Found in Instapundit comments.

Ambulance calls for heart emergencies in young people way up. (Midlands, England). "Don't Say Vax"

 

Source: https://2ndsmartestguyintheworld.substack.com/p/pfizergate-official-government-reports

Truth without a Champion

 Truth without a champion will not set you free.

When everybody's lying, whom do you trust?

Massive shedding of trust is here.
When we go from sceptic to cynic, we believe nothing.
Government dignitaries,  hospital mandarins, scientist oracles,  billionaire CEO's,  fact checker pontifs and more have lost  gravitas and even lost all respect.

When we go from sceptic to cynic, we believe nothing we read or hear.
This makes us pawns in games others play
because we don't make timely distinctions between people in conflict, we fail to establish the relative value of one choice over another.  The somewhat good guys are tarred by the somewhat evil guys brush.
And this makes us less dangerous to hard-ball players.  While we harden ourselves somewhat against every claim, we become vulnerable to any bullldozer doctrine or scam that pushes hard.
The cynic's bubble is only shelter from small noxious affronts.

What touchstone will you use for truth, or to determine a degree of truth, or even to make an interim decision to trust someone until you get a better picture of what's happening?   This has always been a key question but today it faces us urgently.

The internet has brought this forward.  What people really said in private is often quickly heard in public and their hidden deeds from past years may be published promptly today.   There is a lot of falseness, spin, and (in my view) evil doing.  The same flood of news, mostly curated, may also bring cures to the problem.

I insist of hearing and seeing video of controversial statements and want it to be at least a few minutes long so I can evaluate the context and look for edits.  I look to see what other people have said that triangulate with or oppose the controversial statement.    On sites which promote thoughtful commentary written in paragraphs, I read sometimes hundreds of observations to get a better understanding.  And thenb settle on a view.  Even with this, I'm often blindsided and proven wrong, because some much of the information is data spun to entice and deceive.  But it's all I've got and I'm sticking with it.

Supernova near-miss didn't happen but Betelgeuse is pulsing oddly

 From spaceweather.com
Some scientists were worried about Betelgeuse going supernova but it did't make the main news feeds.(I don't see how to link individual spaceweather stories and hence have included the bulk of it.)

WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO BETELGEUSE? You've heard of a CME, a "coronal mass ejection." They happen all the time. A piece of the sun's tenuous outer atmosphere (corona) blows off and sometimes hits Earth. Something far more terrible just happened to Betegeuse. The red giant star produced an SME, or "surface mass ejection."

Above: An artist's concept of an SME on Betelgeuse. Credit: Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)

NASA astronomers believe that in 2019 a colossal piece of Betelgeuse's surface blew off the star. The mass of the SME was 400 billion times greater than a CME or several times the mass of Earth's Moon. Data from multiple telescopes, especially Hubble, suggest that a convective plume more than a million miles across bubbled up from deep inside the star, producing shocks and pulsations that blasted a chunk off the surface.

"We've never before seen such a huge mass ejection from the surface of a star," says Andrea Dupree of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who is leading the study. "Something is going on that we don't completely understand."

After it left the star, the SME cooled, forming a dark cloud that famously dimmed Betelgeuse in 2019 and 2020. Even casual sky watchers could look up and see the change. Some astronomers worried that the dimming foreshadowed a supernova explosion. The realization that an SME is responsible has at least temporarily calmed those fears.

Above: A Hubble image of Betelgeuse located in the shoulder of Orion.

Betelgeuse's brightness has since returned to normal, but something strange is still going on. Astronomers have long known that Betelgeuse is a variable star with a 430-day period. Its metronome-like change in brightness has been observed for more than 200 years. As Betelgeuse recovers, however, those pulsations are no longer regular: See the data. Spectra taken by Hubble and the Tillinghast telescope in Arizona imply that years later the surface of Betelgeuse is still bouncing like a plate of gelatin dessert--a testament to the ferocity of the blowout.

Betelgeuse is so large that if it replaced the sun at the center of our solar system, its atmosphere would extend past Jupiter. Dupree used Hubble to resolve hot spots on the star's surface in 1996. This was the first direct image of a star other than the sun.

What's happening now "is a totally new phenomenon that we can observe directly and resolve surface details with Hubble," says Dupree. "We're watching stellar evolution in real time."

Asteroid alarms from the Daily Mail

If you want to know what's daily really zooming past earth, check spaceweather.com 
If you prefer exciting meteor stories, try the Daily Mail.
In the current week there are bigger and faster and nearer meteors on the way!

