News bits: Corrupt Trump judge; Edible microchips; Deceptive business practices; Etc

As we all know, ethics for radical right Republicans in power is extinct. The Lever reports about a current example of a corrupt Trump federal appeals court judge:

Trump Judge’s Anti-Abortion Ruling Followed 

Payments From Group Leading Case

The conservative group arguing the abortion pill case has made frequent payments to the spouse of James Ho, who just helped threaten access to the medicine

One of the judges who issued Wednesday’s federal court ruling that could significantly reduce access to medication abortions has close ties to the conservative legal advocacy group that argued the case, according to records reviewed by The Lever.

Corrupt Trump thug James Ho

(actually looks like a real thug)

Slate writes about the court case:

Based on what the majority of the three-person panel ruled, the 5th Circuit could be saving this argument for a better case, as they instead ruled on procedural grounds (in a separate opinion partially concurring and dissenting from the panel majority, Trump appointee James C. Ho stated that the Comstock Act meant that it is illegal to send abortion medication via mail). The same wait-and-see game goes for claims that the FDA did not have the authority to loosen restrictions on mifepristone, or even to approve it in the first place.

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QAnon was right! There really are microchips in whatever they said there was microchips in. Business Insider writes:

Parmigiano-Reggiano makers are putting edible microchips the size of a 

grain of sand into their 90-pound cheese wheels to combat counterfeiters

There are counterfeiters of Parmigiano-Reggiano. That's because it's the original parmesan cheese officially protected by the European Union, meaning the name can only be used for the authentic product. Parmigiano-Reggiano must be made in a particular area of northern Italy's Emilia Romagna region ....

The Wall Street Journal reported that the micro-transponders are made of silicon and about the size of a grain of sand. They are being placed on the casein label, a food-safe label commonly used in cheese production, which is placed on the cheese wheel. The microchip can then be scanned to pull up a unique serial ID that buyers can use to ensure they've got the real thing.  

The Journal reported the chips cannot be read remotely or used to track someone should they ingest it.

We're being watched. 👀

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From the An Ignorant Customer is a Profitable Customer Files: Tech dirt writes about huge tech corporations trying hard to avoid transparency about their pricing to consumers:

Comcast, AT&T Try To Kill New Requirements 

To Be Transparent About Their Shitty Pricing

The 2021 infrastructure bill did some very good things for broadband. Not only did it include a massive, $42 billion investment in broadband deployment and require better mapping, it demanded that the FCC impose a new “nutrition label for broadband,” requiring that ISPs be transparent about all of the weird restrictions, caps, fees, and limitations of modern broadband connections.

It’s 2023 and there’s still no label. And big broadband providers including Cox, AT&T, Comcast, and Charter are, unsurprisingly, trying to have the entire requirement killed. After whining for two years that it was too hard to comply with the requirement, industry trade groups and lobbying organizations have been petitioning to have the new rule killed entirely:

The US broadband industry is united in opposition to a requirement that Internet service providers list all of their monthly fees. Five lobby groups representing cable companies, fiber and DSL providers, and mobile operators have repeatedly urged the Federal Communications Commission to eliminate the requirement before new broadband labeling rules take effect.

To be clear, requiring that these regional monopolies be clear about pricing is pretty much the bare minimum when it comes to regulatory oversight. Big ISPs for decades have advertised one price, then saddled your bill with spurious below the line surcharges to hit you with a higher rate.

The FCC, lobotomized after decades of lobbying, routinely engages in regulatory theater when it comes to big telecom. As in they’ll implement some fairly tepid efforts to demand “transparency” by big monopolies, but they routinely lack the courage to actually take aim at the underlying monopoly power and lack of competition (lest it upset campaign contributors and domestic surveillance allies).

Once again, brass knuckles capitalism shows its moral fiber. The fiber is revenue and profit lust. Tech giants want to maintain their revenues and profits by deceiving consumers to rip them off more effectively. Fortunately, we have a lobotomized FCC to pretend it is protecting consumers. Just wait until Republicans control congress and the White House again. What little is left of the FCC will be obliterated.

