b. a lot unexplained - is in part my basis of "not truth". partial truths include partial untruth. meaning less or unexplained.
c. Forensics analysis - also means Indications in your example. the Preponderance of the evidence.
Still, for discussion, your survival analyis showed an increase in variable A, saw an in increase of variable B.
For me, allowing is to be human 😀, truth is a 99.999% absolute x(function of Y). but a 96% factor.. the unexplained 4% is the "not fact, not truth" of variables q and r ?
I was pondering the existentialism of "Statistics". Now I know, we have smart peeps here, academics, statistics users.
Of course, statistics has a useful purpose. But also some consequential negatives.
So to debate and discuss; I posit:
a. Statistics are not Truth.
b. Statistics are collectively, not a Fact.
c. Statistics can be a collection of facts.
d. We often hear Correlation is not Causation
e. Statistics are never showing Causation
f. Statistics show trends, vectors of generalized conclusions.
However, a good thing can be to say, Statistics indicate (trend).generally (more likely than not; ie >50.000001%) something is such, this or that derived (?) conclusion.
Statistics are evil when; a minor datum set is misrepresented as "mostly, or generally, or all of set/thing).
In Automotive, Risks assessment, a probability of occurrence against degree of consequence (severity) is used in Failure Mode analysis. Automotive engineering is the superior technical/business domain for reducing product risk causing harm to Users. NHTSA, SAE.
In Medical Devices, products get approved with high probability of adverse events. There are 10s of thousands of FDA (required) CE (Customer Experience).reports. .If Automotive safety occurrences were normalized to Medical devices, Automotive deaths would increase to 100s of thousands annually.
Pharmaceuticals are worse in my opinion. Essentially because chemistry has statistical variations.
I read the drug insert (showing some of of the study results and adverse events) of drugs. My kidney doctor who I fired 18 months ago, prescribed Farxiga. When a. K was treating with him as he thought I had a state of kidney disease. and b. Type II diabetes. Both are contraindicated for Farxiga!! idiot. clueless dangerous doctor.
>>>Serious, life-threatening cases of necrotizing fasciitis of the perineum (Fournier’s Gangrene) have been reported in patients with diabetes prescribed Farxiga. <<<
a. malpractice
b. this drug should absolutely never have been approved by the FDA.
Statistics are not truth but are proxies of it. A key is the explanatory power of the stats used. An adjusted R-squared of 30% means that the results explain 30% of the variance; which means a lot is unexplained. But assuming the data and methods haven't been faked, we generally trust it as a partial explanation. And most journal articles state implicitly state that.
As far as correlation is not causation, that is true for regression models, but not for probabilistic models, such as event history/survival/failure analysis. But they are statistical models as well. My dissertation was an event history of the biotech industry financing for 25 years. In a survival analysis, the models show for X increase in variable A, we see a Y change in variable B. That is causation.
We use statistics to test theories, which are not fact, but which explain observations, which can be factual. In my most recent study (under review) we examine stock market reactions to an event. We know that the announcement averages 0.59% across all the firms (I have the range for all 36); but that if we split it into two sub-samples, one is positive (about 1.65%), the other is negative. We present a theory to explain the positive reactions, and we explain about 25% of what causes it. Stated differently, what might appear to be a random event probably is not, and we have captured 25% of the explanation as to why it is not random.
If you want to geek out over cool statistical analysis, Data Colada is awesome. Three faculty do forensic investigations on studies: they are the ones who uncovered Havard B-School prof Gina Francesco's data faking. And when you read how they did it, it is humbling. I thought I knew excel well...these folks know it far better than I. I'd say anyone is college educated can follow most of their work, which is why I like it.
One beneficial outcome of Data colada is most major journals now require you place your data in a repository, so that if there are geek questions, they can analyze it for itself. Doing so encourages faculty to dub-check their data for errors.
If you search my name at the OSF repository you can look at my most recent work (currently under submission).
My first gut reaction is, ew!, followed closely by the question as to the NNT statistic for Farxiga (and whatever it’s non-brand name is). The “numbers needed to treat” can reveal some different aspects of prescription drugs and other treatments from the ones required by our FDA.
Statistics, as you say, are not bullet proof, of course. In many cases, I’m suspicious of definitions. You have to define clearly the things you’re counting, and those are often fraught, complex categories of things.
To use a simple, hopefully not too crass, example: counting populations by race. If you just counted people as Black and White, you’d immediately find a morass of people who are some combination of both, and then the whole statistical business gets a lot murkier all at once…
I thought about this (history is written by the winners) and it looks like it’s true for the winners of major wars that resulted in countries being merged with other countries or having their boundaries changed, or leaders and their followers being deposed.
But maybe not when it comes to the winners and losers of elections.
It's probably more accurate to say that "History is written by the survivors" which is why we have good histories of Rome and not of the Gauls or Etruscans. Neither of those last 2 survived (that is, their cultues). But we know about Rome even though it was eventually overrun by barbarians. They adopted the Roman culture the conquered.
I'm reading an excellent essay by my favorite economist, Zhang Weiying "Pundits Are Not Prophets". He unpacks and dissects why the experts are so often wrong, and why the folks blurbing the daily diatribe are almost always wrong. He's the guy that dismantled Graham Allison's childish bit with Thucydides Trap, the moronic book lauded by the academic clerisy as "explaining" US-China relations.
Of course, it was merely an historical analogy, and as such, completely misleading and awful, because every thinkable analogy is full of flaws and holes, incongruencies, biased selection criteria for comparison, and so on. The only safe bet is never to trust any analogy, ever.
The only problem is that we’ve got no other means of comprehending and analyzing the world as mere mortals.
"The currently widespread "Thucydides Trap" mindset is a profoundly destructive notion that could mislead the country. We must free ourselves from this intellectual constraint. The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), a conflict between the Athenian and Spartan alliances, was not the inevitable result of the rise of a new power, as Thucydides claimed. The war was not inevitable or natural. Instead, it resulted from political leaders' arrogance, resentment, and vengeance-driven attitudes and their ignorance, misjudgments, and third-party provocations. Athens’ excessive greed and unrealistic goals ultimately led to its catastrophic failure in the war."