Interest is an information bridge connecting the present with the future.

 From John Mauldin's free newsletter which you can subscribe to.

"Intertemporal Bridge

As I explained earlier in this series (see Time Has a Price), interest rates aren’t simply prices; they are information. Artificially manipulated rates deliver wrong information, causing poor decisions. Ill-conceived central bank policies produce random noise, preventing markets from discerning the necessary signals. Chancellor has possibly the best metaphor I’ve ever seen to explain this.

“Imagine that the present and future are two countries, separated by a river. Finance is the intertemporal bridge that joins them together, connecting the present with the future. By acts of borrowing and lending, and saving and investing, we shift expenditures across time. Interest is the toll levied on borrowers for bringing forward consumption and the fee paid to savers for moving consumption into the future. The level of interest regulates the traffic on the bridge and its general direction. When the interest toll is raised spending is pushed into the future, and consumption is brought forward when the toll is lowered. In an ideal world, people should save enough to meet their future needs, but not so much that current spending is depressed. Under such circumstances, the traffic across the bridge is orderly in both directions.

“This delicate balance is upset when the market rate of interest falls below society’s ‘crystallized impatience.’ When the interest rate is higher than an individual’s time preference, he or she will save more for the future. Conversely, when the market rate is below the public’s time preference people borrow to consume. An abnormally low rate of interest boosts current spending, but the benefits don’t last. You cannot have your cake and eat it, at least not indefinitely. Cake is not the only item on the menu. People have a choice: jam today or more jam tomorrow. The rate of interest influences their decision.”

The problem isn’t just artificially low rates. Artificially high rates send wrong signals, too. The point is this process works only when it finds its own equilibrium. Outside interference—like that of central banks—distorts these intertemporal transactions.

It is important to remember that well past the middle of the last century the Federal Reserve concerned itself mainly with bank solvency, not interest rates. Greenspan was the first to realize that he could “juice” the markets and make everyone happy. It was the beginning of the current round of hubris."

Russian Soldiers Using SIM cards on the Ukrainian Network Reveal Troop Concentrations Exactly.

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1524743911817850881

The information dates from the endof March.   Russian SIM cards inserted into stolen Ukrainian phones. Besides being out of date, this is complicated since there are areas where cell towers have been knocked down and it looks like the Crimea has a Russian cell service.  It also points to areas that are "captured" but are not controlled.  One commenter says the soldiers won't give up their phones to officers because the officers will steal them too.

 

To understand what Canadians believe about Covid and our Charter of Rights and Freedom, read what Russians think about attacking Ukrainians.

 This is painful reading.  The "Overton Window" to discuss the special operation in Ukraine doesn't overlap your own.   My Canadian and American neighbours are often comfortable in beliefs that don't match the reality I see and the evidence I note.    You don't have to read all the way through these poignant interview clips.  My only caveat is that the Russian interviewers confined themselves to fifty people in Moscow and one other Russian area (Kaluga) but other allied regioos of the former USSR are contributing material and men to the Ukraine adventure.

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/05/03/feeling-around-for-something-human

Slow boat from China: Looks like you could walk ship to ship up the entire coast of China and never dip toes in the sea.

At a granular level, this shipping map is not so extremely bad.  Some vessels are in other ports with short turnarounds, some are steaming in and out and the area is always extraordinarily busy, but China's own goal on their economy is startling. 

If you were looking to put your loose money somewhere, would you be considering short supply chains closer to home for mining and manufacturing precursor industrial inputs?

SCOTUS Leak Timing

 Embrace the power of AND.

"The draft opinion was leaked to the press .. in an attempt to switch the vote before it was announced"

AND

"The historic leak from the Supreme Court has sucked all the oxygen from the premier release of an explosive documentary outlining the 2020 election fraud.  Many are seeing the timing as suspiciously strategic."

The document has dating from two months ago.  The clerk who stole the information and passed it to bigger players wasn't the one who set up the timing.  [ Politico: "the immediate impact of the ruling as drafted in February"]

Musk bought the evidence.

From a comment at thenewneo.com:

Musk didn't just buy Twitter
He bought the evidence.

BTW have you noticed that Musk hasn't bought Twitter?  The deal doesn't close for another five months but the hammer swings today.

 

 From Powerline Blog.   I didn't move.  The centre moved.

Top downloads in Russia are now VPN sneak-past-the-guard apps. What happened between February and March?

 February and March top 10 compared.

 

 Live a life of active risk and affection.
The value of life is its depth, not its length.

Adapted from Roger Scruton.