On a related note, I cannot figure out what electricity costs per kilowatt hour. The bills that SDG&E send out are blindingly complex and undecipherable. As best I can guess, the lowest rate at midnight to 6 am is about $0.30 per kWh. I think its closer to about $0.40 at 4 -9 pm and about $0.35 at 6 am to 4 pm. I gave up trying to figure it out. After all I want to be a good customer and  the best customer is ignorant. I'm ignorant. 

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From the Cruel Tyranny of the Radical Right Files: Time magazine reports about a 13 year old girl in Mississippi who was raped. She did not know she was pregnant and could not get an abortion once she figured it out. She starts the 7th grade soon:

Ashley just had a baby. She’s sitting on the couch in a relative’s apartment in Clarksdale, Miss., wearing camo-print leggings and fiddling with the plastic hospital bracelets still on her wrists. .... Peanut, the baby boy she delivered two days earlier, is asleep in a car seat at her feet, dressed in a little blue outfit. Ashley is surrounded by family, but nobody is smiling. One relative silently eats lunch in the kitchen, her two siblings stare glumly at their phones, and her mother, Regina, watches from across the room. Ashley was discharged from the hospital only hours ago, but there are no baby presents or toys in the room, no visible diapers or ointments or bottles. Almost nobody knows that Peanut exists, because almost nobody knew that Ashley was pregnant.  

In the fall of 2022, Ashley was raped by a stranger in the yard outside her home, her mother says. For weeks, she didn’t tell anybody what happened, not even her mom. But Regina knew something was wrong. Ashley used to love going outside to make dances for her TikTok, but suddenly she refused to leave her bedroom. When she turned 13 that November, she wasn't in the mood to celebrate. “She just said, ‘It hurts,’” Regina remembers. “She was crying in her room. I asked her what was wrong, and she said she didn’t want to tell me.” (To protect the privacy of a juvenile rape survivor, TIME is using pseudonyms to refer to Ashley and Regina; Peanut is the baby’s nickname.)

The signs were obvious only in retrospect. Ashley started feeling sick to her stomach; Regina thought it was related to her diet.  

The closest abortion provider for Ashley was in Chicago. At first, Regina thought she and Ashley could drive there. But it’s a nine-hour trip, and Regina would have to take off work. She’d have to pay for gas, food, and a place to stay for a couple of nights, not to mention the cost of the abortion itself. “I don’t have the funds for all this,” she says.

So Ashley did what girls with no other options do: she did nothing.

Poor sad Ashley, Regina, Peanut and sad family. They have been mugged and robbed by a cruel God. America's radical right Christian Taliban is responsible for this gratuitous, outrageous cruelty. It's Dark Ages evil and savagery in the name of an allegedly loving, tolerant Christian God, Jesus, Holy Ghost or whatever the God-forsaken thing(s) is called. 

Q: Can one consider forced birth laws a form of domestic terrorism and Ashley & family casualties of the radical right's civil war on secularism and civil liberties? (it sure looks that way to me)

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From the Trumplandia Cult Files: Poll data from CBS says it all:

Information in the indictments doesn't have an impact, in part, because they generally believe it's Trump who tells them the truth. Trump far and away leads the GOP field among voters who place top importance on a candidate being "honest and trustworthy."

The context here is that Republican primary voters believe the political system is corrupt at an even higher rate than Americans overall do. That could mean perceiving Trump as railing against — or prosecuted by — that system might well make him seem, from their perspective, like the one telling a larger truth.

More generally, Trump's voters hold him as a source of true information, even more so than other sources, including conservative media figures, religious leaders, and even their own friends and family.

What??? Honesty is important to Trump supporters and he is trustworthy?? What planet am I on? Did someone slip a roofie into my kopi luwak? Call out the National Guard! Somebody do something!

Cult: (a) a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object, e.g., "the cult of St. Olaf"; (b) a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister, e.g., "a network of Satan-worshiping cults"; (c) a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing, e.g., "a cult of personality surrounding the leader"

Qs: Is MAGA a cult with Trump the cult leader? If not, why not? 

News bits: Brass knuckles capitalism strikes again; Russian space boo-boo; Etc.