"Donald Kagan, a Yale University scholar, conducted in-depth research on the Peloponnesian War. He found that the politicians involved lacked foresight, mistakenly believing they could achieve significant gains at low costs. They relied on past experiences to craft strategies without adequately accounting for the risks of misjudgments and miscalculations, nor did they prepare contingency plans. Thus, the war's outbreak was neither inevitable nor the result of irresistible forces; it arose from specific decisions made in a particular context."
I can buy that. I was kidding about the T-Trap, and had only heard of it in terms of it being an academic fascination for a while. I didn’t figure I’d ever get to the bottom of it, so didn’t think it was personally worth investing more time in just to get nowhere.
On its face, it sounds unlikely for an event with such poor, scant documentation could furnish lessons for today, unless in only the broadest, vaguest, and abstract terms.
Things that long ago are seen today through the distortions of the world we live in having a profound impact on how we interpret *the past.* It hardly seems likely that events that far in the past could serve as an accurate lens for viewing the present—unless it was just to reinforce what we wanted to believe about the present all along.
WSJ reports: "Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were each arrested in connection with a sweeping investigation into illegal gambling and rigging games in the NBA ..."
I admire the "each" in this sentence, as if readers might otherwise believe that Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were the same person.
The damning one is that "Scary Terry" Rozier pulled out of a game, where there were large wagers on his performance. That's pretty close to throwing a game, which means he's played his last NBA game ever, barring a miracle. What is scary is players regularly engage in "load management", sitting out a game, so it is hard to know when someone is pulling out for load management and for shaving points.
As for the illegal poker game, IDK if he'll be banned for that or not. But if the people he played with were threatening another player, he'll be banned as well.
It's a shame the NBA doesn't explain to players how statistical analysis works, and how they monitor bets. They won't catch an individual $100 bet if the overall accumulation of bets is within a standard range. But the payoffs are where people are greedy and lay serious money on it.
I dislike serious gambling for a reason: too much incentive for others to cheat.
With the amount of dough these guys make, the swaggering social cachet they possess, and the elite lifestyle they enjoy, it's remarkable that they'd risk it all for....what? A couple extra Ferrari's...?
Those fellas are gonna burn. They're gonna burn bad.
You are a NeoColonialist! Claiming oral traditions of the indigenous people's native language is not "history".... IS OPRESSION! There is only one history, the one I chose this morning! Which reminds me...I kinda wrote/plagiarized/stole this next piece....
"There is nothing inherent or natural in having an historical perspective. On the contrary, thinking of events as embedded in an eternal present is much more natural.
Only a relatively small number of civilisations developed a strong historical sense—primarily Classical Greece and Imperial China. Classical Greece passed a sense of history on to Rome, from whence it was passed on to Islam. China passed an historical sense onto Korea, Vietnam and Japan. After dwindling to chronicles in the medieval period, the revival of Classicism in the Renaissance passed an historical sense onto post-medieval Christian Europe and so to the modern West.
With the rise of Critical Theory and its derivatives, we can see Western progressives replacing a sense of history with egregiously self-serving myth. This is a profound attack on an informed sense of ourselves, of others, of the past, of the present, and of a sense of future possibilities. It is a profound attack on history, on having a genuinely historical awareness. It has a great deal to do with the march of toxic stupidities in our time.
The shift away from rule of law—whose fundamental principle is treat like cases like—to anarcho-tyranny, to imposing ever harsher burdens on the law-abiding and ever weaker ones on the “marginalised”, represents a grotesque failure to understand the lessons of the past. It represents the stupidity of the moral and cognitive arrogance of the Western-progressive mindset at its most egregious. No wonder the netizens of China—a society and civilisation with a profound sense of history—regard the baizuo ( 白左) with such contempt."
Interesting? You say interesting?!? There's more...
The term **"Bai Zuo" (白左, "White Left")** is primarily used in Chinese online discourse, particularly among nationalist or conservative-leaning netizens, to critique certain strands of Western liberalism. Below is a deeper look at how and why it’s used:
### **1. Common Targets of "Bai Zuo" Criticism**
The term is often applied to:
- **Western liberals/leftists** (especially politicians, activists, and celebrities) who promote:
- "Excessive" political correctness (e.g., gender pronouns, cancel culture).
- Open-border immigration policies (seen as unrealistic or destabilizing).
- Climate activism (e.g., Greta Thunberg-style protests, viewed as performative).
- "Virtue signaling" (e.g., supporting BLM or LGBTQ+ rights while ignoring issues in non-Western countries).
- **"SJW" (Social Justice Warrior) culture**—Chinese critics argue that Western progressives focus on identity politics at the expense of practical solutions.
- **Western media & NGOs**—Accused of hypocrisy for condemning China’s policies while ignoring problems in their own countries (e.g., U.S. gun violence, European immigration crises).
### **2. How "Bai Zuo" is Used in Chinese Discussions**
- **Mocking perceived hypocrisy**:
- Example: A U.S. politician advocating for racial justice while supporting foreign wars might be labeled *Bai Zuo* for "selective morality."
- Example: European leaders pushing climate policies while maintaining high carbon footprints could be criticized as *Bai Zuo* hypocrisy.
- **Contrasting with Chinese pragmatism**:
- Some Chinese netizens argue that China prioritizes stability and development (e.g., poverty alleviation, infrastructure) over "divisive" Western-style activism.
- The term reinforces the idea that Western liberalism is "decadent" or "declining," while China offers a more effective model.
- **Political deflection**:
- When Western critics attack China’s human rights record, Chinese state-aligned commentators may dismiss them as *Bai Zuo* "ignorant of China’s realities."
I could go on for a while, but that's enough for today's lesson...