 

J6 is opposition attack. Like the Mueller probe, that is its only purpose.

From Sundance:

"What the Mueller probe was to President Trump, the J6 Committee is to the MAGA movement.

Everyone, and I do mean e.v.e.r.y.o.n.e in Washington DC knew Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel for one reason, to target President Trump, weaken his administration and ultimately remove him from office. Not a single entity in DC did not know that was the goal. The same is true here.

Everyone in DC knows Nancy Pelosi’s J6 Committee is intended to target Democrat political opposition. That is the goal. That is ONLY the goal. Not a single entity in DC does not know that is the goal."

Mauldin: Global Recession May Turn Scary

From Mauldin's latest free newsletter.

North Africa inclduing Egypt and Lebanon are heavily dependent on Russia and the Ukraine to feed their people.  Some will skip debt payments to feed their people and avoid riots.
A quarter of US$ denominated debt in China is "stressed" and risks going unpaid.
Ukraine and Russia corner the world market in sunflower oil.
GDP and the velocity of money tracked each other for decades but velocity plunged beginning 2010.  The measuring tape to predict recessions is damaged.
Every penny rise in for a gallon of gas costs the US economy 1.2 billion dollars.  The actual changes in the US are similar to a tax increase of $200,000,000,000.  It will be felt.
The 7.9% inflation jump February in the CPI index doesnt reflect the start of war.  This number is going up.
China gets a lot of oil from Russia too.   The world will want to burn the same amount of oil but will be buying it from a smaller pool.  There won't be enough for a while.

Sources for Ukraine-Russia information, Updates.

 Smallwarsjournal   Link has many sublinks to Twitter feeds you wouldn't otherwise see.

Cappy's army March 7th video has source clips on logistics and more with perspective and, oddly, humour.

Historical background on Russia from a retired Lithuanian intelligence officer.  Starts with the Holy Roman Empire, goes on to the Mongols (who never really left) and comes to the slivoki.  (English captions).

Ludlow with real politik observations in a March 1 American Thought Leaders video with Jan Jekielek.

Understandingwar.org has daily updates re situation in the field.  What's distinctive are the many footnoted links to Army headquarters, Facebook and Twitter sites, Pravda, CNN and so on.  Most in cyrillic script.

The following six links are from this article at spinstrangenesscharm.wordpress.com

Kotkin's interview at the New Yorker:   Re Zelensky: "Having a TV-production company run a country is not a good idea in peacetime, but in wartime, when information war is one of your goals, it’s a fabulous thing to have in place."  On the expansion of NATO: "Way before NATO existed—in the nineteenth century—Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West. This is a Russia that we know, and it’s not a Russia that arrived yesterday"

Vlad Vexler on what it would take for a coup in Russia.  Who will get to harness the half of the 85% of Russians who are going along with present bumps in the road but are watching to see who is the stronger horse.  Also, the oligarchs had political power in the 90's but much less now and their children are a factor too.  There's a few seconds clip of a waffling secret service head being challenged by Putin to spell it out.

Kuzio interviewed on morale of Russian Army.  "Lied to, lack fire in the belly" and more.  Those videos of tanks destroyed are not just by civilians.  Ukrainian forces are taking brag shots and posting them on social media and sending them in to headquarters too.   Putin just created 45 million Ukrainian nationalists instead of freeing "russians" from nazi rule.   Hacking put Ukrainian propaganda on Russian TV that older folk wath.  Information overload will fuel future war crime trials.  What about reparations as a tax on future oil exports.  NATO is already at war with Ukraine, 28 countries in fact are supplying weapons that are killing Russian soldiers and giving cyber defence.  NATO is supplying intelligence allowing Ukrainians to kill Russian soldiers. (Note two senior Russian officers located and killed.)  A No Fly zone could also be over Western Ukraine only to stop the refugee flood, it could be sponsored by OSCE or UN instead of NATO.  "To this day, Russians don't really know where their borders are".  We're seeing a declining great power declining faster.  Think about it: You've watched videos of Ukrainian soldiers talking Russian to Russian soldiers.  Speaking Russian doesn't make you a Russian nationalist any more than a Canadian speaking English makes them American.  Russia is back to 1991.

China has a nuanced and changing position.  Trade with Russia is about 1/20th of trade with the US.  Corporate China may be playing a more influential role than Govermental China.

Captured Russian officer gives thoughtful observations on what he was told going into battle.

Fukuyama on Russia's coming defeat.  "Russian soldiers were evidently carrying dress uniforms for their victory parade in Kyiv rather than extra ammo and rations"