The ever playful sprites that run American Capitalism, Inc., are always protecting their revenues and profits by all available means. Sometimes that means breaking laws. Sometimes it means changing things that were illegal into things that are legal (I call that deep capture and deep political corruption). And, it almost always that means lying to and deceiving the public. Stanford News reports about how the meat and dairy sectors fall back on good old fashioned American capitalist-style deep capture and deep political corruption:

How the meat and dairy sector resists competition 

from alternative animal products

A new Stanford study reveals how meat and dairy industry lobbying has influenced government regulations and funding to stifle competition from alternative meat products with smaller climate and environmental impacts. The analysis, published Aug. 18 in One Earth, compares innovations and policies related to plant-based meat alternatives and lab-grown meat in the U.S. and European Union. Its findings could help ensure legislation, such as the $428 billion U.S. Farm Bill set to expire Sept. 30, levels the food industry playing field.

“The lack of policies focused on reducing our reliance on animal-derived products and the lack of sufficient support to alternative technologies to make them competitive are symptomatic of a system still resisting fundamental changes,” said study lead author Simona Vallone, an Earth system science research associate in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability at the time of the research.

Livestock production is the agriculture sector’s largest emitter of the potent greenhouse gas methane, due to emissions from ruminants such as cattle, sheep, and goats. It’s also the main direct cause of tropical deforestation, due to pasture expansion and feed crop production. Numerous studies have demonstrated that dietary changes hold great potential to reduce humanity’s ecological footprint, especially a reduction in red meat consumption. At the same time, Western-style meat-heavy diets are becoming more popular around the world.

“It’s clear that powerful vested interests have exerted political influence to maintain the animal-farming system status quo.” — Eric Lambin, George and Setsuko Ishiyama Provostial Professor (Provostial, mind you, harrumph!)

In the U.S., about 800 times more public funding and 190 times more lobbying money goes to animal-source food products than alternatives. In the EU, about 1,200 times more public funding and three times more lobbying money goes to animal-source food products.

• EU cattle producers were highly dependent on direct subsidy payments, which constituted at least 50% of their income during the study period. Some of these payments incentivized farmers to maintain herd size, keep pasture in production, or increase overall output.

• In 2017, following a European Court of Justice ruling, dairy terms such as milk and cheese could no longer be used to market most alternative milk and dairy products. Similarly, a proposed amendment to the U.S. Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act would prohibit the sale of alternative meats unless the product label included the word “imitation” and other clarifying statements indicating the non-animal origin.

Not the difference in lobby (corruption) cash intensity in the brass knuckles capitalist US (anti-public interest) and the squishier capitalist (much more pro-public interest) EU. 

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Those pesky Ruskis are sneaking around in space, as usual. One of their nefarious exploits blew a gasket. The NYT reports:

Russia’s Lunar Lander Crashes Into the Moon

The robotic Luna-25 spacecraft appeared to have “ceased its existence” after a failed orbital adjustment, the space agency Roscosmos said  

On Sunday, Roscosmos said that it had lost contact with the spacecraft 47 minutes after the start of the engine firing. Attempts to re-establish communications failed, and Luna-25 had deviated from its planned orbit and “ceased its existence as a result of a collision with the lunar surface,” Roscosmos said.

Luna 25 on its way to a ceased existence as a 

result of co-mingling with the moon's surface

Oops.

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It's going to rain in San Diego because a tropical storm is going to hit later today.

Aaarrrggh!! Rain??

Now that I am fully prepared, I feel better. Carry on.

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Griping about the USSC: A WaPo opinion opines:

Rosalie Silberman Abella is the Samuel and Judith Pisar visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School and is a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. This op-ed is adapted from her speech upon receiving the 2023 Ruth Bader Ginsburg Medal of Honor from the World Jurist Association.

Regrettably, that regressive climate is where we find ourselves today, especially about the judiciary. Critics call the good news of an independent judiciary the bad news of judicial autocracy. They call women and minorities seeking the right to be free from discrimination special interest groups seeking to jump the queue. They call efforts to reverse discrimination “reverse discrimination.” They say courts should only interpret, not make, law, thereby ignoring the entire history of common law. They call the advocates for diversity “biased” and defenders of social stagnation “impartial.” They prefer ideology to ideas, replacing the exquisite democratic choreography of checks and balances with the myopic march of majoritarianism.