I occasionally find it humbling, but I ease my mind by reminding myself that if the internet, or electric grid, goes down, I’ll be in the same boat with possibly billions of people. I’m not sure why but that provides some comfort. Besides, how will worrying about it help?
And to everyone else but with sarcasm switched off.
Just when I thought it was safe to get rid of my Harvard Classics. I still have my Chemical Engineers Handbook and other engineering and science texts...
I posted this at the mothership, but thought PhilH might like this one.
I visited my local Stihl dealer (great repair service if you live near Preble County, Ohio). and saw their latest EV ZTR mower, 60" deck. $15,000 for it, but it is nice! It's not meant for me, this is what a local landscraper would want for mowing lawns every day. I chatted about the high price, and the service tech grinned, told me to check out the latest Honda mower. It has lidar, I think radar too, but only one cup holder I could see. But some models are self driving. It costs over $32k It is very cool tech. But over $32k.
Rumor has it that Tesla plans to launch their own competing, self driving mower called the 𝙀𝙇𝙖𝙬𝙣.
Hey, friends, can you help me out with something? I'm trying to figure out if I can "gift" articles from the Free Press, and if so how many before the pay wall goes back up. Any info is helpful. Thanks!
This is not surprising. THC %'s in modern weed are topping 25%. Pre-rolls are now being dipped "infused" with pure hashish oil; it's toxic. The potency is so high, it's dangerous. (Learned all this from a friend, of course...)
I don't know much about any of it these days...it's not legal here
a friend, about my age, 74, travels to CO frequently; did use edibles a lot, for fun, plus to sleep. And for pain. Not sure if she smoked... She didn't like to eat much before dinner, then she ate a kind-of a lg dinner, but she'd drink a lot of wine for lunch w/ nibbles. And continue wine thru-out the day/evening... She ended up w/ MAJOR intestinal stuff - do ya want details? bloooody runs, couldn't leave the house. That was several months ago, she's now getting infusions, not sure how often, but for a long time she couldn't eat any uncooked veggies, couldn't drink any wine, no carbonated anything... she's back to sipping a tiny bit of wine, not sure about the veggies... she won't talk about what caused all of this...
This FP article suggests that those with the worst problems were habitual users of significant quantities and had been from a fairly young age. Many were TCH vape userss. Symptoms were vomiting and dry heaves -- often for hours. Multiple trips to ER.
Like your friend, I've used for sleep aid and for pain. I had some dental work last week. It was handy when my tooth was throbbing before bed time.
I'm pretty particular about where I purchase. I look for lab-tested products. (And I realize even that's questionable. But they're trying.) It's not like the FDA is involved. And would I trust them if they were, at this point?
Who knows - don’t know the amount or frequency- & she was going across the border to purchase so don’t know what was/wasn’t regulated. I think I read recently that states where it’s now legal are still having probs with “illegal”/unregulated growers to avoid taxes… I suspect my friend would get the best “deal”. And as I said I don’t know if she was also smoking. And age, poor eating habits, heavy drinking (imo) all combined????
I am aware of that stuff; it is absolutely toxic. The occasional edible is relatively harmless, much less problematic than alcohol....but that's a debate I don't engage in.
The only way I’ve found is saving the article as a pdf (icon near the top) in my Google drive, then sharing that link. Not very clean but that’s the answer I got from TFP.
Beats me. I’ve got but one Substack paid subscription, and I can’t tell if it has anything like a “gift” article feature…
I tried your link, and it wanted me to sign in—and I think it meant into my Free Press account, which I don’t have. Because Substack already have my credit card info, I’m leery about signing in and inadvertently adding a new paid subscription. Their description could be read that way.
I understand the need for paywalls, but they should at least make their gifting terms a whole lot less ambiguous.
Yesterday I looked over at my sleeping son a few hours post procedure and saw blotches of blood all over his sheets. Startled, I woke him and said dude you’re bleeding. The wire entry site on his arm was saturated. He nonchalantly replied, “the heparin is working.” They had to reduce his dose. Rib removal at noon which coincides with my husband’s root canal procedure. When it rains, it pours (did I mention my MIL is coming to visit Saturday too? 😜)
I just watched Dave Morris's video. it was definitely IT heavy, and he rattles off IT terms so quickly I found it hard to keep up. But essentially, certain Internet applicaitons went down because they were overly dependent in a single Amazon datacenter in Northern Virginia (US-East-1). And that datacenter developed a fule that disabled services that relied only on that one datacenter for several hours. Other applications, hosted in other cloud services or datacenters, or with more redundancy, stayed up.
At my last employer, our websites were knocked offline for 2 days, because a lightning strike found the single point of failure for a Microsoft Azure datacenter (Azure is a different cloud service which competes with Amazon) in Texas, taking the whole datacenter down. After that incident, we spread out our services across multiple datacenters. Of course, redundancy costs $$$.
It was a bit technical, but clear enough that you could follow along so long as the jargon didn’t scare you off. The short version is that he figures just pointing the internet’s servers at a different default than just the one (the US East Coast DNS servers run by Amazon’s AWS, if I got the gist) would allow quicker recovery when something goes wobbly.
Good morning, everyone. I could be bummed by this, but this morning, I found several more pairs of pants that now fit me again, including some I can wear over leggings to stay warm at camp this weekend, so I'm feeling very chipper.
And if the Collapse of Modern Life happens any time soon, we have so much camping gear and so many sons with Wilderness Survival Merit Badges.
“I found several more pairs of pants that now fit me again.” In the words of Kate Moss, “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Her comment was so controversial back in the day. I kind of agree with her although I would substitute “skinny” with “ healthy.”
That's EXACTLY what I would say, back in the days when I was a Weight Watcher leader (now that term is obsolete; I quit when I moved out of state) Members would come in saying "skinny" & I would gently substitute "Healthy"...
Funny about that. I actually found the event reassuring, and I’m normally a negative Nelly.
