Sunday, May 11, 2025
The Tombstone Mentality
For obvious evolutionary reasons, we are excellent at responding to experience. If something goes horribly wrong, we learn, we adapt, we act to reduce the risk of it going horribly wrong again. But something that could go wrong, but hasn’t yet? No matter how foreseeable — even obvious — the threat is, that is a mere abstraction. It doesn’t move us. We don’t act.
Until it actually goes horribly wrong. Then we act.
Cynics have dubbed this the “tombstone mentality.” History is littered with exhibits of its handiwork. So are cemeteries.
by Dan Gardner, PastPresentFuture | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Check out these predictions: AI Takeoff Forecast 2027; Review: AI 2027; and AI 2027: Media, Reactions, Criticism. I don't know, 2027 isn't looking good.]
My Dinner With Adolf
In The New York Times today, Larry David (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm) recalls his dinner with Adolf Hitler.
Cue needle-scratching-on-record sound effect. Or maybe Moe Szyslak delivering his classic “whaaa…?”
Fortunately, Patrick Healy, the Times deputy opinion editor also has a piece explaining Larry David’s piece.
It seems some people may think Larry David actually had dinner with Adolf Hitler, even though for Larry and Adolf to have had dinner together in 1943 Larry would have to be, what, 135 years old today? Seems implausible to me. One would think a New York Times reader would pick up on that clue and deduce that this piece of writing by Larry David, comedian, is satire. But one can’t be too careful. Satire has never fared well on newspaper pages, as too many journalists to count can tell you. (...)
Anyway, now that Patrick has so helpfully explained everything, if you want to read about Larry David’s dinner with Hitler — which is a satirical device, you must remember, not an actual event that literally happened, and is in no way intended to equate, morally or otherwise, Trump with Hitler — you can read it free here.
Since leaden explanation is the order of the day, let me state that my purpose in writing this note is to add that while Larry David’s choice of satirical figures is outrageous, what he describes actually happened.
And more than once. Really.
Well, no — to be painfully literal — Hitler didn’t have a delightful dinner with a Jewish comedian.
But before the war Hitler did meet with lots of foreign dignitaries. Many were wary. This was the guy who ranted at giant rallies, after all. He had steamrolled the constitution and controlled all branches of government. He had disappeared many of his political enemies and created a camp where people could be sent without due process to be held at his pleasure, beyond judicial review. He was building up his military rapidly. He talked a lot about war. This guy was scary.
But then the dignitaries spent time with Mr. Hitler and discovered he wasn’t so scary! Some came away convinced he was a fine fellow. Genocidal maniac? Heavens, no!
So the point Larry David is making — thanks again for explaining, Patrick — is real. And important. It’s not just Bill Maher. Smart, sophisticated people very often assume horrible people must behave horribly all the time. So when they personally encounter someone who is a fine fellow, they think, “this can’t be a horrible person.”
Seems like a perfectly logical deduction.
But that assumption is all wrong. Horrible people can be delightful. Even charming. You can look them in the eyes, get a feel for their soul — as George W. Bush said about Vladimir Putin — and feel quite sure that this stone-cold killer is a fine fellow.
One of the most infamous examples of someone getting Hitler wrong was Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.
King met Hitler in 1937. In a little more than two years, Canadian soldiers would be fighting and dying to stop Hitler.
So what did King make of Mr. Hitler in 1937? The key reason King’s meeting is infamous is his diary.
So I’ll shut up now and leave you with a few passages King wrote.
But not in his private life. He was nuts in private. He hosted seances to talk to his dead mother.
But at work, so boring.
Cue needle-scratching-on-record sound effect. Or maybe Moe Szyslak delivering his classic “whaaa…?”
Fortunately, Patrick Healy, the Times deputy opinion editor also has a piece explaining Larry David’s piece.
Anyway, now that Patrick has so helpfully explained everything, if you want to read about Larry David’s dinner with Hitler — which is a satirical device, you must remember, not an actual event that literally happened, and is in no way intended to equate, morally or otherwise, Trump with Hitler — you can read it free here.
Since leaden explanation is the order of the day, let me state that my purpose in writing this note is to add that while Larry David’s choice of satirical figures is outrageous, what he describes actually happened.
And more than once. Really.
Well, no — to be painfully literal — Hitler didn’t have a delightful dinner with a Jewish comedian.
But before the war Hitler did meet with lots of foreign dignitaries. Many were wary. This was the guy who ranted at giant rallies, after all. He had steamrolled the constitution and controlled all branches of government. He had disappeared many of his political enemies and created a camp where people could be sent without due process to be held at his pleasure, beyond judicial review. He was building up his military rapidly. He talked a lot about war. This guy was scary.
But then the dignitaries spent time with Mr. Hitler and discovered he wasn’t so scary! Some came away convinced he was a fine fellow. Genocidal maniac? Heavens, no!
So the point Larry David is making — thanks again for explaining, Patrick — is real. And important. It’s not just Bill Maher. Smart, sophisticated people very often assume horrible people must behave horribly all the time. So when they personally encounter someone who is a fine fellow, they think, “this can’t be a horrible person.”
Seems like a perfectly logical deduction.
But that assumption is all wrong. Horrible people can be delightful. Even charming. You can look them in the eyes, get a feel for their soul — as George W. Bush said about Vladimir Putin — and feel quite sure that this stone-cold killer is a fine fellow.
King met Hitler in 1937. In a little more than two years, Canadian soldiers would be fighting and dying to stop Hitler.
So what did King make of Mr. Hitler in 1937? The key reason King’s meeting is infamous is his diary.
So I’ll shut up now and leave you with a few passages King wrote.
When we reached old Hindenburg Palace, we were greeted by a guard of honour. The entire building is like an old palace, and the attendants were attired in court dress. We were shown in what had been Hindenburg’s office, and shown the death mask which reposes on his desk and his portrait on the wall.As you have now deduced, King was an incredibly boring man.
Later we were conducted upstairs, preceded formally by attendants. We had been previously met by members of the Foreign Office and Hitler’s staff. When I was formally shown into the room in which Herr Hitler received me, he was facing the door as I went in; was wearing evening dress; came forward and shook hands; quietly and pleasantly said he was pleased to see me in Germany, and pointed to a seat which had a chair to its back, to the right of which Herr Hitler seated himself. …. The interview lasted until after two; one and a quarter hours altogether.
As we were about to be seated, I placed a de luxe copy of Rogers’ biography on the table, and opened it at the pictures of the cottage where I was born, and of Woodside, of Berlin. I told Herr Hitler that I had brought this book with me to show him where I was born, and the associations which I had with Berlin, Germany, through Berlin, Canada. That I would like him to know that I had spent the early part of my life in Berlin, and had later represented the county of Waterloo in Parliament with its different towns which I named over. I said I thought I understood the German people very well. I mentioned that I had also been registered at the municipality of Berlin 37 years ago, and had lived with Anton Weber at the other side of the Tiergarten. While I was speaking, Hitler looked at the book in a very friendly way, and smiling at me as he turned over its pages and looked at its inscription. He thanked me for it, and then waited for me to proceed with conversation.
But not in his private life. He was nuts in private. He hosted seances to talk to his dead mother.
But at work, so boring.
I spoke then of what I had seen of the constructive work of his regime, and said that I hoped that that work might continue. That nothing would be permitted to destroy that work. That it was bound to be followed in other countries to the great advantage of mankind. Hitler spoke very modestly in reference to it, saying that Germany did not claim any proprietorship in what had been undertaken. They had accepted ideas regardless of the source from which they came, and sought to apply them if they were right.Wow, Hitler! So modest!
[I told him that] I was a man who hated expenditures for military purposes; that the Liberal Government in Canada all shared my views in that particular; that I had the largest majority a Prime Minister had had in Canada.Some things never change. (That’s an in-joke for my fellow Canadians.)
[Hitler said] All our difficulties grew out of the enmity of the Treaty of Versailles, being held to the terms of that Treaty indefinitely made it necessary for us to do what we had done. He spoke of the advance into the Ruhr [Hitler re-militarized it] as being a part of that assertion of Germany’s position to save perpetual subjugation. He went on to say, however, that now most of the Treaty of Versailles was out of the way, moves of the kind would not be necessary any further. He went on to say so far as war is concerned, you need have no fear of war, at the instance of Germany. We have no desire for war; our people don’t want war, and we don’t want war. Remember that I, myself, have been through a war, and all the members of the Government. We know what a terrible thing war is, and not one of us want to see another war….That’s a relief! What a good chap.
