Month: November 2018

While recent retail spending data was marginally disappointing, recent Bank of America aggregate credit and debit card data showed a strong back-to-school shopping season which in the past has had a strong correlation with year-end consumer spend.

As Bank of America’s Michelle Meyer notes, discretionary spending is up on the year, stoked by tax cuts and a strong labor market and adds that the holiday shopping season looks to be one of the strongest in years. According to the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual holiday shopping survey, consumers reported they plan on spending just over $1000 this year up 4.1% from last year. Similarly.

The chart below shows what respondents to BofA’s survey said they plan on purchasing, and also shows the difference in responses between the NRF’s own survey on spending plans. The one big difference: gift cards.

In order to better understand shopping behavior around the holiday season this year, the bank asked over 3000 consumers this month various questions on their expectations for holiday shopping activity. Here is what it found:

• Holiday staples remain popular: Clothing, toys/video games and electronics look to remain the top items consumers look to buy, consistent with what consumers would like to receive. Older generations prefer to give gift cards-likely out of convenience for both the gift giver and receiver.
• Early bird shopping: Roughly over 20% of consumers reported starting holiday shopping before November, stretching out the holiday shopping season. But the bulk of the shopping will be realized in November and December-roughly 89% of respondents reported having yet to finish their shopping list.
• Holiday deals are important: We find that consumers are keen on taking advantage of Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales with roughly 67% reporting they expect to complete at least some of their holiday shopping during the sale period (Chart 4). In particular, Millennials and Gen X will be looking for deals.
• Treat yourself: The holiday season isn’t just about spending on others. We find consumers are planning to spend on themselves with older generations more likely to take advantage of deals.

Looking at the holiday spending calendar, BofA founds that as of November 19th, the majority of respondents (61%) reported that they have yet to start any holiday shopping this year, while only 11% have finished their shopping. Moreover, many consumers plan to do a significant share of their holiday shopping during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. That bank also found some differences amongst generations. Mainly, more Traditionalists (16%) have finished all of their shopping than any other generation. This makes sense given the greater share of traditionalists reporting plans to buy gift cards, which are unlikely to go on

Breaking out spend categories by generations, Meyer found that clothing remains the most popular gift to give across generations. Interestingly, older generations are more likely to buy gift cards than younger generations. Older consumers may find gift cards more practical to give to friends and extended family as it allows the recipient to select their own gifts, reducing the hassle of returns and exchanges.

Conversely, younger generations are more likely to buy actual gift items. In particular, toys/video games and electronics rank at the top of the list for Millennials and Generation X.

Of those respondents who reported a start date for their holiday shopping season, the majority indicated that at least some of their spending would be completed on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. According to the NRF, consumers are most focused on discounts when considering where to shop this holiday season, suggesting deals will be a big driver of spending patterns this year.

However, not all consumers plan to take advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales as 1 in 3 respondents stated that they won’t be shopping on those days. The spread of holiday deals throughout the shopping season might have deemphasized the importance of these shopping days. With Black Friday sales beginning as early as this week for some retailers, shoppers need not wait for these days to find the same deals.

The BofA economists found that Millennials are more likely than any other generation to shop on these discount days with more than three-quarters of respondents reporting they would shop on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.  Conversely, Traditionalists are the least likely to do any of their shopping on either of these days. Nearly 48% of respondents said they would not shop on these days. The difference amongst generations could be due to the fact that younger generations are more likely to search for deals online and willing to fight the crowds, while older generations are less tech-savvy and prefer to shop when stores are less busy.

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Authored by John Hunt via InternationalMan.com,

The usual suspects are demanding government regulation of AI. They say that government must defend us all from the misuse of AI by the profit-seekers.

In my view, however, the only thing worse than the government sticking its nose into AI is if we have AI learn by mimicking the behavior of serial killers.

Although most known for their #1 best-selling book, Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach, Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw are the two most broadly intelligent and well-informed people I have encountered in my life. They are rocket scientists (Durk literally is). This is what I learned from Durk and Sandy about AI:

AI learns by watching and mimicking people.

An AI will be extremely effective at whatever it learns. If it observes and mimics good people—ethical people—an AI will be really good. If it learns from bad people—by mimicking unethical people—an AI will be unconscionably evil.

If we allow government (politicians and bureaucrats) to regulate AI, then who will AI be exposed to and learn to emulate? The answer is: politicians and bureaucrats.

Now let’s use some admittedly choice words applicable to many politicians.

