AID reduction

AID cuts have downstream consequences that are easily foreseeable, and, as expected, reported on skew. "the cost of cancelled projects could be as high as \$US300 million, equal to a third of Liberia’s \$800 million yearly budget." Apples to oranges here: the government budget isn't the GDP.

The first story is about a nutrition project--one in which the object was to spur local intrepeneurs to market a local infant food. And then another anecdote:

For nearly a decade, Julie Sundaygar, 29, of the Bong Mines Bridge community on the outskirts of Monrovia, has sold bananas and shelled peanuts to workers who poured out from the Ministry of Finance’s Mechlin Street entrance. Sundaygar recalls almost doubling her sales when USAID-funded projects filled the ministry with USAID workers. “I could sell \$LD15,000 (about \$US75) first,” says Sundaygar who brings her fruit here from a twice weekly hour-long journey to Omega Market. Now her prices have halved. “Nobody here now gets their fruit.”

When I was last there, one of the popular job training choices the NGOs offered was furniture-making. There was quite a market for American/European style chairs, but if you looked closely the market was NGO workers and UN peacekeeping troops. The peacekeepers were never going to stay forever, and the NGOs come and go--and when they go they rarely pack furniture to go with them, so the market glutted.

An economic plan that's contingent on money coming for free forever is crazed. Tourism is challenging but they have people working on that. Infrastructure is a problem, of course, both the building of and the maintenance of.

The first link above tells of one aid project, but the first one they reported on I took note of: a 17M USAID project to advise the government on tax policy.

I was told the main purpose of USAID when founded was to funnel money to the right people to encourage good behavior and presumably wise choices; secondarily to help out the poorer populations (hopefully as a consequence of those wise choices). That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it lends itself to corruption and recently quite a bit of their money had been going to political influence buying in this country, which is way out of line. I'm not impressed by the motte-and-bailey defenses I've heard.

Coffee

I see coffee memes regularly. I never really acquired a taste for the stuff. I can drink it if there's nothing else available, and it's useful for the owl shift. Not essential, though for some people it seems to matter a great deal.

I'm old enough to remember a song touting an alternative:

Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

I didn't read his "The Martian," but I did see the movie at my sister's house. The framework is quite similar: alone (mostly) facing problem after problem, and building solutions. Once the premise is admitted, the book is hard sci-fi.

In The Andromeda Strain the virus-like thing is able to use extreme energy to reproduce (which drives the cliff-hanger ending). Here the premise is a bacteria-like thing that takes that to another level, able to draw enough energy from the Sun to significantly dim it--though reproduction requires CO2 from Venus--a space-traveling bacteria that is multiplying fast enough to result in disaster in a few decades.

Our hero wakes up with amnesia, and slowly learns about his spaceship and his memories, with parallel stories of his adventures on the ship and what led up to it on Earth. He's not left in the dark about "why" for long (the reader wouldn't stand it)--every nearby star system save one is clearly also infected and dimming badly. Their job--a "Hail Mary" desperate gamble--is to go find out why one of the stars stopped dimming and see if the information can save the Earth before everybody starves.

The strands are wrapped up, and the decisions are mostly plausible--though the final revelation of character isn't well motivated and didn't ring quite right.

The degree of cooperation among nations is a bit implausible, and the director, though a well-drawn character, isn't the most plausible choice for the project either. Perhaps the population of scientists willing to go on a one-way mission has different characteristics than the ordinary crowd, but the two that paired off didn't resemble anybody I knew.

Without giving away the ending, I see why Weir chose that option. It would have been much harder to write the complicated reactions and interactions the alternative would demand, and I think Weir wants to stick to what he does well.

A little axe-grinding, but on the whole a fun read.

Eye of Sauron

This is cool. A research team discovered that a blazar's jet cone is pointed almost directly at us--we can see inside. The image above is their calculation of the magnetic field direction based on the polarization of light. Different regions along the jet are thought responsible for producing all manner of radiation, from radio waves to neutrinos. When such an energetic (Doppler shift of 30?) beam strikes gas clouds, the collisions produce new particles (e.g. pions), which when they decay produce neutrinos--which IceCube has detected coming from this blazar.