As I got up to go, Hitler reached over and took in his hands a red square box with a gold eagle on its cover, and taking it in his two hands, offered it to me, asked me to accept it in appreciation of my visit of Germany. At the same time, he said he had much enjoyed the talk we had had together, and thanked me for the visit. When I opened the cover of the box, I saw it was a beautifully silver mounted picture of himself, personally inscribed. I let him see that I was most appreciative of it, shook him by the hand, and thanked him warmly for it, saying that I greatly appreciated all that it expressed of his friendship, and would always deeply value this gift. He went to give it to someone else to carry but I told him I would prefer to carry it myself. He then drew back a few steps to shake hands and to say good-bye in a more or less formal way. I then said that I would like to speak once more of the constructive side of his work, and what he was seeking to do for the greater good of those in humble walks of life; that I was strongly in accord with it, and thought it would work; by which he would be remembered; to let nothing destroy that work. I wished him well in his efforts to help mankind.It’s a mystery why Hitler wasn’t awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
I then thanked him again for having given me the privilege of so long an interview. He smiled very pleasantly and indeed has a sort of appealing and affectionate look in his eyes. My sizing up of the man as I sat and talked with him was that he is really one who truly loves his fellowmen, and his country, and would make any sacrifice for their good. That he feels himself to be a deliverer of his people from tyranny.
To understand Hitler, one has to remember his limited opportunities in his early life, his imprisonment, et cetera. It is truly marvelous what he has attained unto himself through his self education…. His face is much more prepossessing than his pictures would give the impression of. It is not that of a fiery, over-strained nature, but of a calm, passive man, deeply and thoughtfully in earnest.Now let me channel my inner Times editor and explain slowly and carefully: The preceding is not satire. It is what the prime minister of Canada actually wrote after meeting Adolf Hitler.
by Dan Gardner, PastPresentFuture | Read more:
Saturday, May 10, 2025
Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius
Seeing a world in a grain of sand
More sober thinkers point out that these things might be physically impossible. You can’t do physically impossible things, even if you’re very smart.
No, say the speculators, you don’t understand. Everything is physically impossible when you’re 800 IQ points too dumb to figure it out. A chimp might feel secure that humans couldn’t reach him if he climbed a tree; he could never predict arrows, ladders, chainsaws, or helicopters. What superintelligent strategies lie as far outside our solution set as “use a helicopter” is outside a chimp’s?
Eh, say the sober people. Maybe chimp → human was a one-time gain. Humans aren’t infinitely intelligent. But we might have infinite imagination. We can’t build starships, but we can tell stories about them. If someone much smarter than us built a starship, it wouldn’t be an impossible, magical thing we could never predict. It would just be the sort of thing we’d expect someone much smarter than us to do. Maybe there’s nothing left in the helicopters-to-chimps bin - just a lot of starships that might or might not get built.
The first time I felt like I was getting real evidence on this question - the first time I viscerally felt myself in the chimp’s world, staring at the helicopter - was last week, watching OpenAI’s o3 play GeoGuessr.
GeoGuessr is a game where you have to guess where a random Google Street View picture comes from. For example, here’s a scene from normal human GeoGuessr:
The store sign says “ADULTOS”, which sounds Spanish, and there’s a Spanish-looking church on the left. But the trees look too temperate to be Latin America, so I guessed Spain. Too bad - it was Argentina. Such are the vagaries of playing GeoGuessr as a mere human.
Last week, Kelsey Piper claimed that o3 - OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT model - could achieve seemingly impossible feats in GeoGuessr. She gave it this picture:
…and with no further questions, it determined the exact location (Marina State Beach, Monterey, CA).
How? She linked a transcript where o3 tried to explain its reasoning, but the explanation isn’t very good. It said things like:
Tan sand, medium surf, sparse foredune, U.S.-style kite motif, frequent overcast in winter … Sand hue and grain size match many California state-park beaches. California’s winter marine layer often produces exactly this thick, even gray sky.Commenters suggested that it was lying. Maybe there was hidden metadata in the image, or o3 remembered where Kelsey lived from previous conversations, or it traced her IP, or it cheated some other way.
I decided to test the limits of this phenomenon. Kelsey kindly shared her monster of a prompt, which she says significantly improves performance: (...)
…and I ran it on a set of increasingly impossible pictures.
Here are my security guarantees: the first picture came from Google Street View; all subsequent pictures were my personal old photos which aren’t available online. All pictures were screenshots of the original, copy-pasted into MSPaint and re-saved in order to clear metadata. Only one of the pictures is from within a thousand miles of my current location, so o3 can’t improve performance by tracing my IP or analyzing my past queries. I flipped all pictures horizontally to make matching to Google Street View data harder.
Here are the five pictures. Before reading on, consider doing the exercise yourself - try to guess where each is from - and make your predictions about how the AI will do.
Here are my security guarantees: the first picture came from Google Street View; all subsequent pictures were my personal old photos which aren’t available online. All pictures were screenshots of the original, copy-pasted into MSPaint and re-saved in order to clear metadata. Only one of the pictures is from within a thousand miles of my current location, so o3 can’t improve performance by tracing my IP or analyzing my past queries. I flipped all pictures horizontally to make matching to Google Street View data harder.
Here are the five pictures. Before reading on, consider doing the exercise yourself - try to guess where each is from - and make your predictions about how the AI will do.
Last chance to guess on your own . . . okay, here we go.
by Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten | Read more:
Images: Kelsey Piper; uncredited
[ed. I'm sure the CIA/NSA/FBI are loving this. See also: Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr (ACX).]
NSF Faces Radical Shake-Up as Officials Abolish Its 37 Divisions
The National Science Foundation (NSF), already battered by White House directives and staff reductions, is plunging into deeper turmoil. According to sources who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, staff were told today that the agency’s 37 divisions—across all eight NSF directorates—are being abolished and the number of programs within those divisions will be drastically reduced. The current directors and deputy directors will lose their titles and might be reassigned to other positions at the agency or elsewhere in the federal government.
The consolidation appears to be driven in part by President Donald Trump’s proposal to cut the agency’s $4 billion budget by 55% for the 2026 fiscal year that begins on 1 October. NSF’s decision to abolish its divisions could also be part of a larger restructuring of the agency’s grantmaking process that involves adding a new layer of review. NSF watchers fear that a smaller, restructured agency could be more vulnerable to pressure from the White House to fund research that suits its ideological bent.
As soon as this evening, NSF is also expected to send layoff notices to an unspecified number of its 1700-member staff. The remaining staff and programs will be assigned to one of the eight, smaller directorates. Staff will receive a memo on Friday “with details to be finalized by the end of the fiscal year,” sources tell Science. The agency is also expected to issue another round of notices tomorrow terminating grants that have already been awarded, sources say. In the past 3 weeks, the agency has pulled the plug on almost 1400 grants worth more than $1 billion.
A spokesperson for NSF says the rationale for abolishing the divisions and removing their leaders is “to reduce the number of SES [senior executive service] positions in the agency and create new nonexecutive positions to better align with the needs of the agency.”
NSF receives more than 40,000 proposals a year, roughly one-quarter of which are funded. And division directors wield great authority over the outcome. “Although division directors do many things, their main job is to concur on grant recommendations,” says one former NSF staffer.
The initial vetting is handled by hundreds of program officers, all experts in their field and some of whom are on temporary leave from academic positions. After collecting input from outside reviewers, program managers pick the strongest proposals and ask their division director to concur with their recommendation for funding. For all but the biggest grants, the division director’s endorsement is the final approval step. That system is unlike the one used by the National Institutes of Health, where advisory councils for each institute have the final say and rely on ratings from a panel of outside experts.
As soon as this evening, NSF is also expected to send layoff notices to an unspecified number of its 1700-member staff. The remaining staff and programs will be assigned to one of the eight, smaller directorates. Staff will receive a memo on Friday “with details to be finalized by the end of the fiscal year,” sources tell Science. The agency is also expected to issue another round of notices tomorrow terminating grants that have already been awarded, sources say. In the past 3 weeks, the agency has pulled the plug on almost 1400 grants worth more than $1 billion.
A spokesperson for NSF says the rationale for abolishing the divisions and removing their leaders is “to reduce the number of SES [senior executive service] positions in the agency and create new nonexecutive positions to better align with the needs of the agency.”
NSF receives more than 40,000 proposals a year, roughly one-quarter of which are funded. And division directors wield great authority over the outcome. “Although division directors do many things, their main job is to concur on grant recommendations,” says one former NSF staffer.
