by Rewilding: Beavers to be reintroduced in record numbers across Britain this year Trucker World Perseverance will make sure it has a safe landing Phys.org. How to watch. Exclusive: Whistleblower Accuses Exxon of ‘Fraudulent’ Behavior for Overvaluing Fracking Assets For Years DeSmogBlog. From earlier this month, still germane. Facebook reported revenue it ‘should have never made’, manager claimed FT. Accounting control fraud? Facebook Blocks Charities, Government Pages in Australia News Spat Bloomberg The Big Long The Refomed Broker Polar Vortex 2021 Desperation sets in as power outages and water issues continue ABC13 Big Freeze in Texas Is Becoming a Global Oil Market Crisis Bloomberg Natural Gas Shortage Forces Feedyards to Reformulate Feed, Packing Plants Pause Production AgWeb General
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Lambert Strether writes 2:00PM Water Cooler 2/24/2021
Yves Smith writes Ilargi: But….Then There’s the [Lithium] Math
Lambert Strether writes Links 2/24/2021
Yves Smith writes Michael Hudson Discusses the Economic Winds of [Non] Change Under Biden on Radical Imagination
Rewilding: Beavers to be reintroduced in record numbers across Britain this year Trucker World
Perseverance will make sure it has a safe landing Phys.org. How to watch.
Exclusive: Whistleblower Accuses Exxon of ‘Fraudulent’ Behavior for Overvaluing Fracking Assets For Years DeSmogBlog. From earlier this month, still germane.
Facebook reported revenue it ‘should have never made’, manager claimed FT. Accounting control fraud?
Facebook Blocks Charities, Government Pages in Australia News Spat Bloomberg
The Big Long The Refomed Broker
Polar Vortex 2021
Desperation sets in as power outages and water issues continue ABC13
Big Freeze in Texas Is Becoming a Global Oil Market Crisis Bloomberg
Natural Gas Shortage Forces Feedyards to Reformulate Feed, Packing Plants Pause Production AgWeb
General Motors, Volkswagen halt some Mexican operations on gas shortage Reuters
Perry says Texans willing to suffer blackouts to keep feds out of power market Houston Chronicle. There are plenty of non-Texans to dunk on (dk):
Just want to highlight that this guy Hogan at Harvard is the architect and chief advocate of Texas’s “energy-only” market design. He thought a time of scarcity and the “very high prices” it engenders could be used to fund cap ex at power plants. https://t.co/K5mPqpbalC https://t.co/UeELWfLWRo pic.twitter.com/hx63dt4T2t
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 17, 2021
Tough-guy Texas mayor tells residents ‘fend for themselves’ and resigns Houston Chronicle. From the Mayor’s precipitating Facebook rant: “The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING!”
How They Used to Clear Snowy Roads Before Snowplows and Trucks Were Invented Core77 (Re Silc).
#COVID19
Hydrating the Respiratory Tract: An Alternative Explanation Why Masks Lower Severity of COVID-19 (pre-proof) (PDF) Biophysical Journal. From the Abstract: “We demonstrate that normal breathing results in an absorptiondesorption cycle inside facemasks, where super-saturated air is absorbed by the mask fibers during expiration, followed by evaporation during inspiration of dry environmental air. For double-layered cotton masks, which have considerable heat capacity, the temperature of inspired air rises above room temperature, and the effective increase in relative humidity can exceed 100%. We propose that the recently reported, disease-attenuating effect of generic facemasks is dominated by the strong humidity increase of inspired air. This elevated humidity promotes mucociliary clearance of pathogens from the lungs, both before and after an infection of the upper respiratory tract has occurred. Effective mucociliary clearance can delay and reduce infection of the lower respiratory tract, thus mitigating disease severity. This mode of action suggests that masks can benefit the wearer even after an infection in the upper respiratory tract has occurred, complementing the traditional function of masks to limit person-to-person disease transmission. This potential therapeutical use should be studied further. ” The Daily Mail’s retelling (nvl).
Reports of Anaphylaxis After Receipt of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines in the US—December 14, 2020-January 18, 2021 JAMA. See table: Median minutes to onset: 10 for both Pfizer (range: 1-1140), 10 for Moderna (1-45). Number/percentage of women: Pfizer 44(94%), Moderna 19 (100%).
* * * A new variant (PJ):
A new coronavirus variant named Fin-796H detected in Finnish samples may be harder to detect with some PCR based tests. From our continuing collaboration with @vita_oy @HiLIFE_helsinki @helsinkiunihttps://t.co/PtUnQGDxpD
— Institute of Biotechnology (BI) (@BIOTECH_UH) February 17, 2021
* * * Safety and efficacy of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) Covid-19 vaccine against the B.1.351 variant in South Africa (preprint) medRxiv. On AstraZeneca/Oxford. From the Conclusion: “A two-dose regimen of ChAdOx1-nCoV19 did not show protection against mild-moderate Covid-19 due to B.1.351 variant, however, [Vaccine Efficacy (VE)] against severe Covid-19 is undetermined.”
