Tributes to Jiang Zemin

I met Jiang Zemin back in 1986. He was Mayor of Shanghai. I was there with my boss Steve FitzGerald. We were trying to lease some passenger jets to Shanghai Airlines, for our client the now defunct Ansett Airlines. 

We liked Jiang. Found him straightforward. Helpful. We knew that some people called him a “flowerpot” (花瓶, Huāpíng): looks pretty but not terribly useful. But a flowerpot can be fine, as long as it introduces you to the gardeners. Which he did, and we did a deal.

Xi Jinping describes Jiang as a “great Marxist” (in the red box above). I’d say that he was much more successful as a capitalist. Remember he was a big promoter of Deng Xiaoping’s “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”. That’s to say, Chinese capitalism. State capitalism if you must, but more like a dual economy with the State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and a reborn private sector. 

China’s rapid economic growth since 1978 is owing to the private sector. That is, the market economy. China has been successful to the exact extent that it has allowed market forces. Marxism was always grit in the wheels. In Mao’s day much worse than grit. “Marxism with Mao Tse-tung characteristics” crushed the economy and killed millions. 

Meantime the SOEs are pretty much as inefficient as ever, called “dinosaurs”. Their comet hasn’t hit because they remain a useful social safety net, keeping people employed — even of it’s “employed” in quotes. 

Deng Xiaoping knew this. He was also a great at branding. Socialism holding you back, but you can’t quite say “capitalist”? Very well: “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”. Need to be less ideological? Very well: “it doesn’t matter if it’s a white cat or a black cat as long as it catches mice”. Need to work something out to re-integrate an ex colony? Very well: “One country, Two systems.”

Jiang Zemin who the torchbearer for Deng’s economic rebranding: “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”. A torchbearer for the market economy. Not so much of a Marxist.

A man of good character. Of open mind. To protesters in Shanghai in 1984 he read The Gettysburg Address … English! He was also a good opera singer and played the Er Hu. A man for all seasons. 

“Apple is covering for the Chinese government“

Click for vid (13’)

I bring you Tucker Carlson of Fox, because this is not covered anywhere else. Not on CNN, MSNBC, ABC or CBS. Not in the New York Times or the Washington Post. They do not cover this angle. The angle they are covering is that Musk's push for free speech is a threat to free speech. Or something. Which they don’t like.

The doings Carlson covers are the perfidious pusillanimous pissantery of Apple in China and now, possibly, censorious shenanigans against the American company Twitter.

What Carlson covers is surely consequential. And important. And scary. And not at all helpful to the poor people of China suffering a third year of draconian Zero Covid Policy. 

What I’m also pointing out here, for about the millionth time, is that if one is a liberal and only watches the liberal media (eg CNN et al) then one will not know important chunks of what’s going on. You need to follow both sides of the aisle. It explains why someone super smart, like Sam Harris, did not know anything about the Hunter Biden laptop until now. It was known to conservatives since 2020. 

Conservatives follow a broader range of media 
than do Liberals. Source: Gallup 

You gotta get out of the bubble. The vortex.

Follow-on questions: what to do with Apple stock? It’s performed hugely well over the years. Dropped in recent times, as has all tech. All MAGA (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon). But doesn’t Apple Inc need to be punished by shareholders if they do go ahead and kick Twitter off its App Store? I mean: imagine that! Supporting China and dumping on Twitter! Don’t do it Tim Cook!

This is, as Musk has noted, a fight for civilisation. Hyperbolic? It’s a fight for free speech. And free speech is the ground rock for all else. So no, not hyperbole. 

If I believed, I’d pray. As it is I’ll send petitionary pleadings to the Great Spaghetti Monster. 

Auberge Hotel, Discovery Bay | Central

 

Lockdown, China style. F’ing insane

It’s what led to women and babies being incinerated in a building in Urumqi. Locking people in their apartments, with steel bars. Some of them are welded in place. 

This is not normal. Maybe at the beginning of the pandemic, but now? when we know so much more? when omicron is so much less, when we have vaccines? It’s criminal is wot. 

This is down to the Zero Covid Policy, and of the great leader XJP. And down to the mule-like adherence to authority. Our own mandates here in Hong Kong have led to deaths: by suicide, by stress, by shorter lives, cause of policies in place by the government, by the mandates that have put so many out of work and destroyed family businesses built up over generations. Shame on all the government hacks and lackeys that have implemented these cruel policies. And shame on all the elites in the west as well who have supported strict lockdowns. They are one welded bar away from where China is. 

