Bits: Brain-computer interface update; Insane new electric motor; Poll data about the indictments

Wired reports about artificial intelligence-powered brain reading technology that is returning the power of speech to paralyzed two different patients. Wired writes:

PARALYSIS HAD ROBBED the two women of their ability to speak. For one, the cause was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a disease that affects the motor neurons. The other had suffered a stroke in her brain stem. Though they can’t enunciate clearly, they remember how to formulate words.

Now, after volunteering to receive brain implants, both are able to communicate through a computer at a speed approaching the tempo of normal conversation. By parsing the neural activity associated with the facial movements involved in talking, the devices decode their intended speech at a rate of 62 and 78 words per minute, respectively—several times faster than the previous record. 

While slower than the roughly 160-word-per-minute rate of natural conversation among English speakers, scientists say it’s an exciting step toward restoring real-time speech using a brain-computer interface, or BCI. “It is getting close to being used in everyday life,” says Marc Slutzky, a neurologist at Northwestern University who wasn’t involved in the new studies.  

In the Stanford study, researchers developed a BCI that uses the Utah array, a tiny square sensor that looks like a hairbrush with 64 needle-like bristles. Each is tipped with an electrode, and together they collect the activity of individual neurons. Researchers then trained an artificial neural network to decode brain activity and translate it into words displayed on a screen.

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The first electric motor was made and used in 1832. So by now one would think that it has been refined about as much as possible. One would be wrong. Using quantum mechanics stuff, quarks, physics stuff and both radial and axial magnetic fields, a car nut in Sweden has invented a pipsqueak size electric motor that puts out an insane amount of power and torque. 

Smashing down on the accelerator in a car with three or four of these runts built in will tear a person's head clean off, unless of course (safety tip) your head rest keeps it from detaching. This video gives a general audience description of the little bugger.

 

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Politico writes:

A new POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos poll provides some bad news for Trump: Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, the cascading indictments are likely to take a toll on his general election prospects.

He looks as bad as he actually is

News bits: About the GOP debate; Rot in the Secret Service; Civil war watch

Media people who watched the GOP debate last night are commenting this morning. One opinion in the NYT caught my eye because of the phrase, moral cowardice:

What I Saw on That G.O.P. Debate Stage Was 

Complete and Utter Moral Cowardice

Ron DeSantis faulted Donald Trump for the Covid lockdowns during his presidency. Nikki Haley slammed him for runaway government spending. They did so early during the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night and they did so readily, as if showing voters just how dauntless and independent they were. What guts!

What bunk. When they were later asked to raise their hands if they would support Trump as the 2024 Republican nominee even if he’d been convicted of a felony, up shot DeSantis’s arm. Haley’s, too. No hesitation. No equivocation. No concern about which of Trump’s 91 felony counts might be under discussion. No insistence that they’d have to see how strong the evidence turned out to be. Just fealty. It’s what the Republican electorate seems to insist on, so it’s what all eight candidates onstage in Milwaukee except Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson pledged.

Cowering behind moral cowardice is how I see radical right Republican elites and now also the radicalized rank and file. 

The huge issue here is incentives that reward election and re-election. Politicians are not rewarded for the moral courage needed to speak inconvenient fact, true truth and sound reasoning. The Republican electorate has grown intolerant of inconvenience because it has been taught by the elites to be intolerant. Compromise is treason. 

The moral cowardice problem in radical right politics appears to be intractable. It took decades of divisive, rancid, hateful dark free speech to teach the lesson. Now the lesson has been learned. In my opinion, moral cowardice among political leaders is potentially lethal to secular democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties.

Yes, the same problem plagues Democrats, but at least they are still nominally sort of in favor of democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. There are two choices here, bad and God awful tyranny.

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Ethics watchdog CREW reports contacts between the Secret Service and the domestic terrorist group Oath Keepers. CREW reports:

Internal Secret Service emails obtained by CREW show special agents in close communication with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, while failing to acknowledge the group’s ties to white nationalists and clashes with law enforcement.

