Month: August 2022

Two Plead Guilty To Stealing Ashley Biden’s ‘Inappropriate Showers With Dad’ Diary

Two Plead Guilty To Stealing Ashley Biden’s ‘Inappropriate Showers With Dad’ Diary

Two Florida residents have pleaded guilty to stealing Ashley Biden’s diary and other belongings, before selling them to Project Veritas in the weeks leading up to the 2020 US election.

Aimee Harris, 40, and Robert Kurlander, 58, admitted they took part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials from Florida, where Ashley Biden had been living, to New York, according to the New York Times.

“Harris and Kurlander stole personal property from an immediate family member of a candidate for national political office,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

And while Project Veritas declined to publish the diary (and were still raided by the Biden DOJ), the National File did publish excerpts on Oct. 24, 2020 – and the full diary two days later. While treated as potentially fake at the time, we now know that the contents are legit – including claims that Joe took ‘probably inappropriate’ showers with Ashley, and that she believes she was sexually molested as a child.

Entries in the diary include the author revealing she believes she was sexually molested as a child and shared “probably not appropriate” showers with her father, some that detail the author’s struggle with drug abuse and the author’s crumbling marriage with multiple affairs, along with entries showing the family’s fears of a potential scandal due to her brother’s new home, and those that show a deep resentment for her father due to his money, control, and emotional manipulation. –National File

Via National File

How did it make its way to Project Veritas?

In the spring of 2020, as Joe Biden was in the process of clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, Ashley was living in Delray Beach, FL with said friend “who had rented a two-bedroom house lined with palm trees with a large swimming pool and wraparound driveway,” according to people familiar with the matter.

In June, however, Ashley visited the Philadelphia area as Joe’s campaign was ramping up.

“She decided to leave some of her belongings behind, including a duffel bag and another bag,” according to the report.

Enter Aimee

Several weeks after Ashley left the Delray house, the friend who hosted her invited an ex-girlfriend named Aimee Harris and her two children to move in. Harris, in the middle of a custody dispute and financial woes, appears to have been a Trump supporter according to ‘social media postings and conversations.’ She learned that Ashley Biden had stayed there, and that some of her things had been left behind, according to two people familiar with the mater.

Exactly what happened next remains the subject of the federal investigation. But by September, the diary had been acquired from Ms. Harris and a friend by Project Veritas, whose operations against liberal groups and traditional news organizations had helped make it a favorite of Mr. Trump.

In a court filing, Project Veritas told a federal judge that around Sept. 3, 2020, someone the group described as “a tipster” called Project Veritas and left a voice message. The caller said “a new occupant moved into a place where Ashley Biden had previously been staying and found Ms. Biden’s diary and other personal items.”

The “diary is pretty crazy,” the tipster said on the voice mail, according to a Project Veritas court filing. “I think it’s worth taking a look at.” -NYT

Court filings reveal that Project Veritas bought the diary (though never published it), through an unnamed proxy identified as “A.H.” and “R.K.” – Harris and Robert Kurlander, a self-described venture capitalist, longtime friend, and former housemate of Harris. 27 years ago, Kurlander “pleaded guilty in federal court in Florida to a conspiracy count in a drug-related money laundering scheme” and was sentenced to 40 months in prison, per the Times, which added that the same case resulted in a guilty plea from David Witter – grandson of the founder of Dean Witter.

Days before the 2020 election, Kurlander tweeted: “Where are Biden’s two kids?” adding “Ashley and Hunter are disasters. Reflection of the parents.”

Are we allowed to talk about the ‘probably inappropriate showers’ now?

Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/25/2022 – 14:25

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/BgEm41W Tyler Durden

New Survey Data Cast Further Doubt on the FDA’s Opposition to Flavored E-Cigarettes


FDA Commissioner Robert Califf testifying

A federal appeals court this week sided with several companies whose applications to sell nicotine vaping products in a variety of flavors were rejected by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown noted yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that the FDA’s decisions were “arbitrary and capricious” because the agency ignored marketing and age-verification plans aimed at preventing underage vaping. But as Judge Robin Rosenbaum noted in her dissent, the manufacturers’ victory probably will be short-lived, because the FDA seems dead set against allowing the sale of vaping products in flavors other than tobacco.

