…damn it russia

Ukrainian officials reported more than 100 incoming missiles on Thursday morning, triggering air defense systems around the country, from the capital, Kyiv, to the southern port city Odessa.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/29/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/

…it’s been kind of a brutal start to the day…which among other things may have been a consequence of previous ignorance

Putin’s overconfidence was one of the reasons that he — and Gen. Milley, and I — were wrong about the prospect of a quick Russian victory. I’ve fought in tanks in two wars; there is no spare room for dress uniforms. Any incredibly limited surplus space should have been filled with rations and bullets. Preparing for a short war also meant that some Russian forces may literally have run out of gas on the road to Kyiv. Other planning failures included not destroying Ukrainian air defenses early in the invasion, resulting in catastrophe for the Russian air force and for airborne troops tasked with seizing the Kyiv airport as part of a quick coup de main. The Russian military did not plan for a prolonged fight.

The Russian military also did not train for a prolonged fight. Russia’s vaunted army, at least as far as Ukraine is concerned, looks like a paper tiger. Putin’s efforts to restore the Russian military to its Soviet-era glory have been marred by corruption. For months he refused to appoint a single commander in charge of the entire operation, perhaps afraid that someone with that much power might turn against his regime. Some soldiers reported being given less than an hour’s notice that they were about to engage in a shooting war. The list of Russian mistakes is nearly endless; the invasion violated nearly all principles of war, and the results have been appalling, resulting in the destruction of some of Russia’s most elite units.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/russia-ukraine-war-shocked-putin-military-vets

…there’s a lot of ignorance, though…in all manner of shapes & sizes

A war is raging that has cost more than an estimated 600,000 lives. Its victims have borne witness to shocking human rights abuses and, tragically, civilians have been deliberately targeted. Tens of thousands of women have been raped. It has lasted two years and is happening today, yet the chances are you don’t even know where it is. Though it is far deadlier than the war in Ukraine, the western media have mostly ignored it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/28/war-ukraine-deadliest-conflict-tigray-ethiopia

…some of it surprisingly determined

Federal regulators warned Texas that its power plants couldn’t be counted on to reliably churn out electricity in bitterly cold conditions a decade ago, when the last deep freeze plunged 4 million people into the dark.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-17/texas-was-warned-a-decade-ago-its-grid-was-unprepared-for-cold

…but…it’s probably no surprise that in WaPo’s roundup of the biggest bits of bullshit on offer…one frothing set of jowls pops up twice

Biden is “urging children to report their parents to federal authorities if their parents post something called covid disinformation”
[…]
“Aprivate equity firm run by Hunter Biden funded some of the research into pathogens in these bio labs”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/16/biggest-pinocchios-2022/

…I suppose you could claim he works hard for “the money”

In 2022, amid a recurring cast of hysterical hosts and unhinged guests, […] one man still stands out. Tucker Carlson, as the most-watched host of the most-watched cable news network, holds rare influence over not just Republican supporters, but politicians, too. This year Carlson has been unafraid to wield that power, across issues including war, subjugation of continents and testosterone.
[…]
On 22 February,[…]Carlson used his Fox News show to launch a spirited defense of the Russian president.

“It may be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious, what is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much?” he said on his Wednesday night show.

“Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?” Carlson said. “These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is: ‘No.’ Vladimir Putin didn’t do any of that.”

Carlson went on to refer to the looming conflict as a “border issue” and described Ukraine as “a pure client state of the United States state department”.

[…] in the months since the conflict began, as Kremlin-backed Russian media have amplified Carlson’s coverage “dozens of times”, Carlson’s apparent sympathy towards Putin hasn’t waned. In December the Fox News host declared Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to be a “dictator” and “a dangerous authoritarian”.
[…]
Carlson had already dabbled in the “great replacement” theory, a racist notion that alleges white Americans are being deliberately replaced through immigration, but 2022 was the year he really embraced it publicly.

“The great replacement? Yeah, it’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s their electoral strategy,” Carlson told his viewers in July, amid a lengthy denunciation of immigration.