I had no idea the internet system was as resilient as it already is. Just as I hadn’t realized just how resilient the electric grid is despite the delicate balance it has to achieve second-by-second, day in, day out.
A system-wide near-death experience is a good reminder for the engineers in the background to review their assumptions and look for weaknesses that need shored up.
As for the electric grid: I always imagined they just funnel enough juice into the system at all times, and that’s it. I reckoned it was like the water system: Just have plenty flowing in, and if everyone flushes the toilet in perfect synchrony, there’s a drop in pressure as everyone’s tanks fill up again, and everything is back to normal on its own. But no!
Supply has to be on hand in almost exactly the same amount as demand at all times when it comes to electricity. Supply has to be variable enough to match demand. That’s what makes “renewables” so confounding: They offer variable supply, which means the power plants threaten to bring everything down, too. But they’re engineering around that problem, too. Although it requires more backup emergency generation region-by-region, adding to the hidden costs of renewable installation.
makes me think of how they ration electricity in CA, or parts of... if you use during peak hours, you get charged more. So people do laundry, as an example, in the middle of the night, during lower cost hours.
Good morning. 40 degrees outside. My furnace is running. Predicted high in the 50s. Leaves are coming down in the backyard.
The mothership is covering Trump’s on-again, off-again support for Ukraine. The FP is covering the “drug wars,” the military attacks on supposed drug trafficking boats under the Trump administration. Related, I recently found an online article (no, I didn’t save the link) to an analysis that suggested Trump may have a leg to stand on in international law for these attacks.
When Daughter A was in the Coast Guard, one of the things they did was drug interdiction off the coast of South America. She was in the Pacific, though, so not Venezuela.
Being a rural person means that when a natural disaster strikes ( hurricane, ice storm, Skynet) we are the last people to get power. So we have learned survival skills. I can, in fact, skin a large animal.
when scouts were in charge of some breakfasts on long, multi-overnight hikes, not wanting to carry lots, they would serve poptarts; I never want to eat another one...
I think I generally concur with these:
a. a proxies .. I mentioned indicated..is similar
b. a lot unexplained - is in part my basis of "not truth". partial truths include partial untruth. meaning less or unexplained.
c. Forensics analysis - also means Indications in your example. the Preponderance of the evidence.
Still, for discussion, your survival analyis showed an increase in variable A, saw an in increase of variable B.
For me, allowing is to be human 😀, truth is a 99.999% absolute x(function of Y). but a 96% factor.. the unexplained 4% is the "not fact, not truth" of variables q and r ?
I was pondering the existentialism of "Statistics". Now I know, we have smart peeps here, academics, statistics users.
Of course, statistics has a useful purpose. But also some consequential negatives.
So to debate and discuss; I posit:
a. Statistics are not Truth.
b. Statistics are collectively, not a Fact.
c. Statistics can be a collection of facts.
d. We often hear Correlation is not Causation
e. Statistics are never showing Causation
f. Statistics show trends, vectors of generalized conclusions.
However, a good thing can be to say, Statistics indicate (trend).generally (more likely than not; ie >50.000001%) something is such, this or that derived (?) conclusion.
Statistics are evil when; a minor datum set is misrepresented as "mostly, or generally, or all of set/thing).
In Automotive, Risks assessment, a probability of occurrence against degree of consequence (severity) is used in Failure Mode analysis. Automotive engineering is the superior technical/business domain for reducing product risk causing harm to Users. NHTSA, SAE.
In Medical Devices, products get approved with high probability of adverse events. There are 10s of thousands of FDA (required) CE (Customer Experience).reports. .If Automotive safety occurrences were normalized to Medical devices, Automotive deaths would increase to 100s of thousands annually.
Pharmaceuticals are worse in my opinion. Essentially because chemistry has statistical variations.
I read the drug insert (showing some of of the study results and adverse events) of drugs. My kidney doctor who I fired 18 months ago, prescribed Farxiga. When a. K was treating with him as he thought I had a state of kidney disease. and b. Type II diabetes. Both are contraindicated for Farxiga!! idiot. clueless dangerous doctor.
https://www.drugs.com/farxiga.html
>>>Serious, life-threatening cases of necrotizing fasciitis of the perineum (Fournier’s Gangrene) have been reported in patients with diabetes prescribed Farxiga. <<<
a. malpractice
b. this drug should absolutely never have been approved by the FDA.
Evil statistics. Devil in the details.
Statistics are not truth but are proxies of it. A key is the explanatory power of the stats used. An adjusted R-squared of 30% means that the results explain 30% of the variance; which means a lot is unexplained. But assuming the data and methods haven't been faked, we generally trust it as a partial explanation. And most journal articles state implicitly state that.
As far as correlation is not causation, that is true for regression models, but not for probabilistic models, such as event history/survival/failure analysis. But they are statistical models as well. My dissertation was an event history of the biotech industry financing for 25 years. In a survival analysis, the models show for X increase in variable A, we see a Y change in variable B. That is causation.
We use statistics to test theories, which are not fact, but which explain observations, which can be factual. In my most recent study (under review) we examine stock market reactions to an event. We know that the announcement averages 0.59% across all the firms (I have the range for all 36); but that if we split it into two sub-samples, one is positive (about 1.65%), the other is negative. We present a theory to explain the positive reactions, and we explain about 25% of what causes it. Stated differently, what might appear to be a random event probably is not, and we have captured 25% of the explanation as to why it is not random.
If you want to geek out over cool statistical analysis, Data Colada is awesome. Three faculty do forensic investigations on studies: they are the ones who uncovered Havard B-School prof Gina Francesco's data faking. And when you read how they did it, it is humbling. I thought I knew excel well...these folks know it far better than I. I'd say anyone is college educated can follow most of their work, which is why I like it.
One beneficial outcome of Data colada is most major journals now require you place your data in a repository, so that if there are geek questions, they can analyze it for itself. Doing so encourages faculty to dub-check their data for errors.
If you search my name at the OSF repository you can look at my most recent work (currently under submission).