All this has put us at the edge of a global era unlike any I’ve seen in my lifetime. We’re in a mean-spirited moral free-for-all, a climate polluted by bombastic insensitivity, antisemitism, racism, sexism, islamophobia, homophobia and discrimination generally. Too often, law and justice are in a dysfunctional relationship. Too often, hate kills, truth is homeless and lives don’t matter. 

We need to put justice back in charge, and to do that, we need to put compassion back in the service of law and law in the service of humanity. We need the rule of justice, not just the rule of law. Otherwise, what’s the point of law? Or lawyers? What good is the rule of law if there’s no justice? And to make justice happen, we can never forget how the world looks to those who are vulnerable. It’s what I consider to be the law’s majestic purpose and the legal profession’s noble mandate.

A moral free for all. Hate kills. Truth is homeless. A political climate polluted by bombastic insensitivity. Racism. All of that sounds like America's radical right.

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From the MAGA files: Politico reports about an incident where DeSantis channeled Hillary and is experiencing his very own "deplorables" blowback moment. MAGAlandia has been rudely thrown into a gigantic snit: 

The Trump campaign and MAGA world on Saturday blasted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for remarks appearing to label some of the former president’s supporters “listless vessels.”

“DeSantis goes full-blown Hillary and call[s] MAGA supporters ‘Listless Vessels,’” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung wrote on X, referring to a DeSantis interview with The Florida Standard in which the GOP presidential candidate stated that a strong conservative movement needed to be based on principles.

Listless vessels?? 

Bwaahahahahahaha!!

Politics can't get any better than this. 🤪

News bits: Authoritarianism and fertility rate; Global warming cost watch; Electric battery improvement

A WaPo commentary by several staff writers about the economic slowdown in China raises some interesting insights. A fertility rate of about 2.1 children per woman is requires to maintain a stable population. Sebastian Mallaby writes:

Demographics are destiny

The deep cause of China’s economic slowdown — and the strongest reason to believe it will be lasting — is its demographic collapse. Last year, the country’s population fell for the first time since 1961, a landmark that had not been expected until 2029 or later. .... The United Nations projects that the country’s head count will plummet from today’s 1.4 billion to below 800 million by century’s end. You have to go back to the plagues and famines of the late medieval period to find a loss of population so severe.

China is following the pattern of other high-saving, high-investment economies in Northeast Asia. Economic systems that suppress consumption and living standards eventually face a comeuppance: They create legions of stressed young couples who don’t want to make babies. Accordingly, China is one of the world’s most expensive places to raise a family, a fact that has driven fertility down to an all-time low of 1.2 children per woman.

China’s rock-bottom fertility also reflects distinctly Chinese characteristics — specifically, the authoritarianism of the Communist Party. Because of selective abortion and neglect of baby girls, China has about 30 million fewer females than males. And because China experiences steady net outward migration, it cannot fix its problem by attracting foreigners. Mobile and aspirational people tend to shun aggressively authoritarian regimes.

Thoughts that (i) young couples are burned out and don't want to make babies, and (ii) immigrants don't like dictatorship strongly suggest that China's dictators face problems they cannot fix. To stay in power, another writer suggests that the dictators can play the nationalism card and attack Taiwan. 

Until now the deal was that the Chinese people gave up their freedoms and meaningful political participation in return for an increasing standard of living. After decades of delivering on the deal, the dictator's imposed quid pro quo is now failing. That raises pressure on the dictators to deliver something. Taiwan is something.

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Articles discussing various effects of global warming are increasingly popping up. Paying some attention to a topic like the costs of global warming make sense to keep this developing story in context. The NYT writes:

Grab-N-Go, a drive-through and walk-up convenience store in New Iberia, La., has a central air-conditioning system, a window air-conditioning unit and two small, portable air-conditioners. On a recent afternoon, all of them were running. Cool air swirled through the devil-red metal box of a building.

Still, Don Vitto, the shopkeeper, was sweating anyway.

“It’s a sticky, heavy heat,” Mr. Vitto said, disgust dripping from every drawn out syllable. “You can feel it in your breathing — I know I can. I can feel the thickness in the air.”