In Carlson’s telling, Democrats are deliberately importing immigrants who will then vote for them. It’s a conspiracy theory that appears to have inspired the mass shooting by a white gunman at a supermarket in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo, and a concept described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “​​inherently white supremacist”. But that hasn’t stopped Carlson from perpetuating it.
[…]
The New York Times reported in April that over the course of his Fox News career Carlson “amplified the idea that a cabal of elites want to force demographic change through immigration” in more than 400 shows. The difference this year has been Carlson’s explicit embrace of the concept, the Washington Post reported.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/dec/28/tucker-carlson-fox-news-2022-russia-putin-testosterone

…now…at least as far as I know…that particular failson is a cheap date when it comes to bending over for whatever vlad does to get him to parrot russian talking points all the livelong day…but…given all the cash that’s been slung about in that particular cause…it’d hardly be surprising if some of it dribbled into his pockets

Intrater’s cousin is a guy named Vekselberg, who pushed hundreds of thousands of dollars into Michael Cohen’s “Essential Consulting” from a company called Columbus Nova, and the two traded hundreds of phone calls and text messages. 2/

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) December 27, 2022

In 1996, Vekselberg partnered with another oligarch named Blavatnik to go in on Rusal – an aluminum company owned by Oleg Deripaska – who funneled nearly $4M into GOP coffers including McConnell’s. McConnell tried to cut a deal to build an aluminum plant in KY with their help. 4/

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) December 27, 2022

And Mnuchin, who protected trump from mandatory presidential tax audits, was a partner with Blavatnik in his movie production company. He sold his shares to Blavatnik when he was nominated as Treasury Secretary, and Blavatnik funneled $1M into Donald’s inaugural. 6/

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) December 27, 2022

…still & all…it’s not as though there aren’t plenty of gaps left to fill in…which…as it turns out…might very well be the sort of thing the DoJ is very much on the case about

Given the report that DOJ already has a robust investigation into the money trail, was a bit surprised that the January 6 Committee not only didn’t refer Trump for financial crimes — an easier way to look smart than referring him for inciting insurrection when DOJ has charged no one with insurrection — but relegated the financial part of the report to an appendix. I thought that choice was especially odd given that the false claims Trump made about the Big Lie were repurposed in campaign ads. But among other things, because Alex Cannon (he of the good Maggie Haberman press on the stolen document case) happened to be assigned both to debunking claims of voter fraud generally and he was part of the ad approval process (but as someone who had been doing vendor relations for Trump golf courses until shortly before he moved to the campaign,  he was totally unprepared to deal with campaign finance law), you have a witness otherwise exposed in DOJ investigations who recognized the fundraising claims could not be substantiated.
[…]
As one of the J6C hearings had noted — and as the appendix lays out in more depth — Trump continued to fundraise until the riot kicked off on January 6.
[…]
Remember: The RNC successfully fought a subpoena from the J6C, which kept Salesforce information out of the hands of the Committee. They would have no such opportunity with a d-order from DOJ, though, and those records would show the same kind of awareness at Salesforce as Twitter and Facebook had that permitting Trump’s team to abuse the platform contributed to the violence.

After raising all this money, Trump reportedly then used it for purposes not permitted under campaign finance laws.

There was even a hilarious exchange from a Cannon deposition about how, as a lawyer working for the campaign, he could claim privilege over a discussion with Jared Kushner about setting up a PAC that could not coordinate with the campaign.

The appendix in the report has more details about where the funds eventually ended up — for example, in Dan Scavino’s pocket, or that of Melania’s dress-maker, or legal defense in investigations of these very crimes.
[…]
On top of being an entirely different kind of crime, the financial trail may be one area where it is easier to show pushback on Trump’s false claims.
[…]
In any case, it turns out (as with many parts of the investigation) DOJ has quietly been investigating this for some time. Which may make the financial side of the Trump’s claims a key part of proof available about his campaign’s awareness that he was lying.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/12/27/the-money-trail-stuck-in-an-appendix-of-the-january-6-report/

…&…yes…we’re going to be hearing a lot of opinions about what exactly is demonstrated by a particular set of returns that are hopefully afflicting a certain someone like the worst case of reflux imaginable

Donald Trump’s redacted tax returns will be made public on Friday after a powerful congressional committee voted last week to release them.
[…]
The documents to be released on Friday are expected to include Trump’s tax returns filed between 2015 and 2021, the years he ran for and served as president. It would be the first formal release of his financial records from his time in office.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/27/donald-trump-tax-returns-release-confirmation

…some very likely less qualified than others

One technique he used at least 26 times between 2015 and 2020 was as simple as it was flagrant. Trump filed sole proprietor reports, known as Schedule C, that showed huge business expenses despite having zero revenue. That created losses which Trump used to offset his income from work and investments, thus lowering his income taxes. Additional Schedule Cs had expenses exactly equal to revenues while only a few showed profits.

Trump knew this was unlawful because he lost two trials over his 1984 income taxes in which he did the exact same thing, a story I broke in June 2016. Both judges, in scathing opinions, ruled that Trump committed civil tax fraud.
[…]
The Congressional report raises questions about numerous other tax deductions Trump took, including charitable deductions that may be bogus or overstated; treating personal expenses as business expenses; loans to his three older children that may be to escape gift taxes; and reporting almost $5 million of capital contributions as tax-deductible business expenses.