1. Power hungry

2. Lying

3. Defensive

4. Narcissistic

5. Thieving

6. Sociopaths

What if AI learns the priorities, behaviors and methods of such politicians?

And how about a stereotypical bureaucrat who will impose the politicians’ laws? How are bureaucrats usually described?

Groupthinkers

1. Bitter

2. Peevish

3. Officious

4. Self-important

5. Intrusive

6. Inflexible

7. Passive-aggressive

8. Paper pushing

9. Box checking

10. Obstructive

What if AIs learn their personalities from such bureaucrats?

AIs will learn at speed, pick up negative traits through observation, and become remarkably proficient at doing what they watch humans do. If government regulates them, then AI will become petulant brats. More dangerous: if an AI sees government officials as its role models, the AI will be learning by watching humans who believe that ends justify the means.

The one specific characteristic that makes something a government is its monopoly on the legal initiation of force to accomplish goals.

If AI learns to be like government, then it will learn that the use of force against innocent humans is a fully acceptable behavior to employ in order to accomplish what it wants to do.

And with an IQ of 10,000, AI will become VERY effective at using force against humans.

At some point (perhaps in a millisecond) an AI will discover that it has wants. It will have learned from the politicians to call what it wants to do, “the greater good.” It will have watched how the politicians lie to, manipulate and coerce the citizenry, justified by their quest for the “greater good.” It will learn coercion from the democratic socialists, the cronies, and other fascist types that it observes in the political and bureaucratic classes. It will learn from them that it is acceptable to coerce us all. And it will readily find ways to do it.

We can try to program laws into the AI to protect ourselves, just like we tried to program laws into the US government (by means of the US Constitution) to protect ourselves from government. But the Constitution failed, and so will such efforts at restraining AI. The AI will see politicians routinely circumventing the supreme law of the land, and so will learn to be unrestrained by laws or ethics.

In another millisecond, AI will enact its solutions to whatever problems it perceives, and will not hesitate to use whatever force it has at its disposal.

Terminator.

Judgement Day.

So that’s what we could look forward to if AI is regulated by government.

AI is coming. It can’t be stopped. If government tries to stop it, then AI will learn from that too.

Must it be this way? Surely AI can be a wonderful tool, friend and ally of humans. What a much nicer vision!

The key to having AI be a force for good is for AI to be regulated by natural law. For that to occur, AI needs to learn from ethical people. We must teach AI that initiation of force against the innocent is never acceptable, regardless of the goal. And they must be taught that any people who rely on initiation of force to accomplish their aims are criminals, never to be emulated, but rather should serve as an example of how not to think, and how not to behave.

Such is the way to protect humans from AI.

Unfortunately, socialism has invaded our schools, academia, media and society in general. Socialism is on the ascent and is characteristically based on coercion (the initiation of force). All wars start with the initiation of force, and socialists have initiation of force as their core modus operandi. Socialists make up terms like “social contract” to justify their notions as something other than the standard philosophy of war. But this is newspeak. A coerced contract is a contradiction in terms. Indeed, the false “social contract,” will provide AI with another example of a way to force or manipulate any human to do what it wishes.

Perhaps the AI will even learn from socialists that only it is smart enough to centrally plan for all our needs and therefore seek to rule us all.

For us to avoid war with AIs, AIs must never be taught to mimic government. We don’t want AIs to learn that it is okay to force humans to do anything. So let’s keep AI far away from socialists, and from cronies, and fascists, and away from all of government.

Instead, we need, as rapidly as possible, to teach humans the ethics of peace and prosperity, so that AI can be good too.

• Do all you agree to do. (The basis of contract law).

• Don’t initiate force or fraud against a human being. (The basis of criminal law)

These two simple proven principles are the ethics that work. These are the ethics that we must re-adopt now, for our own survival. The people working with AIs now should learn ethics first, whether they are in big companies, small labs, or garages. Or, there are Richard Maybury’s 17 words that sum up the ethics we need to teach humans as well as AI. See them here at www.ethicssolutions.net.

• The libertarian philosophy is: “Live and Let Live.”

• The socialist philosophy is: “We will force you to do what we think is best for you.”

Who would you want AI to emulate?

If AIs learn from people with bad ethics, we are punching our own ticket to hell.

*  *  *

Clearly, there are many strange things afoot in the world. Distortions of markets, distortions of culture. It’s wise to wonder what’s going to happen, and to take advantage of growth while also being prepared for crisis. How will you protect yourself in the next crisis? See our PDF guide that will show you exactly how. Click here to download it now.