The air has felt swampier and more suffocating. Yet, confoundingly, as moist as the air has been, a scarcity of rain and clouds has made the sun all the more blistering, leaving the earth as dry and cracked as peanut brittle.

But what has made recent months so punishing is the relentlessness of it all, as the conditions have dragged on for days on end and the volume of excessive heat warnings has broken records.

“It’s been an incredibly aggressive summer,” said Barry D. Keim, Louisiana’s state climatologist. “We normally have spells like this most summers. But this summer has been very, very persistent. The breaks are the fleeting moments, and it’s been oppressive most of the time.”

For fairness, the standard global warming denier response: This isn't caused by global warming. It's just weather. Global warming is a socialist, communist hoax. Next year will be different, just like all the other years.

Now that that propaganda is out of the way, one can rationally to consider the misery of high heat that global warming causes. Heat is starting to kill people who have to work outdoors without air conditioning. It's a quality of life thing. At worst, global warming causes the quality of life to decrease so much that it literally kills some people. That is a fact, not an opinion.

Of course global warming deniers, especially ones who mostly live and work in air conditioned workplaces will argue that you cannot put an economic value on quality of life, and therefore there is no economic value to be had. That is false. Value can be and is being assigned as the damage becomes measurable. 

An experiment I would love to do is this: Force those air-conditioned blowhards in high heat areas to live and work for 1 month in July or August without air conditioning. Then poll them to see if they still believe there is no economic damage from global warming, and instead we are merely experiencing weather. Even thought they will still deny it, they will be forced to know that global warming imposes economic costs. 

What a wonderful experiment.

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The Independent newspaper reports about one of those too good to be true electric battery things:

World’s first ‘superfast’ battery offers 400km range from 10 mins charge

Tesla, Toyota and VW supplier CATL says production will begin in 2023

The world’s largest battery maker has launched what it claims is the first ever “superfast charging” battery capable of delivering 400 kilometres (249 miles) of range from just a 10 minute charge.

China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL) said its new lithium-ion battery would open up a new era for electric cars and eliminate range anxiety for owners.

On a full charge, the battery holds enough charge to travel over 700 km (435 miles) without needing to recharge – roughly 60 per cent further than the average electric vehicle in 2023.

What makes this seem like it is for real is the fact that CATL says that commercial scale production will start in 2023. For those who are unaware of it, 2023 is not very far off in the future. Actually, the end of 2023 is not very far off in the future, i.e., the manufacturing plant has to be close to completed and ready for production. Maybe this is for real, ~85% chance according to my minions.

If this is for real, it will revolutionize the way people think about electric cars. The next barrier is getting enough lithium to meet skyrocketing consumer demand.

In 2022, ~14% of new car sales were all electric (~10%) or hybrid

For 2023, electric/hybrid car sales are expected to hit ~18%

A possible solar cell improvement

CONTEXT

Transpiration: the process by which plants give off water vapor through the stomata in their leaves

Stomata: any of the minute pores in the epidermis of the leaf or stem of a plant, forming a slit of variable width which allows movement of gases in and out of the intercellular spaces

Solar cell performance enhancement

Interesting Engineering writes about what seems to be a major advancement in solar panel technology. If this is for real, it is a big deal. IE writes:

Researchers have developed a leaf-inspired design that captures solar energy and generates freshwater, emulating real plant processes

Researchers from Imperial College London have invented a new leaf-like design that collects and generates photovoltaic solar energy and produces freshwater by mimicking the processes found in real plants.

Called PV-leaf [photovoltaic leaf], the innovation “uses low-cost materials and could inspire the next generation of renewable energy technologies.”

Studies have already found that PV-leaves can “generate over 10 percent more electricity compared to conventional solar panels, which lose up to 70 percent of the incoming solar energy to the environment.”

The invention also has the capacity to produce over 40 billion cubic meters of freshwater a year by 2050 if deployed with efficiency.

The artificial leaf has been designed to remove the need for pumps, fans, control units and expensive porous materials. It can also provide thermal energy, adapt to a variety of solar conditions and tolerate ambient temperatures.  

The photovoltaic leaf is capable of synergistically utilising the recovered heat to co-generate additional thermal energy and freshwater simultaneously within the same component, significantly elevating the overall solar utilisation efficiency from 13.2% to over 74.5%, along with over 1.1 L/h/m2 of clean water.