That position is puzzling, since former smokers who have switched to vaping overwhelmingly prefer nontobacco flavors, and the FDA acknowledges that “electronic nicotine delivery systems” (ENDS) hold great promise as a harm-reducing alternative to cigarettes. But the FDA insists there is no solid evidence that flavor variety makes vaping more appealing to adult smokers, even as it worries that flavor variety makes vaping more appealing to teenagers. So when the FDA reconsiders these applications on remand from the 11th Circuit, it is almost certain to reject them again, notwithstanding the steps that the companies are taking to keep their products away from underage consumers.

The FDA’s opposition to flavor variety is driven by concern about an “epidemic” of adolescent vaping. But as new survey data from the government-sponsored Monitoring the Future (MTF) study confirm, the surge in electronic cigarette use by teenagers that alarmed the FDA in 2018 and 2019 is already receding, even though adults can still buy flavored ENDS that remain on the market because the FDA has not yet decided whether to allow them or has not taken enforcement action against them. Those data also indicate that adolescent smoking continued to decline as vaping became more popular. The picture is similar for young adults: As vaping continued to rise among 19-to-30-year-olds in 2021, cigarette smoking hit a record low.

These trends suggest that we are seeing precisely the sort of harm-reducing substitution that the FDA claims to want. The data certainly are not consistent with the idea that the availability of ENDS has resulted in more smoking. Yet Judge Rosenbaum, who seems to think the FDA’s opposition to flavored ENDS is well-grounded, avers that “vaping has been shown to be a gateway to smoking combustible cigarettes.” She cites no evidence to support that claim, which seems highly implausible in light of the continuing decline in smoking among teenagers and adults.

The annual MTF survey, which University of Michigan researchers conducts under contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse, includes students in the eighth, 10th, and 12th grades. In 2021, it shows, the prevalence of past-month nicotine vaping fell sharply in all three grades.

That rate peaked at 10.5 percent in 2020 among eighth-graders before falling to 7.6 percent last year. Among 10th- and 12th-graders, it peaked at 19.9 percent and 25.5 percent, respectively, in 2019 and had fallen to 13.1 percent and 19.6 percent, respectively, by last year. Between 2019 and 2021, the prevalence of “daily” vaping (defined as use on 20 or more occasions in the previous 30 days) fell from 2 percent to 1.1 percent among eighth-graders, from 6.8 percent to 2.5 percent among 10th-graders, and from 11.6 percent to 5.4 percent among 12th-graders.

These findings are broadly consistent with results from the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), which is sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That survey shows the prevalence of past-month e-cigarette use by high school students peaking at 27.5 percent in 2019 before falling to 11.3 percent in 2021. Even though adults still have access to ENDS in a variety of flavors, the “epidemic” decried by the FDA and the CDC seems to be fading fast.

Neither survey provides any evidence of the “gateway” that Rosenbaum perceives. On the contrary, the downward trend in adolescent smoking continued even when vaping was rising sharply. Among 12th-graders in the MTF survey, the prevalence of past-month cigarette smoking fell from 10.3 percent in 2011 to 2 percent in 2021. During the same period, the prevalence of “daily” cigarette smoking fell from 4.3 percent to 0.8 percent. In the NYTS, the prevalence of past-month cigarette smoking among high school students fell from 15.8 percent in 2011 to 1.9 percent last year.

There is reason to think that ENDS, far from interfering with the decline in adolescent smoking, hastened that downward trend, which accelerated as vaping took off. The replacement of smoking by vaping is indisputably an improvement in terms of “public health,” which the FDA claims to be promoting. But the agency instead portrays it as a grave danger to the youth of America. When it comes to teenagers, the FDA refuses even to consider the positive impact of such substitution.

A 2019 analysis of NYTS data found that frequent e-cigarette use was concentrated among teenagers who were current or former smokers. So far the recent decline in adolescent vaping has not led to an uptick in smoking, which makes sense if casual users, rather than teenagers who vape instead of smoking, account for most of the drop. But the FDA should be wary of any policy that makes cigarettes easier to obtain than ENDS or makes ENDS less appealing to people who otherwise would be smoking. Over the long term, the upshot could be more rather than fewer smoking-related deaths.

Logically, that analysis should include teenagers as well as adults. But the FDA insists that the health benefits of substituting ENDS for cigarettes don’t count when vapers are younger than 21. So let’s consider what the MTF data tell us about the potential cost of refusing to let adults buy the vaping products they demonstrably want.