My first gut reaction is, ew!, followed closely by the question as to the NNT statistic for Farxiga (and whatever it’s non-brand name is). The “numbers needed to treat” can reveal some different aspects of prescription drugs and other treatments from the ones required by our FDA.
Statistics, as you say, are not bullet proof, of course. In many cases, I’m suspicious of definitions. You have to define clearly the things you’re counting, and those are often fraught, complex categories of things.
To use a simple, hopefully not too crass, example: counting populations by race. If you just counted people as Black and White, you’d immediately find a morass of people who are some combination of both, and then the whole statistical business gets a lot murkier all at once…
I thought about this (history is written by the winners) and it looks like it’s true for the winners of major wars that resulted in countries being merged with other countries or having their boundaries changed, or leaders and their followers being deposed.
But maybe not when it comes to the winners and losers of elections.
And what about the winners and losers in sports?
It's probably more accurate to say that "History is written by the survivors" which is why we have good histories of Rome and not of the Gauls or Etruscans. Neither of those last 2 survived (that is, their cultues). But we know about Rome even though it was eventually overrun by barbarians. They adopted the Roman culture the conquered.
History is a fable, agreed upon.....Bonaparte
Sports? I can't even remember who played in games I just watched.
I was thinking Olympics, World Series, Americas Cup, etc. trying to think of examples where the losers had something significant to contribute.
I haven’t come up with any yet, but there might be.
I'm reading an excellent essay by my favorite economist, Zhang Weiying "Pundits Are Not Prophets". He unpacks and dissects why the experts are so often wrong, and why the folks blurbing the daily diatribe are almost always wrong. He's the guy that dismantled Graham Allison's childish bit with Thucydides Trap, the moronic book lauded by the academic clerisy as "explaining" US-China relations.
Pundits Are Not Prophets.
But I loved the T-Trap!
Of course, it was merely an historical analogy, and as such, completely misleading and awful, because every thinkable analogy is full of flaws and holes, incongruencies, biased selection criteria for comparison, and so on. The only safe bet is never to trust any analogy, ever.
The only problem is that we’ve got no other means of comprehending and analyzing the world as mere mortals.
Thanks for the tip on Zhang Weiying!
From Zhang Weiying....
"The currently widespread "Thucydides Trap" mindset is a profoundly destructive notion that could mislead the country. We must free ourselves from this intellectual constraint. The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), a conflict between the Athenian and Spartan alliances, was not the inevitable result of the rise of a new power, as Thucydides claimed. The war was not inevitable or natural. Instead, it resulted from political leaders' arrogance, resentment, and vengeance-driven attitudes and their ignorance, misjudgments, and third-party provocations. Athens’ excessive greed and unrealistic goals ultimately led to its catastrophic failure in the war."
"Donald Kagan, a Yale University scholar, conducted in-depth research on the Peloponnesian War. He found that the politicians involved lacked foresight, mistakenly believing they could achieve significant gains at low costs. They relied on past experiences to craft strategies without adequately accounting for the risks of misjudgments and miscalculations, nor did they prepare contingency plans. Thus, the war's outbreak was neither inevitable nor the result of irresistible forces; it arose from specific decisions made in a particular context."
I can buy that. I was kidding about the T-Trap, and had only heard of it in terms of it being an academic fascination for a while. I didn’t figure I’d ever get to the bottom of it, so didn’t think it was personally worth investing more time in just to get nowhere.
On its face, it sounds unlikely for an event with such poor, scant documentation could furnish lessons for today, unless in only the broadest, vaguest, and abstract terms.
Things that long ago are seen today through the distortions of the world we live in having a profound impact on how we interpret *the past.* It hardly seems likely that events that far in the past could serve as an accurate lens for viewing the present—unless it was just to reinforce what we wanted to believe about the present all along.
That’s pretty good.
WSJ reports: "Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were each arrested in connection with a sweeping investigation into illegal gambling and rigging games in the NBA ..."
I admire the "each" in this sentence, as if readers might otherwise believe that Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier were the same person.
If it's true, it will blow up professional sports.
I think there is a significant probability that Mr. Billups and Mr. Rozier were each involved in illegal gambling and rigging games.
How much are you willing to bet on that?
I'll bet neither one of 'em saw this coming...
Nothing at all.
I just buzzed down through the info in the WSJ and NYT...and it looks like you're right. woof...
The damning one is that "Scary Terry" Rozier pulled out of a game, where there were large wagers on his performance. That's pretty close to throwing a game, which means he's played his last NBA game ever, barring a miracle. What is scary is players regularly engage in "load management", sitting out a game, so it is hard to know when someone is pulling out for load management and for shaving points.
As for the illegal poker game, IDK if he'll be banned for that or not. But if the people he played with were threatening another player, he'll be banned as well.
It's a shame the NBA doesn't explain to players how statistical analysis works, and how they monitor bets. They won't catch an individual $100 bet if the overall accumulation of bets is within a standard range. But the payoffs are where people are greedy and lay serious money on it.
I dislike serious gambling for a reason: too much incentive for others to cheat.
With the amount of dough these guys make, the swaggering social cachet they possess, and the elite lifestyle they enjoy, it's remarkable that they'd risk it all for....what? A couple extra Ferrari's...?
Those fellas are gonna burn. They're gonna burn bad.
History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember.
Not entirely wrong, in its way, but I was taught that history is what is written down.
Someone should write that one down...
Ha
Or, history is written by the winners.
See my comment under Stephanie's separate post: "History is written by the survivors".
That works too.
I commented on this, but it ended up as a brand new comment and I’m too lazy to delete it and move it down here.
Report to the hall monitor for afternoon detention.
But but but...that eliminates verbal transmission of stories, which is how most of it is "remembered" so it can be written down.
In school in the 1970s, they said "history" is coincident with writing. "Pre-history" is before there's writing.
It has probably changed now.
