https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1716932122114682972?s=20
Author Archives: Con Brio
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/07/05/1075865/eric-schmidt-ai-will-transform-science/
“Nevertheless, this is a profoundly optimistic moment. Previous paradigm shifts in science, like the emergence of the scientific process or big data, have been inwardly focused—making science more precise, accurate, and methodical. AI, meanwhile, is expansive, allowing us to combine information in novel ways and bring creativity and progress in the sciences to new heights.”
China Holds Debtor Country Toes To The Fire
Bono could pressure Western lenders to forgive debt back in the day.
But he won’t have any say in Beijing.
Beijing is proving to be much less generous than Bretton Woods system institutions and, as it is the dominant trade partner and investor in the majority of countries, what Beijing wants, it gets.
The Chinese want their pound of flesh – and forgiveness of sovereign debts isn’t an agenda item.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/11/china-lending-imf-world-bank-00090588
Putin’s Defeats Mount Up – As Do The Bodies
Max Boot in the Washington Post.
“One of Vladimir Putin’s pseudo-justifications for his war of aggression was the supposed fear that Ukraine would join NATO. That was never likely (and still isn’t).
But, as a result of his invasion, Finland just joined NATO, and Sweden should be close behind. Not only does Finland have Europe’s largest artillery force, but it also recently agreed to combine its warplanes with those of Norway, Denmark and Sweden in a joint operating force.
The Nordic partners have 250 front-line combat aircraft, instantly creating a new military superpower in northern Europe. Thanks, Vlad, for making NATO stronger than ever.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/10/ukraine-russia-defeats-spring-offensive/
Malthus Lite
Robert Bailey:
“The most notoriously wrong modern prophet of Malthusian doom is Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich. My public crusade against Malthusian stupidity began with my 1990 Forbes article, “Doomsday Rescheduled,” in which I reviewed Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s book The Population Explosion.
“One thing seems safe to predict: starvation and epidemic disease will raise death rates over most of the planet,” they asserted in the book. I pointed out that this was a follow-up to Paul Ehrlich’s failed prediction made 22 years earlier in his 1968 The Population Bomb, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked on now.
At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
That didn’t happen.
The Club of Rome’s New Malthusianism-Lite Report
Russia Is Losing Its Future
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Russia is losing its future – Aleksandr Auzan, dean of Economics at Moscow State University on the loss of human capital in Russia.<br><br>Then again, the less open-minded people there are, the easier it is for the Russian regime. <a href=”https://t.co/nXpi5xENQG”>pic.twitter.com/nXpi5xENQG</a></p>— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) <a href=”https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1641162497951518722?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>March 29, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
Diversity Builds Economic Resilience
The idea that making everything domestically builds resiliency is what
@AdamPosen calls “the fallacy of self-sufficiency” & it has repeatedly been disproven. It is having diversified supply chains—including geographically—that builds resilience.
US Needs Institute To Strengthen ASEAN Ties
Following in the footsteps of Japan and India, the U.S. should establish a dedicated institution to head up its economic and cultural engagement with Southeast Asia. Such a move would give Washington a way to help quiet doubts about its long-term commitment to the region.
Solar panels handle heat better when combined with crops
Sun-harvesting solar panels function better when they’re not too hot. But luckily researchers have now discovered precisely how to cool them down.
Building solar panels at a specific height above crops can reduce surface temperatures by up to 10 °C, compared to traditional panels constructed over bare ground, they’ve found.
The results, published in the journal Applied Energy, are the latest contribution to a growing body of research on agrivoltaics: a farming method that aims to maximize land use by pairing solar panels with cropland, thus minimizing competition between energy production and food.
We already know that agrivoltaics can increase land-use efficiency, produce plenty of electricity on minimal land, and may also improve crop yields by shielding plants from heat and wind.
Smartphone Era – Bankers Take Note!
Bankers finally waking up to the reality that we live in a smartphone era! Just 16 years after the release of the first smartphone.
Slow?
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blackstone-ceo-says-silicon-valley-163055755.html
America …Continued
“The case for a renewed Sino-Russian axis is equally unfounded. Although Putin recently hosted his “dear friend” Xi at the Kremlin, underlying this friendship is the stark reality of a deepening Russian vassalage to Xi’s China. A loss of Russian prestige and status in Ukraine, and by extension an American victory, would prove a mortal blow to Putin’s project of contesting the world order that, from the Kremlin’s perspective, represents a greater civilisational struggle.”
Disgraceful!
The IOC is siding with Putin’s fascism.
By deciding to let Russian and Belorussian athletes return to international competition, the IOC is stating that violent aggression against peaceful states is acceptable.
Why respect international borders if Putin and his fellow dictators are free to ignore them?
Turnbull, Rudd, Major, Brown Call For War Crimes Tribunal To Try Putin
The world needs to be made aware of the atrocities that Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered in Ukraine. There are currently three ways under international law that Putin’s actions can be subjected to global scrutiny, and these can be complemented with a new body focused on the specific crime of aggression.
GORDON BROWN, JOHN MAJOR, KEVIN RUDD, MALCOLM TURNBULL
Read further on Project Syndicate
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US Senate Condemns Putin As War Criminal
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Putin’s Crazed Imperial Fantasy Is Dying
Trump’s failed Capitol insurrection on Jan 6, 2021 may yet prove to have been the high point of the authoritarian wave.
Putin’s crazed fantasy of creating a Russian Third Reich is now being buried in Ukrainian fields, streets and towns.
Can Putin hear the people singing? Does he know that his megalomaniacal dream is dying?
“Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the song of angry men?
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!”
Xi, and all the other petty authoritarians – from Trump and Bolsonaro to Mohammed Bin Salman and the Myanmar junta – are watching fearfully.
When Putin fails, the democratic tsunami will sweep around the world.
And, it will sweep them away.
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Smartphones, digital citizens and open secrets in Russia–Ukraine war | The Strategist
In the court of global opinion where digital citizens dwell, Russian President Vladimir Putin has lost any ‘just war’ justification. His military assault is in no way proportionhttps://www.aspistrategist.org.au/smartphones-digital-citizens-and-open-secrets-in-russia-ukraine-war/ate and responds to no immediate threat. No more baloney, please—realist or Russian—about how this is the fault of NATO and the US.
Graeme Dobell writes …
Put Putin On Trial
Everything Putin is doing in Ukraine is criminal.
Acts such as bombing hospitals and refugees are obviously war crimes. But simply invading a sovereign neighbor just to assuage Putin’s overweening sense of inadequacy is a crime against the international order, according to former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
There’s no law against such aggression for the International Criminal Court to prosecute, thanks to the obstruction of — you’ll never believe this — Russia.
But most nations outlaw it, and US President Joe Biden should push for a special tribunal to hold Putin and his henchmen accountable.
One of the worst examples of Russia’s criminal disregard for human life is its bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol.
Even when maternity hospitals aren’t being bombed, babies and pregnant women suffer more than most other people in war zones.
Somewhat less despicable, but still criminal, is taking innocent people hostage to use as bargaining chips. It’s an old Soviet tactic, and Stephen Carter writes Putin appears to have revived it by jailing American basketballer Brittney Griner.
These stories usually end with either Russia getting its way or the innocents doing hard time. Either outcome is criminal.
As Vladimir Putin turns himself into a dictator, the combination of conflict and sanctions is causing the biggest commodities shock in decades.
The London-based Economist argues that when Putin dreamed of restoring the glory of the Russian empire by invading Ukraine, he was also restoring the terror of Josef Stalin.
That is not only because he has unleashed the most violent act of unprovoked aggression in Europe since 1939, but also because at home he is resorting as never before to lies, violence and paranoia.
That is not only because he has unleashed the most violent act of unprovoked aggression in Europe since 1939, but also because at home he is resorting as never before to lies, violence and paranoia.
The Economist
The Economist describes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as triggering the biggest commodity shock since 1973, and one of the worst disruptions to wheat supplies since the first world war.
Although commodity exchanges are already in chaos, ordinary folk have yet to feel the full effects of rising petrol bills, empty stomachs and political instability.
But make no mistake, those things are coming—and dramatically so if sanctions tighten further, and if Putin retaliates.
Western governments need to respond to the commodity threat as determinedly as to the senseless aggression of the 21st-century Stalin.
Western governments need to respond to the commodity threat as determinedly as to the senseless aggression of the 21st-century Stalin.
The Economist
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- Hamas’ ‘success’ may Signal its Doom
- (no title)
- China Holds Debtor Country Toes To The Fire
- Putin’s Defeats Mount Up – As Do The Bodies
- Malthus Lite
Will China Respect Anti-Putin Sanctions?
Putin Attacks From Weakness Not Strength
David Uren writes: “China and Russia may be allies in autocracy, but their attitudes towards engagement with the global economy could not be more different.
“Whereas Vladimir Putin has devoted the past 20 years to making Russia’s economy as bulletproof as he can, China has pursued as much growth as globalisation can deliver.
“Announcing China’s 2022 growth target of 5.5% over the weekend, Premier Li Keqiang underlined the Chinese Communist Party’s continuing commitment to the open world markets that are being slammed shut to China’s Russian ally.
Since 2009, Russia has averaged growth rates of only around 0.8%, less than half the growth of other Eastern European nations and below the advanced nation average.
David Uren
Read more on The Australia Strategic Policy Institute site.
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Moral Clarity
“Few events create as much moral clarity as the unprovoked, brutal invasion of a peaceful nation by a militaristic empire.”
In Vladimir Putin’s warped worldview anyone who disagrees with him simply does not exist. Or, they are Nazis’ who must be hunted down and exterminate.
Russian death squads are now roaming the Ukrainian countryside murdering civilians and dissidents. Anyone who opposes Putin is, by their definition, a fascist enemy.
Putin’s arguments and even more his actions make him the fascist, the natural heir to Adolf Hitler’s evil mantle.
Few events create as much moral clarity as the unprovoked, brutal invasion of a peaceful nation by a militaristic empire.
Noah Smith
How Putin is following Hitler’s playbook
Nigel Jones writes: “So has Putin been following Hitler’s playbook in his confrontation with Ukraine? It looks very much like it. Consider: on 28 May 1938 Hitler told a meeting of his top generals:
‘I am utterly determined that Czechoslovakia should disappear from the map’
Similarly, Putin has openly expressed the view – not just once, but frequently – that Ukraine is an integral part of a greater Russia that has been torn from the bosom of the Motherland and must be restored, either peacefully or by naked force. Only this week, in a rambling televised monologue, using language eerily reminiscent of the Nazi Fuhrer, Putin described Ukraine as a ‘colony’ that had ‘no historical right to exist’.
Putin Believes Ukraine Doesn’t Exist
As absurd as it might sound, Putin is actually arguing that the Ukraine doesn’t exist. A country which has a rich history going back millenia – long before Russia was created – does not even exist in Putin’s mind.
Such are the weird perambulations of a mind used to absolute, unquestioned power. Putin has been in the Kremlin for 22 years now – using different titles.
Since winning the second Chechnya war in the late 1990s, his approach hasn’t changed. He launches small wars utilizing maximum violence. After killing off the ruling elite he doesn’t like, he installs a puppet government – consisting either of Russians or of locals who are totally subservient to his aims.
When people rebel – as they did in Belarus two years ago, or in Khazakhstan late last year – Russian ‘peacekeepers’ are sent in to ensure that the Kremlin aligned clique remains in power.
Putin’s death squads then fan out across the dissident area and even into Germany, the United Kingdom and the US. All well known, all clearly documented.
But we – the world – has let him get away with it. Until now.
He’s Writing a Cheque His Ass Can’t Cash
Unlike his early wars in Chechnya, Dagestan, Moldova, Georgia, the northern Caucasus, in the Crimea and in eastern Ukraine, this war is aimed at subjugating an entire European country of 50 million people. The Ukraine is as big as France. Its people are sophisticated, educated and have extensive high technology industries.
This isn’t a fringe war against an essentially rural peasant rebellion. It is a major European war – the likes of which we haven’t seen since 1945.
More on Putin’s warped worldview on Vox.
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Why Buy A Failing AGL?
What Does Atlassian Billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes Really Want?
Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures and Brookfield, a Canadian asset management company have offered to take over Australia’s oldest listed company, AGL, which began life as Australian Gas & Light.
Cannon-Brookes styles himself as an eco-warrior, offering to shutter AGL’s remaining coal fired generating plants early.
He says that would be one of the single most important decarbonization steps on the planet.
Even if accepted at face value, that claim is somewhat overblown and frail reasoning for a multi-billion dollar investment.
So, what assets does AGL possess that Cannon-Brookes would value?
Failing AGL Trying To A Itself Into Two Companies
AGL is losing money and has been struggling for some years.
Management has been in turmoil, unable to successfully adapt to the changing generating and electricity distribution industry. Visionary executives have been ejected in favor of Liberal Party (and IPA)-backed business-as-usual political hacks. Political interference from the IPA think tank has driven continuous management changes, seriously damaging the market’s assessments of the company’s reliability, long term vision and earnings potential.
AGL’s market capitalisation, has fallen to significantly less than AUD $5 Billion, well below its enterprise value which is north of $7 Billion. Investors, in other words don’t have confidence in the current management.
That means there are assets of $7 Billion up for grabs – at a price significantly less than $5 Billion. Cannon-Brookes could buy the company, shutter the coal fired generators and still be ahead of the game.
In desperation, the current management has been trying to split the company into two: AGL Australia and Accel Energy.
Grok Ventures – a $2 Billion Venture Fund
If successful, where would AGL (or AGL Australia and Accel Energy) fit in Cannon-Brookes’ investment fund, Grok Ventures?
Most of Grok’s investments have been in technology – Canva, CultureAmp, SpaceX, Who Gives A Crap, Bitcoin, Adelaide-based Fleet Space Technologies, and Spriggy.
But Grok has also taken a significant stake in a variety of renewable energy plays – right along the value chain. Among the largest is the investment in the $30 billion Sun Cable project to partially power Singapore from a solar farm in the Northern Territory.
Grok has also invested in home solar fintech Brighte, Sun Drive Solar, (a Sydney solar panel startup to provide solar panels to Sun Cable), Goterra a maggot-based waste management business, a meat replacement companies Fable Food Co. and Vow Food Co.
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- Hamas’ ‘success’ may Signal its Doom
- (no title)
- China Holds Debtor Country Toes To The Fire
- Putin’s Defeats Mount Up – As Do The Bodies
- Malthus Lite
Aussie Arts & Letters 
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