…I think I’m hoping I got out the wrong side of bed today…because…well…aside from the inevitable part about being behind schedule getting this ready I’m not sure I wouldn’t trade a hangover for the way I seem to be feeling about the stuff I’ve been reading…being as it’s the weekend & all I commend to you the option to just click the little number just above the header image & skip all this in favor of the comments…but for those of you who are morbidly curious…I’ll try not to go off the deep end

I am just going to go ahead and say it: I do not think that killer robots are a good idea.

I know that the San Francisco Police Department wants to have killer robots. But I think, sometimes, you do not need to give people what they want. Especially if what they want is killer robots.

I understand that this remark is controversial. But what are columnists for, if not to take these bold stances? So I will say it again: I, for one, think that killer robots are bad. I do not think the robots should kill. I think if you are going to draw a line someplace, killer robots should be on the other side of the line.
[…]
That might not be where you draw your line. I understand. You might say, “I think the robots should do a little killing. Let them have their fun.”

But I am going to say, “I think you’re making a mistake. I think the ideal amount of killing that should be done by robots is zero killing.”

“But wait,” you’re saying. “Historically, haven’t killer robots been good for society?” Actually, no! Actually, there have not been any killer robots, because we were pretty confident they would be bad for society.
[…]
I am old-fashioned like that. No robots killing people, thanks! In fact, I do not even think the police should be killing people. But that is just me.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/03/san-francisco-police-robot-killer-satire/

…but…the deep end is maybe not as deep as it used to be

The normally placid Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir, could suddenly transform into something resembling a funnel, with water circling the openings, the dam’s operators say.

If that happens, the massive turbines that generate electricity for 4.5 million people would have to shut down — after nearly 60 years of use — or risk destruction from air bubbles. The only outlet for Colorado River water from the dam would then be a set of smaller, deeper and rarely used bypass tubes with a far more limited ability to pass water downstream to the Grand Canyon and the cities and farms in Arizona, Nevada and California.

Such an outcome — known as a “minimum power pool” — was once unfathomable here. Now, the federal government projects that day could come as soon as July.

Worse, officials warn, is the remote possibility of an even more catastrophic event. That is if the water level falls all the way to the lowest holes, so only small amounts could pass through the dam. Such a scenario — called “dead pool” — would transform Glen Canyon Dam from something that regulates an artery of national importance into a hulking concrete plug corking the Colorado River.

Anxiety about such outcomes has worsened this year as a long-running drought has intensified in the Southwest. Reservoirs and groundwater supplies across the region have fallen dramatically, and states and cities have faced restrictions on water use amid dwindling supplies. The Colorado River, which serves roughly 1 in 10 Americans, is the region’s most important waterway.
[…]
In August, the Bureau of Reclamation announced it would support studies to find out if physical modifications could be made to Glen Canyon Dam to allow water to be released below critical elevations, including dead pool. That implies studying such costly and time-consuming construction projects as drilling tunnels through the Navajo sandstone at river level, said Jack Schmidt, a Colorado River expert at Utah State University.

“There was a time in my professional career that if anybody from Reclamation ever said that, they’d be fired on the spot,” said Schmidt, who served as the chief of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center during the Obama administration. Even raising that issue is “a huge sea change telling you how different the world is.”
[…]
This year, the Biden administration called on the seven states of the Colorado River basin to cut water consumption by 2 to 4 million acre-feet — up to a third of the river’s annual average flow — to protect power generation and avoid such dire outcomes. But negotiations have not produced an agreement. And the Interior Department has not yet mandated those cuts, even after an August deadline passed for states to propose voluntary reductions.
[…]
But these types of ominous scenarios are starting to be considered. With Lake Powell at one-quarter full, Reclamation has begun a feasibility study on the prospect of harnessing the deeper bypass tubes for power generation. The entity that markets Glen Canyon’s electricity — the Western Area Power Administration, known as WAPA and part of the Energy Department — is working with two national laboratories to assess what electricity would be available for purchase if Glen Canyon shut down.
[…]
The chances of hitting minimum power pool (lake elevation 3,490 feet above sea level) within the next two years is part of Reclamation’s minimum probable forecast, and more likely scenarios have water levels staying above that threshold. But researchers including Schmidt have documented how Reclamation’s projections have been too optimistic in recent years amid the warming climate and historic drought that is wringing water out of the West on a grand scale.