In September 2020, a Secret Service agent sent an email to others within the agency, informing them that he had just spoken to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes about an upcoming visit by then-President Trump to Fayetteville, NC. The agent, who referred to himself as “the unofficial liaison to the Oath Keepers (inching towards official),” described the group as “primarily retired law enforcement/former military members who are very pro-LEO [law enforcement officer] and Pro Trump. Their stated purpose is to provide protection and medical attention to Trump supporters if they come under attack by leftist groups.”

That sounds to me like the Secret Service is too concerned about being friendly to an allegedly pro-LEO terrorist group, and not concerned enough about doing its job. Whoever is in charge of personnel there needs to be fired and replaced.

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The civil war we are now in against radical right authoritarianism deserves more attention. If the insurgents win, tolerant secular democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law will all bite the dust. The WaPo writes about another direct threat of violence by the authoritarian cult demagogue:

Trump suggests in Carlson interview that U.S. could see more political violence

The former president also again defended the mob of his supporters that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021

Former president Donald Trump suggested that the United States could see intensifying political violence, saying in a new interview that tensions in the country were reaching a boiling point.

Asked by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson whether the nation is headed toward open conflict, Trump responded: “I don’t know. I can say this: There’s a level of passion that I’ve never seen. There’s a level of hatred that I’ve never seen. And that’s probably a bad combination.”  

Trump compared the current volatile mix of passion and hatred to the crowd on Jan. 6, 2021, and pivoted to defending his supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol that day — falsely describing the violent assault as a day of “love and unity.”

He justifies his violent coup attempt as merely a day of “love and unity”? WTF?

That DJT is still out on bail and allowed to openly foment civil war is outrageous. One has to take this as more evidence of our failing two-tiered system of law enforcement. Elites get treated far better than the rest of us. The demagogue really is above the law.

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The NYT writes about GOP candidates responses to a global warming question:  

It was an unusual litmus test for a Republican primary debate, one that quickly descended into personal attacks and obfuscation: The candidates were asked whether humans had contributed to climate change.

There is no scientific dispute that the answer is yes, but hardly any of the Republican candidates gave a straight answer.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the millionaire entrepreneur whose campaign has dabbled in conspiracy theories, seized on the moment to deny the scientific consensus on climate change.

“Let us be honest as Republicans — I’m the only person on the stage who isn’t bought and paid for, so I can say this — the climate change agenda is a hoax,” he said.

Legal proceedings: The Mar-a-Lago case; The clobbered prisoner case

The stink at Mar-a-Lago

Court filings in the lawsuits against DJT are sometimes astonishing. The degree of criminality and total lack of concern about breaking laws is jaw-dropping. Really. To show I'm not making this stuff up, I am cutting and pasting directly from a paper filed in a court. 

In the Mar-a-Lago (MaL) document hiding case, one witness known as Trump Employee 4, (Yuscil Taveras) dumped his Trump lawyer, got a real defense attorney, and then immediately retracted a slew of lies he told the D.C. court under oath. Yup, that was perjury. One can reasonably surmise that the Trump attorney, Stanley Woodward, told Taveras to lie to the court. Woodward himself was in a terrible conflict of interest position because he was defending several people accused in the MaL incident. The whole thing is so rotten it blows my mind.

Part of page 1 of court filing in the MaL case

The court filing includes these beyond nuts comments at pages 3-5:

On June 27, 2023, consistent with its responsibility to promptly notify courts of potential conflicts, and given the prospective [perjury] charges Trump Employee 4 faced in the District of Columbia, the Government filed a motion for a conflicts hearing with the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for District of Columbia (Boasberg, C.J.), who presides over grand jury matters in that district. The Government notified this Court on the same day, by sealed notice, of the filing in the District of Columbia. See ECF Nos. 45, 46. Mr. Woodward raised no objection to proceeding in the District of Columbia regarding Trump Employee 4. 

