Joe Rogan, Neil Young, And Rock’s Eternal Now

January 27th, 2022

Rock musician Neil Young got a bee up his bonnet about Joe Rogan spreading Unapproved Thought, and told Spotify that they needed to either remove Rogan or remove his music. It wasn’t a hard choice.

Spotify has sided with its podcast superstar over Neil Young.

The legendary folk singer gave the streaming behemoth an ultimatum earlier this week, saying he refused to allow his music on the same platform as Joe Rogan. The “Heart of Gold” singer accused Rogan and his podcast of spreading false information about COVID-19 vaccines.

Spotify reportedly paid more than $100 million deal to be the exclusive home of Rogan’s show. Young, meanwhile, stands to lose 60% of his streaming income from his defiant stance, he said in a statement on his website.

“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” a spokesperson for the company told the Wall Street Journal. “With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators.”

This is bunk. Spotify should have jack squat concern about safety for it’s listeners, at least beyond slapping a warning on lethal pranks like the Fork In the Electric Outlet Challenge.

Since the start of the pandemic, the spokesman noted, Spotify has removed more than 20,000 COVID-related podcast episodes. Still, Young’s protests were not sufficient for it to drop its lucrative star talker.

“We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon,” the spokesperson added.

Rogan’s podcast has attracted an estimated 11 million listeners.

Never mind the Lynyrd Skynyrd references, how little money most artists make out of streaming, or the irony of the “This Note’s For You” guy wanting to censor someone for not toting the government/big pharma line. If this was anything more than a publicity ploy (of the “Wait, you’re still alive?” type) on Young’s part, he’s badly overplayed his hand. But I want to talk about the oddity of Rock’s Eternal Now.

Because it was the music boomers grew up with, and it’s still on the radio and used in tons of movies, rock music of the 60s and 70s has stayed an active part of the culture much longer than the popular music of earlier eras did.

Neil Young had one only one number one hit, “Heart of Gold,” in April of 1972. That’s a few months shy of half a century ago. Go back half a century before that, to April of 1922, and this is the song that was topping the charts:

If people remember the name Fanny Brice at all today, it’s because Barbara Streisand played her in a movie in 1968 (which is to say more than half a century ago). How many rock musicians were listening to Fanny Brice songs in 1972? Approximate answer: None.

Which makes you wonder how many of today’s musicians are listening to Neil Young, a half-century after his heyday. I’m guessing more than Fanny Brice, but not many.

Just as we only know bits of the early 20th century songbook because they were featured on Looney Tunes (“Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal…”), it’s likely that any Neil Young listeners under the age of 50 or so only know of him from TV sound tracks or Jimmy Fallon imitating him. And most of his hardcore fans are not in Spotify’s demographic, since they already have the CDs they bought to replace the records and 8-tracks they bought in their youth.

One repeated line from “Heart of Gold” is “And I’m getting old.” So is the entire cohort of golden age Rock and Roll.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

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Posted in Media Watch, video | 7 Comments »

Is The Bloom Off The Bush?

January 26th, 2022

I’ve been looking for a meaningful hook to talk about the Texas Attorney General race since Republican U.S. Congressman Louie Gohmert officially joined. Gohmert’s entry was a bit more puzzling than the others. Paxton is the incumbent, George P. Bush is attempting to move up from Land Commissioner, and Eva Guzman is attempting to move up from the Supreme Court. But from U.S. Congressman to Texas Attorney General is not a clear-cut move up. And I don’t particularly like his chances.

But now we have some campaign finance reports to chew on.

In just over a month, [incumbent Ken] Paxton will face the most significant primary challenge in his career with three other widely-known candidates in Texas politics: Land Commissioner George P. Bush, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman, and Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX-01).

The first financial reports to be released since the list of candidates were finalized for the ballot corroborate the viability of each of the candidates, as all raised over a million dollars in the period between July 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021 — more than any of the Democrats vying for the nomination.

Having been in the position for nearly two full terms, Paxton’s war chest is still the largest out of any candidate with $7.5 million cash-on-hand.

Becoming available a day past the due date, Paxton’s finance report showed that he raised $2.8 million and spent $2.1 million.

Over half of his expenditures — $1.3 million — was spent on direct mail. Of note, another $153,000 was spent on “campaign advertising services” and $130,000 was listed for “legal fees.”

Citing contributions from “ more than 5,000 grassroots conservative donors” with about half giving to Paxton for the first time, his campaign stated, “With these dominant fundraising numbers and the groundswell of grassroots support behind him, it’s clear Ken Paxton’s campaign has both tremendous enthusiasm and financial advantages over his challengers in the primary.”