“The critical part about what’s been happening and what climate change is forcing us to do is: We have to look more at the extremes,” said Tom Buschatzke, director of Arizona’s Department of Water Resources, said in an interview. “We’ve got to plan for the low end.”

…it’s hardly as though this stuff is unique to the states…but having at least once tried to get my head around the scale of the view standing at one edge of the grand canyon only to be thrown all over again by the knowledge that the wispy thread running through it was the colorado river…this one boggles my mind more than most, I guess

As the water has receded, so has the ability to produce power at Glen Canyon, as less pressure from the lake pushes the turbines. The dam already generates about 40 percent less power than what has been committed to customers, which includes dozens of Native American tribes, nonprofit rural electric cooperatives, military bases, and small cities and towns across several southwestern states. These customers would be responsible for buying power on the open market in the event Glen Canyon could not generate, potentially driving up rates dramatically.

The standard rate paid for Glen Canyon’s low-cost power is $30 per megawatt hour. On the open market, these customers last summer faced prices as high as $1,000 per megawatt hour, said Leslie James, executive director of the Colorado River Energy Distributors Association.
[…]
Glen Canyon’s electricity is important for the nation in other ways. The dam is what’s known as a “black start” facility for the country’s largest nuclear plant, the Palo Verde Generating Station in Arizona. This means the dam could bring the nuclear plant back online if it shut down and needed to restart.
[…]
In September, Glen Canyon sent about 80 megawatts of power to California for three hours at the height of its record-breaking heat wave, helping the state narrowly avoid rolling blackouts. It was the second time in the past few years that the dam has been called on to ramp up during emergencies threatening the electric grid, said Adam Arellano, an executive with the Western Area Power Administration.
[…]
Being forced to switch to the four smaller bypass tubes would instantly cut the dam’s capacity to release water by two-thirds. If water levels and pressure fell further, these pipes would quickly lose the ability to deliver the millions of acre-feet of water the lower basin states consume each year, the Glen Canyon Institute wrote in a report in August on low water scenarios.

“That dam is just not capable of delivering water at lower levels. It’s going to create huge problems for the Grand Canyon,” said Eric Balken, the institute’s executive director.
[…]
With Lake Powell so diminished, water temperatures have risen dramatically — from the high 40s when he started, to a record high of near 70 degrees this summer — as water closer to the surface is now passing through the dam. Swimming, once for the hardiest, is now commonplace.

…maybe I’m just not looking at it the right way

Arguments against Lake Powell have been around as long as the lake. Its existence, to some, amounts to an ecological atrocity, the drowning of miles of intricate slick rock canyons. Some argue it is unnecessary for water storage, power generation or the tourist economy — despite having more than 3 million visitors last year.

“Everybody keeps running around saying how can we prevent this from happening,” said Dan Beard, who served as the Bureau of Reclamation’s commissioner from 1993 to 1995. He added that he wouldn’t be surprised to see dead pool in the next three years. “My question is: Why should we prevent it from happening?”

…or just lacking perspective

Some say the gravity of the threat is enough to spur the states and federal government to make the necessary cuts in water use.

“I’m actually very optimistic that we’re not going to go below power pool,” said Arellano, the WAPA executive. “This is the number one issue for pretty much everybody in the hydropower industry.”

But the reservoirs remain vulnerable. The most recent five-year hydrology projection estimates the chance at reaching minimum power pool (elev. 3,490) at 10 percent next year and 30 percent in 2024, as dry La Niña conditions are expected to continue. Reclamation predicts there is zero chance of reaching dead pool (elev. 3,370) at Lake Powell over the next five years.

…honestly, though…I can’t say as I like the odds?

“If there was a line in Vegas, and I was a betting man, I think I’d probably bet we’ll go below 3,490,” said Charles Yackulic, a research statistician with USGS who is part of a team that was tasked in August to study how power pool or dead pool would impact the Colorado River.