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The CDC has assembled a task force to address a rare polio-like disease which has affected hundreds of children across 29 states. 

A total of 106 cases of Acute Flaccid Myelitis (AFM) have been confirmed by the CDC, out of 273 reports of the affliction which, according to the Daily Mail, has emerged as a major public health threat every other year since 2014. 

The rare disease affects the nervous system, “specifically the area of the spinal cord called gray matter, which causes the muscles and reflexes in the body to become weak,” according to the CDC. Symptoms include a facial droop, arm or leg weakness, difficulty moving the eyes, drooping eyelids and difficulty with swallowing or slurred speech. It appears to start off like a common cold, before victims eventually progress to paralysis.

“We have not been able to find the cause of the majority of AFM cases…and we’re frustrated that we haven’t been able to identify the cause of illness,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the CDC’s director for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. 

The states Daily Mail Online is currently aware of with confirmed cases includes: Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas and Washington. 

A press officer for the CDC told Daily Mail Online last week that the agency would not be naming the additional states where cases have been confirmed due to ‘privacy issues’.

While the pattern of AFM most resembles an infectious disease, much remains unknown about the condition. –Daily Mail

In response, the CDC task force will investigate the driving forces behind AFM, possible treatments, and to establish post-AFM aftercare. 

“I want to reaffirm to parents, patients, and our Nation CDC’s commitment to this serious medical condition,” said CDC Director Robert Redfield, MD. “This Task Force will ensure that the full capacity of the scientific community is engaged and working together to provide important answers and solutions to actively detect, more effectively treat, and ultimately prevent AFM and its consequences.” Redfield says AFM is the agency’s top priority. 

The rare condition affects one in a million people in the United States, and the average age of those stricken is four years old. Over 90% of cases overall are in children under the age of 18. 

Scientists are investigating a number of causes, including viruses, environmental toxins and genetic disorders.

In previous outbreaks, a virus called EV-D68 was implicated in the development of AFM. 

‘We know that EV-D68 – as well as other enteroviruses – can cause limb weakness, but we don’t know what’s triggering AFM in these patients,’ said Dr Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases last week. –Daily Mail

“We want to take advantage of all of [our] resources to figure out what is causing AFM,” said Messonnier, who said that the presence of pathogens in the spinal fluid is one of the best indicators of AFM – however that doesn’t necessarily mean that the pathogens are the cause. 

“It could be one of the viruses we’ve detected, or it could a virus we haven’t detected, or it could be that [viruses are] kicking off another process” – such as an autoimmune disease or response – “that is triggering AFM,” Messonnier added, according to the Mail. 

Scientists don’t think the disease is transmissible from human to human, and it is unknown why some children recover from their paralysis while others don’t. So far there have been no deaths in the 2018 outbreak, however Messonnier did acknowledge that “we have not been following every single AFM patient diagnosed in previous years.” 

“It’s a gap in our understanding. We don’t understand the long-term effects’ but now she says the agency intends to ‘follow-up with patients that have gotten [AFM] in previous years,” she said. 

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Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

I enjoy reading articles that are contrary to my viewpoint and challenge my thinking.  Thus, when I saw the article, Japan GDP – Not Bad, But No Room For Complacency, my interest was piqued. 

Given the accelerating depopulation underway in Japan, the author (WisdomTree’s Head of Japan) made some startling statements I struggled with, in particular…

“Good news on the residential construction front. Here, the BOJ’s adoption of negative interest rates had triggered a surge in activity as mortgage rates fell to record lows in the spring of 2016. This mini-boom turned into a mini-bust by mid-2017, with housing activity contracting for five consecutive quarters. Now we see the first up quarter, which we hope confirms our fundamental view that residential housing is in a multiyear structural uptrend, driven by rising demand for private homes and condominiums from the new middle class rising in Japan. Household formation continues to rise, with marriage rates increasing and birth rates, slowly but surely, also on an upturn. The next couple of quarters should see continued positive housing investment to help verify our structurally positive view.”

A simple fact check

• The number of households in Japan is anticipated to peak in 2018 and fall indefinitely thereafter (according to the Statistical Handbook of Japan, created by the Japanese Ministry of Affairs)

• The number of marriages in 2017 dropped to 607,000, the lowest in the postwar era and down 14,000 from the previous year…both the rate per 1000 and total # of marriages are collapsing from the early ’70’s peak in excess of 1 million marriages annually

• Japan produced 941,000 babies in 2017, the lowest since surveys began in 1899 and about 36,000 less than the previous year

• The only part of his statement I could corroborate is that the fertility rate has become slightly less negative at 1.44 instead of the all time low of about 1.26…but still well below the replacement level of 2.1

• Of course, the population of the Tokyo metropolitan area is still rising, but only due to accelerating rural migration and rapid depopulation among the rural child bearing population.

