An der mexikanischen Westküste entsteht mit "Costa Azul" für 2 Milliarden Dollar das erste Terminal für den Export von texanischem Gas nach Asien. Es signalisiert eine weitreichende und für die Dekarbonisierung möglicherweise katastrophale Verschiebung im Gasgeschäft. Die USA könnten zunehmend auch zum Lieferanten für Asien werden. Ob weitere Terminals errichtet werden, hängt von der Klimapolitik der US-Regierung ab, die gerade ein Moratorium für LNG-Terminals ausgerufen hat. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/13/climate/mexico-natural-gas-biden.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/opinion/truth-climate-future.html

Ausführlicher Bericht über die Konflikte um das neue LNG-Terminal CP2 an der Küste von Louisiana. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/26/climate/cp2-natural-gas-export-louisiana.html

Vor der Apec-Konferenz haben China und die USA "statements of cooperation" veröffentlicht, die als positive Signale für eine Zusammenarbeit beim Klimaschutz gewertet werden, auch wenn China nicht auf Investitionen in Kohlekraftwerke verzichtet. Beide Seiten wollen die Kapazität bei Erneuerbaren bis 2030 global verdreifachen. Erstmals ist China bereits, Reduktionsziele für alle Treibhausgase festzulegen. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/climate/us-china-climate-agreement.html

Sunnylands Statement on Enhancing Cooperation to Address the Climate Crisis: https://www.state.gov/sunnylands-statement-on-enhancing-cooperation-to-address-the-climate-crisis/

Die rohölproduktion in den USA wird in diesem Jahr ein Rekord-Hoch erreichen Etwa 25% der US-Emissionen werden durch Öl und Gas verursacht, das auf Bundesterritorien gefördert wird. Die New York Times zeigt ausgehend von einem Beispiel im Golf von Mexiko, warum es angesichts der Mehrheitsverhältnisse in Repräsentantenhaus und Senat und des konservativen obersten Gerichtshofs für die für die Biden-Administration extrem schwierig ist, die Zusage, dort keine weiteren Bohrungen zuzulassen, umzusetzen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/climate/biden-drilling-leases.html

https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersde00beac/page/n1/mode/2up

Daniel Ellsberg's personal copy of the Pentagon Papers with handwritten annotations.

Full Daniel Ellsberg collection of scanned documents from his home: https://archive.org/details/danielellsberg?tab=collection

Informationsreicher Artikel des Guardian über eine neue Anlage von #ExxonMobil zum chemischen Recycling von Plastik im texanischen Baytown-Komplex. Viele Basis-Informationen zu dieser umweltschädlichen Technik und ihrer Verwendung durch die Ölindustrie, um von der wachsenden Produktion von Single Use-Plastik abzulenken. Anlagen zum chemischen Recycling werden vor allem in räumlicher Nähe von Communities, die bereits extrem und der Verschmutzung durch Plastik und Abgase leiden Chemisches Recycling gehört auch zu den Geschäftsfeldern der #OMV-Tochter #Borealis. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/10/exxon-advanced-recycling-plastic-environment

Based on yesterday's discussion at Dan Allosso's Book Club, we don't include defense spending into the consumer price index for calculating inflation or other market indicators. What other things (communal goods) aren't included into these measures, but which potentially should be to take into account the balance of governmental spending versus individual spending. It seems unfair that individual sectors, particularly those like defense contracting which are capitalistic in nature, but which are living on governmental rent extraction, should be free from the vagaries of inflation?

Throwing them into the basket may create broader stability for the broader system and act as a brake via feedback mechanisms which would push those corporations to work for the broader economic good, particularly when they're taking such a large piece of the overall pie.

Similarly how might we adjust corporate tax rates with respect to the level of inflation to prevent corporate price gouging during times of inflation which seems to be seen in the current 2023 economic climate. Workers have seen some small gains in salary since the pandemic, but inflationary pressures have dramatically eaten into these taking the gains and then some back into corporate coffers. The FED can increase interest rates to effect some change, but this doesn't change corporate price gouging in any way, tax or other policies will be necessary to do this.

From Wikipedia page on Icarus Paradox. Example of architectural design/technical debt leading to an "interest rate" that eventually collapsed the organization. How can one "pay down the principle" and not just the "compound interest"? What does that look like for this scenario? More invest in workforce retraining?

Humans are complex, adaptive systems. Machines have a long history of being complicated, efficient (but not robust) systems. Is there a way to bridge this gap? What does an antifragile system of machines look like? Supervised learning? How do we ensure we don't fall prey to the oracle problem?

Baskerville, R.L.; Land, F. (2004). "Socially Self-destructing Systems". The Social Study of Information and Communication Technology: Innovation, actors, contexts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 263–285

Ball, P. (2022, February 26). Will we get a single, variant-proof vaccine for Covid? The Observer. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/26/will-we-get-a-single-variant-proof-vaccine-for-covid

Gallagher, J. (2021, November 14). Covid vaccine ‘waning immunity’: How worried should I be? BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59260294

Similarly Paul Wolfowitz was U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense running the U.S. war in Iraq before leaving to become the 10th President of the World Bank.