Delayed Second Dose versus Standard Regimen for Covid-19 Vaccination NEJM (nvl).
* * * Ireland’s toothless travel restrictions exposed as sunseekers take ‘dental’ holidays Politico
Who says theatre is dead:
My family collectively spent over $500 to get COVID testing and English language certification before flying back to US. And no one even checked it at the passport control. Not feeling great about our disease control efforts.
— T.K. of AAK! (@AskAKorean) February 14, 2021
US life expectancy drops a year in pandemic, most since WWII AP
China?
Credit crunch: Chinese infrastructure lending and Lao sovereign debt Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
New Funding for Taiwan Studies Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University
Decoupling denied: Japan Inc lays its bets on China FT
Southeast Asia would choose the U.S. over China if forced to pick sides, survey shows CNBC. Stupid headline. Southeast Asia wants to play all sides against each other and both ends against the middle. The very last thing they want to do is pick sides.
Biden Is Adopting a Militaristic Approach to the Far East The Nation
Myanmar
Swe Win on journalism in Myanmar, the coup, and what comes next CJR
Why Min Aung Hlaing has entered a blind alley Political Insider
Clever tactic:
“Slowdown” Campaign happening in Ygn
Aim: To block police trucks and water cannons
To support CDM , to slowdown the rates of ppl going to work 😂GIVE BACK HUMAN RIGHTS#WhatsHappeningInMyanmar#Feb18Coup pic.twitter.com/a6LtYvdHEf
— Kai Gracey (@GraceyKai) February 18, 2021
I still want to know what’s going on out in the villages — where the reporters aren’t.
Cambodia sets up China-style Internet firewall The Star
Stay-at-home orders in Vietnam Covid-19 hotspot France24
Philippine Remittances See First Drop Since 2001 Bloomberg
India
The hills of hardship From People’s Archive of Rural India. From 2015, still germane.
Can Ganga be saved? What must be done to clean up India’s holy river? Channel News Asia
UGC wants students to write ‘cow science’ exam, asks vice chancellors to ensure wide publicity Scroll.in. Read all the way to the end.
Nigeria’s ecological emergency Africa is a Counrry
Mauritius
The devastation of the Mauritius oil spill is still unaddressed Al Jazeera
Syraqistan
Troop levels are down, but US says over 18,000 contractors remain in Afghanistan Stars and Stripes
The Arab Spring Failed But the Rage Against Misery and Injustice Continues Counterpunch (Re Silc).
Soviet Jews who fled Israel back to the USSR Yasha Levine, Immigrants as a Weapon
UK/EU
COVID-19 infection rate plummets in England, says Imperial College study Sky News
Keir Starmer’s big economy speech sounds awfully like business – or politics – as usual Independent
Cost of having someone killed across Europe falls as younger hitmen blamed for violence Irish Independent. Silver lining!
New Cold War
Estonia report: Russia bets on COVID-19 weakening the West AP
Russia’s Covid vaccine faces global production hurdles FT
“The Forgotten War.” The Scrum
Biden Transition
The Abruzzo Nomination is Great News For Labor Law Enforcement Labor Law Lite
After Pork Giant Was Exposed ror Cruel Killings, the FBI Pursued Its Critics The Intercept
Democrats in Disarray
Why the Democrats Tied Themselves in Knots During Donald Trump’s Impeachment Trial Jacobin. Putin?
Our Famously Free Press
Can Anyone Moderate Podcasts? The Verge. This new-found liberal lust to censor is really something.
The Clubhouse App and the Rise of Oral Psychodynamics Zeynep Tufecki, Insight
Groves of Academe
What a Public-Information Act Request Revealed About My College President The Chronicle of Higher Education (dk: “This is like all the terrible small college faculty stories I’ve heard in the last 20+ years all rolled into one.”) My worst imaginings….
Iowa Auditor Rob Sand accuses regents of ‘bad faith’ in keeping utilities deal secrets The Gazette
Imperial Collapse Watch
A Superpower, Like It or Not Robert Kagan, Foreign Affairs. Kagans gotta Kagan….
A Culture in Despair Unpopular Front. Journalism/activism in France during the Dreyfus Affair.
Class Warfare
Workers from home beware – pay cuts might be the price of freedom Reuters
It’s Not A Political Problem, It’s A Propaganda Problem: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix Caitlin Johnstone
Antidote du jour (via):
Bonus antidote (1):
KEEPING WARM: Thousands of cold-stunned sea turtles are inside the South Padre Island Convention Centre after volunteers rescued more than 3,500 of them from freezing temperatures amid a record-breaking winter storm. https://t.co/ZFy8N1HIht pic.twitter.com/sF0hWoThem
— ABC News (@ABC) February 17, 2021
Bonus antidote (2):
My mom is retired, & she spends her winters volunteering at a sea turtle rescue center in south Texas. The cold snap is stunning the local turtles & they’re doing a lot of rescues. She sent me this photo today of the back of her Subaru. It’s *literally* turtles all the way down. pic.twitter.com/xaDRNjLDoQ
— Lara (@lara_hand) February 15, 2021
Volunteers of America!
See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.