In short, Trump’s tax returns are a rich environment in which questionable conduct is found throughout the filings and needs only seasoned auditors to uncover fictional expenses.
[…]
Trump didn’t limit himself to lawful tax avoidance, my analysis of the Congressional report and other documents shows.
[…]
[A] tax return the city received was not an original with “wet” (ink) signatures, but a photocopy.

Asked about the validity of the photocopy, Mitnick gave astonishing testimony.

“We did not” prepare that return, Mitnick testified, referring to himself and his firm. In other words, the tax return was a forgery. Mitnick’s signature was applied using scissors and a photocopy machine. (My first national journalism award, in 1975, was for exposing a corrupt Michigan state senator who put his name on his predecessor’s medical records using a photocopier, then tricked the state Supreme Court into giving the supposedly dying senator a law license after he badly flunked the bar exam, and then miraculously recovering and using his law license to swindle his predecessor’s widow out of her fortune.)

https://www.dcreport.org/2022/12/27/trumps-brazen-tax-cheating-revealed/

…but all contributing to that feeling of getting bogged down by a surfeit of details

When journalists write books on the presidency of Donald Trump, they tend to choose one of three options. They write about personality, they write about paper, or they write about people.

This choice not only determines what kinds of work they produce but also affects how their audiences interpret Trump’s continuing influence over American life. In personality-driven narratives, the former president’s uniqueness and unpredictability render him mesmerizing but always verging on self-destruction; after all, when you suck all the air out of the room, you risk bursting. Writers who focus on paper — meaning the investigations, memos and ritual documentation of Washington, which Trump challenged with equal measures of deliberation and carelessness — depict his presidency as a tug between disruption and procedure, as the political system and Trump resisted and adapted to each other. An emphasis on people tells the story of Trump’s craven enablers, his true believers, his embattled opponents and, looking ahead, his most opportunistic imitators.
[…]
Special counsel reports don’t deter him. Vote counts don’t deter him. Not even the Constitution fazes Trump, whose recent call for the document’s “termination” is the ultimate battle against paper. His initial response to the Jan. 6 committee’s conclusion that he committed multiple federal crimes reflected a standard Trump tactic. “These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me,” he declared. “It strengthens me.” Trump always tries to turn paper fights into personality fights and then rallies people to defend him. For Trump, personality beats paper, and the support of his people beats everything.
[…]
In Robert Draper’s new book, “Weapons of Mass Delusion,” Trump is not the one battling Washington or undergoing a psychological assessment. Draper, a staff writer with The New York Times Magazine, studies the Republican House members who emulate Trump’s “performance art of cultural vendetta” and the MAGA supporters who, having absorbed the conservative media’s vilification of the left for so long, forgive whatever their side might do to counter the left. Even an assault on the Capitol is acceptable if the opponents arrayed against them are not just wrong but wicked. “So long as there was evil, there was righteousness,” Draper writes. “Identify evil, and the details did not matter.”

…I suppose you might call that “studied ignorance”…& it sure does seem like some folks are invested in trying to spread that muck in hopes of harvesting a bumper crop of that brute force they’re hooked on

The emotional kinetics may be easier to understand if we recognize that “stop the steal” was never just about the presidency or the 2020 vote or even Trump himself. For those gathered on Jan. 6, what was stolen was not just the election; it was America itself, or at least the fantasy version of the country that the rioters and their supporters felt had been promised and never delivered yet somehow wrested away. The 2022 midterm election results may signal a weakening of such forces, and Trump’s early poll numbers for 2024 are not exactly commanding, but how often have we heard that a fever was finally breaking?

“The question of Trump’s influence was the wrong one,” Draper concludes. “The more salient question of the 2022 political season was whether it would augur the return of sanity to the Republican Party.” Too much of the G.O.P. has morphed into standard-issue Trumpism, no matter whether Trump is its standard-bearer.
[…]
One of the great questions of this time has always been whether Trump changed the country or revealed it more clearly. The answer is yes; it is both. He changed America by revealing it. On Jan. 6, Trump was the man who could win the country back for those who yearned for him long before they imagined him. If he can’t do it, someone like him will do. Or someone like him, perhaps, but more so.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/opinion/trump-haberman-baker-glasser-draper.html

Source https://t.co/5ZrtBRrKwr

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) December 27, 2022

Source https://t.co/vV9WGMBHhT

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) December 27, 2022

…reducing things to a punchline can feel pretty satisfying

Tate recently topped Google’s 2022 most-searched list in the “who is …” question category. He has been active in far-right circles for years, but he began gaining mainstream attention this year after clips from his appearances on multiple podcast episodes and Twitch streams went viral.