Below that threshold, as Glen Canyon dam is able to release less and less water — the change between how much water is flowing at night or during the day would also diminish. That would lessen the “tides” that now characterize life in the Grand Canyon, water flows that fluctuate based on demand for hydropower.

Ultimately, the Colorado River would “become less like a river,” Yackulic said, “and more like an irrigation ditch.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/01/drought-colorado-river-lake-powell/

…so…I guess I can beg for forgiveness

The most common explanations for the root causes of mass shootings — a mental health crisis and overly lax gun laws — have merit. Another factor is the fading of forgiveness in our society. It is no longer valued or promoted as it was in the past. And a society that has lost the ability to extend and receive forgiveness risks being crushed by the weight of recriminations and score settling.

Many people committed to justice value forgiveness, but others worry that it lets oppressors off the hook. Technology also makes a contribution. Social media is a realm in which missteps and wrongful, impulsive posts are never forgiven. Screenshots of every foolish word you have ever said online can be circulated in perpetuity. And our politics is filled with vitriol. In our cultural moment a conciliatory, forgiving voice is nowhere to be heard. Calls for forgiveness and reconciliation sound like both-sidesism, a mealy-mouthed lack of principle and courage.

Yet what is the alternative to forgiveness? In the 1970s, I was a pastor in a small town that had not a single professional therapist or social worker. I ended up counseling dozens of couples with troubled marriages. I discovered that those who learned and embraced forgiveness usually survived and those who did not never did. Without forgiveness, no human relationships or communities can be sustained. Without forgiveness, centuries-long cycles of retaliation, violence and genocide repeat themselves. Without forgiveness, you are more subject to heart disease and heart attacks, strokes and depression. We should forgive because it is profoundly practical. To fail to forgive is to undermine the health and coherence of one’s body, one’s relationships and the entire human community.

Another reason to forgive is simple fairness. We owe it to others to forgive because we all need forgiveness ourselves. At the end of his parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18, Jesus describes God saying to an unforgiving man, “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you?” Imagine that when Judgment Day comes, you will be evaluated only on the basis of all the times you told others, “You ought to” or “You should.” In other words, imagine you will be judged only on the basis of your own moral standards. Not a person on earth could pass such a test, and we know it.
What Too Little Forgiveness Does to US [NYT]

…but…well…I don’t know as I can honestly say I’m feeling all that forgiving?

On Friday afternoon, Substack writer Matt Taibbi tweeted what he called “The Twitter Files,” a series of internal documents he says he obtained from sources at the social media company. The documents appear to show internal conversations about Twitter’s decision to block a New York Post story about Hunter Biden from its platform in October 2020. New Twitter CEO Elon Musk teased the release of the documents before they published, and shared Taibbi’s posts shortly after, saying, “Here we go!! 🍿🍿”

Most notably, the documents shared by Taibbi include email exchanges between employees at Twitter, before Musk took over the company, discussing how to handle the Post story shortly before the 2020 election. Twitter initially blocked sharing of the story due to concerns that it violated the company’s Hacked Materials Policy, but later reversed those restrictions. Taibbi’s thread—or series of posts—quickly ignited a fierce debate on the platform about free speech, intimate photos of Hunter Biden, technology companies’ ability to moderate political news coverage, and Musk’s role in amplifying the documents.

[…all in all…& not least after hearing marcy wheeler’s thoughts on the subject…I’m sticking with my original view about the more-smoke-than-fire thing on that one…& the ones blowing it are high on my list of people I’m not feeling like forgiving…because…what.the.actual.fuck?]

