unreasonably angry about it. One thing I always do with these games that I think is anathema to a lot of their fans is to spoil myself on what I’m up against. In dark souls I would always have open area maps, rather than try to navigate the combat and exploration simultaneously. It put my mind at ease, I didn’t like the discomfort of the tension of untriggered surprise. And with Sekiro, I know roughly the zones I’m up against, I’m not above watching videos of the boss fights to learn the proper counters etc. No shame, no honor, that’s not what I get out of these games, really.

As with running, so with jobsearch, so with Sekiro, the method is diligence, the appeal is the pleasure of feeling my improvement over time. There is nothing more exciting to me than casually accomplishing something that I know would have annihilated me only a short time ago. I can finish 2 miles in 20 minutes, I want to get it down to 15. This also means the videogame tends to lose out on the priorities list—if I’m wanting to dedicate myself to practice, there’s almost always a different outlet that’d be better outcomes in the long run

very 8 of pentacles mood overall, lately.

Books:

I’m almost done with Pynchon’s Against the Day, which had taken up all of my Reading attention span this month. Unless it does something in the final 8% to lose me hard, it’ll probably clock in as my 2nd favorite of his stuff, behind Gravity’s Rainbow.  Anarchism as expressed against American mining companies, European empires, and the Mexican state; searches for a lost paradise city; warfare between schools of mathematics; the nature of Light. At face value, it feels closest to Gravity’s Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, compared to the rest of his work (I know there’s a lot of subtext and referencing going over my head with all of these in terms of both history and literature; I noticed a lot of reviews of AtD focused about the variety of genre style work that he’s pulling from in certain sections, nearly all of which is lost on me. It has, however, been very fun to me that I’m able to keep up with the mathematic academia infighting depicted in this). There’s a “fairy tales coming to life” quality to all three, if instead of Grimms’ stories it’s historical models of the world: Supersonic rockets wreck the flow of pavlovian cause & effect, the destruction of natural landscape in the course of linear surveying becomes a direct conduit for a massive influx of evil energy, quaternion mathematics casting time as real and space as imaginary allow a yogi to contort himself out of sight and into the imaginary plane. The aether is experimentally disproven in the beginning of Against the Day’s timeline, which doesn’t stop holdout engineers and mystics from working wonders with it.

It feels like there’s about as much going on in here as GR, but where GR is claustrophobically overstuffed (which is also part of the reason it’s a better book) and Mason & Dixon gets kind of plodding, the material here is given space to breathe, without losing momentum. It probably helps that the characters in this are a.) numerous, and b.) unusually solid as far as Pynchon goes.

It’s also got many great examples of something else I really like about Pynchon, which is that he is willing to commit 110% to incredibly stupid jokes. There’s an Elmer Fudd reference in here that completely knocked me on my ass.

Viz:

Watched the Bo Burnham netflix, which was mostly pretty good, though I’m completely out of patience for ostentations self-awareness or fake debate where the ~comedian~ who’s concerned about being ~white privileged mannn~ feels guilty he might be ~taking up space~, doesn’t know that he ~deserrrrves it~... out of patience because I already know what he did with that guilt (if genuine) — he didn’t scrap the project, he released the fucking thing anyway. What am I to do with this, Bo Burnham? Would you like my permission? Would you like an “it’s ok dude” from people of marginalized groups within your audience? Why am I watching along for a decision you’ve quite literally already made? I don’t trust displays of vulnerability before an audience of this size.

Also watched through I Think You Should Leave, which... sure it’s funny, and also very effective at making me uncomfortable, which is clearly what it’s aiming to do, but. I don’t really get why it’s got such a strong cultural draw within the online spheres I’m normally checked into. Saw some discourse about how the quotability is somehow distinct from regular memeing, which, alright get over yourselves jesus christ.

speaking of flavors of the month, watched 50 shades and lmao. I’ve been told by a trusted source the books are worse which is hilarious.

also speaking of flavors of the [century], S.O. and I have been doing a rewatch of pre-MCU comic book movies, which has been some fascinating anthropology. It meant, though, that we had to sit through howard the duck, an absolutely wretched film. Other highlights so far: willem dafoe power rangers acting, the soundtrack on affleck daredevil (incl a fuckin choice Evanescence exercise montage), Blade & Blade II still hold up.