Gee what a surprise! A pool of Beijing picked judges to rule on National Security laws

You ask the wolf into the henhouse, they gonna eat chickens.

This follows on from the news yesterday.

Apple pulling Twitter App from its App store would be a really scary move. 

There’s nothing that Elon Musk has done that is anything like the panic on the far left about a “cesspool of hate” and “like the gates of hell”. That’s crazy, yet if Apple pulls Twitter, it’s giving in to that crazy.

"The Media's Deranged Hysteria Over Elon Musk's Promised Restoration of Free Speech"

Taylor Lorentz of the WaPo is a leader of the pitchfork brigade. Musk the Warlock. To be given the Python witch test. 

Glenn Greenwald: 

It is hard to overstate how manic, primal and unhinged is the reaction of corporate media employees to the mere prospect that new Twitter owner Elon Musk may restore a modicum of greater free speech to that platform. It was easy to predict — back when Musk was merely toying with the idea of buying Twitter and loosening some of its censorship restrictions — that there would be an all-out attack from Western power centers if he tried. Online censorship has become one of the most potent propaganda weapons they possess, and there is no way they will allow anyone to dilute it even mildly without attempting to destroy them. Even with that expectation in place of what was to come, the liberal sector of the corporate media (by far the most dominant media sector) really outdid itself when it came to group-think panic, rhetorical excess, and reckless and shrill accusations. [More...]

Heather and Bret at around 21:00 talk on the issue.  

More from the Glenn link:

I know it can be hard to believe, or at least it should be hard to believe, but the wealthiest, once most prestigious and most mainstream news organizations really are explicitly and earnestly insisting that Elon Musk is about to have large amounts of blood on his hands. Why? Because he intends to allow a broader range of political opinions and perspectives to be heard. There's nothing else to it than that.

To these people, free speech is not a fundamental right. It is not the linchpin of political liberty enshrined in the First Amendment to the US Constitution. It is to them what it is to all petty tyrants and authoritarians: Free speech is a danger. It is a hazard, a menace, something that frightens them to their core. They see free speech the way most people see a raging forest fire or a contagious fatal illness or a violent prison riot, as something that is scary, fatal, and that therefore must be controlled and then extinguished at all costs. And to be fair to these censorship advocates, which I will never tire pointing out that the leaders of this protesters movement are the people who call themselves journalists a state of affairs. It's as surreal and bizarre as if the leading advocates of more cigaret smoking were cardiologist. To be fair to them, there is a grain of truth in what they are saying to those who seek to preserve status quo power structures.

We are in the middle of a major battle over free speech. And it’s happening at Twitter. And the main man is Elon Musk. And the main opponents to the main man are the WaPo, New York Times, LA Times,  CNN, MSNBC, etc...

Central

The category of “not good news”

It was way back when, in the early oughts perhaps, that Hong Kong officials first asked for an “interpretation” from China’s National Peoples Congress. And led to lots of people claiming that Beijing had “interfered” in HK, and all the anger of the 2019 riots. 

Why are they doing it again? Did they have to? What’s been done with foreign judges has been done for ever. Oh well…

China being has been helpful (“pragmatic”) over Ukraine

Click above for vid

Cindy Yu asks Owen Matthews and Emma Ashford if it’s possible that there could be “back channels” between Washington and Beijing. 

As a retired foreign affairs type, posted in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, I say “of course there are back channels”. They are called “diplomacy”. That’s what diplomats do. They are every day, every hour, in contact with their own governments and that of their hosts. That’s what they do.

The deal struck in March 2022 was: China to US: don’t allow Poland to give the strike jets to Ukraine and we (China) won’t support Russia. 

That’s been helpful. To keep the nuclear option at bay. “To keep the nuclear dimension at bay”. Because they want to keep it out of Taiwan.  

Imagine if China had supported Russia with arms. Not saying it hasn’t by other back channels. But it hasn’t in obvious ways. And Putin has been kept on the back foot because of that. 

Two guys living and married to China reflect on the current unrest

What I've said for years. The Chinese, when you met them travelling around China, are friendly, outgoing, generous; are not the same as the Beijing regime.
"They're awesome!" say the guys.
Currently demos in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Hangzhou, Urumchi, Guangzhou, Wuhan.
I see there's even some action here in Hong Kong, in Central. Memorials for the dead in Urumchi.
Sadly, though, I fear the state is just too strong. The crackdown is happening. Resentment will simmer, you can't disappear it.