On Saturday, Donald Trump weighed in on #TwitterGate, and called for parts of the Constitution to be thrown out to combat what he characterized as election fraud. The message, which Trump posted on Truth Social, appeared counterintuitive to some observers, as critics of Twitter’s actions largely cited concerns about protecting the First Amendment to the Constitution.
[…]
Meanwhile, Musk seemed to revel in the controversy he helped create. Not long after Taibbi published his thread, Musk tweeted:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/12/donald-trump-just-weighed-in-on-twittergate-and-i-really-wish-he-hadnt/

Tune in for Episode 2 of The Twitter Files tomorrow!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 3, 2022

…& sure…I do believe elon is a fucking idiot in any number of ways…but

Ye and big tech gave Infowars one of it’s biggest days ever [NBC]

…I do not for one moment buy that this is a “they know not what they do” scenario

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-twitter-reinstates-neo-nazi-andrew-anglin-account

…& am definitely lacking anything resembling christian charity in the forgiveness department where these assholes are concerned

Elon Musk’s Twitter is leaning heavily on automation to moderate content according to the company’s new head of trust and safety, amid a reported surge in hate speech on the social media platform.

Ella Irwin has told the Reuters news agency that Musk, who acquired the company in October, was focused on using automation more, arguing that Twitter had in the past erred on the side of using time and labour-intensive human reviews of harmful content.

…really? …that’s your takeaway? …not the part where any automated moderation process that doesn’t have a person in the loop to exercise judgement is essentially guaranteed to be systematically gamed by bad actors…largely if not exclusively of the sort that actually deserve to be driven out of the conversation the way they strive so hard to expunge the voices of those who see them for what they are?

Her comments come as researchers reported a surge in hate speech on the social media service, after Musk announced an amnesty for accounts suspended under the company’s previous leadership that had not broken the law or engaged in “egregious spam”.
[…]
Researchers say the number of tweets containing hateful content on Twitter rose sharply in the week before Musk tweeted on 23 November that impressions, or views, of hateful speech were declining. Tweets containing words that were anti-Black that week were triple the number seen in the month before Musk took over, while tweets containing a gay slur were up 31%, a study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate showed.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/03/twitter-moderators-turn-to-automation-amid-a-reported-surge-in-hate-speech

…so…some things are good to see

fuck him up, buttercup

— Popehat (@Popehat) December 2, 2022

…you either laugh or you cry, I guess…& I’m pretty sure we already know there’ve been tears before bedtime

Chinese authorities have initiated the highest “emergency response” level of censorship, according to leaked directives, including a crackdown on VPNs and other methods of bypassing online censorship after unprecedented protests demonstrated widespread public frustration with the zero-Covid policy.

The crackdown, including the tracking and questioning of protesters, comes alongside the easing of pandemic restrictions in an apparent carrot-and-stick approach to an outpouring of public grievances. During an extraordinary week in China, protests against zero-Covid restrictions included criticism of the authoritarian rule of Xi Jinping – which was further highlighted by the death of the former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin.

Leaked directives issued to online Chinese platforms, first published by a Twitter account devoted to sharing protest-related information, have revealed authorities’ specific concerns about the growing interest among citizens in circumventing China’s so-called “Great Firewall”. The demonstrations have been strictly censored, but protesters and other citizens have this week used VPNs to access non-Chinese news and social media apps that are banned in China.

The directives, also published and translated by the China Digital Times, a US-based news site focused on Chinese censorship, came from China’s cyberspace administration, and announced a “Level I Internet Emergency Response, the highest level of content management”.

…but that context just seems to be from-bad-to-worse

Lockdowns have lifted in major cities this week, even where relatively high case numbers are still being reported. Testing and quarantine requirements have also been relaxed in some areas, amid some expectation of a shift in national virus policies. Some communities in Beijing and elsewhere have already allowed close contacts of people carrying the virus to quarantine at home, and several testing booths in the area have stopped operating. In Chengdu, in Sichuan province, passengers no longer needed negative test results to take the bus or subway. In Jincheng, which is halfway from Beijing to Shanghai, people can now enter karaoke venues, but still cannot dine inside restaurants.

However, the haphazard relaxation of restrictions appears to have fuelled some confusion and concern, with residents suddenly feeling more exposed to a virus that, until this week, authorities were describing as deadly.