OK, 74.5% sounds too good to be true. So, more info. The press release from the Imperial College London comments:

Taking inspiration from plant leaves, the PV-leaf concept mimics the transpiration process, allowing water to move, distribute and evaporate. Natural fibers mimic leaf vein bundles while hydrogels simulate sponge cells, so a PV-leaf can effectively and affordably remove heat from solar PV cells.

Concept structure drawing:

Real leaf on the left

PV leaf on the right

 OK, that sounds possible. The researcher's paper in Nature Communications says:

Most solar energy incident (>70%) upon commercial photovoltaic panels is dissipated as heat, increasing their operating temperature, and leading to significant deterioration in electrical performance. The solar utilization efficiency of commercial photovoltaic panels is typically below 25%. .... We demonstrate experimentally that bio-inspired transpiration can remove ~590 W/m2 of heat from a photovoltaic cell, reducing the cell temperature by ~26 °C under an irradiance of 1000 W/m2**, and resulting in a relatively 13.6% increase in electrical efficiency. Furthermore, the photovoltaic leaf is capable of synergistically utilizing the recovered heat to co-generate additional thermal energy and freshwater simultaneously within the same component, significantly elevating the overall solar utilization efficiency from 13.2% to over 74.5%, along with over 1.1 L/h/m2 of clean water.

** At the latitude of Massachusetts, the solar radiation value at the Earth's surface is approximately 1000 W/m2 on a clear day at solar noon in the summer months.

A biomimetic transpiration (BT) layer is attached to the back of a solar PV cell in order to remove the heat generated in the cell. Natural bamboo fiber bundles are employed to mimic the vascular bundles in transporting and distributing liquid water over the cell’s surface, while hydrogel cells with large specific surface area and excellent water absorption performance are used to mimic the sponge cells in providing effective evaporation.

The capital cost of the additional transpiration components (hydrogel, fiber bundle, supporting mesh and piping) of the PV-leaf relative to a conventional standalone PV panel is estimated to be ~1.1 $/square meter, based on available bulk prices, which is only ~2% of the price of a commercial PV panel (~55 $/square meter). The payback time of the additional components is thus less than half a year. Given current predictions for the global PV capacity to reach over 22 TW [terrawatts] by 2050, and assuming that 30% of the PV panels have access to water resources [primarily sea water?] as coolant, PV-leaf designs promise to generate an additional ~650 GW [1 TW = 1,000 GW] of power globally, which is close to the current global PV installed capacity.

Ooh, that's how they did this - they attach the fake leaf to the bottom 

of existing solar cells to draw heat off by transpiration, which cools the solar 

cell, and that increases electricity output from 13.2% to 14.5% (an impressive 9.8% increase) 

Note in (c), the "root" in water - that's where the water

for transpiration and cooling of the solar cell comes from

(it can be sea water)

Cooling efficiency data

But how did they get from 13.2% to 14.5% efficiency in electricity to the claimed 74.5% efficiency in total solar energy hitting the surface of the Earth? That huge increase in efficiency is claimed to come from transpiration and the use of salt water to generate fresh water. The water used in the root can be sea water, which is about 3.5% salt. The water vapor that comes from transpiration is fresh water with 0% salt in it. 

But here a major problem jumps right out. The salt.

Where does the salt in salt water go? It stays in the fake leaf hydrogel and accumulates each day as water passes from the root into the air as water vapor. The water vapor can be captured and used as freshwater. But at the end of each day, the hydrogel needs to be soaked in more salt water to release the accumulated salt from the previous day. Doing this near the sea could be feasible on a huge scale. Whether that's the case inland away from sea water isn't clear.

The paper explains that its claim of 74.5% total energy efficiency comes from a combination of the 9.8% increase in electricity, capture of heat and production of freshwater from salt water - see (c) in the figure below.  

The researchers note that they plan to tweak the polymer composition of the hyrdogel to enhance clearing of salt from the hyrogel and work on ways to improve low-temperature water vapor condensation. It's not clear to me if the claimed 74.5% total energy capture is theoretical or actual. The paper says it's actual. If that's true, this could be something worth serious development work.