On the cheerful side

After losing 25 pounds in a month, I stabilized, and am finally eating almost normally--though I still can't taste half the things (including salt and chocolate). And my walking speed is the same as before, despite several months of almost no exercise. And 15 minutes of trying to excavate day-lilies doesn't fatigue me.

Ironically, several people have said I'm looking better than before.

Ambitious plans for banking in Liberia

CBL Unveils National Electronic Payment Switch to Drive Cash-Light Economy and Financial Inclusion

The Central Bank of Liberia has officially announced the upcoming launch of a national electronic payment switch, a transformative initiative aimed at modernizing Liberia’s financial infrastructure, promoting financial inclusion, and reducing reliance on physical cash.

What's wrong with this picture?

Yep, electrical power is unreliable, even in Monrovia. And the climate isn't kind to electronics.

“If someone in Liberia can pay for goods in Ghana without U.S. dollars, that’s not just convenience—it’s transformation,” Ngafuan said.

OK, that seems like a nice ambition.

“Digitization helps fight corruption. You can trace every payment,” Balogun said. “We, the banks, are ready to support."

That, if true, sounds like a good reason for the system to never get implemented. Who in the government has an interest in fighting corruption?

Although it opens the door for spying on business rivals, so maybe... And it suggests ways of doing taxation or asset seizure conveniently.

Is it possible to de-Nazi-fy Gaza?

Nazi Germany worshipped the tribe and state, with Hitler as its prophet. The Japanese worshipped the tribe and the Emperor. Outsiders weren't entirely human.

The way the Nazis treated the Russians seems calculated to make any kind of compromise or forgiveness impossible; likewise the way the Japanese treated prisoners and most everybody else. Oct 7 seems intended the same way, to announce to the world (possibly especially Iran?) that there would never be any reconciliation.

After the war we and the Soviets both tried to de-Nazi-fy Germany. The Soviets were somewhat better at it, but in both cases we ran into a problem. Who is a devout Nazi? On one scale (are they willing to throw stones at Jews?), lots and lots—perhaps a majority of the population. They were raised to it, after all. Were they Party members? Since you pretty much had to be for lots of jobs, that also is quite a fraction. Do you want to dispose of all of them? "Stare into the abyss"--you start to sound like a Nazi too.

Instead, if you had control of the ground and the schools, and control of the religion that inspired them, you could simply make examples of the leaders, put temporary restrictions on the "Inner Party" members, and rely on control of education and the media to grow a new generation without the Nazi religion.

We weren't thorough in Germany, and even less so in Japan. But so long as the direction changed, and the worship of the state either went away or trended benign, we decided that was good enough, under the circumstances. Stalin and Mao were almost as vile, and as dangerous, as Hitler and Hirohito. And since the Nazi Werwolf project was never widely implemented (and I don't recall hearing of anything significant during the occupation of Japan), we could focus on trying to make the institutional changes we wanted.

After all, the German tribe was defeated and their demi-god Hitler was dead, and the Japanese tribe was defeated and their demi-god Hirohito told them to cooperate with the Americans. The locus of their religions was within the occupied states. There were no outside powers that still supported the Axis states.

Gaza differs. They do have something like Werwolf going, the ground is not occupied, the schools are not controlled, and the locus of the Hamas brand of the religion lies elsewhere. And Hamas has plenty of support around the world.

The cost of occupying the ground will be high, and it won't be over quickly. Control of the media is probably nearly impossible, and I suspect that controlling the schools will be undermined in every direction. And as for the religion—Islam doesn't have to be Jew-hating, but it frequently is, especially if the Jews are "uppity."

De-Nazi-fication of Gaza may not be possible at a price Israel is willing to pay.