“Cigarette smoking among young adults has been declining steadily since
2004 and reached new historic lows in 2021,” an MTF report notes. “Cigarette use in the past 30 days decreased by more than half in the past decade,” from 21.2 percent in 2011 to 9 percent in 2021.

In recent years, that downward trend in smoking by 19-to-30-year-olds has been accompanied by an upward trend in vaping. “Since it was first measured in 2017,
nicotine vaping in the past 30 days has nearly tripled among young adults to 16.1% in 2021,” the report says. “Nicotine vaping in the past 12 months was reported by 21.8%, just below the all-time high of 23.6% in 2019.”

Between 2017 and 2021, as the prevalence of past-month vaping in this age group rose by 160 percent, the prevalence of past-month cigarette smoking fell by 39 percent. Those trends are not consistent with Rosenbaum’s theory that more vaping means more smoking. But they are consistent with the theory that many young adults are choosing to vape instead of smoke.

The FDA ostensibly would like to see more of that. The whole premise of approving the sale of ENDS as “appropriate for the protection of the public health”—the standard the FDA is supposed to apply under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act—is that it will help reduce tobacco-related morbidity and mortality by offering smokers a much less hazardous way to consume nicotine. Yet the FDA claims to be unpersuaded that flavor variety plays an important role for smokers who have made that potentially lifesaving switch or might be interested in doing so.

The FDA contradictorily insists that flavor variety is important to teenagers. It thinks at least some of them will eschew vaping if tobacco is the only flavor they can find. The possibility that some teenagers therefore will smoke instead does not enter into the FDA’s calculations at all. And it dismisses the danger that the same thing will happen among adults, saying ENDS manufacturers have not produced enough evidence to that effect.

Contrary to its legal duty, the FDA has not carefully weighed the costs and benefits of its supposedly youth-protecting policy. Instead, it refuses to admit there are any costs to consider.

The post New Survey Data Cast Further Doubt on the FDA's Opposition to Flavored E-Cigarettes appeared first on Reason.com.

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Back In The Studio

In 2017 and 2018, Randy Barnett and I spent nearly eight hours in the studio to create the thirteen-hour video library for An Introduction to Constitutional Law. Four years later, we were back in the studio to record videos for the Second Edition of the book. The new collection will include some new recent cases like Dobbs, Bruen, and American Legion. We also recorded several classic cases that should have made the cut in the First Edition, including Gideon, Engel, Baker, Mirada, and a few other gems. Stay tuned for more information. The book be published in November.

(Pro tip: we only use footage above the waist, so wear comfortable shoes.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Back In The Studio appeared first on Reason.com.

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New Survey Data Cast Further Doubt on the FDA’s Opposition to Flavored E-Cigarettes


FDA Commissioner Robert Califf testifying

A federal appeals court this week sided with several companies whose applications to sell nicotine vaping products in a variety of flavors were rejected by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown noted yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that the FDA’s decisions were “arbitrary and capricious” because the agency ignored marketing and age-verification plans aimed at preventing underage vaping. But as Judge Robin Rosenbaum noted in her dissent, the manufacturers’ victory probably will be short-lived, because the FDA seems dead set against allowing the sales of vaping products in flavors other than tobacco.

That position is puzzling, since former smokers who have switched to vaping overwhelmingly prefer nontobacco flavors, and the FDA acknowledges that “electronic nicotine delivery systems” (ENDS) hold great promise as a harm-reducing alternative to cigarettes. But the FDA insists there is no solid evidence that flavor variety makes vaping more appealing to adult smokers, even as it worries that flavor variety makes vaping more appealing to teenagers. So when the FDA reconsiders these applications on remand from the 11th Circuit, it is almost certain to reject them again, notwithstanding the steps that the companies are taking to keep their products away from underage consumers.

The FDA’s opposition to flavor variety is driven by concern about an “epidemic” of adolescent vaping. But as new survey data from the government-sponsored Monitoring the Future (MTF) study confirm, the surge in electronic cigarette use by teenagers that alarmed the FDA in 2018 and 2019 is already receding, even though adults can still buy flavored ENDS that remain on the market because the FDA has not yet decided whether to allow them or has not taken enforcement action against them. Those data also indicate that adolescent smoking continued to decline as vaping became more popular. The picture is similar for young adults: As vaping continued to rise among 19- to 30-year-olds in 2021, cigarette smoking hit a record low.