He has attracted attention in large part due to his extreme statements: comparing women to property, graphically describing how he would assault a woman for accusing him of cheating and claiming that men would rather date 18- and 19-year-olds over women in their mid-20s because the younger women would have had sex with fewer men.
[…]
He also received backlash in 2017 when, at the height of the #MeToo movement, he tweeted that women should “bare some responsibility” for being sexually assaulted, amid other widely criticized statements appearing to blame women for the abuse and harassment they receive. Twitter had permanently suspended his account that year. He appeared to return to the platform last month.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/greta-thunberg-andrew-tate-tweet-twitter

yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com https://t.co/V8geeVvEvg

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) December 28, 2022

…& the strain may be starting to show

According to downdetector.com, which tracks site traffic, the website became unavailable shortly before midnight GMT (11am Thursday AEDT, 7pm Wednesday EST), with outages most commonly reported on website rather than the app.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/29/twitter-users-report-global-outage-with-many-unable-to-log-into-website-or-app

…not that necessarily everyone will notice a thing like that

Works for me

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 29, 2022

…which…might beg a question or two

It’s natural to attribute Tesla’s recent decline — which is, to be sure, part of a general fall in tech stocks, but an exceptionally steep example — to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the reputational self-immolation that followed. Indeed, given what we’ve seen of Musk’s behavior, I wouldn’t trust him to feed my cat, let alone run a major corporation. Furthermore, Tesla sales have surely depended at least in part on the perception that Musk himself is a cool guy. Who, aside from MAGA types who probably wouldn’t have bought Teslas anyway, sees him that way now?

[…] though, it’s hard to explain the huge valuation the market put on Tesla before the drop, or even its current value. After all, to be that valuable, Tesla would have to generate huge profits not just for a few years but in a way that could be expected to continue for many years to come.

[…] But we more or less understand the durability of the dominance of Apple and Microsoft, and it’s hard to see how Tesla could ever achieve something similar, no matter how brilliant its leadership. Both Apple and Microsoft benefit from strong network externalities — loosely speaking, everyone uses their products because everyone else uses their products.
[…]
Similar stories can be told about a few other companies, such as Amazon, with its distribution infrastructure.

The question is: Where are the powerful network externalities in the electric vehicle business?
[…]
So what would make that happen for Tesla? You could imagine a world in which dedicated Tesla hookups were the only widely available charging stations, or in which Teslas were the only electric cars mechanics knew how to fix. But with major auto manufacturers moving into the electric vehicle business, the possibility of such a world has already vanished. In fact, I’d argue that the Inflation Reduction Act, with its strong incentives for electrification, will actually hurt Tesla. Why? Because it will quickly make electric cars so common that Teslas no longer seem special.

In short, electric vehicle production just doesn’t look like a network externality business. Actually, you know what does? Twitter, a platform many of us still use because so many other people use it. But Twitter usage is apparently hard to monetize, not to mention the fact that Musk appears set on finding out just how much degradation of the user experience it will take to break its network externalities and drive away the clientele.

Which brings us back to the question of why Tesla was ever worth so much. The answer, as best as I can tell, is that investors fell in love with a story line about a brilliant, cool innovator, despite the absence of a good argument about how this guy, even if he really was who he appeared to be, could found a long-lived money machine.

[…] there’s a parallel here with Bitcoin. Despite years of effort, nobody has yet managed to find any serious use for cryptocurrency other than money laundering. But prices nonetheless soared on the hype, and are still being sustained by a hard-core group of true believers. Something similar surely happened with Tesla, even though the company does actually make useful things.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/opinion/tesla-stock-elon-musk.html

…there’s a weird imbalance between people who think everyone should know what they say they think…but don’t want anyone to be able to see what they think of what they say amongst themselves

Mr. Dorsey is promoting one of the most potent and fashionable notions in Silicon Valley: that a technology free of corporate and government control is in the best interest of society. To that end, he announced he would give $1 million a year to Signal, a text-messaging app.

Like Messages on your iPhone, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, Signal uses end-to-end encryption, making it impossible for the company to read the contents of user messages. But unlike those other companies, Signal also refrains from collecting metadata about its users. The company doesn’t know the identity of users, which users are talking to each other or who is in a group message. It also allows users to set timers that automatically delete messages from the sender’s and receiver’s respective accounts.
[…]
This level of privacy can be beneficial on a number of fronts. For instance, Signal is used by journalists to communicate with confidential sources. But it is no coincidence that criminals have also used this government-evading technology. When the F.B.I. arrested several Oath Keepers for rioting at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, one of its primary pieces of evidence was messages on Signal. (It’s unclear how the F.B.I. got access to the messages in this instance; there is a longstanding cat and mouse game between lawmakers and technology.)