China bots swamp internet with porn to hide demos.

Time for more nuclear power? Hong Kong electricity price increases unavoidable, experts say | South China Morning Post

LETTER TO SCMP:

I agree it's time for more nuclear power in Hong Kong. (Time for more nuclear power?… 27 November)

We've been told we must "listen to the science".

The science is that nuclear power is the cheapest, cleanest and safest reliable base power in the world. (about the same as Wind and Solar, but neither of them can be a base power).

We can subsidise wind and solar all we want, but here in Hong Kong we simply don't have the space. Even as CLP is doing offshore wind we know from elsewhere that this can only be a small part of the mix. 

Here is the chart of safety and greenhouse gas emissions of the different types of electricity generation:

While the relative costs are shown below. Note that nuclear is amongst the cheapest. 

It's about time we stopped listening to the likes of Greenpeace. It's because of their scare tactics that we are now not net zero on electricity production: it was they who frightened us out of moving big time into nuclear electricity, back in the seventies. They are still at it. Even as they scream about "climate emergency". 

More Daya Bays I say! Please. Nothing else -- not solar, not wind — will provide the clean reliable base-load electrify we need. That's the science!

Peter F. etc…

“Our disease is no freedom and poverty”. Wild scenes in China

 

Click above for video

Is it like 1989? Not now. The government armed forces are too strong. 

But people have had it with Zero Covid Policy. 

Shocking scenes in Urumqi where people were locked in. As many as 34 dead in the fire. Crazy.

The guy with the phone in Shanghai complains about food prices. Says carrots are $4.80 a kg. Here in the HK carrots from Oz are $2/kg, less than half.

一放就乱一管就死 Yī fàng jiù luàn yī guǎn jiù sǐ. The CCP dilemma on ZCP: “relax => chaos ; control => death [of economy]. ~21:00.

Note the police in full PPE gear.

Lei gives good insights.

The Kafka Trap of Critical Race Theory

 

The Kafka Trap: You: “I’m not racist”. Kafka: “That’s just what a racist would say”. 

Aka: medieval dipping the witch test. Floats, she’s guilty. Sinks, she’s innocent.

Aka: Maoist struggle sessions ~31:00    

Aka: The racism of anti-racism.

CRT: the latest form of Marxism. Making the long March through the institutions. And already widely spread.

A very interesting talk with a smart young woman who saw it from the inside. Who got caught in the trap.

“Xi who must be obeyed”

Good ol’ Speccie!

For those too young to recognise the reference: it’s to Rumpole of the Bailey”, books and TV. Rumpole’s dry ref to his wife, Hilda. Aka “‘er indoors”. (But originally — and I’m only just now finding out — from H. Rider Haggard).

ADDED: great minds… at the Economist.

Oh… and Spiked 

Goodness! Even our own SCMP way back in 2017! And the Spectator Australia, also 2017. Let’s face it, it’s too obvious a pun!

Calling for democracy on Wulumuqi Rd

Vivian Wu ⁦‪@vivianwubeijing‬⁩ At this movement in the chilly winter night, Shanghai people are chanting on the downtown street " we don't want dictatorship, we want democracy".Extraordinary courage and solidarity showed. After 3 years of suffering from lockdown & control of society, people are raged. pic.twitter.com/AZRFh6bbiE   27/11/2022, 3:03 am

Wulumuqi Lu (Urumchi Rd) one of my favourite hang-out streets when I lived in Shanghai in 1990. Funky shops, hole-in-the-wall eateries, dan-dan noodles, sweet-strange swan-soft chikkies.…

Today the crowds there are sick of Zero Covid policy lockdowns. And they let it be known. Which policies, please let’s recall, many in the west wanted us to emulate. And we partially did, for a while.

I wonder how long it was before the armed might of the state moved in to crush them. Think how easy we did it, with our own police, our own democratic police, in Melbourne, in London, in New York. Let alone how easy for an efficient authoritarian state with unchallenged power. Police power > people power. Sadly.

A swag of bad news on China

Today’s South China Morning Post. All Covid-caused. A remarkable flurry of bad news.