Chief Judge Boasberg made available independent counsel (the First Assistant in the Federal Public Defender’s Office for the District of Columbia) to provide advice to Trump Employee 4 regarding potential conflicts. On July 5, 2023, Trump Employee 4 informed Chief Judge Boasberg that he no longer wished to be represented by Mr. Woodward and that, going forward, he wished to be represented by the First Assistant Federal Defender. Immediately after receiving new counsel, Trump Employee 4 retracted his prior false testimony and provided information that implicated Nauta, De Oliveira, and Trump in efforts to delete security camera footage, as set forth in the superseding indictment.

The Government anticipates calling Trump Employee 4 as a trial witness and expects that he will testify to conduct alleged in the superseding indictment regarding efforts to delete security footage. Trump Employee 4 will very likely face cross-examination about his prior inconsistent statements in his grand jury testimony, which occurred while Mr. Woodward represented him, and which he disavowed immediately after obtaining new counsel.

This is beyond discombobulating. It's positively wackadoodle dipstickery with humbuggery in it. Trump's attorney told his client Taveras to lie under oath to protect Trump while exposing Taveras to slam dunk perjury charges. Assuming he isn't fired by Trump or disbarred and prosecuted for criminal acts before the court, Trump attorney Woodward now gets to grill his former client Taveras to show the world what a liar he is for doing what Woodward told him to do in the first place. What bizarre planet are we on here? It's not Earth, that's for sure. Mind blown. Scotty, beam me up . . . . . 

Ouch, the ceiling fell on my head, I need an aspirin . . .  

klunk, Kev falls down unconscious

I swear, few Americans have any idea of what it is like to be in jail. It can be summarized like this: It sucks hard on good days, but it kills you on bad days. And then you get to face the sometimes equally bizarre law in the process. This fun case is about a prisoner, Kevion Rogers, filing a lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and a couple of it's valiant employees, Jeffrey Jarrett and Jeremy Bridges. 

Page 1 of the court filing

Note the lead counsel, Neal Katyal

Long story short Jarrett sent Rogers into a prison building that was in the process of falling down. Jarrett said he left something in the building and wanted Rogers to go in to get retrieve it for him. Rogers went in and got the item. As he was just about to walk out of the building, the ceiling collapsed on his head. 

Rogers sued and Texas responded by saying the lawsuit is barred by an ancient common-law doctrine called qualified immunity. In other words, even if the defendants Jarrett, Bridges and Texas, did do the dirty to Rogers, they are immune from acts that deprived Rogers of his constitutional rights. In other words, law enforcement in Texas is above the law. Katyal is arguing that the defendants are not protected by qualified immunity. The court filing comments:

Petitioner Kevion Rogers suffered a traumatic brain injury after the ceiling of a jail facility collapsed on his head and jail staff repeatedly refused his pleas for medical help.

On the morning Rogers was injured, he was supervised by respondent Jeffrey Jarrett.

Early that morning, Jarrett entered one of the hog barns and saw that “[t]here was water coming out of the ceiling” and that part of the ceiling was hanging from the area of the leak. Jarrett shut off the water to the barn and removed the still-hanging portions of the ceiling, leaving a hole in the ceiling. Jarrett later directed Rogers to enter the barn to retrieve something.

Rogers complied, and, as he left the barn, part of the ceiling collapsed, striking him in the head and knocking him unconscious. When Rogers regained consciousness, he “stagger[ed]” out of the barn and sought help. [Note: Jarrett valiantly waited outside the barn to maintain proper safety for himself] Covered in insulation, he told Jarrett the ceiling had collapsed on him, that he had blacked out, and that he was “seriously injured.” He told Jarrett that he needed “to go to the infirmary” because “a whole ceiling just fell on me!” Jarrett ignored the request and did not investigate further because he believed Rogers “looked fine.”

Yup, Kev's brain looks just fine to me 

He wants lunch!

 
 Rogers’s condition deteriorated. Other inmates tried to keep him awake as he went “in and out of consciousness.” As his condition worsened, Rogers requested “medical attention” from another prison official, who radioed his supervisor, respondent Jeremy Bridges, for instructions. Because Rogers said that, in addition to wanting medical attention, he wanted to eat lunch, Bridges believed Rogers’s  condition was not  “serious.” Bridges instructed that Rogers be taken to his bunk rather than the infirmary.