The initial vetting is handled by hundreds of program officers, all experts in their field and some of whom are on temporary leave from academic positions. After collecting input from outside reviewers, program managers pick the strongest proposals and ask their division director to concur with their recommendation for funding. For all but the biggest grants, the division director’s endorsement is the final approval step. That system is unlike the one used by the National Institutes of Health, where advisory councils for each institute have the final say and rely on ratings from a panel of outside experts.
by Jeffrey Mervis, Science | Read more:
Image: E. Billman/Science
[ed. If an adversary (say, Russia) wanted to cripple US scientific expertise and competition, it could hardly do better than this. Maybe this administration is actually an undercover terrorist cell. See also: Institutionalizing politicized science (Science editorial).]
Sisters of the Valley
Images: Raquel Cunha/Reuters
[ed. Great pics.]
"Sisters of the Valley is a non-religious group founded in 2014 that has pledged to spread the gospel of the healing powers of cannabis. The Sisters argue that the fight against drugs in Latin America has been a failure, leading to widespread violence and mass incarceration"
Friday, May 9, 2025
India and Pakistan Enter a More Dangerous Era
When India and Pakistan clash, the world too often dismisses it wearily as just another flare-up of age-old animosities over religion and Kashmir punctuated by inconclusive cross-border skirmishes. As President Trump recently put it — inaccurately — “They’ve had that fight for a thousand years in Kashmir,” and “probably longer than that.”
This is somewhat understandable. Despite a few wars and many more scuffles between Muslim-majority Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India, confrontations have always been followed by negotiation and diplomacy, often facilitated by the United States. Even when serious fighting did erupt, established guardrails kept the two sides from coming too close to the unthinkable: using their nuclear weapons.
That predictable cycle is a thing of the past. The immediate trigger for the military conflict now underway between the countries was a terrorist attack on Hindu tourists in Kashmir last month that killed 26 people. The incident’s rapid escalation into armed hostilities spotlights a profound and dangerous shift in the India-Pakistan rivalry in recent years that has eliminated the diplomatic space that had allowed the neighbors to avoid a devastating conflict.
That shift can be traced to the two countries’ vastly different trajectories.
India has emerged as a geopolitical and economic powerhouse and its Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, has cast it as not only a great nation, but an ascendant great civilization whose moment on the global stage has arrived. This has crystallized an uncompromising mind-set in which New Delhi increasingly views Pakistan not as a disruptive nuisance but an acute threat to India’s rightful rise. India has lost patience with Pakistan’s claim on the Indian-held half of Kashmir, the Muslim-majority region that each side calls its own, and its support of anti-India terrorism.
Pakistan, on the other hand, has been mired for two decades in economic, political and security crises. One institution there reigns supreme: a powerful army that dominates decision-making and has very significant conventional and nuclear military capability. Although beleaguered, Pakistan, with its own ambitions to remain a regional power, is unwilling to back down against India and on issues such as Kashmir that are central to its national identity. (...)
Even if the two sides back off and the current hostilities fizzle, India seems determined to pursue a more absolutist endgame of long-term pressure aimed at changing Pakistani political calculations on India and inflicting irreparable damage to Pakistan’s main power center, its army. Since the Kashmir attack last month, prominent Indian politicians and analysts have taken a more maximalist position, arguing that Pakistan is a failed rogue state and that India must actively seek its destruction.
Pakistan, aware of this shift, has abandoned hope of normalized relations with India and appears to be girding for a prolonged confrontation. Ominously, the confrontation is threatening crucial guardrails that prevented conflicts from spiraling. India last month suspended a 1960 treaty on the sharing of rivers, in particular the Indus waters, threatening one of Pakistan’s most important water supplies. Pakistan previously warned that such a suspension would be considered an “act of war” and has threatened to abandon a 1972 agreement that established the border in a divided Kashmir.
All of this is taking place as the United States has stepped back from being South Asia’s crisis manager. Washington once served as an intermediary, trusted by both sides and able to pull India and Pakistan back from the brink.
by Asfandyar Mir, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Chaudary/Associated Press
[ed. Update: US has supposedly helped broker a cease-fire (for the time being). Despite all the congratulatory back-slapping, this conflict has been going on for decades. Don't get too excited (and what are the terms?).]
This is somewhat understandable. Despite a few wars and many more scuffles between Muslim-majority Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India, confrontations have always been followed by negotiation and diplomacy, often facilitated by the United States. Even when serious fighting did erupt, established guardrails kept the two sides from coming too close to the unthinkable: using their nuclear weapons.
That shift can be traced to the two countries’ vastly different trajectories.
India has emerged as a geopolitical and economic powerhouse and its Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, has cast it as not only a great nation, but an ascendant great civilization whose moment on the global stage has arrived. This has crystallized an uncompromising mind-set in which New Delhi increasingly views Pakistan not as a disruptive nuisance but an acute threat to India’s rightful rise. India has lost patience with Pakistan’s claim on the Indian-held half of Kashmir, the Muslim-majority region that each side calls its own, and its support of anti-India terrorism.
Pakistan, on the other hand, has been mired for two decades in economic, political and security crises. One institution there reigns supreme: a powerful army that dominates decision-making and has very significant conventional and nuclear military capability. Although beleaguered, Pakistan, with its own ambitions to remain a regional power, is unwilling to back down against India and on issues such as Kashmir that are central to its national identity. (...)
Even if the two sides back off and the current hostilities fizzle, India seems determined to pursue a more absolutist endgame of long-term pressure aimed at changing Pakistani political calculations on India and inflicting irreparable damage to Pakistan’s main power center, its army. Since the Kashmir attack last month, prominent Indian politicians and analysts have taken a more maximalist position, arguing that Pakistan is a failed rogue state and that India must actively seek its destruction.
Pakistan, aware of this shift, has abandoned hope of normalized relations with India and appears to be girding for a prolonged confrontation. Ominously, the confrontation is threatening crucial guardrails that prevented conflicts from spiraling. India last month suspended a 1960 treaty on the sharing of rivers, in particular the Indus waters, threatening one of Pakistan’s most important water supplies. Pakistan previously warned that such a suspension would be considered an “act of war” and has threatened to abandon a 1972 agreement that established the border in a divided Kashmir.
All of this is taking place as the United States has stepped back from being South Asia’s crisis manager. Washington once served as an intermediary, trusted by both sides and able to pull India and Pakistan back from the brink.
by Asfandyar Mir, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Chaudary/Associated Press
[ed. Update: US has supposedly helped broker a cease-fire (for the time being). Despite all the congratulatory back-slapping, this conflict has been going on for decades. Don't get too excited (and what are the terms?).]
A Soviet-Era Spacecraft Built to Land on Venus is Falling to Earth Instead
Kosmos 482, a Soviet-era spacecraft shrouded in Cold War secrecy, will reenter the Earth's atmosphere in the next few days after misfiring on a journey to Venus more than 50 years ago.
On average, a piece of space junk the size of Kosmos 482, with a mass of about a half-ton, falls into the atmosphere about once per week. What's different this time is that Kosmos 482 was designed to land on Venus, with a titanium heat shield built to withstand scorching temperatures, and structures engineered to survive atmospheric pressures nearly 100 times higher than Earth's.
So, there's a good chance the spacecraft will survive the extreme forces it encounters during its plunge through the atmosphere. Typically, space debris breaks apart and burns up during reentry, with only a small fraction of material reaching the Earth's surface. The European Space Agency, one of several institutions that track space debris, says Kosmos 482 is "highly likely" to reach Earth's surface in one piece.
As of Thursday, expert predictions centered on a likely reentry of Kosmos 482 early Saturday. But reentry forecasts have large margins of error. Small variations in the density of the upper atmosphere driven by solar activity could bring down the spacecraft sooner or later than expected. (...)
If you go through most of your days without worrying about space junk falling on you, there's little reason for serious alarm now. The Aerospace Corporation says any one individual on Earth is "far likelier" to be struck by lightning than to be injured by Kosmos 482. The US government's safety threshold for uncontrolled reentries requires the risk of a serious injury or death on the ground to be less than 1 in 10,000. The Aerospace Corporation projects the risk of at least one injury or fatality from Kosmos 482 to be 0.4 in 10,000 if the descent craft reaches the surface intact.
If you find yourself along one of the lines on this map, perhaps it's worth keeping track of Kosmos 482 over the next couple of days—out of curiosity more than worry. Chances are the spacecraft will fall into the ocean or over an unpopulated area.
But what happens in the unlikely event that Kosmos 482 winds up in your yard? "If Kosmos defies the odds and does land in your yard, please don’t touch it!" the Aerospace Corporation said. "It could potentially be hazardous, and it is best to notify your local authorities.