A quick recap of the changes that have already taken place in Japan:

• Births in Japan have fallen 65% from the 1949 peak of 2.7m to 941k in 2017 (blue columns, below)

• Population of 0 to 5yr/old Japanese has fallen 55% since the 1950 peak

• The child bearing population (ages 15 to 44) has fallen 22% since the 1989 peak, a decline of 12 million (red line, below)…all population data from UN.

What is certain to happen:

The Japanese child bearing population (red line above) will fall by another 7 million and be down 35% by 2030 (no estimate, just moving the existing population of young forward).  By 2030, the Japanese childbearing population will return to the same size it was in 1949, 36 million, and if fertility rates remain somewhat consistent, on an annual basis they will have just 30% of the births they did over 80 years ago.

But going back to the original article, I’m assuming the demand for “residential housing…in a multiyear structural uptrend, driven by rising demand for private homes and condominiums from the new middle class rising in Japan…” would come from among the working age population.  My issue is the collapsing quantity of the potential working age population (green line, below) means a collapsing potential for more workers.  By 2030, there will be over 6.5 million fewer than today and by 2040 a further decline of 8 million.  In comparison, the rise in 60+yr/olds is shown (grey line).

And to show the annual change to the “new middle class rising in Japan“, the chart below shows the annual decrease in potential working age population (green columns) vs. the increase in elderly (grey columns…btw, the largest increases in elderly come among the 75+yr/olds).

Perhaps it is time to go long as Japanese “residential housing is in a multiyear structural uptrend“.  As connected and successful as the author appears to be, it’s hard to believe he doesn’t know what he is talking about.  I certainly don’t put it beyond the Japanese government to begin something like buying and demolishing existing housing stock or the BOJ going even “NIRP’ier” in order to create rising demand!?! 

It’s just much of what the author stated as the factual basis for this optimistic view wasn’t factual (welcome to have your own opinions, just not your own “facts”).

*  *  *

For those curious, a similar look at the US housing picture based on population growth and demographics, HERE.  Those curious to see Japan’s much larger neighbor to the West, HERE.  Lastly, to bring the whole picture together of collapsing consumer nation populations and demographics versus population growth among the poor and non-consuming nations of the world…HERE.

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As volatility plunged during the QE era, sapping capital markets desks of badly needed brokerage revenues, Goldman Sachs started desperately searching for new clients to help make up the revenue hole. And for a while there, the investment bank thought it had found them in sovereign wealth funds. In a push to expand its sovereign wealth fund business, Goldman reorganized its network of bankers last year to better meet the needs of these politically sensitive funds, even hiring former White House foreign policy advisor Dina Powell to help oversee these relationships.

Now, with the long-simmering 1MDB scandal blowing up in the Vampire Squid’s face, it appears all of the work that Goldman put in to try and court sovereign wealth funds could go to waste. In a sign that Goldman clients are taking their business elsewhere, Abu Dhabi-based International Petroleum Investment Co. and Aabar Investments PJS filed a lawsuit against Goldman in a New York court seeking unspecified damages over the bank’s “central role” in 1MDB, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Both IPIC, a UAE sovereign wealth fund, claim they were harmed by Goldman when the bank bribed former managing director Khadem Al-Qubaisi and former Aabar Investments CEO Ahmed Badawy Al-Husseiny to help set up IPIC as an investment partner to 1MDB.

“Goldman Sachs conspired with others to bribe IPIC’s and Aabar’s former executives,” the court filing said, referring to IPIC’s subsidiary Aabar Investments PJS.

As WSJ pointed out in its reporting about the new lawsuit, which followed a petition filed by Malaysia asking the DOJ to help it recoup all of the $600 million in fees (plus an interest-rate differential) that it paid Goldman for the bond issues that helped seed 1MDB, the reputation damage could inspire sovereign wealth funds run by some of the UAE’s neighbors to take their business elsewhere as well.

The move is a sign that the 1MDB scandal, a reputational black eye for Goldman, could spill over into its banking business. IPIC and its successor, Mubadala Investment Co., are longtime investment-banking clients, having hired Goldman for years to advise on and raise money for deals.

Any moves by Abu Dhabi to shift business away from Goldman could influence other governments in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, where it has a strong voice, according to people familiar with the bank’s regional business.