In recent days, there has been a distinct shift in messaging from officials and state media, regrading the pandemic. Officials appear to have stopped or at least reduced referencing the “dynamic zero Covid” policy by name. The lower severity of Omicron compared with previous virus strains is being publicly discussed and emphasised for the first time.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/02/china-brings-in-emergency-level-censorship-over-zero-covid-protests

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/04/fears-of-deadly-infection-surge-as-china-abandons-zero-covid-policy

…& quite frankly I have more than enough existential terror to be getting along with

Big polluting industries have been given almost €100bn (£86bn) in free carbon permits by the EU in the last nine years, according to an analysis by the WWF. The free allowances are “in direct contradiction with the polluter pays principle”, the group said.

Free pollution permits worth €98.5bn were given to energy-intensive sectors including steel, cement, chemicals and aviation from 2013-21. This is more than the €88.5bn that the EU’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) charged polluters, mostly coal and gas power stations, for their CO2 emissions.

Furthermore, the WWF said, the free permits did not come with climate conditions attached, such as increasing energy efficiency and some polluters were also able to make billions in windfall profits by selling the permits they did not use.
[…]
“The analysis shows that for the last decade, the ETS was based on a ‘polluters-don’t-pay principle’, with billions and billions of forgone revenue that EU countries could instead have invested in industrial decarbonisation,” said Romain Laugier, at the WWF’s European policy office and lead author of the report. “EU negotiators should phase out free allowances as soon as possible, and in the meantime make sure companies that receive them meet strict conditions on cutting their emissions.”

Alex Mason, also at the WWF, said: ‘If taxpayers are going to forgo tens of billions in revenue, then industry should be using that money to invest in the technologies to decarbonise, certainly not simply doing nothing or even profiting from the free allowances.”
[…]
The report excludes the UK, which left the EU in January 2020. But before Brexit, UK companies were among those making big profits from selling excess free carbon allowances, along with those in Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

A 2021 assessment from Carbon Market Watch reported that steel, cement, petrochemical and refinery companies had made windfall profits of up to €50bn between 2008 and 2019. In addition, some industrial companies that had to buy carbon permits have later received government compensation for the costs.
[…]
The report concludes: “We have very little time left to keep global temperature rise to 1.5C and stop runaway climate change, and how we spend public money is critical. It seems clear that issuing free allowances under the ETS has been a serious policy failure.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/29/big-polluters-given-almost-100bn-in-free-carbon-permits-by-eu

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/30/giving-up-on-15c-climate-target-would-be-gift-to-carbon-boosters-says-iea-head

…without throwing out hard-learned lessons because nobody thinks consequences are a real thing

This grim reality has arrived with startling rapidity. Since February, the war in Ukraine has created an acute risk of U.S.-Russia conflict. It has also vaulted a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to the forefront of American fears and increased Washington’s willingness to respond with military force. “That’s called World War III,” indeed.

Yet how many Americans can truly envision what a third world war would mean? Just as great power conflict looms again, those who witnessed the last one are disappearing. Around 1 percent of U.S. veterans of World War II remain alive to tell their stories. It is estimated that by the end of this decade, fewer than 10,000 will be left. The vast majority of Americans today are unused to enduring hardship for foreign policy choices, let alone the loss of life and wealth that direct conflict with China or Russia would bring.

Navigating great power conflict is hardly a novel challenge for the United States. By 1945, Americans had lived through two world wars. The country emerged triumphant yet sobered by its wounds. Even as the wars propelled the United States to world leadership, American leaders and citizens feared that a third world war might be as probable as it today appears unthinkable. Perhaps that is one reason a catastrophe was avoided.
[…]
But memory is never static. After the Soviet Union collapsed and generations turned over, World War II was recast as a moral triumph and no longer a cautionary tale.
[…]
Besides, why dwell on the horrors of global conflict at a time when no such thing even seemed possible? With post-Soviet Russia reeling and China poor, there were no more great powers for the United States to fight. Scholars discussed the obsolescence of major war.
[…]
Not having to worry about the effects of wars — unless you enlist to fight in them — has nearly become a birthright of being American.