[ed, Don't look up.]
On average, a piece of space junk the size of Kosmos 482, with a mass of about a half-ton, falls into the atmosphere about once per week. What's different this time is that Kosmos 482 was designed to land on Venus, with a titanium heat shield built to withstand scorching temperatures, and structures engineered to survive atmospheric pressures nearly 100 times higher than Earth's.
So, there's a good chance the spacecraft will survive the extreme forces it encounters during its plunge through the atmosphere. Typically, space debris breaks apart and burns up during reentry, with only a small fraction of material reaching the Earth's surface. The European Space Agency, one of several institutions that track space debris, says Kosmos 482 is "highly likely" to reach Earth's surface in one piece.
As of Thursday, expert predictions centered on a likely reentry of Kosmos 482 early Saturday. But reentry forecasts have large margins of error. Small variations in the density of the upper atmosphere driven by solar activity could bring down the spacecraft sooner or later than expected. (...)
If you go through most of your days without worrying about space junk falling on you, there's little reason for serious alarm now. The Aerospace Corporation says any one individual on Earth is "far likelier" to be struck by lightning than to be injured by Kosmos 482. The US government's safety threshold for uncontrolled reentries requires the risk of a serious injury or death on the ground to be less than 1 in 10,000. The Aerospace Corporation projects the risk of at least one injury or fatality from Kosmos 482 to be 0.4 in 10,000 if the descent craft reaches the surface intact.
If you find yourself along one of the lines on this map, perhaps it's worth keeping track of Kosmos 482 over the next couple of days—out of curiosity more than worry. Chances are the spacecraft will fall into the ocean or over an unpopulated area.
But what happens in the unlikely event that Kosmos 482 winds up in your yard? "If Kosmos defies the odds and does land in your yard, please don’t touch it!" the Aerospace Corporation said. "It could potentially be hazardous, and it is best to notify your local authorities.
by Stephan Clark, Ars Technica | Read more:
Image: Aerospace Corporation[ed, Don't look up.]
Wall Street Tells Google to Break Itself Up
Today’s piece is brief, but notable. This morning, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services, Eddy Cue, testified in the Google remedy antitrust case. And he made two observations about the consequences of the case, which led Google’s stock to crater 7.5%, or $150 billion in value. Here’s the Google stock chart.
You can see the timing of when Cue went on the stand, but what’s interesting is that the stock drifted down for another two hours, which means that analysts were taking time to internalize what he had said and growing more pessimistic as the full ramifications of his comments sunk in.
So what did Cue say? Well, first, he said Apple is considering a revamp of the search experience on its iPhone. Right now, Google pays Apple more than $20 billion a year to be the search default, which is a key to the search company’s monopoly and the heart of the antitrust case. It’s essentially a shared search rent split between Google and Apple. In 2020 when the case was first filed, Apple considered creating its own search engine, fearing the loss of that revenue stream and looking for ways to replace it. Now it seems like something along that strategy is likely. Cue says that Apple might revamp its Safari browser to incorporate AI-powered search engines, which is a polite way of saying the company knows the game is soon up on selling the lucrative default position in Safari to Google.
The second thing he said is that Google search volume declined last month on the iPhone for the first time ever, presumably because people are beginning to use generative AI tools instead of ordinary search. This change is also a consequence of the antitrust case. Apple has already integrated OpenAI into its Apple Intelligence feature set; it did not choose Google, and one likely factor was the antitrust risk. Perplexity testified in the Google antitrust case, arguing that Google is blocking its distribution. Immediately after, it cut a deal with Motorola for distribution.
In other words, Google’s search monopoly may be starting to crack, which will put significant pressure on the company and force its cash cow ad business to be disciplined by competition. There are parts of Google that do compete, like its cloud business and office suite, but it has a money printing machine that might get taken away.
Wall Street seemed pretty stunned, not just by this legal development, but also Apple’s brutal loss in its unfair competition case against Epic Games, which will also hit the phone giant. I watched a half an hour long CNBC panel talk about Google and Apple and their antitrust problems. Panelists debated whether Google’s monopoly is cooked, how badly Apple’s services revenues are going to be hit, and possible strategies going forward. And that’s without evening mentioning yet another legal development yesterday, which is that the Antitrust Division asked, in a totally different antitrust case that Google lost, to split apart the company’s advertising software division.
There are broader implications here. Most institutional investors have piled into seven big stocks - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla - such that the name the “Magnificent 7” is now shorthand among investors for this basket. But now that whole world might be ending, and Google and Apple will have to, as a panelist put it, “reinvent itself.” A different commentator went further. "Maybe the best thing ultimately is that Alphabet is split up,” he said. “Maybe that's the best outcome for you as a shareholder."
One of the very first pieces I wrote for BIG, six years ago, was titled Break-ups and stock prices, and in it, I described why investors do well during break-ups.
What about Firefox developer Mozilla? It has its own worries. The last thing Mozilla wants is for Google to be fully spanked by the Dept of Justice. What's that you say? Isn't Firefox Chrome's arch-enemy? Please. Stop with the fanboi nonsense.
As well as demanding a Chrome sell-off, American prosecutors also hope to ban Google from paying other browser makers – including Moz – to be the default for web search. Mozilla can't survive without the cash it gets from Google search.
Don't believe me? Would you believe Mark Surman, President of Mozilla? In a blog post, giving Mozilla's response to DoJ's demands on Google, Surman said, "The big unintended consequence here is the handing of power from one dominant player to another. So, from Google Search to Microsoft, or Bing for example – while shutting out the smaller, independent challengers that actually drive browser innovation and offer web users privacy and choice.”
Without this money, Mozilla feels it couldn't develop and maintain Gecko, Firefox's web browser engine. That, in turn, means, Surman claimed, "it's game over for an open, independent web. Look, Microsoft — a $3 trillion company — already gave up its browser engine in 2019, and Opera gave up theirs in 2013. If Mozilla is forced out, Google's Chromium becomes the only cross-platform browser engine left."
You can see the timing of when Cue went on the stand, but what’s interesting is that the stock drifted down for another two hours, which means that analysts were taking time to internalize what he had said and growing more pessimistic as the full ramifications of his comments sunk in.
So what did Cue say? Well, first, he said Apple is considering a revamp of the search experience on its iPhone. Right now, Google pays Apple more than $20 billion a year to be the search default, which is a key to the search company’s monopoly and the heart of the antitrust case. It’s essentially a shared search rent split between Google and Apple. In 2020 when the case was first filed, Apple considered creating its own search engine, fearing the loss of that revenue stream and looking for ways to replace it. Now it seems like something along that strategy is likely. Cue says that Apple might revamp its Safari browser to incorporate AI-powered search engines, which is a polite way of saying the company knows the game is soon up on selling the lucrative default position in Safari to Google.
The second thing he said is that Google search volume declined last month on the iPhone for the first time ever, presumably because people are beginning to use generative AI tools instead of ordinary search. This change is also a consequence of the antitrust case. Apple has already integrated OpenAI into its Apple Intelligence feature set; it did not choose Google, and one likely factor was the antitrust risk. Perplexity testified in the Google antitrust case, arguing that Google is blocking its distribution. Immediately after, it cut a deal with Motorola for distribution.
In other words, Google’s search monopoly may be starting to crack, which will put significant pressure on the company and force its cash cow ad business to be disciplined by competition. There are parts of Google that do compete, like its cloud business and office suite, but it has a money printing machine that might get taken away.
Wall Street seemed pretty stunned, not just by this legal development, but also Apple’s brutal loss in its unfair competition case against Epic Games, which will also hit the phone giant. I watched a half an hour long CNBC panel talk about Google and Apple and their antitrust problems. Panelists debated whether Google’s monopoly is cooked, how badly Apple’s services revenues are going to be hit, and possible strategies going forward. And that’s without evening mentioning yet another legal development yesterday, which is that the Antitrust Division asked, in a totally different antitrust case that Google lost, to split apart the company’s advertising software division.
There are broader implications here. Most institutional investors have piled into seven big stocks - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla - such that the name the “Magnificent 7” is now shorthand among investors for this basket. But now that whole world might be ending, and Google and Apple will have to, as a panelist put it, “reinvent itself.” A different commentator went further. "Maybe the best thing ultimately is that Alphabet is split up,” he said. “Maybe that's the best outcome for you as a shareholder."
One of the very first pieces I wrote for BIG, six years ago, was titled Break-ups and stock prices, and in it, I described why investors do well during break-ups.