Going crazy over the Colorado gay nightclub killings

“Stop killing us”. Yes, but who should that plea be directed to? [SEE Below]

People have gone bananas over this. Like everything these days. Insanity. 

On the Left, the immediate go-to was that it was the Right, Republicans, Fox, etc, with all their “anti-trans rhetoric” that caused it. Not remembering that the same conclusion was jumped to for the Pulse nightclub slaughter in Florida in 2016. It turned out the killer was an ISIS-supporting Islamic terrorist just out to kill the foreigners. Didn’t even know it was a gay bar. 

And so at the Club Q in Colorado Springs. Immediate jumping to conclusions on the Left: horrid right wingers and their “hateful anti-trans rhetoric" are responsible. 

Until it turns out that the killer has identified as “non-binary” with “they/them” pronouns. Now this is a dilemma for the Left, as you’re not allowed to question someone and their sex identify. If women on the Right complain that men calling themselves women in order to enter women's prisons, are gaming the system, they're told they are bigots for questioning that self-identity. So now, how can the Left question this killer’s self-identity? Even as they show they’re itching to do so: the killer’s lawyer, they suggest, is doing it to “mitigate the hate crime element”. Right. Well, yeah, maybe. But then doesn’t this destroy that other part of their narrative? The one where you have to believe anyone and their self-identify?? Oh dear....

On the Left we have the very left Cenk Uygur on The Young Turks, with Ana Kasparian, going full on ballistic, over a tweet on the shooting, by a podcaster called Tim Poole. I’m not quite sure why he gets so bent out of shape, as the tweet doesn’t seem, to me, to be supporting the killing of LGBTQ+ folks, as Cenk claims (loudly and rather objectionably). As another tweeter said: “With these people, it’s, like, If you say ‘I like pancakes’ they will say ‘So why don’t you like waffles?!’”.  I offer Cenk as an example of someone saying that all republicans, ALL, are “terrible, horrible people”, while clearly believing that The Young Turks and the Left generally are the embodiment of tolerance. Weird. 

Here’s some of Tim Poole and his crew, on other issues, but to give a flavour of the guy and his team. (BTW, I don’t follow him).

And here’s the much derided Tucker Carlson talking the issues. Over time, I’ve seen quite a bit of Carlson. I’ve never seen anything he said that’s racist or homophobic. He does query surgical procedures on the underage for gender dysphoria. But that’s an issue that ought be discussed Right and Left, without name calling. After all we know that young kids don’t alway make the best decisions for themselves. Which is why adults are there. To guide. Anyway, I thought Tucker’s take was much more measured and fair than Cenk’s. Or indeed many others on CNN or NBC, some of which went bent out of shape, speechless even, when they learned of the “non-binary” nature of the killer. Didn’t fit the narrative!

Just to round it out on the conservative side, there’s this, from Ben Shapiro. I know, it’s a lot on the Right. But the Left is more than covered by the mainstream media. There’s plenty on CNN, BBC, MSNBC, the New York Times, et. al. (Which we’ll quickly see less of, exactly because the killing doesn’t fit the narrative of horrid right-wing rhetoric killing gay and trans people). 

ADDED: I make a conscious effort to read and watch as much on the Right as on the Left. I can say this: I have never seen or read anyone on the Right saying horrid things about LGBTQ+ folks, let alone calls to kill them. TBF, I’ve never heard that from either side of the fence. Yet the Left is always going on about how much “hate” is “spewed” on the Right about the gay and trans communities. I’ve never seen it. It’s a nonsense to claim that one side or the other is spewing hate speech and a particular nonsense for the Left to say it of the Right. Because: (a) it’s not true as a generality and (b) to the extent that there is hate speech, it’s on both sides!

Related: I wonder about the tag under the photo above: “Stop killing us”. The narrative here is that LGBTQ+ people are being killed in higher numbers than the general community. (Whether by horrid Republicans, or their very own “non-binary” misfits).

The facts are the opposite. According to a June 2022 report by the Williams Institute, in the United States, 1.6 million people 13+ identify as transgender, 0.48% of the US population of 332 million. [*] The number of transgender people murdered in the United States was  57 in 2021 (Human Rights Campaign), with 22 so far in 2022 (AP). 

Taking the higher figure of 57 transgender people murdered in a population of 1.6 million, that comes to 3.6 per 100,000. The murder rate for the United States as a whole in 2020 was 6.3 per 100,000. 