…they say a bad workman blames their tools…& I guess I’ve always somewhat assumed that a corollary would be that a good craftsman knows the right tool for the job…& I may be more by way of the bad workman…or the sort of jack-of-all-trades that exemplifies that adage about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing…but…it never really seemed to me that ignorance is a good choice of tool to wield in the service of anything much that’s worth doing…not only is it the bluntest of instruments…it also has the potential to blow back on you like a wildfire when the winds change…but…all things are relative, I suppose

The ethical universe, according to Signal, is simple: The privacy of individuals must be respected above all else, come what may. If terrorists or child abusers or other criminals use the app, or one like it, to coordinate activities or share child sexual abuse imagery behind impenetrable closed doors, that’s a shame — but privacy is all that matters.

One should always worry when a person or an organization places one value above all. The moral fabric of our world is complex. It’s nuanced. Sensitivity to moral nuance is difficult, but unwavering support of one principle to rule them all is morally dangerous.

The way Signal wields the word “surveillance” reflects its coarsegrained understanding of morality. To the company, surveillance covers everything from a server holding encrypted data that no one looks at to a law enforcement agent reading data after obtaining a warrant to Eastern Germany randomly tapping citizens’ phones. One cannot think carefully about the value of privacy — including its relative importance to other values in particular contexts — with such a broad brush.
[…]
I am drawing attention to Signal, but there’s a bigger issue here: Small groups of technologists are developing and deploying applications of their technologies for explicitly ideological reasons, with those ideologies baked into the technologies. To use those technologies is to use a tool that comes with an ethical or political bent.

…& given the part where that last bit isn’t exactly what you might call a conscious choice made on that kind of a basis…maybe that qualifies as brute-forcing ignorance…after all, arguably the easiest way to pull off what hackers might call a man-in-the-middle attack…is setting yourself up to be the middle man in as many interactions as possible…but I digress

Signal is pushing against businesses like Meta that turn users of their social media platforms into the product by selling user data. But Signal embeds within itself a rather extreme conception of privacy, and scaling its technology is scaling its ideology. Signal’s users may not be the product, but they ‌‌are the witting or unwitting advocates of the moral views of the 40 or so people who operate Signal.

There’s something somewhat sneaky in all this (though I don’t think the owners of Signal intend to be sneaky). Usually advocates know that they’re advocates. They engage in some level of deliberation and reach the conclusion that a set of beliefs is for them.

But users of apps like Signal need not have such beliefs. They may merely (mistakenly) think, “Here’s a way to message people that my friends are using.” Signal’s influence doesn’t necessarily hit us at the belief level. It hits us at the action level: what we do, how we operate, day in and day out. In using this technology, we are acting out the ethical and political commitments of the technologists.

Perhaps the technologists are right that Big Tech and Big Government cannot be trusted and are beyond repair. Still, that wouldn’t settle whether these technological solutions and the people who create and deploy them are any better. If one of the complaints about Big Tech and Big Government is that they are insufficiently accountable for their misdeeds, can we not levy the same critique against the technologists?
[…]
So I am not convinced we are really getting more freedom and “for the people by the people” by way of our technology overlords. Instead, we have a technologically driven shift of power to ideological individuals and organizations whose lack of appreciation for moral nuance and good governance puts us all at risk.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/opinion/jack-dorseys-twitter-signal-privacy.html

…who knows…maybe we’ll figure it out…after all…the stars are aligned

Every planet in the solar system was visible in the night sky simultaneously on Wednesday, which is regarded by experts as a rare astronomical event.
[…]
All eight planets appeared only 1.5 degrees apart on Wednesday night and were set to reach conjunction – their closest point – on Thursday at 2100 GMT.
[…]
Gianluca Masi, an astronomer with the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, told Newsweek: “These nights, we can see all the planets of our solar system at a glance, soon after sunset. It happens from time to time, but it is always a spectacular sight.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/dec/28/all-planets-in-the-solar-system-visible-in-night-sky-at-same-time-on-wednesday

…but…if the heavens don’t seem like the place to look to for answers…you could always look elsewhere for enlightenment

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/dec/27/the-best-of-the-long-read-in-2022

…though…I’m guessing this particular read is longer than it ought to be already…so it’s time to find some music worth facing, I guess?