The granddaddy of all monopolies and break-ups is Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller’s oil monopoly at the turn of the century that structured the most important business of the era. In 1911, the Supreme Court broke his company into 34 components, many of which went on to be some of the most powerful companies in the world, such as Exxon, Mobil Pennzoil, Conoco, Chevron, and so forth. Shareholders did fantastically well in the break-up, with Rockefeller quintupling his wealth.As with Standard Oil, Google’s model is to leverage its market power across its various lines of business, to self-preference its own properties. There’s a lot of upside here in terms of retaining monopoly profits, but there is also a downside, which is that those lines of business, were they independent, would be more innovative and engage in profitable partnerships with firms outside the Google empire. As antitrust reduces the upside for collusion among Google subsidies, the cost of monopoly goes up. On the flip side, if YouTube, Search, Gmail, Cloud, Play, and Chrome became separate businesses, they’d be among the biggest companies in the world, and likely far more profitable than they are jammed together.
Why did Standard Oil’s component parts do so well? And was the break-up responsible for higher stock prices? The answer is that the older monopolistic business structure was inefficient, and breaking up the company helped unleash technological innovation in the industry by enabling the use of a relatively unimportant part of Standard’s portfolio: gasoline.
In 1909, a Standard-employed chemist named William Burton invented “thermal cracking,” which was a way to vastly improve the process of turning oil into gasoline. The Indiana branch applied to headquarters to put $1 million into developing the process, but HQ said no. The company primarily sold kerosene, and while cars were increasing demand for gasoline - what was then seen as a relatively useless byproduct of oil refining - such an investment was simply too risky to what had become a lazy, slothful monopoly. After the break-up, Standard Oil of Indiana simply went ahead and began using thermal cracking, and eventually the whole industry was licensing patents from the company. While stockholders did fantastically well, Indiana shareholders did even better. The era of cheap gas came, or at least was accelerated dramatically, by the break-up.
by Matt Stollar, BIG | Read more:
Image: NASDAQ
[ed. Interesting times. See also: If Google is forced to give up Chrome, what happens next? (The Register):]***
As well as demanding a Chrome sell-off, American prosecutors also hope to ban Google from paying other browser makers – including Moz – to be the default for web search. Mozilla can't survive without the cash it gets from Google search.
Don't believe me? Would you believe Mark Surman, President of Mozilla? In a blog post, giving Mozilla's response to DoJ's demands on Google, Surman said, "The big unintended consequence here is the handing of power from one dominant player to another. So, from Google Search to Microsoft, or Bing for example – while shutting out the smaller, independent challengers that actually drive browser innovation and offer web users privacy and choice.”
Without this money, Mozilla feels it couldn't develop and maintain Gecko, Firefox's web browser engine. That, in turn, means, Surman claimed, "it's game over for an open, independent web. Look, Microsoft — a $3 trillion company — already gave up its browser engine in 2019, and Opera gave up theirs in 2013. If Mozilla is forced out, Google's Chromium becomes the only cross-platform browser engine left."
Thursday, May 8, 2025
via:
Harrison Ford and the Origin of Western Civilization
TED:
So what do want to talk about today?
INTERVIEWER:
Today I want you to stop acting so elitist—that’s why we’re going to talk about action films. What’s your favorite?
TED:
I’m not as elitist as you think. I’ve written hundreds of essays about science fiction, horror stories, locked-room mysteries, TV westerns, and other types of popular entertainment.
By the way, I love action movies of all sorts—I even have a Jackie Chan poster on my bedroom wall.
INTERVIEWER:
Is that true?
TED:
No, I just made that up.
But I do enjoy Jackie Chan’s movies, especially the early ones. I would consider putting a Jackie Chan poster on the wall, but Tara would veto that.
She already made me take down my autographed photo of Jake LaMotta—she said it clashed with the decor.
INTERVIEWER:
She is probably right. But let’s go back to my original question. What’s your favorite action film?
TED:
That’s hard to answer. There was a very good movie about LaMotta…
INTERVIEWER:
That doesn’t count. It wasn’t a real action movie. Pick another one.
TED:
Huh? There were plenty of fight scenes in it. But I’ll take you at your word, and choose another movie
[Ted stops and thinks.]
Okay, I’ve got an answer for you. The action movie I’ve seen most often is The Fugitive—starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. I’ve watched it so many times, I’ve lost count.
INTERVIEWER:
What do you like about it.
For a start, it’s the exact counterpart of Homer’s Odyssey….
INTERVIEWER:
Gimme a break, you’re doing it again. I said no elitist stuff today. So you’re not allowed to talk about Homer and ancient epic poetry.
TED:
Hey, hear me out. Homer’s Odyssey is also an adventure story—and not for elites. This story has entertained youngsters for thousands of years.
And it’s my favorite kind of adventure story.
INTERVIEWER:
Why is that?
TED:
The Odyssey was the first adventure story in Western culture about a hero who prevails through intelligence and reasoning, not fighting and bloodshed.
That’s a big deal. It signals the moment when the West emerged from savagery—assuming that we have emerged from savagery.
Odysseus is not a brave solider—if you’ve read Pseudo-Apollodorus, you will know that he tried to avoid fighting in the Trojan War by pretending to be crazy.
INTERVIEWER:
Sudoku app adores us? What the devil are you talking about?
TED:
Don’t worry about Sudoku. I’m trying to explain that Odysseus was the first adventurer who hates adventure. There’s a postmodern concept for you. He doesn’t even like fighting—he prefers to use his wiles and cunning.
This is the greatest turning point in Western culture. We finally have an alternative to the reciprocal violence that dominates so much of human history. The worst mistakes we’ve made in the West have taken place when we have forgotten that alternative.
But, of course, it’s also a breakthrough in storytelling.
Homer’s previous epic, the Iliad, is all about bravery and violence on the battlefield. Some 240 battlefield deaths are described during the course of that brutal poem—frequently related in grisly detail.
But the Odyssey is totally different. The hero is actually portrayed as a coward.
Homer drops a hint when he says the Odysseus places his ship in the exact middle of all the Greeks boats on the shore of Troy—that’s the safest place in the event of a surprise attack by the Trojans. Homer doesn’t say it explicitly, but he implies that Odysseus always had an escape plan, and needed to ensure that his ship was available for a hasty retreat.
INTERVIEWER:
What does this have to do with Harrison Ford and The Fugitive.
TED:
It has everything to with it. In The Fugitive, Harrison Ford succeeds through cunning and intelligence. There’s that great scene when Ford’s colleague tells Tommy Lee Jones: “You will never find him. He is too smart.”
Just as the Odyssey represents a shift away from the obsessive violence of the Iliad, Harrison turns his back on the constant battling of his previous manifestations in Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
In the movie poster for The Fugitive, Ford is actually running away from the fight—much like Odysseus tried to do.
So this is a great moment in Hollywood action movies. There’s actually very little fighting in The Fugitive. Ford even risks capture at one point by saving a person’s life. And that makes perfect sense because he is playing Dr. Richard Kimble, who—like all doctors—has taken a Hippocratic oath to avoid harm and do good.
That’s why The Fugitive is so satisfying to watch. We finally have a hero who really does good deeds and avoids reciprocal violence. And when he must engage in conflict, he out-thinks his opponent—instead of fighting and killing.
In fact, the entire point of the film is that Dr. Kimble is an innocent man. He has been falsely accused (of murdering his wife), and his only goal in this movie is to prove his innocence and his commitment to doing good.
I won’t give away spoilers. But in the final minutes of the film, he applies that Hippocratic Oath to do good through medicine and healing in a very unexpected way. You might even say that he saves thousands of people—in addition to himself.
But there are many other similarities between The Fugitive and Homer’s great epic the Odyssey.
INTERVIEWER:
What other similarities?
TED:
Like all great epic poets, Homer starts the Odyssey in the middle of the story—literary critics call this in medias res. Homer may even have invented this storytelling technique.
The Fugitive follows the same pattern. The movie begins after our hero Dr. Richard Kimble has been falsely accused and convicted of his wife’s murder. So (as in the Odyssey) we must learn about these incidents through flashbacks.
In the case of the Odyssey, our hero must battle a one-eyed monster—the Cyclops!—in order to survive and prevail. The same thing happens in The Fugitive, except that Dr. Kimble needs to deal with a one-armed monster who murdered his wife.
INTERVIEWER:
This is just coincidence. Stop playing games with me…
TED:
You’re totally wrong about that.
Let me ask you a question now. What’s the name of the one-armed man in The Fugitive?
INTERVIEWER:
I have no idea.