Summary:

• Murder rate in Trans community: 3.6 per 100,000 [*] (43% lower than the General community)
• Murder rate in the General community: 6.3 per 100,000 (75% higher than the Trans community)

Note: I don’t record this to minimise murders in any community. But to point out the actual facts. Which do not support the general narrative of a horrid society bent on killing Trans folks. The opposite is the truth. This is the same as the issue of police killings of young black men. Society believes it’s in the thousands. That police are out to hunt and kill young black men. The truth is that about a dozen unarmed black men are killed by the police each year. (and to be clear, that’s a dozen too many; but it’s not “thousands”, is my point). 

I keep hoping that facts and figures might have some effect. Cool the rhetoric. Tone down the heat. The false idea that the police are out to hunt & kill young black men has done huge damage to society, many killed and huge property damage (sadly mostly to minority communities). 

Similarly, the idea that LGBTQ+ people are being hunted, targeted and killed for their sexual orientation is both false and damaging. It is hugely harmful to society, it makes everyone hate each other. Bottom line is: the best place to be LGBTQ+ in the world today, is very likely the US. (Or maybe even Hong Kong, where the general murder rate is barely 0.3/100k...).

[*] It’s likely that many more people than 1.6 million now identify as Trans. That means the murder rate for Trans people would be even lower than the 3.6 above. I won’t hazard a guess, but I’ve seen some figures that the number of young people identifying as Trans has jumped no less than an incomprehensibly absurd 4,000% (!) in recent years. 

The Science

Only very slightly ironic or jokey. And, as regards us here in Hong Kong, there simply is no Science. Mask mandates for outdoors, when there has not been a single case, since the beginning of the pandemic, that’s caught by walking outside in a fresh easterly breeze. And vaccine passports required everywhere -- maybe the only place in the world, China aside, that they are --  when we know (the science!) that they vaccines don’t stop transmission. Allowed to unmask in bars, but not in supermarkets. That sort of stuff. Many have noticed: it all makes no sense. 

Yet we are trapped in it. A long, bad dream. In February 2020 we were thinking it’d be over by May of that year! From our experience with the first SARS outbreak in 2002. Now it seems like the forever pandemic. They’re now saying, our government, that even if they relax mask mandates for Covid, they should still be worn because of the flu!

Getting our Poinciana (aka Flame Tree aka Phoenix Tree) pruned today

Next door, 7 May 2021. Poinciana. Aka, Flame Tree.
Chinese: 凤凰树  Fenghuang Shu, lit: Phoenix Tree

Pruning trees best done in winter, so Mr Google tells me. 

Pruning by ATP Tree of Sai Kung, arborists. Owner Jonathan Picker. Pruning Team leader: Ben, + 4. [Added: they did a great job!].

PS: I wish our own Poinciana was as floribund as the one above. I’m envious! But it seems some are, some aren’t. We have plenty of Poincianas around Discovery Bay, some really huge, and all have differing amounts of flowering come spring. 

Ben up the Poinciana

Yikes! (Ben, again)

Da Boyz, L to R: Ben, Jeff, Fred, Sean, Chris

They did a great job. The poinciana tree is now so nicely trimmed, looks like I do when I’ve had a haircut. Needed! Job done!

PS: I planted this tree myself back in 2002. It was 6’ tall when I planted it. It’s grown all that in 20 years. Over the years, it’s been knocked down several times by typhoons. Now it’s too big to be knocked over, I think. Unless by a super typhoon and then I’ll blame global warming. 

Advertising on Twitter — “falling off a cliff” or “signing up in droves”?

There’s a thing on the Musk-hating left: “Twitter advertisers are leaving in droves”. Which they’ve been sent saying, on Twitter, since Musk took over. Do they know this? Or is it wish-hope?  Because they hate Musk. Because they want Musk to fail. Because Musk doesn’t follow the narrative. He’s a classic liberal rather than the progressive liberal he should be.

In any case: I wonder, do they know? Do they really know that advertisers are deserting Twitter? I suspect they know no more than I do, sitting here in Himg Kong. Unless they have an inside source, but even then the animus inside Twitter towards Elon is such you count really count on its being true.