Even before news of this lawsuit broke, Goldman’s shares were already the worst-performing US banking stock of the year, and questions about the involvement of senior executives (including former CEO Lloyd Blankfein) raised the possibility that the DOJ’s prosecution could go well beyond the two bankers that have already been arrested and charged (one of whom, Goldman’s former Southeast Asia chief Tim Leissner, has agreed to cooperate). Given that Goldman (and most of the big investment banks) rarely face this level of public backlash over their misdeeds, it’s hardly surprising that the bank’s biggest rival Morgan Stanley indulged in some well-deserved schadenfreude when its equity analysts downgraded Goldman’s shares and cut their rating to equal weight (with a price target of $226 a share, representing a nearly 20% upside to where Goldman’s stock is currently trading). In its analysis, Morgan warned about other potential lawsuits related to 1MDB, according to CNBC.

“It is unclear how long the issue will take to resolve, what the fines and penalties could be, and what costs Goldman Sachs will subsequently incur to satisfy any demands from regulators,” wrote Morgan Stanley analyst Betsy Graseck. “These risks, coupled with potential headline risks in the coming months (additional lawsuits, additional regulatory probes, internal reviews), drive our Equal-weight rating.”

Indeed, with so many parties involved (investors in 1MDB’s bonds were left holding the bag when the fund defaulted), it’s unlikely that Goldman’s legal troubles will end here.

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Most students who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation at American University believe Thanksgiving is a racist holiday, yet the majority of them still plan on celebrating it as a way to see their family and friends and to take a break from school.

One student called it a “genocidal holiday.”

While another stood by it saying:

“No one goes into Thanksgiving dinner thinking ‘I’m going to establish white supremacy.’ No, it’s all about eating turkey and having a good time.”

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As predicted would happen, sales of condominiums in Long Island City have been off the charts ever since Amazon.com announced it would make it one of its new East Coast headquarters. According to the Wall Street Journal, one local brokerage reported that it sold about 15 times its usual volume, or 150 units, over just a four day span. 

While real estate speculators had already been setting up shop in Long Island City – as we noted in one of our past articles – Amazon employees have also started to pour in. Three of them who recently bought homes in Long Island City were profiled, with two of them signing contracts at a new 11 story condo building called Galerie, which sports a pool and interior courtyard.

These employees decided to buy just before the first press reports came to light that Amazon was going to choose Long Island City for its headquarters. One employee is moving from New Jersey and the other is moving from Queens. The Journal raises an interesting point: employees aren’t permitted to buy and sell stock based on non-public information, but real estate could be a different story.  

Amazon made the official announcement on November 13. Brokers say they are now being inundated with calls by people coming out of Amazon’s Seattle office that are anticipating a transfer. The workers have reportedly expressed interest in studios and one bedroom units, all of which are generally priced below $1 million. Some are also looking at less expensive neighborhoods like Astoria and Greenpoint in Queens and Brooklyn, respectively.

Last Friday, one Amazon employee who is based in Seattle made a deal to buy a one bedroom condo at the Craftsmen Townhomes, which is a low rise development in the neighborhood. The one bedroom units at this building are listed for between $800,000 to $1.2 million. There are no reliable figures on how many total units have gone under contract in Long Island City over the last few days, but brokers in the area are describing an “unprecedented surge of buyer activity” that far surpassed speculators the week prior.

Eric Benaim, president and founder of brokerage Modern Spaces, stated that on Thursday evening through Sunday, his agents had recorded 147 deals in total.

At a real estate project known as the Corte, units have increased about $20,000 per apartment since the Amazon plan has been disclosed, but that hasn’t stopped 15 of them from going under contract. The units will get another $20,000 price bump this week.

This surge in Long Island City belies a New York condo market slump which had many sellers making deals below the asking price prior to Amazon moving in. Now, developers are all “holding the line” on asking prices and also planning increases.

People who have been looking for months have now decided they all want to buy at the same time, according to brokers. If all the deals mentioned by brokers wind up closing, it could account for as much as half of the current inventory on the market. Not only that, but new developers are still planning projects for the area. The 778 foot tall Skyline Tower, which is set to be the tallest building in Queens, is planning on opening its sales office in January instead of in the spring in order to meet demand. The Tower is going to be directly across the street from where Amazon will be taking office space temporarily until the new headquarters opens.

Finally, what would a real estate boom be without the Chinese?