You are a NeoColonialist! Claiming oral traditions of the indigenous people's native language is not "history".... IS OPRESSION! There is only one history, the one I chose this morning! Which reminds me...I kinda wrote/plagiarized/stole this next piece....
"There is nothing inherent or natural in having an historical perspective. On the contrary, thinking of events as embedded in an eternal present is much more natural.
Only a relatively small number of civilisations developed a strong historical sense—primarily Classical Greece and Imperial China. Classical Greece passed a sense of history on to Rome, from whence it was passed on to Islam. China passed an historical sense onto Korea, Vietnam and Japan. After dwindling to chronicles in the medieval period, the revival of Classicism in the Renaissance passed an historical sense onto post-medieval Christian Europe and so to the modern West.
With the rise of Critical Theory and its derivatives, we can see Western progressives replacing a sense of history with egregiously self-serving myth. This is a profound attack on an informed sense of ourselves, of others, of the past, of the present, and of a sense of future possibilities. It is a profound attack on history, on having a genuinely historical awareness. It has a great deal to do with the march of toxic stupidities in our time.
The shift away from rule of law—whose fundamental principle is treat like cases like—to anarcho-tyranny, to imposing ever harsher burdens on the law-abiding and ever weaker ones on the “marginalised”, represents a grotesque failure to understand the lessons of the past. It represents the stupidity of the moral and cognitive arrogance of the Western-progressive mindset at its most egregious. No wonder the netizens of China—a society and civilisation with a profound sense of history—regard the baizuo ( 白左) with such contempt."
Me And Some Other Folks Whose Names I Forget
That's very interesting. Really. As I said, I doubt things are considered as simplistically today as they were in the 1970s in junior high school.
Interesting? You say interesting?!? There's more...
The term **"Bai Zuo" (白左, "White Left")** is primarily used in Chinese online discourse, particularly among nationalist or conservative-leaning netizens, to critique certain strands of Western liberalism. Below is a deeper look at how and why it’s used:
### **1. Common Targets of "Bai Zuo" Criticism**
The term is often applied to:
- **Western liberals/leftists** (especially politicians, activists, and celebrities) who promote:
- "Excessive" political correctness (e.g., gender pronouns, cancel culture).
- Open-border immigration policies (seen as unrealistic or destabilizing).
- Climate activism (e.g., Greta Thunberg-style protests, viewed as performative).
- "Virtue signaling" (e.g., supporting BLM or LGBTQ+ rights while ignoring issues in non-Western countries).
- **"SJW" (Social Justice Warrior) culture**—Chinese critics argue that Western progressives focus on identity politics at the expense of practical solutions.
- **Western media & NGOs**—Accused of hypocrisy for condemning China’s policies while ignoring problems in their own countries (e.g., U.S. gun violence, European immigration crises).
### **2. How "Bai Zuo" is Used in Chinese Discussions**
- **Mocking perceived hypocrisy**:
- Example: A U.S. politician advocating for racial justice while supporting foreign wars might be labeled *Bai Zuo* for "selective morality."
- Example: European leaders pushing climate policies while maintaining high carbon footprints could be criticized as *Bai Zuo* hypocrisy.
- **Contrasting with Chinese pragmatism**:
- Some Chinese netizens argue that China prioritizes stability and development (e.g., poverty alleviation, infrastructure) over "divisive" Western-style activism.
- The term reinforces the idea that Western liberalism is "decadent" or "declining," while China offers a more effective model.
- **Political deflection**:
- When Western critics attack China’s human rights record, Chinese state-aligned commentators may dismiss them as *Bai Zuo* "ignorant of China’s realities."
I could go on for a while, but that's enough for today's lesson...
I occasionally find it humbling, but I ease my mind by reminding myself that if the internet, or electric grid, goes down, I’ll be in the same boat with possibly billions of people. I’m not sure why but that provides some comfort. Besides, how will worrying about it help?
This is why I never opted out of paper mortgage statements. I want proof that I paid on time.
Keep a backup set of walkie-talkies or UHF radios. Or is it VHF radios.
Worrying always helps because all the stuff one worries about never happens. Coincidence? I don't think so...
Happy Thursday to you, too!
And to everyone else but with sarcasm switched off.
Just when I thought it was safe to get rid of my Harvard Classics. I still have my Chemical Engineers Handbook and other engineering and science texts...
I posted this at the mothership, but thought PhilH might like this one.
I visited my local Stihl dealer (great repair service if you live near Preble County, Ohio). and saw their latest EV ZTR mower, 60" deck. $15,000 for it, but it is nice! It's not meant for me, this is what a local landscraper would want for mowing lawns every day. I chatted about the high price, and the service tech grinned, told me to check out the latest Honda mower. It has lidar, I think radar too, but only one cup holder I could see. But some models are self driving. It costs over $32k It is very cool tech. But over $32k.
Rumor has it that Tesla plans to launch their own competing, self driving mower called the 𝙀𝙇𝙖𝙬𝙣.
That windup waas absolutely not worth the letdown -- 🚪
Good one.
Good one!
Hey, friends, can you help me out with something? I'm trying to figure out if I can "gift" articles from the Free Press, and if so how many before the pay wall goes back up. Any info is helpful. Thanks!
Grass Sick: The Mysterious Marijuana Syndrome Filling Emergency Rooms: https://www.thefp.com/p/grass-sick-cannabinoid-hyperemesis-syndrome-marijuana?r=9an1s&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I read of this in a number of medical journals, over the past few years.
I got the entire article free, but it wanted to put up a paywall for just a second.
Thanks for experimenting. That’s helpful.
That's particularly helpful. Thanks, John!
I read about that in National Geographic.
This is not surprising. THC %'s in modern weed are topping 25%. Pre-rolls are now being dipped "infused" with pure hashish oil; it's toxic. The potency is so high, it's dangerous. (Learned all this from a friend, of course...)
According to this article, there are legal products with 99 percent THC. That *sounds* poisonous.
I use edibles occasionally. But not anything like that.