TED:
The character’s name is Sykes. This reference to the Cyclops would be obvious to any classicist in the audience.
Can’t you see that the filmmaker wants to remind us of the Odyssey?
INTERVIEWER:
You’re blowing my mind. Is that for real?
TED:
Go ahead, check it out for yourself.
But let me go on. There’s a whole web of connections here.
I’m not even going to talk about the obvious ones—for example, Homer frequently refers to Odysseus as “great-hearted” while Dr. Kimble is an actual heart surgeon. And Odysseus’s troubles began with Helen of Troy, while Dr. Kimble’s problems begin with his wife Helen—both victims of fighting men who intrude into their peaceful lives.
Those are just tiny details. The plot is the main source of my interest here.
In the Odyssey, our hero must survive a ship wreck—and later must escape from captivity on an island, where Calypso wants to hold him for the rest of his life. In The Fugitive, Harrison Ford needs to survive a train wreck—which allows him to escape from captivity as a prisoner on death row, where he would otherwise spend the rest of his life.
In the Odyssey, our hero eventually returns unexpectedly to his native land—the island of Ithaca—where he faces his final and greatest challenges. In The Fugitive, the US Marshalls are shocked when Dr. Kimble returns to—can you guess it?—his home town of Chicago.
That’s the last thing they expected from a runaway fugitive. “Sonofabitch,” declares Tommy Lee Jones, “our boy came home.”
But, of course, a homecoming is necessary in this type of adventure story. These heroes must return home to resolve all the dangers and obstacles they face. And in that familiar terrain, both heroes prevail against heavy odds.
By the way, both the Odyssey and The Fugitive culminate with an unexpected confrontation in a crowded banquet hall in that same home town. The parallelism is now completed.
And this brings me to my favorite part of the story.
So what do want to talk about today?
INTERVIEWER:
Today I want you to stop acting so elitist—that’s why we’re going to talk about action films. What’s your favorite?
TED:
I’m not as elitist as you think. I’ve written hundreds of essays about science fiction, horror stories, locked-room mysteries, TV westerns, and other types of popular entertainment.
By the way, I love action movies of all sorts—I even have a Jackie Chan poster on my bedroom wall.
INTERVIEWER:
Is that true?
TED:
No, I just made that up.
But I do enjoy Jackie Chan’s movies, especially the early ones. I would consider putting a Jackie Chan poster on the wall, but Tara would veto that.
She already made me take down my autographed photo of Jake LaMotta—she said it clashed with the decor.
INTERVIEWER:
She is probably right. But let’s go back to my original question. What’s your favorite action film?
TED:
That’s hard to answer. There was a very good movie about LaMotta…
INTERVIEWER:
That doesn’t count. It wasn’t a real action movie. Pick another one.
TED:
Huh? There were plenty of fight scenes in it. But I’ll take you at your word, and choose another movie
[Ted stops and thinks.]
Okay, I’ve got an answer for you. The action movie I’ve seen most often is The Fugitive—starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. I’ve watched it so many times, I’ve lost count.
INTERVIEWER:
What do you like about it.
TED:
:For a start, it’s the exact counterpart of Homer’s Odyssey….
INTERVIEWER:
Gimme a break, you’re doing it again. I said no elitist stuff today. So you’re not allowed to talk about Homer and ancient epic poetry.
TED:
Hey, hear me out. Homer’s Odyssey is also an adventure story—and not for elites. This story has entertained youngsters for thousands of years.
And it’s my favorite kind of adventure story.
INTERVIEWER:
Why is that?
TED:
The Odyssey was the first adventure story in Western culture about a hero who prevails through intelligence and reasoning, not fighting and bloodshed.
That’s a big deal. It signals the moment when the West emerged from savagery—assuming that we have emerged from savagery.
Odysseus is not a brave solider—if you’ve read Pseudo-Apollodorus, you will know that he tried to avoid fighting in the Trojan War by pretending to be crazy.
INTERVIEWER:
Sudoku app adores us? What the devil are you talking about?
TED:
Don’t worry about Sudoku. I’m trying to explain that Odysseus was the first adventurer who hates adventure. There’s a postmodern concept for you. He doesn’t even like fighting—he prefers to use his wiles and cunning.
This is the greatest turning point in Western culture. We finally have an alternative to the reciprocal violence that dominates so much of human history. The worst mistakes we’ve made in the West have taken place when we have forgotten that alternative.
But, of course, it’s also a breakthrough in storytelling.
Homer’s previous epic, the Iliad, is all about bravery and violence on the battlefield. Some 240 battlefield deaths are described during the course of that brutal poem—frequently related in grisly detail.
But the Odyssey is totally different. The hero is actually portrayed as a coward.
Homer drops a hint when he says the Odysseus places his ship in the exact middle of all the Greeks boats on the shore of Troy—that’s the safest place in the event of a surprise attack by the Trojans. Homer doesn’t say it explicitly, but he implies that Odysseus always had an escape plan, and needed to ensure that his ship was available for a hasty retreat.
INTERVIEWER:
What does this have to do with Harrison Ford and The Fugitive.
TED:
It has everything to with it. In The Fugitive, Harrison Ford succeeds through cunning and intelligence. There’s that great scene when Ford’s colleague tells Tommy Lee Jones: “You will never find him. He is too smart.”
Just as the Odyssey represents a shift away from the obsessive violence of the Iliad, Harrison turns his back on the constant battling of his previous manifestations in Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
In the movie poster for The Fugitive, Ford is actually running away from the fight—much like Odysseus tried to do.
So this is a great moment in Hollywood action movies. There’s actually very little fighting in The Fugitive. Ford even risks capture at one point by saving a person’s life. And that makes perfect sense because he is playing Dr. Richard Kimble, who—like all doctors—has taken a Hippocratic oath to avoid harm and do good.
That’s why The Fugitive is so satisfying to watch. We finally have a hero who really does good deeds and avoids reciprocal violence. And when he must engage in conflict, he out-thinks his opponent—instead of fighting and killing.
In fact, the entire point of the film is that Dr. Kimble is an innocent man. He has been falsely accused (of murdering his wife), and his only goal in this movie is to prove his innocence and his commitment to doing good.
I won’t give away spoilers. But in the final minutes of the film, he applies that Hippocratic Oath to do good through medicine and healing in a very unexpected way. You might even say that he saves thousands of people—in addition to himself.
But there are many other similarities between The Fugitive and Homer’s great epic the Odyssey.
INTERVIEWER:
What other similarities?
TED:
Like all great epic poets, Homer starts the Odyssey in the middle of the story—literary critics call this in medias res. Homer may even have invented this storytelling technique.
The Fugitive follows the same pattern. The movie begins after our hero Dr. Richard Kimble has been falsely accused and convicted of his wife’s murder. So (as in the Odyssey) we must learn about these incidents through flashbacks.
In the case of the Odyssey, our hero must battle a one-eyed monster—the Cyclops!—in order to survive and prevail. The same thing happens in The Fugitive, except that Dr. Kimble needs to deal with a one-armed monster who murdered his wife.
INTERVIEWER:
This is just coincidence. Stop playing games with me…
TED:
You’re totally wrong about that.
Let me ask you a question now. What’s the name of the one-armed man in The Fugitive?
INTERVIEWER:
I have no idea.
TED:
The character’s name is Sykes. This reference to the Cyclops would be obvious to any classicist in the audience.
Can’t you see that the filmmaker wants to remind us of the Odyssey?
INTERVIEWER:
You’re blowing my mind. Is that for real?
TED:
Go ahead, check it out for yourself.
But let me go on. There’s a whole web of connections here.
I’m not even going to talk about the obvious ones—for example, Homer frequently refers to Odysseus as “great-hearted” while Dr. Kimble is an actual heart surgeon. And Odysseus’s troubles began with Helen of Troy, while Dr. Kimble’s problems begin with his wife Helen—both victims of fighting men who intrude into their peaceful lives.
Those are just tiny details. The plot is the main source of my interest here.
In the Odyssey, our hero must survive a ship wreck—and later must escape from captivity on an island, where Calypso wants to hold him for the rest of his life. In The Fugitive, Harrison Ford needs to survive a train wreck—which allows him to escape from captivity as a prisoner on death row, where he would otherwise spend the rest of his life.
In the Odyssey, our hero eventually returns unexpectedly to his native land—the island of Ithaca—where he faces his final and greatest challenges. In The Fugitive, the US Marshalls are shocked when Dr. Kimble returns to—can you guess it?—his home town of Chicago.