By the time Rogers arrived at the dormitory, “he was wheezing, he had mucus draining, his face was bruising, and his eye and head were swelling.” He eventually collapsed, began to “seize violently, began vomiting, and lost consciousness.” Three and a half hours after Rogers first asked to be taken to the infirmary, prison officials finally radioed for medical assistance. Rogers had to be airlifted to a nearby hospital, where he was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury. 

Rogers sued Jarrett and Bridges in Texas state court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Rogers alleged that the defendants violated his Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by acting with deliberate indifference to his safety and medical needs. Defendants removed the case to federal court and moved for summary judgment on all claims, asserting qualified immunity.

What fun. The hog barn fell on his head. But it's OK. Not to worry, because Texas has qualified immunity. The good people are protected!

News: BKC fights for opacity; A COVID origin story; Carbon tax research

The Lever writes about a quiet lobby effort to block disclosure of carbon emissions by BKC (brass knuckles capitalist) businesses in California:

One of the nation’s most important climate fights is currently playing out under the radar in California, where state residents are weathering an unprecedented tropical storm. Oil and industry lobbying groups are spending millions in a last-ditch attempt to block first-of-its-kind legislation that would require thousands of large companies doing business in the state to fully disclose their carbon emissions, a move that would effectively set national policy.

In the final weeks of California’s legislative session, which ends in mid-September, Assembly members are expected to vote on the climate transparency bill. With a federal version of the measure still delayed — and nearly certain to face lengthy legal challenges from industry — California’s legislation could expedite a public reckoning over corporations’ true contributions to climate change.

The bill has already passed the state Senate, and if it survives a secretive appropriations hearing later this month, it will go before the full Assembly — where a previous version failed by just four votes last year following a fierce opposition campaign.

This is more evidence of the tactics that major BKC interests routinely employ to keep as much information as possible from both the public and government. For most businesses, an ignorant consumer and an ignorant government is best for revenues and profits.

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A long, detailed WaPo Editorial Board opinion focuses on China's very bad cover-up and lies behavior in the early part of the epidemic:

In the first weeks of 2020, a radiologist at Xinhua Hospital in Wuhan, China, saw looming signs of trouble. He was a native of Wuhan and had 29 years of radiology experience. His job was to take computed tomography (CT) scans, looking at patients’ lungs for signs of infection.

And infections were everywhere. “I have never seen a virus that spreads so quickly,” he told a reporter for the investigative magazine Caixin. “This growth rate is too fast, and it is too scary.”

But this tableau of chaos was hidden from the Chinese people — and the world — in early 2020. Chinese authorities had acknowledged on Dec. 31, 2019, that there were 27 cases of “pneumonia of unknown origin,” and 44 confirmed cases on Jan. 3, 2020. The Wuhan health commission reported 59 cases on Jan. 5, then abruptly reduced the number to 41 on Jan. 11, and claimed there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission or any signs of doctors getting sick.

That claim was a lie. The coronavirus was running rampant. Doctors at the radiologist’s hospital, and other hospitals, were getting sick. But China’s Communist Party leaders prize social stability above all else. They fear any sign of public panic or admission that the ruling party-state is not in control. 

Secrecy has long been a major tool of the governing Communist Party. It suppresses independent journalism, censors digital news and communications, and withholds vital information from its people. Doctors in Wuhan who knew the truth were afraid to speak out. China did not reveal human transmission of the virus until Jan. 22, and by then, the global pandemic had been ignited.  

This editorial is part of a series examining the inner workings of authoritarianism around the world. Previously, we looked at how dictatorships exploit social media, at the creation of disinformation and at how autocrats share tactics. This installment examines how China’s authoritarian system handled a grave public health crisis, as seen through the eyes of doctors and other health-care professionals on the front lines who were struggling to cope with a virus no one had witnessed before. At a time when trust and transparency were needed to save lives, Chinese authorities covered up the facts and lied — and they continue to do so today.  