…I don’t know about that, exactly…though I do see what they’re getting at…certainly enough to think that maybe of all the times to dwell on the existential terror of the whole thing…sunday ain’t it…suffice to say

That birthright has come to an end. The United States is entering an era of intense great power rivalry that could escalate to large-scale conventional or nuclear war. It’s time to think through the consequences.
[…]
If the possibility of war with Russia was not enough, U.S. relations with China are in free fall, setting up the world’s two leading powers to square off for decades to come.
[…]
In short, a war with Russia or China would likely injure the United States on a scale without precedent in the living memory of most citizens. That, in turn, introduces profound uncertainty about how the American political system would perform. Getting in would be the easy part. More elusive is whether the public and its representatives would maintain the will to fight over far-flung territories in the face of sustained physical attack and economic calamity. When millions are thrown out of work, will they find Taiwan’s cause worth their sacrifice? Could national leaders compellingly explain why the United States was paying the grievous price of World War III?
[…]
As international relations have deteriorated in recent years, critics of U.S. global primacy have frequently warned that a new cold war was brewing. I have been among them. Yet pointing to a cold war in some ways understates the danger. Relations with Russia and China are not assured to stay cold. During the original Cold War, American leaders and citizens knew that survival was not inevitable. World-rending violence remained an all-too-possible destination of the superpower contest, right up to its astonishing end in 1989.

Today the United States is again assuming the primary burden of countering the ambitions of governments in Moscow and Beijing. When it did so the first time, it lived in the shadow of world war and acted out of a frank and healthy fear of another. This time, lessons will have to be learned without that experience.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/opinion/america-world-war-iii.html

…& what with there being a certain amount of where america goes the rest of the world follows when the strokes are that broad…& potentially unforgiving…I get to the part where I’d probably trade out for a hangover this morning…& I apologize profusely if I’ve taken the shine off anyone’s day…so…with that in mind…though it might still be a bit dry to qualify as recreational reading…I humbly submit that checking out the recent 11th circuit judgement might help take the edge off…or at least reassure you that an objective reality may in fact still have the edge in the long run?

The opinion’s key point is that, were they to rule for Trump, it would create an impossible precedent, either halting much pre-indictment access to seized material, or creating an exception only for former Presidents.

In considering these arguments, we are faced with a choice: apply our usual test; drastically expand the availability of equitable jurisdiction for every subject of a search warrant; or carve out an unprecedented exception in our law for former presidents. We choose the first option. So the case must be dismissed.
[snip]
The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so. Either approach would be a radical reordering of our caselaw limiting the federal courts’ involvement in criminal investigations. And both would violate bedrock separation-of-powers limitations. Accordingly, we agree with the government that the district court improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction, and that dismissal of the entire proceeding is required.

Much of the opinion is an Richey analysis–the analysis Cannon worked so hard to manufacture. It’s not all that interesting. The key point is that, as Jay Bratt told Judge Cannon on August 30, the precedent in the circuit is clear.

But in conducting a Richey analysis, which it ultimately called a “sideshow,” the opinion took repeated swipes at the efforts Cannon went to make shit up to benefit Trump.

Plaintiff has adopted two of the district court’s arguments, dedicating a single page of his brief to discussing the first and third theories of harm. On the first argument, Plaintiff echoes the district court and asserts that he faces an “unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public.” It is not clear whether Plaintiff and the district court mean classified information or information that is sensitive to Plaintiff personally. If the former, permitting the United States to review classified documents does not suggest that they will be released. Any official who makes an improper disclosure of classified material risks her own criminal liability. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 798. What’s more, any leak of classified material would be properly characterized as a harm to the United States and its citizens—not as a personal injury to Plaintiff.

The only thing specific to Trump’s status as an ex-President, besides the opinion’s repeated reminder that he is not special, is the way with which the opinion twice dismissed Trump’s claim that if he had designated these documents his personal property under the Presidential Records Act, it would allow him to keep it. That’s nonsense, of course, because warrants authorize the seizure of personal property as a general rule.
[…]
A very conservative panel, including two Trump appointees, just confirmed that he’s not special anymore.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/12/01/11th-circuit-to-trump-youre-not-special/

…well…it makes me feel better, any road?

[…I’ll see if I can do a bit better with the things to listen to than I managed with the reading material today]