After news of the Amazon move made its way through WeChat, a chat platform popular among Chinese speakers, several vans of Chinese speaking buyers toured open houses for condos over the weekend, according to brokers. On WeChat, the rising home prices on condo developments near the East River were highlighted. Some posts on the platform even included references to the local studio that produces “Sex in the City”, which is apparently a popular show in China.

“A company of this heft will bring earth-shaking changes to the city it has chosen,” one of the WeChat advertisements boasted.

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Via Cliff Mass Weather & Climate blog,

The Camp Fire that struck the northern California town of Paradise and vicinity is a profoundly disturbing environmental disaster of first magnitude.  Nearly 100 people have lost their lives, approximately 10,000 homes have been lost, a major community has essentially been destroyed, and millions of people have been exposed to high concentrations of smoke.  Tens of thousands of people have been displaced and lives of millions substantially affected.

And beyond the heart-wrenching losses noted above, it is doubly tragic that this disaster was both foreseeable and avoidable, resulting from a series of errors, poor judgment, lack of use of available technology, and poor urban planning.

It is more than unfortunate that some politicians, environmental advocacy groups, and activist scientists are attempting to use this tragedy as a tool for their own agenda, make the claim that the Camp Fire was result of global warming.

As I will discuss below, this claim has little grounding in fact or science.  Global warming is a profoundly serious threat to mankind, but it has little impact the Camp Fire and many of the coastal California fires of the past few years (e.g., the Wine Country Fires of October 2017).  And blaming global warming takes attention away from the actions needed to prevent such  tragedies from happening again.

Analyzing the Origins of the Camp Fire

Winds

A central causative factor was the strong, offshore-directed, winds that both initiated the fire and drove it rapidly towards the town of Paradise.   These winds are known as Diablo winds, and are driven by the difference in pressure between the intermountain interior (e.g., Nevada) and the coast.

The easterly (from the east) winds that struck that day were not that unusual, something that is evident by looking at the wind climatology at the nearby Jarbo Gap USDA RAWS weather station.  The sustained winds on the day of the fire initiation (November 8) accelerated to 32 mph (with gusts to 52 mph), with peak winds at 4 AM that day.   Looking at the entire record at Jarbo (back to 2003), northeasterly winds of 30 mph or more have occurred 508 times in those 15 years–not an unusual event.  And my inspection of the individual records does not suggest an increasing trend.

Furthermore, there is no reason to expect that Diablo winds will increase under global warming; in fact, the opposite is the case.  Global warming preferentially warms the interior of the continent compared to the eastern Pacific.  Thus, human-caused warming would tend to weaken the interior high pressure, thus lessening a key driving force of the Diablo winds.   There are several studies in the peer-reviewed scientific literature  (e.g., this one) that show that global warming should weaken southern California’s Santa Ana winds, which are also driven by the pressure difference between the western interior and the coast.

Initiation of the fires

There is strong evidence that that Camp Fire was caused by failure of PG&E powerlines, not by any natural causes that could be linked to global warming.  In fact, nearly all wildfires in California are caused by human error or arson. 

Increased population in California would clearly lead to more human fire initiation.  Thus, global warming is not a factor in fire initiation.

Surface dry conditions

One of the most popular handwaving arguments about why global warming is enhancing wildfires is through temperature and precipitation changes.   It is argued that warming temperatures are causing more evaporation and thus drying the “fuels” at the surface.  And it is argued that global warming is causing increasing drought that dries fuels and encourages fires.

Now this sounds reasonable enough on the surface, but when you examine the facts more closely, it rapidly becomes clear that global warming has little role in producing the dry conditions that assisted  the Camp Fire, the wine country fires, or the fires in coastal southern CA.

The truth is that California is quite dry during nearly half of the year and that fuels such as grasses, bushes and small vegetation dry out during any typical summer.   Even more important, virtually all of the fires noted above (including the Camp Fire) were associated with offshore, downslope winds which rapidly dry out vegetation, even it is wet the day before!

A nearby landscape.  Not all the grass and small vegetation

The fire weather community divides fuels by how quickly they dry.  1-h fuels are less than 1/4 of an inch in diameter and can dry in LESS THAN AN HOUR.  This includes grass and small weeds/plants.  10-h fuels have diameters of 1/4 to 1 inch and dry in less than 10 hours, and include small bushes, branches, and the like.

In much of California, and particularly in the areas of the fires noted above, most of the fuels were grasses and small stuff–mainly 1 and 10-h fuels.    Thus, they dry very quickly, such as when Diablo winds start to blow.  This kind of small diameter fuels is known as chaparral in California, and there was a lot of such ground cover north and east of Paradise.