McNamara was the 5th President of the World Bank.

If only there were a way to hurl objects at an attacker very quickly and accurately in Texas. Perhaps one could carry multiple such objects in case the first few missed.

The Uncomfortable Truth is the Difficult and Unpopular Decisions are Now Unavoidable.

Topic is relevant across a span of global issues. Natural resources are Finite.....period! Timely decisions are critical to insure intelligent use of resources. DENIAL is the enemy and 800lb gorilla in the room. Neoliberisim and social dysfunction feed on any cognitive dissonance and poop it out as "crap". True believers of American Capitalism (yes there is a difference) have become "cult-like" and drink the fluid of the cult to the very end, human consequence is of no concern.

Point being: Reality is always elusive within a cult controlled (authoritative) mindset. Cult members are weak sheep, incapable of individual logic/reason. Authority can not be challenged. -- Denial, a human defense mechanism has been and is the common denominator in all personal and global conflict. Denial can be traced throughout modern history and rears its ugly head whenever the stakes are high.

Seitz, B. M., Aktipis, A., Buss, D. M., Alcock, J., Bloom, P., Gelfand, M., Harris, S., Lieberman, D., Horowitz, B. N., Pinker, S., Wilson, D. S., & Haselton, M. G. (2020). The pandemic exposes human nature: 10 evolutionary insights. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(45), 27767–27776. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2009787117

Schindler, S., Reinhardt, N., & Reinhard, M.-A. (2020). Defending one’s worldviews under mortality salience – Testing the validity of an established idea. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/7bxcs

To contextualize, you can still spend a hell of a lot on development, but if you don't have costly mobilizations it can make it look like you aren't spending as much as others; in fact, you are arguably making 'smarter' investments?

I'm picking up some serious Strong Defense vibes from this. The study of eloquence builds a community, a world.

I'm in.

Weak defense much?

This sounds like Lanham's strong defense of rhetoric, the idea that meaning is communally negotiated and anchored to socio/political/cultural contexts. Although here Locke is not happy about that.

Lanham says, "The Strong Defense assumes that truth is determined by social dramas, some more formal than others but all man-made. Rhetoric in such a world is not ornamental but determinative, essentially creative" (156). If that defense is not just restricted to "man-made" social dramas but cultural dramas, to dramas rooted in a particular historical and cultural context (joining Rickert's sense of rhetorics), then it can also be opened up to material forces beyond the human.

Is this the Strong Defense of rhetoric again? Meaning arrived at not through empiricism but a communal negotiation?

There's a weird tension here for me between the idea of rhetoric as "determinative, essentially creative." I'm perhaps inserting a reading that focuses too much on the similar-but-different word "determinate" rather than "determinative." I don't object to the creative aspect, but identifying something as "determinative" seems to suggest a kind of rigidity antithetical to the fluid, contextual nature of rhetoric that Lanham outlines. I might just be spitting hairs here, but it struck me as odd.

This is not relevant to the successful prosecution of this woman's murderer. Pro-defense effect. Casts the victim in a sketchy light so as to evoke emotion from the jury pool. Attempting to separate the victim from possible jury pool (i.e., harder for jurors to imagine themselves the victim).

It may ignore rhetoric, but it does have its advantages. Factors like your audience, topic, or motive all play role in your usage of the strong or weak defense. And, we've all seen the weak defense beat the strong defense several times this past year.

Weak defense.

Weak defense.

It seems as though this reading vacillates between weak defense and strong defense more than others.

So wouldn't presenting rhetoric as a solution be a version of the weak defense for other disciplines?

The strong defense of the will to power.

The language of instrumental and applicable certainly suggests a weak defense at work here.

A pretty powerful articulation of the weak defense,

Ah, yes, the weak defense.

I might be wrong, but... Weak Defense?

Another weak defense of language.

A weak defense of words?

To oscillate between the weak and strong defenses.

A useful articulation of the Weak Defense.

This phrase is certainly a challenge. And of course there are etymological links between virtue and *virtuosity".

This is a very helpful way to understand the relationship between the Weak and the Strong defenses. That is, what the Weak Defense will treat as an absolute, the Strong Defense will treat as contingent.

These "endangering possibilities" are the focus of much of the Enlightenment thinkers we will shortly engage.

Seeing the world as a hostile place, we defend with our power to deceive. Competition and survival based in theories of scarcity.

The sword of intellect and dissimulation equated to the physical defensive characteristics of all living things for preservation, yet with the unique capacity to be misused. Highlighting the vulnerability of humans and over-reaching amplification of intellect to disguise a deep insecurity that originates in the fundamental physical inferiority of humans among beasts.

Postpone judgment, allow me the space to discuss, no matter what. How closely does this defense align with what we might think of as education?