We’ve also made it to the final season of pre-reboot xfiles. Duchovny’s mostly gone from this last season, replaced largely by robert patrick of T1000 fame, who is a better actor but a worse character, dude’s basically just A Cop. The writing’s weirdly probably better than the last couple Duchovny seasons, but the show doesn’t work without him — his bad acting was the main thing keeping things together, the tone’s all off now.

[eightlivs]

25 July 2020

Oh, do NOT get me wrong, I would LOVE to regale you with tales of how we’re already machining pieces for the collider and we’ve got things ordered and we’re starting construction and we’ve gotten a TON of stuff done while I’ve been out -

But no.

Guess what this chick has been doing? For THREE MONTHS?

RE-LEARNING FUCKING AUTO.CAD.

Why, why, WHY can’t they just use Solid.Works. Why. We’ve used Solid.Works for YEARS.

Well, apparently NOT, the other-universe version of Alchemax uses AUTO.CAD. And not even the CAD software I remember, oh no, it’s some weird pseudo-command-line shit that I’m having to memorize.

And we can’t use the software I’ve BEEN using up ‘til now because fucking formatting and something else about not having a commercial license for it, blah blah, so we’ve got to take all the stuff I’ve been doing and convert it.

So everyone ELSE is off modeling and altering pieces that I originally drafted and designed, while I get to sit in a computer lab and watch fucking TRAINING VIDEOS and try not to throw things at people.

(Didn’t work. Adrien has to go change clothes and my coffee’s all over the floor.)

You know what? Fuck this. I’ve been staring at a screen for so long my eyeballs are going to roll out of my damn skull. I could use a good run out into the trees. It’s late enough that maybe I’ll get to see some stars.

-

I’m back. Oh, that’s much better. Jumping fifty-foot birch trees with octopus arms? Whoo, that never gets old! You know my best initial propelled speed so far is nearly 90 mph? It’s WAY faster in a swing or a dive - 90 mph is jumping from a standstill. That’s limited by me, by the way, not the prosthetics. I’m still working up to it, okay? You do realize a jump from standstill to 90 mph means 0-90 mph in less than a second, right? That’s like 4 g’s.

And if you don’t know, G’s are g-forces, which is basically “how much times the Earth’s gravity is this acceleration.” Trained humans, like pilots, can wear suits and flex muscles to let them withstand about 9 g’s, but the rest of us puny humans can withstand about 5 g’s (not comfortably, but you’d manage it). That’s the equivalent of roughly 0 to 110 mph in one second.

Not bad, eh?

Oh. I ran into the new Spider-Man, y’know. He’s still so... small.

Still, he’s a fast little shit. I’ll have another bruise on my jaw tomorrow. (Why is it always my jaw?)

I hadn’t seen him for a while. Guess it was too much to hope he was gone.

Ah well. All in good time.

I’m in a much better mood. Time to go home for the day.

Footnotes: Hi everyone! I’m back! I’ve moved, I no longer have the flu or whatever (not COVID, don’t worry), I nailed what I hope is a more stable income source... things are winding down in my personal life... Holy hell, has the past three months been QUITE something.

Anyway! Notes as usual: SolidWorks and AutoCAD are both actual CAD softwares used in engineering - they’re basically highly precise modeling programs. I’ve actually used both - I prefer SolidWorks, but meh. My current job uses something entirely different - one called Terramodel, which does work off a sort of custom command line type of interface - and it’s bloody annoying to learn, so I share Liv’s annoyance there.

Liv’s jump speed is limited by the fact that humans are squishy and don’t accelerate very solidly. Fastest acceleration a non-trained human could likely withstand is indeed about 5 g’s before all sorts of weird stuff starts happening - most notably, you pass out because there’s very little blood going to your head. That link has a lot of info about G-forces! The calculations are pretty easy, too - you can even google “G-force conversion” and a calculator will probably pop up.

Quick edit: Apparently the trees outside Alchemax are birch trees, not pines, as I previously said! Thank you to an arborist anon who took the time to point that out!