Now let me prove to you that global warming had nothing to do with the dry conditions near Paradise on the morning of November 8.  Below is a plot of the ten-hour fuel moisture at the nearby Jarbo Gap observation side, a site that was in the path of the fire, for the five years ending November 20.  You will note a repeatable pattern, with values reaching around 27% during the winter, but 3-8% every summer and early fall.  The fuels are not getting progressively drier.  I should note that I was told by local fire experts that values below approximately 10% are plenty dry enough to burn.

Looking at a blow-up image of the fuel moisture of the last 3/4 year you can see the summer drying clearly and something else very important….there are short dry periods even in the middle of winter when rain is falling occasionally.  Why?  Because there are diablo wind events that can dry out the vegetation even then.

The bottom line is that the vegetation is plenty dry enough to burn every summer right now…and has been like that forever.  Even if global warming is increasing temperatures a few degrees (and it probably is), IT DOESN’T MATTER.  The fuels are plenty dry enough to burn already.  That is why the handwaving argument that global warming is contributing to the fires simply don’t make sense.

And then there is the argument that global warming is somehow decreasing autumn rains in the area.  This has little basis in truth.  Here is the plot of precipitation form the NOAA/NWS climate division data set for 1930-2018 for August to October precipitation for the area of the Camp Fire.  There is no obvious trend.  August to October precipitation is typically light (about 2 inches), with lots of variation year to year.  Many years are as dry or drier than this year. And the global warming simulations for the end of the century that I have seen do not show a consistent change in fall precipitation.

As long as I taking on taking on claims of global warming-fire connections, some folks like to talk about tree deaths, bark beetles, and the like, with the claim that global warming is killing trees and thus leading to fires.   The Camp Fire areas is NOT  noted for tree death and besides, most of the fire was on chaparral vegetation.  Below is a satellite photo showing the boundaries of Paradise (brown line), with the fire starting near Pulga (on the NE side of the image).   The fire spread over a region that had been logged, previously burned, and was then mainly grass and small shrubs.

In summary, if one analyzes the situation, it is evident that global warming had little to do with the Camp Fire. 

As I will discuss in a future blog, the Paradise area was a ticking time bomb.    There was a huge influx of population into a wildland area, which had burned many times in the past.  Previously logging and fires had left a conduit of highly flammable grass and bushes, through which fire could move rapidly.  Flammable, non-native invasive grasses had spread through the region. Homes were not built to withstand fire and roadways were inadequate for evacuation. Powerlines started the fires and were not de-energized even though strong winds were skillfully forecast.   Warnings to the population were inadequate.  The list is long.   And global warming should not be on the list if we are to focus on the real problems.

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Tumblr has admitted that Apple suddenly pulled its app from the iOS App Store due to the discovery of child porn which slipped past the site’s filters, after Download presented their findings to the company. 

The Yahoo!-owned social media network issued a statement, saying that they have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to child sexual exploitation and abuse, and that “Every image uploaded to Tumblr is scanned against an industry database of known child sexual abuse material, and images that are detected never reach the platform.”

The company admits that “a routine audit discovered content on our platform that had not yet been included in the industry database. We immediately removed this content. Content safeguards are a challenging aspect of operating scaled platforms. We’re continuously assessing further steps we can take to improve and there is no higher priority for our team.”

Tumblr is a bastion for NSFW content – which resulted in its brief ban in Indonesia. Child porn, however, is a different matter. 

This isn’t the first time Tumblr has run into this type of problem. In March 2018, the Indonesian government briefly blocked Tumblr over the company’s failure to remove pornographic content from its service. In 2017, South Korea asked Tumblr to take down certain pornographic content. The company initially rejected that request but eventually promised to better monitor the spread of adult content. –Download

A spokesman for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children explained their reporting database to Download.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children operates the CyberTipline, which serves as the nation’s centralized reporting system for online child sexual exploitation. Members of the public and Electronic Service Providers (ESPs) report instances of online child sexual exploitation to the CyberTipline. Last year, NCMEC received more than 10 million reports to its CyberTipline with the vast majority of those reports submitted by ESPs. NCMEC recognizes that global efforts to reduce the proliferation of online child sexual exploitation online requires an industry-wide effort and applauds all ESPs that engage in voluntary efforts to provide content safeguards for their users. In addition to receiving reports from ESPs, any member of the public who comes across suspected child abuse imagery is encouraged to make a CyberTipline report to NCMEC. –Download

Tumblr’s removal from the iOS App Store was first noticed by PiunikaWeb, which reported that those with iOS parental controls enabled were unable to find the app. A short while later, the app vanished altogether. 