That’s the last thing they expected from a runaway fugitive. “Sonofabitch,” declares Tommy Lee Jones, “our boy came home.”
But, of course, a homecoming is necessary in this type of adventure story. These heroes must return home to resolve all the dangers and obstacles they face. And in that familiar terrain, both heroes prevail against heavy odds.
By the way, both the Odyssey and The Fugitive culminate with an unexpected confrontation in a crowded banquet hall in that same home town. The parallelism is now completed.
And this brings me to my favorite part of the story.
by Ted Gioia, The Honest Broker | Read more:
Images: Ted Gioia and The Fugitive
[ed. Interesting take, even though The Fugitive was initially produced for tv in 1963 (starring David Janssen), and as far as I know had none of these themes/connections.]
David Attenborough at 99: ‘I Will Not See How the Story Ends’
I have been fortunate enough to live for nearly 100 years. During this time we have discovered more about our ocean than in any other span of human history. Marine science has revealed natural wonders a young boy in the 1930s could never have imagined. New technology has allowed us to film wildlife behaviour I could only have dreamt of recording in the early stages of my career, and we have changed the ocean so profoundly that the next 100 years could either witness a mass extinction of ocean life or a spectacular recovery.
To date we have done such a good job of telling the stories of demise and collapse that many of us can all too easily picture a future ocean of bleached reefs, turtles choking on plastic, sewage plumes, jellyfish swarms and ghost towns where fishing villages were once full of life. There may be much to fear in the near future, yet it could also be the most exciting time to be alive.
We know already that the ocean can recover. Mangroves and kelp forests can regrow, whales can return and dying coastal communities can flourish once again.
We now understand how to fix many of the biggest problems we face as a species, and we have centuries of progress to draw on for inspiration. Indeed, in the past 100 years alone we have dramatically reduced infant mortality, suppressed many of our most feared diseases, increased access to education and healthcare, acquired scientific knowledge that has transformed our understanding of the world and co-operated on global issues to a degree never seen before.
Young children playing on a beach today will live through perhaps the most consequential time for the human species in the past 10,000 years. They will grow up to see how this story ends, to see how our choices play out. If we use our great discoveries, apply our unique minds and direct our unparalleled communication and problem-solving skills to restoring our ocean, then those children will bring their own into a world where the biggest challenges our species has ever faced have already been navigated. (...)
I will not see how that story ends but, after a lifetime of exploring our planet, I remain convinced that the more people enjoy and understand the natural world, the greater our hope of saving both it and ourselves becomes. With that in mind, here are some of my favourite ocean experiences, which I hope will inspire you to look beyond the shore and beneath the waves.
We know already that the ocean can recover. Mangroves and kelp forests can regrow, whales can return and dying coastal communities can flourish once again.
We now understand how to fix many of the biggest problems we face as a species, and we have centuries of progress to draw on for inspiration. Indeed, in the past 100 years alone we have dramatically reduced infant mortality, suppressed many of our most feared diseases, increased access to education and healthcare, acquired scientific knowledge that has transformed our understanding of the world and co-operated on global issues to a degree never seen before.
Young children playing on a beach today will live through perhaps the most consequential time for the human species in the past 10,000 years. They will grow up to see how this story ends, to see how our choices play out. If we use our great discoveries, apply our unique minds and direct our unparalleled communication and problem-solving skills to restoring our ocean, then those children will bring their own into a world where the biggest challenges our species has ever faced have already been navigated. (...)
I will not see how that story ends but, after a lifetime of exploring our planet, I remain convinced that the more people enjoy and understand the natural world, the greater our hope of saving both it and ourselves becomes. With that in mind, here are some of my favourite ocean experiences, which I hope will inspire you to look beyond the shore and beneath the waves.
Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Armed Madhouse – U.S. Defense Racketeering
As the Trump administration prepares to increase the enormous U.S. defense budget to over one trillion dollars, it is an appropriate time to describe how the U.S. arms industry participates in a structure of normalized corruption that I call defense racketeering. The Military-Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned against in 1961 has grown and evolved in ways that are grossly wasteful, promote armed conflict, and weaken national defense. I will describe this pernicious system of grifting and offer some recommendations for ending it.
A few years ago, I made the diagram shown below depicting the financial circulatory system of the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex (aka, The Blob). Eisenhower originally intended to describe it as the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, and this would have been a more accurate term because the defense budget funding committees of the U.S. Congress are the beating heart of the Blob.
It is not generally understood how few people direct the flow of the hundreds of billions the U.S. spends every year on defense. The senators and representatives on the Armed Services and Appropriations committees of the Congress are easy targets for the lobbyists of the defense corporations. The weapons makers spend about $70 million a year on lobbying in Washington, and they donate generously to members of the key committees that control the defense budget.
The committee staffers responsible for advising on defense budget items are out-gunned by the industry lobbyists, who earn considerably more, and are proficient in the arts of persuasion. As of 2023 there were 708 active Washington lobbyists working for defense corporations. Most of these lobbyists have gone through the “revolving door” of military or government jobs and are intimately familiar with the political terrain.
The goals of the lobbyists are two-fold: promote the growth of the overall defense budget and defend the the weapons programs of their employers. There are enormous sums at stake. Although in recent years the U.S. defense budget has consumed about an eighth of the total Federal budget, it has been roughly half of the discretionary budget. The discretionary budget is all outlays that are not legally obligated, and thus directly under congressional control each year.
If Trump’s proposed cuts to domestic programs and defense budget increase to $1 trillion are passed, the U.S. will be spending even more of the discretionary budget on weapons and war, pushing the defense share to over 60%.
How does the U.S. defense industry run such a successful racket? I have already mentioned their potent lobbying capability. Now let us examine some tools of their trade.
Threat Inflation
A massive defense budget must be justified by threats to the United States. If legitimate threats do not exist, imaginary ones can easily be conjured up. Working with think tanks, media contacts, and bellicose politicians, almost any foreign entity can be puffed up to a serious threat to U.S. “interests” by defense industry lobbyists. At various times, Cuba, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya were considered military threats. For 20 years, Islamic terrorism was the threat justifying huge U.S. military budgets. With the revival of cold war confrontation with Russia and China, we have returned to a tried and true national security threat. The costumes change, but the show goes on.
Gold Plating
It is an article of faith in the U.S. defense community that advanced, highly-complex weaponry can overcome the presumably inferior weaponry of potential adversaries. This bias toward ambitious application of leading-edge technologies is beneficial to arms makers because it raises the costs of weapons programs and justifies delays and difficulties in completing projects. The result is a process of over-specification of weapons designs and disappointing results in the deployed system.
An example of this approach is the M777 howitzer. This field gun was designed to be highly transportable, incorporating titanium parts and other lightweight components. On the battlefield in Ukraine the M777 has suffered from short barrel life, and replacement of barrels and other worn parts has become a logistical problem. The B2 Stealth Bomber, at a cost of $2 billion per aircraft, had the rare distinction of costing more than its weight in gold until 2008. Gold prices have risen since then, but production of the B2 was halted in 2001 and only 20 are operational. Other examples of gold-plated projects are the Gerald Ford aircraft carriers, the Zumwalt destroyer, and the Osprey tilt-rotor transport aircraft.
Non-Competition
The magic of the marketplace has not been working in favor of U.S. taxpayers, as defense corporations have consolidated into five behemoths that manage the biggest weapons projects, such as the F35, nuclear submarines, ICBMs, and the Patriot missile system.
Moreover, some of the contract bidding has become single-source. The $13 billion contract for replacing the U.S. ground launched Minuteman ICBM force was awarded to Northrop Grumman without any competitive bid. What could go wrong?
Deferred Bribery
Dangling the prospect of lucrative future employment is not considered bribery if there is no explicit offer. A senior military officer in the U.S. can retire after 20 years and receive a pension of about 50% of military salary, then take a lobbying job in the defense sector earning double the former military salary. This process is what makes the revolving door spin, and it results in most of Washington defense lobbyists having prior military or government careers. Even retired congressional representatives can cash in on lobbying employment if they have influence with the key funding committees. Thus, decisions on military expenditures are in the hands of people who stand to benefit from actions friendly to potential future employers, and it is all perfectly legal.
Moving Goalposts
When developing complex, highly-sophisticated weapons systems, delays and cost overruns frequently occur. Defense contractors are seldom punished for failures to meet schedule and cost requirements. Instead, project timetables are extended and supplemental funding is awarded. The F35 fighter program has been delayed by more than 8 years and has exceeded original cost expectations by $165 billion.