“As the stakes get even higher moving forward, there is no question that Ken Paxton is the only candidate positioned to defeat the radical left’s candidate in November,” said Paxton’s campaign in a press release.

Though Paxton’s war chest is the largest, the candidate to receive the most contributions for the period was Guzman.

Backed by the powerful Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR) PAC, Guzman reported a haul of $3.7 million.

The majority of her contributions came from a handful of wealthy donors.

TLR PAC topped the list of contributors to Guzman’s campaign with a total of $626,000 listed. Richard Weekley, the chairman of the board of directors for TLR, contributed another $500,000, and another board member, Alan Hassenflu, contributed $250,000.

Guzman also reported receiving $500,000 from Harlan Crow, $500,000 from Robert Rowling, and $250,000 from Jan Duncan.

Advertising accounted for a large portion of the $2.6 million Guzman reported spending, with $1.2 million on media buys, a combined $555,000 on printing and postage for direct mail, and another $269,000 listed for political advertising.

Bush, who was the first challenger to jump in the race, reported raising $1.9 million, bringing him to a total of $3.2 million cash-on-hand at the beginning of January, the second-largest war chest behind Paxton.

“We have a good number of cash-on-hand, but the real factor in this campaign that’s different is the ‘Texas First Tour’ that we’re putting together,” Bush told The Texan at a meet-and-greet in Round Rock.

“We’ve got about 20 events lined up over the course of the next three weeks leading up to early voting, and then we have two weeks of early voting,” said Bush.

The focus on a more event-oriented ground game was reflected in Bush’s campaign expenditures as well. While $132,000 was categorized for consulting expenses and $154,000 was for advertising, $635,000 of the $1.8 million total expenditures went toward salaries for campaign employees and contractors.

Gohmert, the last candidate to enter the race who joined partway through the candidate filing period in November, also put more expenditures toward grassroots campaigning.

The East Texas congressman spent far less than the other candidates with only $126,000 in total expenditures. Of that, over half — $65,000 — was listed for the “purchase of campaign vehicle,” and another $32,000 was used for “yard signs/stakes.”

Gohmert’s total fundraising haul for the period tallied to slightly above $1 million, his target goal when he announced he was considering a bid for the position.

But the finance report I want to hone in on is not Gohmert’s, but Bush’s.

Going after an entrenched incumbent, this is the first race Bush has run where he’s a financial underdog. $3.2 million is only slightly more than the $2.8 million he raised at this point in his 2014 Land Commissioner run, where “his two main challengers, a Republican and a Democrat” had raised “a combined total of around $20,000.” To be running behind both Paxton and Guzman in the money derby in a higher profile race seems to be a setback for the candidate who garnered more votes than Greg Abbott in the 2014 general election. (In 2018, he ran some 220,000 votes behind Abbott.)

Conventional wisdom is that Paxton is vulnerable due to his pending state security fraud charges, but those charges have been pending for over six years despite the federal charges having been dismissed, and didn’t keep him from winning the general by almost 300,000 votes in The Year of Beto. These lengthy delays suggest that the case is all smoke and no fire, and that the case is more useful for Democratic county DAs as a club against Paxton than actually trying the case, and the indictment will probably run into Sixth Amendment issues if it hasn’t already.

But back to Bush. Back in 2014, there seemed to be an unspoken assumption among establishment types that George P. Bush was some sort of golden boy of Texas politics, destined for the Governor’s mansion at some point based on his last name, in much the same way that his father Jeb was seen as the likely 2016 GOP Presidential nominee. Well Jeb!’s campaign came a cropper, and Bush seems considerably less golden these days. The Bush dynasty’s one persistent advantage, their reputation of fundraising prowess, doesn’t seem to be working well enough thus far for George P.’s uphill charge against an entrenched incumbent.

Conservative activists have always been cool to Bush: The Third Generation, but were willing to give him a chance as Land Commissioner because, frankly, he was on the ballot. After the Alamo redesign controversy, the bloom was definitely off the Bush as far as conservative activists are concerned. But in a four-way race, Bush is at risk of missing the runoff, with Eva Guzman drawing a lot of the same moderate/business/Hispanic Republican support base that Bush needs. By contrast, Paxton’s record for being a strong advocate for conservative principles (and filing lawsuits against the Biden Administration) has a lot of activists still standing behind him.

Bush could still get into a runoff with Paxton, but right now it’s no sure thing.