Wasting time

Our sense of time can be manipulated. The essay uses "curvilinear" to describe media feeds that are active, without an end, and which include a mild variety--feeds that require no decision. Feeds with an end, feeds with nothing close to your interests--these evoke decisions. When we don't need to make decisions, time can slide by. And when there's no narrative, we tend tolose track of what has happened--forget the details, and how much time has passed.

Perhaps it isn't obvious, but links can eat time similarly to video feeds. The stories or essays may be longer and demand more of our minds, but you can binge anyway--and lose track of time. Been there.

Dish washing time

My wife was watching a Time Team episode in which the archaeologists were looking at pottery fragments--pottery that had been tempered with bits of crushed pottery, leaving a surface that looked pretty ugly. But I guess it held up to heat OK.

Anyhow, the first thing that came to my mind was: how do you clean that? No soap, though you could scrub with ash. Or sand, but that'd be pretty abrasive, the more so if the surface is already uneven. Frayed stick ends would scrub pretty well.

This Facebook conversation proposes some things I'd never heard of before--such as seasoning the inside with starch, and that they may have had partial survivor's immunity to some of the diseases and so cleaning wasn't so critical. (Dunno about that last--cleaning your pots would give you an edge over the tribe that didn't, and in South America they devised thorough ways of getting the last cyanide out of their cassava--that last little edge is important.)

Cleaning up doesn't seem to get quite the same attention as hunting or fighting or fabrication or cooking. But without it...

Following up on the topic of cleanliness, I tried googling for indian longhouse chamber pot, and Google's AI hallucinated at me. I figure there had to be something customary, especially in large settlements like Cahokia.

of Solomon

I was reading Psalms 72 today, and recalled the police blotter from yesterday. "He will have compassion on the poor and needy, And the lives of the needy he will save. He will rescue their life from oppression and violence, And their blood will be precious in his sight;"

The police tend to arrest more of the poor--because the other poor are the ones who need the help most often. The violent and the oppressors are often neighbors. The slaver is on the street corner.

Synthetics

I remember reading about krokodil some years ago--the writers were very worried about this synthetic morphine. It was a problem in Russia, but krokodil abuse in the US: urban legend or not? California poison control seems to take it seriously but says reports tapered off a decade ago. The first link cites cheap heroin (and presumably fentanyl) and difficulty getting codeine (to synthesize it) in the US as militating against its adaption here.

I don't hear much about bath salts (synthetic cathinones=khat), but I gather they're still a problem.

And for those watching West Africa, there's kush--a combination of synthetic opioid and synthetic cannabinoid (a combination which, despite media hype last year, doesn't have to use human bones in its synthesis). It's claimed to be particularly addictive, but I haven't found anything remotely like solid numbers on how many guys use it or what the mean expected lifetime is.

Fentanyl's a problem here, and a friend of a friend lost a kid to heroin. I wonder how elastic the demand is for euphoria. If we successfully suppress the current opioids significantly, will some of these others fill in?

There's more than one kind of slavery.

UPDATE: Wrt kush in Liberia: this story claims 100,000 addicts, which sounds like a nice round number from the air, and a UNFPA 2023 report estimating 1 in 5 use narcotics. Careless reporting is common; that may mean narcotics specifically or all drugs generically. Someone counted 866 "drug dens" in Monrovia, which is by far the largest city. If each serviced 20-50 addicts, the 100,000 doesn't sound too far out of line. If 32% of the 5.7 million are youth, that's about 1.8 million, and if UNFPA is right that's about 350,000 drug users.

As long as it wasn't buried too deeply

Apparently people came back to Pompeii after the Roman era eruption. Some buildings were taller than 20 feet, so a few things would stick out and mark the place clearly. Scavenging might be possible in somewhat sheltered areas, and I'd guess there would have been some rites possible for the already-buried dead family members.

And in a few years the land nearby would be fertile. Rain would tend to thicken and eventually harden the ash, so the window for digging might not be very long. But there'd be some worked stone handy.