Where I live, it’s legal to grow your own. I don’t grow any myself, but some friends do, and they make their own edibles. Brownies, usually.
Maybe that’s the only way to titrate the THC yourself.
Marijuana is not legal in Tennessee. THC edibles are — for now..
I don't know much about any of it these days...it's not legal here
a friend, about my age, 74, travels to CO frequently; did use edibles a lot, for fun, plus to sleep. And for pain. Not sure if she smoked... She didn't like to eat much before dinner, then she ate a kind-of a lg dinner, but she'd drink a lot of wine for lunch w/ nibbles. And continue wine thru-out the day/evening... She ended up w/ MAJOR intestinal stuff - do ya want details? bloooody runs, couldn't leave the house. That was several months ago, she's now getting infusions, not sure how often, but for a long time she couldn't eat any uncooked veggies, couldn't drink any wine, no carbonated anything... she's back to sipping a tiny bit of wine, not sure about the veggies... she won't talk about what caused all of this...
This FP article suggests that those with the worst problems were habitual users of significant quantities and had been from a fairly young age. Many were TCH vape userss. Symptoms were vomiting and dry heaves -- often for hours. Multiple trips to ER.
Like your friend, I've used for sleep aid and for pain. I had some dental work last week. It was handy when my tooth was throbbing before bed time.
I'm pretty particular about where I purchase. I look for lab-tested products. (And I realize even that's questionable. But they're trying.) It's not like the FDA is involved. And would I trust them if they were, at this point?
Who knows - don’t know the amount or frequency- & she was going across the border to purchase so don’t know what was/wasn’t regulated. I think I read recently that states where it’s now legal are still having probs with “illegal”/unregulated growers to avoid taxes… I suspect my friend would get the best “deal”. And as I said I don’t know if she was also smoking. And age, poor eating habits, heavy drinking (imo) all combined????
I am aware of that stuff; it is absolutely toxic. The occasional edible is relatively harmless, much less problematic than alcohol....but that's a debate I don't engage in.
The only way I’ve found is saving the article as a pdf (icon near the top) in my Google drive, then sharing that link. Not very clean but that’s the answer I got from TFP.
Thanks much. That's annoying. And I can't believe it's their best business model.
*shrug*
Beats me. I’ve got but one Substack paid subscription, and I can’t tell if it has anything like a “gift” article feature…
I tried your link, and it wanted me to sign in—and I think it meant into my Free Press account, which I don’t have. Because Substack already have my credit card info, I’m leery about signing in and inadvertently adding a new paid subscription. Their description could be read that way.
I understand the need for paywalls, but they should at least make their gifting terms a whole lot less ambiguous.
Thanks for the attempt. Your cost concern is valid.
And yeah, either tell me I can forward stories and how many or don't. It's confusing.
Yesterday I looked over at my sleeping son a few hours post procedure and saw blotches of blood all over his sheets. Startled, I woke him and said dude you’re bleeding. The wire entry site on his arm was saturated. He nonchalantly replied, “the heparin is working.” They had to reduce his dose. Rib removal at noon which coincides with my husband’s root canal procedure. When it rains, it pours (did I mention my MIL is coming to visit Saturday too? 😜)
Oy! That's something else again.
Yikes...deep breath, relax...
yep, continued prayers...
Is he in the med field? Can’t recall your mentioning…which is probably on me.
My husband is an ENT doc, this is our 24 yo son. 🙂
I don’t usually watch the videos here, other than some of the TSAF videos. But as an old IT guy I’ll have to watch the one this morning.
And I agree about the electrical grid. If we ever lost power over a wide area for any length of time, I fear for public order.
You might understand it but that Napoleon Dynamite quote came back to me yet again, “I don’t understand a word you just said.”
I just watched Dave Morris's video. it was definitely IT heavy, and he rattles off IT terms so quickly I found it hard to keep up. But essentially, certain Internet applicaitons went down because they were overly dependent in a single Amazon datacenter in Northern Virginia (US-East-1). And that datacenter developed a fule that disabled services that relied only on that one datacenter for several hours. Other applications, hosted in other cloud services or datacenters, or with more redundancy, stayed up.
At my last employer, our websites were knocked offline for 2 days, because a lightning strike found the single point of failure for a Microsoft Azure datacenter (Azure is a different cloud service which competes with Amazon) in Texas, taking the whole datacenter down. After that incident, we spread out our services across multiple datacenters. Of course, redundancy costs $$$.
"I caught you a delicious bass."
"Vote for me, and all your wildest dreams will come true." ....wait, that was Pedro.
"Vote for Pedro."
"I don't even have any skills... like nunchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills...."
It was a bit technical, but clear enough that you could follow along so long as the jargon didn’t scare you off. The short version is that he figures just pointing the internet’s servers at a different default than just the one (the US East Coast DNS servers run by Amazon’s AWS, if I got the gist) would allow quicker recovery when something goes wobbly.
Not just a different default but either more than one default, or else a default that can be quickly changed during an outage.
RUSTY THOUSAND WORDS: A car graveyard as art – kinda (photo essay): https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/photos-antique-cars-cemetery-68a7ece50df3f8f90fb6ea155086204b
Ohhhh, will share this w/ hubby!!! Some of his favorite shows:
Road Worthy Rescues, his very fav
Chasing Classic Cars
Tx Metal
Iron Resurrection
I know from Mettmann: home of the living Neanderthalers.
And Michael Froehlich is cheerful and/or happy. I mean, that’s what his last name literally translates as…
Epic Fail saw a Citroen 2CV. I saw invasive English ivy.
Is English ivy invasive in Germany? I blame Churchill.
That's what Epic asked. Google says it's native to Germany.
Tucker Carlson may rest easy then.
Tucker Carlson could use a "rest cure" in a pleasant but secure facility.
I'll bet they have some of those over in Russia that are far cleaner and likely superior in every other way than the ones here....