In editorials last year, we called attention to how the virus was spreading in November and December 2019, earlier than China has admitted; how China had carried out genomic sequencing of the virus in late December 2019; and we pointed to additional cases that were not reported to a joint mission of China and the WHO. It is still not known precisely how or where the pandemic began, whether from zoonotic spillover or a laboratory leak. .... The genomic sequencing showed the virus was closely related to the first SARS virus, which had set off panic in China almost 20 years earlier.  

At Wuhan Central on Dec. 30, 2019, ophthalmologist Li Wenliang examined the medical report of a patient whose condition seemed strikingly like SARS. He shared it with his former medical school friends in their class WeChat group, so they could be prepared. “Seven cases of SARS confirmed,” he wrote. On Jan. 1, Li was detained by police, along with seven other doctors. He was accused of “making untrue comments” that had “severely disturbed the social order.” He was reprimanded for “this illegal activity” and signed a paper promising not to do it again.  

But while democracies are swamped with information as well as disinformation, China’s dictatorship bottled up the truths and published lies. The party’s quest for absolute control — through fear, threats and intimidation — blocked action precisely when the virus spread might have been slowed or stopped. The decisions allowed a spark to become a wildfire, a disaster of immense proportions. As the pandemic unfolded, China remained a black box. It slammed the door on any further investigation of the origins of the virus inside China and did not publish accurate data on the pandemic death toll; doing so might have called into question the party’s competence and leadership. When Zhejiang province recently published mortality data indicating a surge of deaths after China abruptly lifted its “zero covid” policy in December 2022, indicating a higher death toll than China had acknowledged, the data was promptly deleted.

One has to ask the obvious questions: What else is the brutal Chinese government still hiding? We all know the official answer to two critical questions about (i) whether COVID was man-made, and (ii) whether COVID leaked from a lab in Wuhan, regardless of if the virus was arose in nature or was man-made. 

The official Chinese government response to those two questions? (a) Hell no, (b) hell no, and (c) if you keep asking those questions, you will be disappeared and your family billed for your assassination and secret burial costs, so STFU.

We are never going to know the truth about what China did and/or did not do in the early days if it makes the dictators look bad. The least worst story that the virus arose naturally is the official story, even if it's a lie. That's just how dictators routinely operate.  

Q: Does how the Chinese government acted remind us of anything roughly similar to that in American politics? 

Hint: Hell yes, the corrupt RRRP (radical right Republican Party) and its brutal, corrupt cult leader.

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An article The Conversation published discusses some recent research into projected effects of having a carbon tax. At present, a carbon tax is impossible to pass at the national level. The RRRP (radical right Republican Party) is dead set against dealing with global warming. Maybe some blue states could impose a state tax.  

In a new study, colleagues and I investigated U.S. households’ personal responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 to 2019. We previously studied emissions tied to consumption – the stuff people buy. This time, we looked at emissions used in generating people’s incomes, including investment income.

We linked a global data set of financial transactions and emissions to microdata from the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly labor force survey, which includes respondents’ job, demographics and income from 35 categories, including wages and investments. People’s wages we connected to the emission intensity of the industries that employ them, and we based the emissions intensity of investment income on a portfolio that mirrors the overall economy.

A couple of interesting things might result, particularly if the tax was set based on the carbon intensity of the company. Corporate executives and boards would have incentive to reduce emissions to lower taxes for shareholders. Shareholders would have incentive, out of self-interest, to pressure companies to do so.

Investors would also have incentive to shift their portfolios to less-polluting companies to avoid the tax. Pension and private wealth fund managers would have incentive to divest from carbon-polluting investments out of a fiduciary duty to their clients. To keep the tax focused on large shareholders, I could see retirement accounts being excluded from the tax, or a minimum asset threshold before the tax applies. 

Instead of putting the responsibility for cutting emissions on consumers, maybe policies should more directly tie that responsibility to corporate executives, board members and investors who have the most knowledge and power over their industries.

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Crackpot watch: About 33% of adult Americans believe that COVID-19 vaccines probably or definitely caused thousands of sudden deaths. 

There sure are a heck of a lot of gullible, falsely informed people wandering around out there. This is worse than pathetic.