Thoughts by others on AI

At Of Two Minds: where AI fails. "In other words, 90% is good enough, as who cares about the other 10% in a college paper, copycat song or cutesy video."

A conversation with ChatGPT: "Diabolus Ex Machina"

How Long Has This Been Going On?

Your preference? Ace, or Ella Fitzgerald, or Charlie Puth?

Sweeney

I don't know if it says more about how out-of-touch I am or how fast the Babylon Bee reacts, but I first heard of Sweeney via the Bee.

Grim posted an informative link. Apparently the usual suspects have their hair on fire, and the usual responders have replied in the expected ways, (and that's what the Bee responded to), and I have nothing to add to that discussion.

The woman is shapely and moves very well, but something seemed a little off. I think I pinned it down--she had a "generic gaze". Some models give the impression that they are looking at you, and not at the camera, but I didn't feel that way with her.

I gather she's successful at what she does, so I give no advice. Perhaps I'm just used to a different "personal gaze" from my wife.

Russia collusion

I gather that evidence is coming to light that the Russia Collusion claim was known to be a hoax even before the old FBI probe.

That surprises me--I'd have expected more thorough document destruction. That it was a hoax was a no-brainer.

Finding money spent by Russia to stir up mischief seems pretty trivial--on two fronts. Trying to make trouble for the US has been a foreign policy objective for the Russian/Soviets for a century. And the sums announced were trivial too, compared to the amount the parties and supporters were already putting in.

And the notion that the Russians would prefer Trump to Hillary didn't pass the smell test. Governments run on money, and the bulk of Russian hard currency money came and comes from hydrocarbon sales, with arms sales coming up distant second. Hillary was committed to ending and preventing fracking, which would have boosted hydrocarbon prices and Russian revenue and Putin's power. She was predictable.

Making up stories about political opponents has a long history, though getting government collusion in the project seems innovative. Though, on consideration, it sounds like some of what I've been listening to in Byzantine history.

Movies seem to be stylized sometimes

Someone pointed out the old training video Surviving Edged Weapons. It's almost an hour and a half long, and not pleasant viewing.

I hope I never have to find it useful

Tom Lehrer

My introduction to his work came during study hall in the English class back in '69 or '70. Somebody brought an album and persuaded the teacher to play it. The only song I'm sure was on it was "Be Prepared." We heard both sides, so I guess the teacher liked it too.

I liked it then, but over the years I've had less and less interest in revisiting his works. MLF Lullaby or Folk Song Army hold up pretty well, but I don't take much joy in the deliberately dark these days.

A very talented man. I'd no idea he'd written things for The Electric Company--I hope he had joy in that.

How trustworthy?

I'm not persuaded that Ghislaine Maxwell's testimony, whatever it may be, will be accurate or relevant. If files have been suppressed by both Dem and Rep governments for perhaps even legitimate "reasons of state," what is there to verify her named names (assuming she does)? Who's to contradict her if she has a vendetta or two, or if she's been given a list of safe targets?

"Name the other witches."

A better classification

If you're not reading Sippican Cottage, go enjoy "The Sixties Never Happened."

The idea that generational shifts happen in neat, tectonic fashion, bang-on the first day of each decade, is useless for encapsulating eras. So I’m gonna fix it. Well, at least the years between 1952 and 1982. Those thirty years were split into two parts, not three: The Fixties, and The Endless Bummer. The thing everyone calls The Sixties never happened.

and

Now, the Fixties are often maligned as a cultural wasteland, mostly by people with rings in their intellectual noses. Well, the Fixties gave us Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, and the atypical Dave Brubeck’s Take Five in the same year. Wes Montgomery was inventing smooth jazz right in front of your eyes. There was the birth of bossa nova. Broadway theaters were heaving with musicals. And they didn’t call it the Golden Age of movies for nothing. The industry had to compete with the television all of a sudden, and managed it just fine by giving much more to look at.

I wish I could write as well.

If you want another sample, try Hostile Workplace