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/02/15/tucker_carlson_tours_moscow_subway_station_its_perfectly_clean_and_orderly_how_do_you_explain_that.html
And call me crazy, but the food in the nut houses over there is probably to die for, if one can extrapolate a prediction from this...
https://www.thewrap.com/tucker-carlson-russian-moscow-grocery-store-radicalized-us-leaders/
Attended by men (and women) in white coats.
Good morning, everyone. I could be bummed by this, but this morning, I found several more pairs of pants that now fit me again, including some I can wear over leggings to stay warm at camp this weekend, so I'm feeling very chipper.
And if the Collapse of Modern Life happens any time soon, we have so much camping gear and so many sons with Wilderness Survival Merit Badges.
yes, I was gonna say scouts should know survival! All those scouting books!!
“I found several more pairs of pants that now fit me again.” In the words of Kate Moss, “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Her comment was so controversial back in the day. I kind of agree with her although I would substitute “skinny” with “ healthy.”
That's EXACTLY what I would say, back in the days when I was a Weight Watcher leader (now that term is obsolete; I quit when I moved out of state) Members would come in saying "skinny" & I would gently substitute "Healthy"...
I like to say, "Nothing tastes as good as making smart choices for yourself feels."
ETA: Or even consciously deciding to make a dumb choice one time. It's good as long as you can make a smart choice the next time.
Funny about that. I actually found the event reassuring, and I’m normally a negative Nelly.
I had no idea the internet system was as resilient as it already is. Just as I hadn’t realized just how resilient the electric grid is despite the delicate balance it has to achieve second-by-second, day in, day out.
A system-wide near-death experience is a good reminder for the engineers in the background to review their assumptions and look for weaknesses that need shored up.
As for the electric grid: I always imagined they just funnel enough juice into the system at all times, and that’s it. I reckoned it was like the water system: Just have plenty flowing in, and if everyone flushes the toilet in perfect synchrony, there’s a drop in pressure as everyone’s tanks fill up again, and everything is back to normal on its own. But no!
Supply has to be on hand in almost exactly the same amount as demand at all times when it comes to electricity. Supply has to be variable enough to match demand. That’s what makes “renewables” so confounding: They offer variable supply, which means the power plants threaten to bring everything down, too. But they’re engineering around that problem, too. Although it requires more backup emergency generation region-by-region, adding to the hidden costs of renewable installation.
makes me think of how they ration electricity in CA, or parts of... if you use during peak hours, you get charged more. So people do laundry, as an example, in the middle of the night, during lower cost hours.
Good morning. 40 degrees outside. My furnace is running. Predicted high in the 50s. Leaves are coming down in the backyard.
The mothership is covering Trump’s on-again, off-again support for Ukraine. The FP is covering the “drug wars,” the military attacks on supposed drug trafficking boats under the Trump administration. Related, I recently found an online article (no, I didn’t save the link) to an analysis that suggested Trump may have a leg to stand on in international law for these attacks.
A peg leg... the choice of pirates the world over...
When Daughter A was in the Coast Guard, one of the things they did was drug interdiction off the coast of South America. She was in the Pacific, though, so not Venezuela.
REACHER Season 1 in Margrave is about the Venezuelan drug cartel. Alan Ritchson is great!
It was all about Colombia in the 1980s.
I took the exam for Officer Candiate School but decided against it because I didn't want to do drug interdiction.
My mom applied to be a Revenue Officer for the IRS, but decided against it when they wanted her to interview for a position in Montana.
That could be good TV, the kind of TV that relies on, uh, dynamic family relations to balance the plot.
My impression is that she would have been an asset in the eyes of hardworking taxpayers.
She expected it would have too much shooting.
You could rent out the sons to those of us less wilderness-able.
True, but we'd have to negotiate a medium of exchange.
#KurtCoin... I will hold the money for you, minus a "courtesy fee".
True. Maybe good open fire recipes?
Kudzu is very nutritious. I figure we can burn our fence palings first.
really?? Kudzu was everywhere in TN - awful, but never tried eating it
Really. It's kind of like spinach, only a bit more fibrous, so you need to de-vein the leaves unless they're very young.
No....treated lumber? Also, most fence post wood was chosen for its toxicity, i.e., resistance to rot/decay.
Ours are rotting and decaying, so I figure they'd burn.
So, in case of the AI Apocalypse, how might one join Team Cynthia?
Just show up on the doorstep and offer to kill and skin something.
too cold. Come down here - we have deer, turkeys, rabbits, etc., in our backyard...
We get rabbits in the back yard, also squirrels. They know we don't have a cat any more.
Deer are plentiful in the neighborhood. I haven't seen any turkeys nearby, but I'm sure there are some, and lots of Canada geese.
:-) ...... I'm in.
I saw signs last weekend suggesting thousands want join your team! But won't that get us in trouble with the Secret Service?
Being a rural person means that when a natural disaster strikes ( hurricane, ice storm, Skynet) we are the last people to get power. So we have learned survival skills. I can, in fact, skin a large animal.
What about killing off the AI? 🙂
If the power grid collapses, AI will be dead-o.
Unless the AI is smart enough to protect its own power source.
Like in "The Matrix".
And always bring a hostess gift.
Twinkies...(?)
ewwww
Yes! They could survive a nuclear attack!
I've heard PopTarts can do the same ---- ewwww
when scouts were in charge of some breakfasts on long, multi-overnight hikes, not wanting to carry lots, they would serve poptarts; I never want to eat another one...
And be just as good for you as they ever were.
At least you don't have to play cards with Shannon on the front lawn anymore. It was amazing how many guests we didn't have.
Good times, good times...
My hillbilly heritage is finally paying off!
In the timeless words of backwoods sage Jed Clampett, "That's the thing about possum innards -- they's just as good the second day."
👌
Nailed it!
"...global Axis of America-Hating Autocracies..." That would include.......the current administration?
I hate to say it, but you'd be correct in saying that.
Yeah. One might get that impression at times…times between early morning and late night…
I love it when you cheer me up first thing in the morning.
You’re welcome!