I’ve had a look at my own Twitter feed. I follow 187 people, a variety of liberal and conservative. I’ve noticed no particular change in advertisers. If anything I see more. And there seems to be a new class of advertiser on Twitter: individual tweets that are “promoted” presumably at a fee to Twitterl. BTW I notice no increase in nasty tweets, nor a “cesspool of hate” as Musk-haters are claiming. (I never tweet myself, I just go there to see what’s happening).

I can totally imagine why there might be more advertisers. Back in the oughts my company was a major advertiser online (mostly Yahoo at the time). If we saw that we could get some cheap advertising when others were scared to — as is the claim at the moment for Twitter— we’d rush in for it! It would make no difference that there might be nasty tweets nearby. No sane advertiser imagines that people connect their product, a Dior dress, say, with a distasteful tweet above or below it. That’s just silly. As Dior, Bank of America … etc, clearly know.

Here’s a list of advertisers on my Twitter feed as of just now:

Advertisers that appeared on my feed before Musk and are still there:

Dior

Bank of America 

Interactive Brokers

Financial Times

Bloomberg 

UBS

Economist

Standard Chartered

BBC Storyworks

Advertisers since Musk:

Voluum 

Uni Helsinki

Bulls n Bears

Blaze

Sake Post

Aramco

Metawin 

Turnitin 

World Bank

Melia Hotels 

NBA (One of America's most woke organisations)

Digital Currency

Linch Network

Near Protocol 

CASETiFY

Barclay Bank

Art Basel

Financial Service Development Council 

Oxford Journals

UBtech Robotics

That’s a lot of new accounts! Of course, YMMV. Everyone’s feed is different and so the advertisers algorithmically “promoted” to you will be different from the ones promoted to me.

In any case, from the above it sure doesn’t seem -- does it? -- that Twitter advertisers are “falling off a cliff”.

By the way (1): it turns out Twitter doesn’t need 2,500 sales people. Most advertisers can sign up online to have their ad “promoted”. They don’t need to speak to an actual, live, person. 

By the way (2): at least 5,000 Twitter staff have been sacked or resigned. Average salary just under $100kpa. That’s $500,000,000 savings per year. Think on that. Half a billion, per year, savings. 

By the way (3): World Bank, Aramco and NBA aside, I don’t recognise most of the new advertisers. But isn’t that the point of advertising? To get known?

ADDED (re the s/shot at top): Jeep, Mars, Merck, etc, are storied brands all, most decades old, some over a century (Merck 354!), nonetheless captured, apparently, by woke-ism, either their staff or their customers, to stop advertising on Twitter. Shame on them. I presume their accounts are larger than most of the new companies advertising, above.  But they will be back, I wager. Especially now they know Twitter has record high engagement. And is not a “right wing cesspit”. 

Covid mayhem in Zhengzhou, China | Covid cases spiking China-wide

	Manya Koetse ⁦‪@manyapan‬⁩ The voice you hear says: "We are not demanding anything, just regular nucleic acid testing and food delivery would be enough." pic.twitter.com/UBek4y7v8i   23/11/2022, 7:09 pm

Elephant? What elephant?

For those of us who have written about the Hunter Biden scandal and the family’s influence-peddling operation for years, it is routine to read media stories denying the facts or dismissing calls to investigate the foreign dealings. However, this weekend, the Associated Press made a whopper of a claim that there is no evidence even suggesting that President Joe Biden ever spoke to his son about his foreign dealings. I previously discussed how the Bidens have succeeded in a Houdini-like trick in making this elephant of a scandal disappear from the public stage. They did so by enlisting the media in the illusion. However, this level of audience participation in the trick truly defies belief. [Read on…]

Jonathan Turley, via Althouse. (Law professors both). 

But could anything be found to stick?

Is the climate “crisis” worth 4 hours of your time? | "Climate Change Debate: Bjørn Lomborg and Andrew Revkin"

Two experts -- Bjørn Lomborg and Andrew Revkin”--  neither a “catastrophist”, but both having worked in the climate change area for decades, have a debate. A discussion. 

Moderated by the wonderful Lex Fridman.

4 hours, but fully time-stamped for topics of particular interest. 

A main take-away: Climate change is a reality but it’s not a “catastrophe” or “crisis" that the likes of Greta, Just Stop Oil, David Attenborough, claim. The IPCC from the UN says the same, if you can get around to reading it. Nowhere does it say that we have an “existential” crisis, as many have claimed. The most the report says is that if we don’t keep the temperature change to below 1.5C life may be “less comfortable”. 