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Posted in Elections, Republicans, Texas | 2 Comments »

Texas AG Paxton Sues Google (Again)

January 25th, 2022

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Google again, this time over location tracking.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Google for harvesting the location data of its users, claiming the practice violates the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (TDTPA).

“This most recent Google lawsuit argues that the company misled Texas consumers by continuing to track their personal location even when the user thought he or she had disabled it from doing so. Google then uses the deceptively gathered data to push advertisements to the consumer, earning the Big Tech company enormous profits,” Paxton’s office stated in a press release issued Monday morning.

The Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act is a law that requires businesses in Texas to truthfully represent their products and ownership to consumers. By misleadingly implying to users that they can stop location tracking, Paxton claims Google violated the section of the law that bans businesses from withholding information that might prevent consumers from using their product.

“Google has systematically misled, deceived, and withheld material facts from users in Texas about how their location is tracked and used and how to stop Google from monetizing their movements,” the lawsuit claims.

“[While] many Texans may reasonably believe they have disabled the tracking of their location, the reality is that Google has been hard at work behind the scenes logging their movements in a data store Google calls ‘Footprints.’ But while footprints generally fade, Google ensures that the location information it stores about Texans is not so easily erased.”

The lawsuit claims that the sheer prevalence of Google technology makes the company’s data collection all the more effective, complete, and specific. Paxton argues that location data alone allows the company to create a “unique mosaic” of each user with information like health status and religious affiliation inferred from travel habits.

This is a good time to remind you that if Google or Facebook has your email address or phone number (and they do), they have all your personal information and can track you no matter how many cookies or location tracking controls you turn off. And it’s not just them: Any of their advertising partners that has your email or phone number can link you to your Google and/or Facebook profile. So any time you enter your email to, say, use Wi-Fi at a venue, it’s a good bet they automatically have access to all the ad profile information Google and Facebook have gathered on you. And I suspect this information is tied to your phone in various ways, cookies or no cookies.

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Posted in Texas | No Comments »

The Time Of The Turning?

January 24th, 2022

Is Flu Manchu Madness finally cresting? Has the entire world, finally, said “Enough!” to the draconian restrictions and lockdown madness imposed by ruling elites which have shown no discernible effect on coronavirus transmission and death rates? There are some encouraging signs:

  • The UK lifts all vaccine passports, mask mandates and work restrictions.

    Restrictions including COVID-19 passes, mask mandates, and work-from-home requirements will be removed in England, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Wednesday. Johnson also suggested that self-isolation rules may also be thrown out at the end of March as the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic becomes endemic.

    Effective immediately, the UK government is no longer asking people to work from home. The COVID pass mandate for nightclubs and large events won’t be renewed when it expires on Jan. 26. And from Thursday, indoor mask-wearing will no longer be compulsory anywhere in England.

    The requirement for secondary school pupils to wear masks during class and in communal areas will also be removed from the Department for Education’s national guidance.

    Roaring cheers from lawmakers could be heard in the House of Commons following Johnson’s announcements on masks.

    Johnson has largely been a disappointing squish on just about everything but Brexit, but here he’s finally undertaken a sensible policy.

  • Ireland has listed most of their restrictions.
  • Belgium seems pretty fed-up with restrictions:

  • Canada looks to be in a world of pain over vaccine mandates, given how much of their food comes from the U.S., and that some 50% of truckers are refusing to comply. Indeed, the issue has prompted a long convoy to Ottawa to protest those mandates:

    (Now might be a perfect time for an updated remake of Convoy. The original was deeply flawed, weirdly compelling, and Sam Peckinpah’s most financially successful film.)

  • Closer to home, liberals Bill Maher and Bari Weiss note that they’re completely over Flu Manchu.

  • Here’s a translation of the general mood for the liberal of hearing:

    • Is all this enough to make our political class give up their suicidal fixation on vaccine mandates, masking and lockdowns? Maybe, though I think that disasterous polls for Democrats may provide a more notable prod. Vaccine mandates are a surefire political loser, but something deep in the Democratic Party seems to demand their implementation. And many rank and file Democrats have embraced mandatory masking as identity marker for their own inflated sense of self-virtue to easily give up on it two years into two weeks to flatten the curve.

    It may take a truly epic whipeout in November to get them to change their tune.

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    Posted in Democrats, Regulation | No Comments »

    “For The Greater Good”

    January 23rd, 2022

    I think we’ve long past the point when data has proven that lockdowns, vaccine mandates and covid theater masking are not only ineffective but actually harmful and do nothing to control the spread of coronavirus.

    Americans are done with all this nonsense, and insincere appeals “for the greater good” simply won’t work any more.

    And we’re sure as hell not to comply with any of your social justice garbage anymore.

    (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)

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    Posted in Democrats, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, video | 2 Comments »

    The Babylon Bee Interviews Elon Musk

    January 22nd, 2022

    When it comes to longer videos I find interesting, I have a system for posting them here:

    1. I see a longer video I think BattleSwarm readers will be interested in.
    2. I go “Hey, I’ll go ahead and post that as soon as I have time to watch the whole video!”
    3. I never have time to watch the full video.
    4. I never post the video.

    I think there are some drawbacks to the system.

    This Babylon Bee (Seth Dillon, Kyle Mann, and Ethan Nicolle) interview with Elon Musk from back in December is one of those longer videos I meant to get to before now. Rather than continue to hold onto this forever, I’ve watched more of it and am posting it here.

    Some topics of discussion:

  • How Saturday Night Live and The Onion used to be funny before they became so hard left they refused to make fun of Democrats.
  • “Bernie Sanders…Elizabeth Warren…Babylon Bee…Hitler.”
  • The threat to western civilization by the “woke mind virus.”
  • “At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary and hateful. It basically gives mean people a reason, it gives them a shield, to be mean and cruel, armored with false virtue.”
  • Kyle Mann: “The left is almost this religion now,where they’re so serious, and they believe what they believe with such intensity, that for us to make fun of them you know for them, it’s like you’re making fun of God or salvation.”
  • Musk is much higher on “sustainable energy” than I am (which you would expect for a guy that owns solar power companies), but does say shutting down nuclear power plants is a big mistake.
  • The craziness of trying to shut down Dave Chappelle.
  • “Part of why I moved to Texas, it’s just fewer strings tying you down.”

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    Posted in Democrats, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, video | 1 Comment »

    LinkSwarm for January 21, 2022

    January 21st, 2022

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Biden’s vaccine mandate receives another blow in court, Biden stumbles his way through another press conferences, and a Joe Rogan podcast lays bare social justice perfidy.

  • Federal judge blocks Biden’s employee mandate.

    After SCOTUS last week rejected the administration’s attempt to force corporations to abide by the mandate via OSHA, a federal court in Texas has issued an injunction against Biden’s jab mandate for federal workers, the other part of his administration’s attempts to force vaccines on reluctant Americans – a strategy that Biden has already abandoned in favor of providing at-home COVID tests to all Americans.

    Biden issued both mandates by executive order back in September.

    Trump-appointed Judge Jeffrey Brown of the US Court for the Southern District of Texas said the case was not about whether individuals should be vaccinated or even about federal power more broadly. Instead, he said it’s about “whether the president can, with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress, require millions of federal employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of their employment,” Brown wrote.

    “That, under the current state of the law as just recently expressed by the Supreme Court, is a bridge too far.”

  • James Lindsay (AKA @Conceptual James) did an interview with Joe Rogan that may be as devastating to Social Justice Warriors as Rogan’s McCullough and Malone interviews were to the Official Flu Manchu Narrative. Some excerpts:

    How Ibram X. Kendi unwisely picked a Twitter fight with Jack Posobiec:

    How CNN destroyed CNN:

    On How Google lies to you and DuckDuckGo doesn’t:

    On the impossibility of telling parody from reality:

    Including a shout-out to the Babylon Bee.

  • Biden had a press conference where he mixed some lies in with the usual rambling.

    ‘My plan cuts the deficit, and it boosts the economy by getting more people into the workforce’

    Biden and his aides received intense scrutiny in the fall after they clung to a line that claimed the president’s spending plans would cost zero dollars — even after multiple analyses found that was not the case.

    Biden seemingly recycled that line during his press conference Wednesday when he claimed more than once that his proposals would not add to the deficit.

    The Congressional Budget Office found that the Build Back Better Act would add $3 trillion to the deficit by 2031 if its programs were permanent rather than allowed to expire on what critics have described as artificially short time frames designed to give the bill the appearance of costing less.

    If the programs expired as written by Democrats, the Build Back Better Act would still add $367 billion to the deficit by 2031, according to the CBO.

    Experts have also debunked Biden’s claim that the bill would boost the economy overall.

    The Penn-Wharton Budget Model from the University of Pennsylvania found that Biden’s plan would reduce America’s gross domestic product over several decades and would even slightly lower hourly wages over the same time period.

  • Focus group shows that independents (people who vote for both Obama and Trump) hate Biden’s America.

    these independents are “resigned rejecters” — deeply pessimistic about the state of the country, deeply disappointed by President Biden, and about as dissatisfied with the status quo as one can get.

    Alice, a 60-year-old Latina from New York who works as a supervisor for homeless services, described her community as returning to an almost-lawless Hobbesian state* of the strong dominating the weak through force, violence, and intimidation: “I think they’ve taken us back to cave-man time, where you would walk around with a club — ‘I want what you have.’ You’re not even safe to walk around and go to the train station, because somebody might throw you off the train, okay? It’s a regression.”

    Dickie, a 38-year-old white financial analyst from Texas concurred: “When Alice was talking about the cave-man thing, I can agree with that. I’ve had my bike stolen here in Austin, in a very gentrified neighborhood, four different times in the last seven, eight months. Things are kind of chaotic. I feel like there’s no rules, really.”

    Twelve of the 14 said the level of crime is up in America today compared to a year ago.

    If statements like that aren’t a flashing neon sign declaring “DO SOMETHING ABOUT CRIME!” I don’t know what is.

  • “How well do the SARS-CoV-2 shots work against the Omicron virus variant? The Danish study results shown in the graph found the Pfizer and Moderna shots provide some protection for a couple months, followed by a higher risk of infection than no shots at all. I don’t call that ‘working.'” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • An exiting resident laments the decline of Portland:

    

  • Speaking of Democrat-run hellholes in the Pacific northwest: “Meet The Seattle Schools Woke Indoctrination Czar Who Married A Child Molester.”

    Despite decades of the most aggressive equity programs anyone could ask for, Seattle’s racial disparities are among the worst in the nation – and they’re getting worse, not better.

    At the forefront of Seattle Public Schools’ (SPS) initiatives was Tracy Castro-Gill, until recently its director of ethnic studies, who represented herself as a fierce Chicana who overcame homelessness and was willing to take on racism no matter who she had to battle, turning schools into vehicles for social change.

    Castro-Gill, it turned out, was a perennially unhappy toxic liar, one who misrepresented her background to the point that her own father compared her to Rachel Dolezal, and who was ultimately pushed out of her job for repeated misconduct. A focus on racial oppression did not create resiliency, but rather despondency, with Castro-Gill and three other racial justice leaders going on paid leave from SPS for mental health issues in 2019 alone.

    As Castro-Gill used children for politics in the workplace, her personal life also raised questions about the costs that can incur. She married a convicted child molester and moved her young daughter in with him. Then, her previous ex-husband told me, she pressured her child, who had serious mental impairments, to become gender-nonbinary.

    The academic achievement of Seattle’s youth plummeted as she implemented initiatives like replacing math instruction with courses on “power and oppression.” But in this world, there was no such thing as failing: Those gaps were used to justify still more jobs and efforts like hers.

  • FBI raids home and office of Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar. Hmmmm…
  • “Texas Secretary of State Finds Over 11,000 Potential Non-Citizen Voter Registrations.”
  • “Texas has regained all lost pandemic jobs while New York trails far behind.”
  • Related: New York City fines wrong woman $259,000 for violations by her neighbor. Bonus: They couldn’t correct the record for 20 years.
  • Criminal tries to rob a house in Arlington, Texas, where he wins stupid prizes. (Hat tip: 357 Magnum.)
  • Jordan Peterson resigns from professorship at University of Toronto. What are the odds he ends up at the University of Austin?
  • Heh:

  • The Sex in the City reboot characters are the same age as The Golden Girls were in Season One.
  • Meatloaf, RIP. For a guy I thought of more as a singer, he had a long, active, and actually pretty impressive acting career. (“His name is Robert Paulsen!”) Only a small number of you will get this:

  • “Biden Outperforms Nation’s Expectations For First Year By Still Being Alive.”
  • “In Major Deal, The Babylon Bee Purchases Competing Satire Site CNN.”
  • “The whole thing sounds sketchy.”

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • Our canine friend lays down the law:

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Economics, Media Watch, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Semiconductor Subsidies: The Wrong Solution For The Wrong Problem

    January 20th, 2022

    There’s no problem that the federal government throwing money at it can’t make worse.

    Today’s example: Democrats pimping billions in taxpayer subsidies for the semiconductor industry.

    As the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates supply chain backlogs and global computer chip shortages

    Correction: It wasn’t the pandemic itself, it was government lockdowns and other overeactions that did that.

    Democratic leaders in Congress as well as President Joe Biden want Congress to fast track a $250 billion bill to develop American independence from China and other competitors in chip manufacturing.

    The Capital Region – home to SUNY Polytechnic Institute, the only publicly owned 300-millimeter semiconductor research and development center in the U.S. – stands to reap significant benefits from the enactment of Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s multi-billion dollar bill, which he envisions as a direct investment in his home state’s economy.

    “Sen. Schumer wrote this legislation with upstate New York always at the forefront of his mind,” Schumer’s spokeswoman Allison Biasotti said. “We are already seeing the excitement in major employer expansions and thousands of jobs on the horizon from GlobalFoundries’ planned expansion (in Malta) and (his) push for Albany Nanotech to be a hub for the National Semiconductor Technology Center.”

    A focal point of the bill, which the New York Democrat co-sponsored with Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., is a historic $52 billion investment in stateside semiconductor research and development to address a global chip shortage plaguing the automotive industry.

    Lawmakers began to focus more on the low domestic production of semiconductors when the COVID-19 pandemic cut off supplies from overseas. Without access to chips, several automakers shut down their production lines, and manufacturers of essential medical devices and consumer electronics struggled to meet increasing demand.

    Roughly 12 percent of the world’s semiconductors are manufactured in the United States, down from 37 percent in 1990, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.

    Either these stats are false or misleading (probably the latter). The most recent stats I can find show that the United States has some 47% of the semiconductor market. It’s possible that the 12% refers to the entire worldwide number of individual chips produced, including discrete components (transistors, resistors, etc.). Those are indeed semiconductors, but they’re produced on old amortized fabs (inside the industry these are referred to as “jelly bean factories”) and sell for pennies a piece (or less). If you’re already in that industry, those old fabs make small, steady profits every year, but nobody jumps into that business with new fabs.

    The chips China make are generally either: A.) Cheap, or B.) intended for their internal market. No one sends cutting edge chips to be fabbed in China because they don’t have the tech to do it and everyone know they’ll steal your designs and crank out knock-offs on the sly whenever possible. China’s semiconductor industry is mostly smoke and mirrors all the way down.

    Semiconductor subsidies have all the hallmarks of a classic Washington boondoggle: The wrong action at the wrong time for the wrong problem.

    First, there are already signs that the automotive semiconductor crunch is easing, thanks not to the Biden Administration but to the actions of the free market.

    Second, the shortage wasn’t the result of a “chip shortage,” it was the result of “a lack of available foundry wafer starts.” Automakers cancelled their orders for display drivers when it looked like Flu Manchu lockdowns were going to depress the economy for a while, and were caught off-guard by the V-shaped recovery under Trump, and got sent to the back of the line to get their product fabbed after they changed their mind. Remember, just about all foundries are running flat-out 24/7/365, pausing only to switch to different chips for different customers. There’s no slack in the system, and those wafer starts are already spoken for (and possibly paid for) by other customers well in advance. Just as nine woman can’t give birth to a fully grown baby in one month, you can’t just “make chips quicker” in an existing fab.

    Third, remember that cutting edge semiconductor fabs are hideously expensive. Moore’s second law states that the cost of a new, cutting edge semiconductor plant doubles every four years. Samsung’s planned fab in Taylor, Texas is going to cost $17 billion.

    Fourth, if you go to a random semiconductor company and go “Here’s 20 billion! Go build a state-of-the-art 5nm wafer fabrication plant!”, then:

    A.) You’re looking at a very minimum of 2-3 years before the first production wafer comes off the line. You can’t just take an existing building and turn it into a fab, it has to be specially built from the ground up with exacting standards for cleanroom air filtering, concrete slab level uniformity, etc. And 2-3 years is probably the lead time to get an ASML EUV stepper.

    B.) Unless you’re TSMC, Samsung or (maybe) Intel, the answer is probably “Uh, we’ll try, but no promises,” because those three companies are the only ones that actually having wafer fabs running 10nm or smaller process nodes. GlobalFoundries, mentioned in the article, has Fab 8 in Malta, NY, running 14nm, which is not horribly far off the state-of-the art, but not good enough to fab the really cutting-edge chips demanded of companies like Apple, NVIDIA, etc. Tiny problem: In 2018, GlobalFoundries stopped all work on 7nm development.

    The contract maker of semiconductors decided to cease development of bleeding edge manufacturing technologies and stop all work on its 7LP (7 nm) fabrication processes, which will not be used for any client. Instead, the company will focus on specialized process technologies for clients in emerging high-growth markets. These technologies will initially be based on the company’s 14LPP/12LP platform and will include RF, embedded memory, and low power features.

    So it was too hard a game for them to play, but with a big heap of taxpayer subsidies, I’m sure they’d be willing to give it another go.

    Of course, you don’t need a cutting edge fab to build display drivers. Bosch just opened a $1.2 billion, 65nm fab in Dresden to do just that. But you don’t need subsidies to build trailing edge fabs.

    $250 billion in taxpayer subsidies wouldn’t get you a single additional wafer start this year, and probably would accomplish little more than channeling money to politically connected firms and sticky pockets in a state (New York) that no one wants to build fabs in any more because of high costs, high taxes and union rule requirements.

    It’s a bad idea congress should reject.

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    Posted in Democrats | 3 Comments »

    “Agonizing Penis Pain”

    January 19th, 2022

    Hey folks, there’s an exciting new Flu Manchu side effect: “agonizing penis pain“:

    A man’s agonising penis pain was blamed on Covid infection, as docs warned of the rare side effect.

    Writing in a medical journal, the Iranian team described how the virus led to blood clotting in the poor man’s shaft.

    For most men (outside of an extremely narrow band of S&M fetishists) “agonizing penis pain” is generally considered “undesirable.” Mao Tze Lung is just the gift that keeps giving.

    So I guess guys should take the vaccine to avoid this rare side effect?

    Not so fast, bucko! When it comes to rare adverse effects in the male groinological area, searching the VAERS database for COVID-19 and “penis” brings up 11 records, including such phrases as “Penile pain,” “Penile vein thrombosis” and “penile haemorrhage.” A veritable buffet of “Do Not Want!”

    It’s like a Monty Python skit.

    John Cleese: All right, time for your vaccine!
    Eric Idle: Is it safe.
    John Cleese: Oh, totally safe, totally safe. (under his breath) Except for the horrifying side effects…
    Eric Idle: What?!
    John Cleese: Nothing!
    Eric Idle: What side effects?
    John Cleese: Nothing to worry about! Just a tiny number of cases of agonizing penis pain.
    Eric Idle: What?!
    John Cleese: Really, it’s only very small number of cases of profuse bleeding and absolutely excruciating pain in your standing hampton! Now roll up your sleeve!
    Eric Idle: But I don’t want to experience agonizing penis pain!
    John Cleese: Well, I don’t want to be allergic to soft cheese, but there’s just nothing to be done about it! It’s science! Now roll up your sleeve!

    You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

    (Hat tip: Stephen L. Miller on Twitter.)

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    Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »

    Electric Van, Electric Van/Can You Find One? No One Can/Loses A Fight With Petroleum Van/Electric Van

    January 18th, 2022

    Everyone in the Democratic Media Complex wants us to know that electric vans are THE FUTURE of delivery. That remains to be seen, but they sure seem to have a lot of trouble being the present of delivery.

    In the fall, Jeff Bezos tweeted praise for Rivian, a start-up under contract to make 100,000 electric delivery vans for Amazon, and its founder, R.J. Scaringe, calling him “one of the greatest entrepreneurs I’ve ever met.”

    Then, Mr. Bezos worked in a jab: “Now, RJ, where are our vans?!”

    The comment may have been in jest, but the problem he raised is a serious one.

    Amazon has an insatiable appetite for electric vans, thanks to a ballooning logistics operation and a pledge that half of its deliveries will be carbon-neutral by 2030. But that hunger is running into the reality that the auto industry barely produces any of the vehicles yet.

    While consumer electric cars are finally hitting their stride — Tesla delivered almost a million cars last year — the market for commercial electric vehicles is still nascent, with their heavier loads multiplying the technology challenges. Amazon would not say if Rivian delivered the first 10 production vans in December, as was expected, and other automakers are not manufacturing at scale yet, either.

    Even though Amazon owns nearly 20 percent of Rivian, it has also put in orders with other automakers, to lay claim to as many vans as it can before they are even under production.

    This month Amazon said it would buy “thousands” of electric Ram vans from Stellantis, the company formed last year after the merger of Fiat Chrysler and the French automaker Peugeot.

    I too stumbled over “Stellantis” the first time I saw it, a company formed from the merger of three car companies, none of whose quality screamed “reliable.” (Or, indeed, even whispered it.) But I digress.

    It has also ordered 1,800 electric vans from Daimler in Europe. And it has formed a partnership with Mahindra, the Indian automaker, as part of its goal to have 10,000 electric three-wheeled vehicles on the road by 2025.

    “The scale and speed at which we’re trying to do this requires a lot of invention, testing and learning, and a completely new playbook,” Ross Rachey, who oversees Amazon’s global fleet, said in a statement.

    Amazon expected to have roughly 175,000 of its vans on the road by the end of 2021, according to an internal document from late 2020, nearly all of which burned fossil fuels.

    That number is growing quickly. Amazon is several years — and tens of billions of dollars — into a huge push to deliver packages, shifting away from relying on large carriers like UPS. To begin the expansion, Amazon ordered 20,000 diesel Sprinter vans from Mercedes-Benz.

    You saw very few of those Mercedes vans on the road before Amazon started buying them, but now they’re everywhere. But, again: gas-powered.

    Through its network of contractors, Amazon now delivers more than half of its orders globally, and far more in the United States. Amazon has six times as many delivery depots now as it did in 2017, with at least 50 percent more new facilities set to open this year, according to data from MWPVL, a logistics consultancy.

    That logistics boom, accelerated by the pandemic’s shift to online shopping, multiplies the challenges the company faces in meeting its pledge to reduce its climate impact. Its vow to make half of its deliveries carbon-neutral by 2030 is part of the company’s broader pledge to be net-carbon-neutral by 2040.

    Conveniently far in the future that deadlines can slip long after the people making such promises are retired.

    “Electrification of their delivery fleet is a really important part of that strategy,” said Anne Goodchild, who leads the University of Washington’s work on supply chain, logistics and freight transportation.

    Delivery vans are well suited to electric propulsion because they usually travel 100 miles or under in a day, which means they don’t need large battery packs that add to the cost of electric cars. Delivery trucks are often used during the day and can be recharged overnight, and usually require less maintenance than gasoline trucks. Electric vehicles don’t have transmissions and certain other mechanical components that wear out quickly in the heavy stop-and-go typical in delivery routes.

    This isn’t strictly true. Some electric vehicles have two-speed transmission, and they still need gears to change drive-speed ratio.

    In September 2019, when Mr. Bezos announced Amazon’s huge Rivian order — the largest ever order of electric vehicles — he positioned it as central to Amazon’s commitment to reduce its carbon footprint. At the time, he said he expected the 100,000 vans to be on the road “by 2024.”

    Amazon invested at least $1.3 billion in Rivian, which Amazon says is supposed to make 10,000 vans as early as this year. Amazon also locked up exclusive rights to Rivian’s commercial vans for four years, with the right of first refusal for two years after that. The companies have been testing the vans for almost a year.

    In regulatory disclosures in November, Rivian said it would make the full delivery to Amazon “by 2025.” Last week, Mr. Rachey said Amazon expected to have the vehicles on the road “no later than 2030.”

    Rivian declined to comment.

    Yeah, I bet.

    There’s nothing impossible about making an all-electric fleet. With enough money (and assuming certain Biden-era supply chain disruptions don’t get worse), it could be done by the end of next year. But whether it could be done cost-effectively is another question. Battery capacity is constantly improving, but not by Moore’s Law-esque leaps and bounds. Lots more can go wrong on a gasoline-powered car, but the technology is mature and many individual engine parts are relatively affordable. By contrast, as the man who blew up his Tesla showed, replacing current lithium ion batteries for an entire car is hideously expensive right now. That will probably come down, but no one knows by how much or how quickly. There’s a case to be made that those batteries are so expensive that electric cars are actually worse for the environment than modern gas-powered automobiles. But pointing that out commits heresy against The Holy Global Warming Narrative.

    By the way, it’s not just Amazon that’s having trouble. The Postal Service is finding electric vehicles a lot more expensive than they expected.

    After the USPS was criticized on Capitol Hill for its $9.3 billion plan to replace 165,000 trucks—specifically because 90 percent of them would be powered by gas combustion engines—the government-operated service went back and crunched the numbers again. In its recently released Final Environmental Impact Statement, the USPS estimates that the cost of an all-electric fleet would be $11.6B. That’s an additional $3.3B.

    If that price tag seems a bit steep, the USPS estimates that it could electrify 75,000 of its vehicles—less than half of the proposed total—for an additional $2.3B ($10.3B total). Still too high? That figure is a mere fraction of the financial losses the USPS has experienced in the last 15 years. According to a report published by the Government Accountability Office in September 2021, the USPS has lost more than $87 billion since 2007 as the volume of mail it delivers has dropped.

    A billion here, a billion, and pretty soon you’re talking real money…

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    Posted in Global Warming | 15 Comments »

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