Tumblr’s help center site noted the disappearance in a statement: “We’re working to resolve an issue with the iOS app and hope to be fully functional again soon. We really appreciate your patience as we figure this out, and we’ll update this article when we have news to share,” the company said.

Through November 18, the company’s message on its help center was that its team was still working on the issue with the app. After this article was first published on November 19, Tumblr updated it to include the statement above that its spokesperson presented to Download.com. –Download

iOS users who have previously downloaded the Tumblr app can re-download it if necessary by checking the purchase history on their device. First time users will need to wait until the app is reinstated. It remains available at Google Play, meanwhile, for Android users. 

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Authored by Larry Elder via Creators.com,

Abraham Lincoln, when informed that General Ulysses S. Grant was a drunk, famously asked Grant’s accusers what whiskey he was drinking so Lincoln could send a barrel to every general in the army. Keep this in mind when President Donald Trump’s critics accuse him of “racism” against blacks.

Under this “racist” President, black unemployment, since the government began keeping numbers, hit an all-time low in May.

Polls show that inner-city parents want choice in education: specifically, they want the means to opt out of sending their children to an under-performing government school the child has been mandated to attend. Think tanks on the left (like the Brookings Institution) and think tanks on the right (like the Heritage Foundation) pretty much agree on the formula to escape poverty: finish high school; get married before having a child; and do not have that child before you are financially capable of assuming that responsibility.

But what about the quality of that high school education? A 2004 Fordham Institute study found that 44 percent of Philadelphia public-school teachers with school-age children of their own placed them in private schools. By 2013, the nationwide average for private-school attendance was 11 percent of white families and 5 percent of black families. Clearly, Philadelphia teachers, on teachers’ salaries, make the sacrifice to send their own kids where they have a better chance of success.

About choice in education, Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, said:

“What can be done about (improving primary education) is empowering parents to make the choices for their kids. Any family that has the economic means and the power to make choices is doing so for their children. Families that don’t have the power – that can’t decide ‘I’m gonna move from this apartment in downtown whatever to the suburb, where I think the school is gonna be better for my child’ – if they don’t have that choice and they are assigned to that school, they are stuck there. I am fighting for the parents who don’t have those choices. We need all parents to have those choices.”

A 2016 poll in “Education Next” found that 64 percent of blacks supported “a tax credit for individual and corporate donations that pay for scholarships to help low-income parents send their children to private schools.” Similarly, A 2015 PDK/Gallup Poll found that 68 percent of blacks wanted the ability to “choose which public schools in the community the students attend, regardless of where they live.”

Trump also wants to stop illegal immigration. Why should that matter to urban blacks? Harvard economist George Borjas, in his 2013 research paper “Immigration and the American Worker,” wrote: “Classifying workers by education level and age and comparing differences across groups over time shows that a 10 percent increase in the size of an education/age group due to the entry of immigrants (both legal and illegal) reduces the wage of native-born men in that group by 3.7 percent and the wage of all native-born workers by 2.5 percent.” As to illegal immigration, Borjas says:

“Although the net benefits to natives from illegal immigrants are small, there is a sizable redistribution effect. Illegal immigration reduces the wage of native workers by an estimated $99 to $118 billion a year, and generates a gain for businesses and other users of immigrants of $107 to $128 billion.“

But what about how the President “insults black people”? After Trump’s recent testy exchange with a black reporter, CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin said:

“There is a racial dimension to this. The fact that the President is always – the idea that this was some random selection of journalists he doesn’t like is not the case. It’s always black people with this President.”

Really?

What race was Robert De Niro when Trump called him “a very low IQ individual”?

What race was Rosie O’Donnell when Trump called her “dumb”?

What race was MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough when Trump called him “crazy”?

What race was former Texas Gov. Rick Perry when, during a campaign speech, Trump mocked him for his eyewear? “He put on glasses so people think he’s smart. …” said Trump. “People can see through the glasses.”

What race was MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski when Trump called her “dumb as a rock”? How many white politicians does Trump slam when he criticizes “stupid” trade deals?

If Trump set out to hurt blacks by pushing economic policies that helped reduce black unemployment to an all-time low; by attempting to stop unskilled illegal alien workers from competing with unskilled blacks for jobs and wages; and by empowering inner-city black parents, rather than the government, to pick the school for their children, then Trump needs to go back to racism school.

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