Lowering the Net
When a big weapons program gets into trouble, performance specifications are sometimes relaxed to allow the program to continue. The F35’s maneuverability, acceleration, and combat radius requirements were all relaxed in the course of the program. A general reduction of weapons testing requirements has also been underway in recent years, much to the liking of the defense contractors.
The Secrecy Shield
If no one knows what you are doing, no one knows what you are doing wrong, and this maxim applies to the “black budget” programs of the U.S. Defense Department. Considering the embarrassing failures of defense projects that are publicly accountable, one can only imagine what malfeasance lies behind the cloak of secrecy surrounding programs considered too sensitive for public disclosure. The black budget of undisclosed secret programs has grown to well over $50 billion.
What Can Be Done
Although it is unlikely that the U.S. Congress will resist the lobbying power of the defense industry, there are several measures that should be taken to reduce the abuses of defense racketeering:
by Haig Hovaness, Naked Capitalism | Read more:
Images: uncredited[ed. I wouldn't hold my breath. With this president and congress it's onward to infinity (below). See also: Elon Musk Set to Win Big With Trump’s Trillion-Dollar Pentagon Budget (The Intercept).]
"Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) publicly objected to the administration’s request to keep the military funded at about $893 billion, while criticizing Trump’s proposed cuts to biomedical research, education support programs for low-income households and subsidies to help the poorest Americans cover the cost of heating and cooling their homes.
Noting that the budget was “late” and lacks “key details,” Collins voiced “serious objections to the proposed freeze in our defense funding given the security challenges we face,” as well as the White House’s proposed cuts “and in some cases elimination” of non-defense programs.
Former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who is now chair of the Senate’s defense funding panel, slammed the White House budget office for asking Congress to keep defense spending static for the upcoming fiscal year, saying in a statement that the extra cash Republican leaders are hoping to pour on through the tax and spending megabill they are hoping to enact this summer is “not a substitute for full-year appropriations."
“OMB accounting gimmicks may well convince Administration officials and spokesmen that they’re doing enough to counter the growing, coordinated challenges we face from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and radical terrorists. But they won’t fool Congress,” McConnell said.
The White House’s request would be “a cut in real terms” for the military, said Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) in a statement, agreeing with McConnell that the additional $150 billion in military funding GOP leaders want to pass through their separate party-line package was not meant “to paper over” the White House budget office’s “intent to shred to the bone our military capabilities and our support to service members.”
A few years ago, I made the diagram shown below depicting the financial circulatory system of the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex (aka, The Blob). Eisenhower originally intended to describe it as the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, and this would have been a more accurate term because the defense budget funding committees of the U.S. Congress are the beating heart of the Blob.
It is not generally understood how few people direct the flow of the hundreds of billions the U.S. spends every year on defense. The senators and representatives on the Armed Services and Appropriations committees of the Congress are easy targets for the lobbyists of the defense corporations. The weapons makers spend about $70 million a year on lobbying in Washington, and they donate generously to members of the key committees that control the defense budget.
The committee staffers responsible for advising on defense budget items are out-gunned by the industry lobbyists, who earn considerably more, and are proficient in the arts of persuasion. As of 2023 there were 708 active Washington lobbyists working for defense corporations. Most of these lobbyists have gone through the “revolving door” of military or government jobs and are intimately familiar with the political terrain.
The goals of the lobbyists are two-fold: promote the growth of the overall defense budget and defend the the weapons programs of their employers. There are enormous sums at stake. Although in recent years the U.S. defense budget has consumed about an eighth of the total Federal budget, it has been roughly half of the discretionary budget. The discretionary budget is all outlays that are not legally obligated, and thus directly under congressional control each year.
If Trump’s proposed cuts to domestic programs and defense budget increase to $1 trillion are passed, the U.S. will be spending even more of the discretionary budget on weapons and war, pushing the defense share to over 60%.
How does the U.S. defense industry run such a successful racket? I have already mentioned their potent lobbying capability. Now let us examine some tools of their trade.
Threat Inflation
A massive defense budget must be justified by threats to the United States. If legitimate threats do not exist, imaginary ones can easily be conjured up. Working with think tanks, media contacts, and bellicose politicians, almost any foreign entity can be puffed up to a serious threat to U.S. “interests” by defense industry lobbyists. At various times, Cuba, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya were considered military threats. For 20 years, Islamic terrorism was the threat justifying huge U.S. military budgets. With the revival of cold war confrontation with Russia and China, we have returned to a tried and true national security threat. The costumes change, but the show goes on.
Gold Plating
An example of this approach is the M777 howitzer. This field gun was designed to be highly transportable, incorporating titanium parts and other lightweight components. On the battlefield in Ukraine the M777 has suffered from short barrel life, and replacement of barrels and other worn parts has become a logistical problem. The B2 Stealth Bomber, at a cost of $2 billion per aircraft, had the rare distinction of costing more than its weight in gold until 2008. Gold prices have risen since then, but production of the B2 was halted in 2001 and only 20 are operational. Other examples of gold-plated projects are the Gerald Ford aircraft carriers, the Zumwalt destroyer, and the Osprey tilt-rotor transport aircraft.
Non-Competition
The magic of the marketplace has not been working in favor of U.S. taxpayers, as defense corporations have consolidated into five behemoths that manage the biggest weapons projects, such as the F35, nuclear submarines, ICBMs, and the Patriot missile system.
Moreover, some of the contract bidding has become single-source. The $13 billion contract for replacing the U.S. ground launched Minuteman ICBM force was awarded to Northrop Grumman without any competitive bid. What could go wrong?
Deferred Bribery
Dangling the prospect of lucrative future employment is not considered bribery if there is no explicit offer. A senior military officer in the U.S. can retire after 20 years and receive a pension of about 50% of military salary, then take a lobbying job in the defense sector earning double the former military salary. This process is what makes the revolving door spin, and it results in most of Washington defense lobbyists having prior military or government careers. Even retired congressional representatives can cash in on lobbying employment if they have influence with the key funding committees. Thus, decisions on military expenditures are in the hands of people who stand to benefit from actions friendly to potential future employers, and it is all perfectly legal.
Moving Goalposts
When developing complex, highly-sophisticated weapons systems, delays and cost overruns frequently occur. Defense contractors are seldom punished for failures to meet schedule and cost requirements. Instead, project timetables are extended and supplemental funding is awarded. The F35 fighter program has been delayed by more than 8 years and has exceeded original cost expectations by $165 billion.
Lowering the Net
When a big weapons program gets into trouble, performance specifications are sometimes relaxed to allow the program to continue. The F35’s maneuverability, acceleration, and combat radius requirements were all relaxed in the course of the program. A general reduction of weapons testing requirements has also been underway in recent years, much to the liking of the defense contractors.
The Secrecy Shield
If no one knows what you are doing, no one knows what you are doing wrong, and this maxim applies to the “black budget” programs of the U.S. Defense Department. Considering the embarrassing failures of defense projects that are publicly accountable, one can only imagine what malfeasance lies behind the cloak of secrecy surrounding programs considered too sensitive for public disclosure. The black budget of undisclosed secret programs has grown to well over $50 billion.
What Can Be Done
Although it is unlikely that the U.S. Congress will resist the lobbying power of the defense industry, there are several measures that should be taken to reduce the abuses of defense racketeering:
by Haig Hovaness, Naked Capitalism | Read more:
Images: uncredited
"Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) publicly objected to the administration’s request to keep the military funded at about $893 billion, while criticizing Trump’s proposed cuts to biomedical research, education support programs for low-income households and subsidies to help the poorest Americans cover the cost of heating and cooling their homes.
Noting that the budget was “late” and lacks “key details,” Collins voiced “serious objections to the proposed freeze in our defense funding given the security challenges we face,” as well as the White House’s proposed cuts “and in some cases elimination” of non-defense programs.
Former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who is now chair of the Senate’s defense funding panel, slammed the White House budget office for asking Congress to keep defense spending static for the upcoming fiscal year, saying in a statement that the extra cash Republican leaders are hoping to pour on through the tax and spending megabill they are hoping to enact this summer is “not a substitute for full-year appropriations."
“OMB accounting gimmicks may well convince Administration officials and spokesmen that they’re doing enough to counter the growing, coordinated challenges we face from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and radical terrorists. But they won’t fool Congress,” McConnell said.
The White House’s request would be “a cut in real terms” for the military, said Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) in a statement, agreeing with McConnell that the additional $150 billion in military funding GOP leaders want to pass through their separate party-line package was not meant “to paper over” the White House budget office’s “intent to shred to the bone our military capabilities and our support to service members.”
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