These trends suggest that we are seeing precisely the sort of harm-reducing substitution that the FDA claims to want. The data certainly are not consistent with the idea that the availability of ENDS has resulted in more smoking. Yet Judge Rosenbaum, who seems to think the FDA’s opposition to flavored ENDS is well-grounded, avers that “vaping has been shown to be a gateway to smoking combustible cigarettes.” She cites no evidence to support that claim, which seems highly implausible in light of the continuing decline in smoking among teenagers and adults.

The annual MTF survey, which University of Michigan researchers conducts under contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse, includes students in the eighth, 10th, and 12th grades. In 2021, it shows, the prevalence of past-month nicotine vaping fell sharply in all three grades.

That rate peaked at 10.5 percent in 2020 among eighth-graders before falling to 7.6 percent last year. Among 10th- and 12th-graders, it peaked at 19.9 percent and 25.5 percent, respectively, in 2019 and had fallen to 13.1 percent and 19.6 percent, respectively, by last year. Between 2019 and 2021, the prevalence of “daily” vaping (defined as use on 20 or more occasions in the previous 30 days) fell from 2 percent to 1.1 percent among eighth-graders, from 6.8 percent to 2.5 percent among 10th-graders, and from 11.6 percent to 5.4 percent among 12th-graders.

These findings are broadly consistent with results from the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), which is sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That survey shows the prevalence of past-month e-cigarette use by high school students peaking at 27.5 percent in 2019 before falling to 11.3 percent in 2021. Even though adults still have access to ENDS in a variety of flavors, the “epidemic” decried by the FDA and the CDC seems to be fading fast.

Neither survey provides any evidence of the “gateway” that Rosenbaum perceives. On the contrary, the downward trend in adolescent smoking continued even when vaping was rising sharply. Among 12th-graders in the MTF survey, the prevalence of past-month cigarette smoking fell from 10.3 percent in 2011 to 2 percent in 2021. During the same period, the prevalence of “daily” cigarette smoking fell from 4.3 percent to 0.8 percent. In the NYTS, the prevalence of past-month cigarette smoking among high school students fell from 15.8 percent in 2011 to 1.9 percent last year.

There is reason to think that ENDS, far from interfering with the decline in adolescent smoking, hastened that downward trend, which accelerated as vaping took off. The replacement of smoking by vaping is indisputably an improvement in terms of “public health,” which the FDA claims to be promoting. But the agency instead portrays it as a grave danger to the youth of America. When it comes to teenagers, the FDA refuses even to consider the positive impact of such substitution.

A 2019 analysis of NYTS data found that frequent e-cigarette use was concentrated among teenagers who were current or former smokers. So far the recent decline in adolescent vaping has not led to an uptick in smoking, which makes sense if casual users, rather than teenagers who vape instead of smoking, account for most of the drop. But the FDA should be wary of any policy that makes cigarettes easier to obtain than ENDS or makes ENDS less appealing to people who otherwise would be smoking. Over the long term, the upshot could be more rather than fewer smoking-related deaths.

Logically, that analysis should include teenagers as well as adults. But the FDA insists that the health benefits of substituting ENDS for cigarettes don’t count when vapers are younger than 21. So let’s consider what the MTF data tell us about the potential cost of refusing to let adults buy the vaping products they demonstrably want.

“Cigarette smoking among young adults has been declining steadily since
2004 and reached new historic lows in 2021,” an MTF report notes. “Cigarette use in the past 30 days decreased by more than half in the past decade,” from 21.2 percent in 2011 to 9 percent in 2021.

In recent years, that downward trend in smoking by 19-to-30-year-olds has been accompanied by an upward trend in vaping. “Since it was first measured in 2017,
nicotine vaping in the past 30 days has nearly tripled among young adults to 16.1% in 2021,” the report says. “Nicotine vaping in the past 12 months was reported by 21.8%, just below the all-time high of 23.6% in 2019.”

Between 2017 and 2021, as the prevalence of past-month vaping in this age group rose by 160 percent, the prevalence of past-month cigarette smoking fell by 39 percent. Those trends are not consistent with Rosenbaum’s theory that more vaping means more smoking. But they are consistent with the theory that many young adults are choosing to vape instead of smoke.

The FDA ostensibly would like to see more of that. The whole premise of approving the sale of ENDS as “appropriate for the protection of the public health”—the standard the FDA is supposed to apply under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act—is that it will help reduce tobacco-related morbidity and mortality by offering smokers a much less hazardous way to consume nicotine. