Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025
On this day in 1967, a fire in NASA’s Apollo 1 Command Module killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee.
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
The ADL appears to have realized exactly how bad they looked defending Musk, and are now…criticizing his jokes about the Holocaust.
Not any of the actual important things Musk is saying, like his recent comments in Germany.Report
On the strength of China’s DeepSeek AI, NVidia is down 15% and the NASDAQ is down almost 2%.
These AI Wars have begun.
Edit: I just checked and Pelosi sold 10 big lots of NVidia stock on December 31st.Report
Yeah, honestly, that seems to have been much less of a crash than I was personally expecting. But of course, it’s not over.Report
Oh, and while there’s plenty to criticize about Pelosi’s stock trading, as far as I’m aware, the slide so far and the expected crash of NVidia isn’t really inside information she’d have. Is it?Report
The return of gangster government. Denmark and other nations seek to higher Trump connected lobbyists: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/27/us/politics/trump-denmark-panama-greenland-lobbyists.htmlReport
Trump’s Tactics:
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-01-27-trumps-gestapo-raids/
At around 8 o’clock Sunday morning, in Mountain View, California, four ICE agents in full battlefield regalia followed a resident into a 19-unit apartment building. They carried M15 assault weapons, and had no warrants.
They were looking for two Venezuelans, who had lived there temporarily in the apartment of a lawyer, who was helping asylum seekers pro bono. The Venezuelans were legal residents with temporary protected status until last week, when Trump changed the rules and they suddenly became illegal.
The Venezuelans were not present at the time. There was another asylum seeker in the building with similar status, whom the agents ignored, apparently because she was not on their hit list. Residents called the Mountain View police, who said they could do nothing.
Despite brave words about sanctuary cities, state and local officials have not cooperated but have not resisted. Citizens who try to shelter targets of these raids are themselves inviting arrest.
This was only one of several ICE raids over the weekend. Others took place in Chicago, Boston, Austin, and L.A. Fox News reporters were invited to embed with the agents in Boston and Chicago, capturing the raids on video.
The agents wore tactical gear and vests with large letters displaying “Police ICE” and “Homeland Security.” According to CNN, at least two agencies told personnel to wear made-for-TV outfits, in case there were video opportunities.
This stunt suggests the performative aspect of these Gestapo-style raids, as red meat for Trump’s base. Trump has directed that ICE increase its raids and summary deportations, from a few hundred per day to at least 1,200 to 1,500.Report
There’s also the fear mongering performative aspect which is reported leading to immigrants abandoning crops in the field.
But this is what they voted for.Report
Incidentally, ICE almost never has actual judicial warrants that would allow them to enter premises and search for people.
They have things they wave around that they claim are warrants, and are warrants in the sense they are called ‘deportation warrants’. But all that means is they have identified someone they wish to deport, and can legally detain that person if they find them. It was signed off on by an immigration official, _not_ a judge.
A deportation warrant gives them _absolutely_ no authority to forcible enter a place and search for that person anywhere. None at all. They are just basically lying to you, hoping by waving a thing in your face and calling it a warrant that you think they have the right to enter somewhere.
You should never let them in anywhere. If they have judicial authority, they will force their way in, but 99.99% of the time, they do not, and will leave.
In fact, it might be a good practice to start doing that with the police in general.Report
Trump fires career DOJ lawyers who had civil service protections: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-administration-fires-doj-officials-worked-criminal-investigation-rcna189512Report
This is deeply concerning.Report
2025
This is deeply concerningReport
The massacre continues:
resident Donald Trump’s budget office on Monday ordered all federal agencies to temporarily block disbursement of grants and loans — other than for Social Security, Medicare and other programs providing direct aid to individuals.
The memo says the temporary pause, effective starting at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, is intended to ensure agencies are complying with Trump’s executive orders to root out “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies” from programs within their purview.
It’s not immediately clear how wide-ranging the pause will be in practice, due to the Office of Management and Budget’s ability to grant exceptions on a “case-by-case basis,” language exempting direct aid to individuals and a clause that states the pause is subject to what’s “permissible under applicable law…..
Still, as written the pause could affect a big swath of programs that aid lower-income households, including: Medicaid; school breakfast and lunch programs; Section 8 rental assistance; Title I education grants; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; state grants for child care; Head Start; and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Program and EPA grants to states and localities for clean water infrastructure — both of which fund a large chunk of congressional earmarks each year — could also be impacted.
Foreign aid grants are likely to be put on hold as well as clean energy projects, as those are specifically named in earlier executive orders.”Report
Pete Beinart has one of his pieces where he questions whether “Israel has a right to exist.” A genuinely understand this line of thought for a few reasons. One is despite what a bunch of people outside I/P want, very few people who live in I/P actually wants a South African solution. It constantly doesn’t poll well among Israelis and Palestinians. Both want their own state. Also, well meaning outsiders imposing their solution on the people on the ground has a horrible track record of success and the idea of doing this to the I/P conflict is mind-boggling. The third reason why this seems like a no brainer solution is that Israel obviously currently exists and Israelis demonstrated that they will fight like hell for their country so making Israel not exist would require a massive use of force. That nobody is volunteering to be this force shows the questionability of the endeavor.Report
The massacre continues: Jim Acosta is out at CNN after having his slot moved to midnight.Report
He quit live on air.
You can watch the footage for yourself:
Report
More in the world of FAFO, Trump is threatening tariffs on Taiwanese chips: https://www.pcmag.com/news/trump-to-tariff-chips-made-in-taiwan-targeting-tsmc
https://www.pcmag.com/news/trump-to-tariff-chips-made-in-taiwan-targeting-tsmcReport
For years and years if you traveled down the highways of the Central Valley or San Joaquin Valley, you would see cranky right-wing ranch owners put up signs expressing their ire at CA Democrats for not giving them enough water. Trump is apparently trying to use the LA Wildfires to circumvent CA water laws and give water to the Central Valley ranchers on the pretense that it is for the wildfires: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-seeks-circumvent-laws-californias-water-wildfire-response-rcna189386
Of course the ranchers won’t have anyone to pick their ample crops because all the fieldworkers are hiding from ICE.Report
Question for you Californians — is this tweet accurate? It’s pretty jaw-dropping:
Report
Chris Cillizza has a twitter thread in which he apologizes for getting the virus origin story wrong. He talks about, among other things, all of the bad assumptions he made when he took Fauci at his word and downplayed Trump’s statements.
I don’t bring this up because I think that Cillizza is trustworthy! Heaven forefend! This isn’t evidence of *ANYTHING* having to do with the origin of the virus!
Windsocks are, however, evidence for the direction of the wind. The “THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!” pro-censorship folks are going to have a bad time in a few months.
Because the CIA ain’t gonna be the last and final drip out of the faucet.Report
It really come down to just how biased these folks are to Trump. Trump said China was the cause, so they had to believe anything that said that was not true. Because Trump cannot be right about anything.
Like this whole Columbian thing. Trump cannot have a win, so sources like CNN and BBC are believing and spreading lies. It must be because TRUMP CANNOT WIN!
Nice to see a person admit they were wrong. Though I wonder how many people here will say the CIA is lying because TRUMP CANNOT BE RIGHT ABOUT ANYTHING!Report
No one thinks the science is settled. The science is, however, almost entirely pointing in one direction. Who knows what we’ll find in a 5 years, or even next month? But right now, there are no good scientific arguments for a lab leak. There are, however, good political arguments for one, and the politicians are putting serious pressure on scientists, which your talk of censorship would suggest you’re opposed to, but your continued beating of any talk of scientist with a stick suggest you’re actually in favor of.Report
Sure! Nobody thinks that the science is settled enough to censor people who disagree with the consensus.
I’ve brought up scientists who have argued for reasons to believe in a lab leak. The pivot then switch from “any scientist” to “well, the *CONSENSUS*.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.Report
If you find a scientist who has published their arguments in the scientific literature — and there are some who have — then it will not be hard to find several scientists who’ve rebutted those arguments in the scientific literature. This is an exercise you can complete yourself, and I would hope that, since you seem to have largely made up your mind, you have done so and merely concluded that the counterarguments were impotent or incomplete.Report
denial: everybody’s saying it’s fake!
anger: nobody’s saying it’s true!
bargaining: find me anyone credible who’s saying it’s true!
depression: there’s still some people saying it’s fake!
acceptance: it’s Trump’s fault it happened!Report
I’m not smart enough to figure out whom this is meant to describe, but I am sure there is someone, and it describes them well.Report
you seem to have largely made up your mind
My mind hasn’t been made up on the origin.
Indeed, nobody knows where it came from and nobody can know where it came from.
It has, however, been made up on the topic of whether discussion of the lab leak ought to be censored on social media.
It remains made up on that topic and the whole “CIA changing its mind” and “reporters apologizing for how they covered it back then” is only making my mind even more made upper.Report
and nobody can know where it came from.
This is perhaps true in an abstract philosophical sense: there will always be room for doubt in any empirically-based conclusion, but it is not true in any meaningful practical sense. We absolutely can know where it came from. For example, if someone were, presumably at great personal risk, leak genetic evidence of laboratory-held viruses dated well before the pandemic (say, from 2018 or early 2019) that matched early strains of COVID in China (we have their DNA makeup, and have since early January 2020), that’d be dispositive under pretty much any theory of knowledge short of radical skepticism.
The same is true if we were able to find samples from the local wet market from well before the outbreak (similar timeframe) with the exact DNA signature, except this would give us pretty firm knowledge that it was the result of spillover.
Short of these two things, we have to go with the data we have, which is samples taken from the markets early in the outbreak, as well as later samples, and deduction from the genetic makeup of the early virus. These will not give us 99.999999% certainty, the way the two pieces of evidence described above would, but they’ll get us pretty close over time. To a large extent, they already have.Report
Wow. That is pretty damning for the conclusions of the FBI and CIA. Someone should explain that to them.
Maybe it’s good that the FBI was kept from briefing Biden with their findings, if what you say is accurate.Report
Yes, the FBI and CIA, two sources we should absolutely believe over the scientific literature.Report
As I’ve said elsewhere, the CIA (and the FBI) are intelligence agencies. They may have sources or insights the scientific agencies don’t have when it comes to figuring out the internal workings of Chinese labs. And they may not be able to tell us what those sources are. That’s what they’re good at, but I’m not aware of any particular spycraft basis for their very tentative, low confidence conclusions. If they are going on science rather than spycraft, the science stuff is more within the competence of our science agencies.Report
I thought “maybe I could do my own research…” and where better to do my own research than Wikipedia!
Here’s the talk page for the Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory. It’s even better than the real page.
It’s got a *TON* of sources in there.
I would like to hope that scientists are not particularly likely to be bullied into joining a consensus despite misgivings.Report
Hoo boy.Report
I dunno how to respond to a link to a Wiki talk page, but I can recommend this, and the works cited therein:
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.01240-24?fbclid=IwY2xjawIGLypleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWomOrcIBe_iUiWbpbj6ZoSFfu-JjoScNehZvizY9avZG96I__pEajP61w_aem_4Dz7htJWLtKLWHfB_GG6CQ
Particularly:
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.01240-24?fbclid=IwY2xjawIGLypleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWomOrcIBe_iUiWbpbj6ZoSFfu-JjoScNehZvizY9avZG96I__pEajP61w_aem_4Dz7htJWLtKLWHfB_GG6CQ
https://ct.prod.getft.io/YXNtLGFhYXMsaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2NpZW5jZS5vcmcvZG9pL2Ficy8xMC4xMTI2L3NjaWVuY2UuYWJwODMzNw.O_lDOw2Z1t6rJr6L4WNDYt28rjYviyiQIL0SZvW8Hw0
along with this accessible counter to the main lab leak arguments:
https://pauloffit.substack.com/p/lab-leak-mania
And this more formal one:
https://journals.asm.org/servlet/linkout?suffix=e_1_3_2_15_2&dbid=4&doi=10.1128%2Fjvi.01240-24&key=10.1128%2Fjvi.00365-23&site=asmjReport
(If you think those links look awful, you should have seen how it looked when I first posted it. Forgive me; I’m old, and these computing boxes confuse me.)Report
Well, had you clicked on the link, you would have been taken directly to “Lab Link Theory Sources”.
It’s got a bunch of stuff in there.
Here’s the most recent paper from last year: Use of a risk assessment tool to determine the origin of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
Here’s the abstract:
They’ve got Patrick Berche’s Gain-of-function and origin of Covid19 that has a breakdown talking about the importance of the furin site and how unique it is.
Yeah, I wouldn’t click on them either. Life’s too short.Report
Nitpick. Covid-19, like all corona viruses, is an RNA virus.Report
Sorry, yes, I should have just said genetic material.Report
White House Counsel Alina Habba: “The law is ‘what our attorney general of the United States says'”
White House adviser Alina Habba lashed out at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) after he blasted President Donald Trump’s freeze on federal grant programs.
“Your attorney general is not the attorney general!” she exclaimed. “We have an attorney general. That will be Pam Bondi.”
“And what your opinion is on what the law is doesn’t really matter,” Habba continued. “It’s what the White House counsel says and what our attorney general of the United States says.”
https://www.rawstory.com/alina-habba-attorney-general-law/Report
France is considering sending troops to Greenland to help the Danes:
https://ordinary-times.com/2025/01/27/open-mic-for-the-week-of-1-27-2025/#comment-4063674Report
It borrow from a classic movie, “it’s a trap” and a very stupid one: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-administration-offer-federal-workers-buyouts-resign-rcna189661Report
Musk’s lackeys, are storming into government positions: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-lackeys-office-personnel-management-opm-neuralink-x-boring-stalin/Report