Also: that there are lots of things that can be done to mitigate the changes that are easier than reducing CO₂, which is “very difficult” and long term only. Not that it shouldn’t be worked on, but that the main outcomes of CO₂ increase are already baked in, and no matter the extent of reductions in CO2, there’s going to be certain levels of temperature increase, so we must mitigate. 

And: while we work towards more renewables, we ought to keep natural gas in the mix. It’s less CO₂ intensive than coal or oil and is the main reason countries like the US have been able to reduce carbon emissions in recent decades. Let’s not perfection be the enemy of action. Gas is easy, cheap and effective in reducing carbon emissions. 

Nuclear: the alarmism over nuclear power from the sixties (from the Greens) was greater than the alarmism over climate change. And Greens remain reluctant. Because their “ageing donors” remain concerned (from the panic of the sixties; a panic never justified by the facts).

Megyn Kelly and Vivek Ramaswamy on Twitter, Musk, Musk free speech mistakes, Affirmative action

Vivek Ramaswamy strikes me as a super smart guy. He likes what Musk is doing with Twitter on a technical level, but less on a free speech level. Good stuff on the fraught issue of Affirmative Action, which is being considered by SCOTUS. 

Megyn is a top interviewer. 

“Hong Kong says it wants to reopen, but acts like it does not” | Mike Rowse

Mike Rowse is spot on here. As you’ll know from my own writings I agree 💯%.

We should scrap all Covid restrictions forthwith.

Chief executive John Lee has been flirting around the place talking up Hong Kong. But that’s all it is; talk. Passengers at our airport are still down 99.2% on 2019. Contemplate that! That’s the reality. 

Michael Shellenberger and Winston Marshall in conversation

Click above for video 

Great discussion Michael Shellenberger and Winston Marshall, covering: Just Stop Oil, COP27, nuclear, renewables, Greta, plastics, homelessness. 

Shellenberger is a longtime environmentalist. Democrat, liberal, a Time Magazine “Hero of rhe environment”, now a knowledgeable critic of climate change policies. Fierce defender of nuclear and natural gas. Points out that Britain’s CO2 emissions have been dropping, due to gas replacing coal. Renewables have a place, but we need more energy dense solutions: gas and nuclear. 

The hypocrisy of reducing fossil fuel use domestically  — as US, Europe, etc — then begging other countries for fossil fuels.

I’ve known most of what he covers, except not so much in the recyclability of plastics (@30:30). Or lack of recyclability. Less than 10% end up recycled. 

Which I sort of suspected for Hong Kong, but turns out it’s the same everywhere. Only about 10% of plastics out in our recycle bins actually end up recycled. The rest, most is shipped to poorer countries and then into rivers and the sea. It’s better to our plastic in the rubbish bin. Then it goes to incineration or landfills. Which is better than going into the sea. As he explains.

Also the case against biodegradable plastics. Which need huge amounts of land. 

Winston is a good interviewer. He asks questions we’d like to ask. Not afraid to show his ignorance. He was banjo player with a Mumford and Sons before he left because he’d spoken favourably about a book on ANTIFA by Andy Ngo. Which I’ve read. And is a fine inside look at ANTIFA, itself ironically fascistic. But was out of bounds to the woke. Because critical of ANTIFA and partners BLM. So he was cancelled. Imagine. Cancelled and lost a career for a book recommendation!

The last outdoor pool day of this season

A delicious Meloni

I wonder if it’s true. If so, should be a scandal.

Such forceful elegant Italian.

Will Twitter die? I think not

Before Musk. Marketers

I should say I *hope* not. Cause I do love Twitter.  It that I ever post a tweet. I don’t. I just go in to see what other folks are saying. And I try to follow folks across the board, liberal and conservative. You can get a feel for the global conversation. You don’t need to be in a “cess pit” unless you choose to.

But right now there’s a lot of hate of Twitter coz there’s a lot of hate of Musk, coz he doesn’t think just like all the left. 

And so now there’s talk of the collapse of Twitter. As up to 85% of those remaining after the first round of layoffs have decided they don’t want to sign a doc that says they’ll work hard and at their desks.

I feel it’s a lot of wish thinking, and have faith that Elon will pull through.

I’m not good at forecasts, so I hope that doesn’t out the mockers on Twitter.

As of a minute ago, it still existed.

After Musk. Coders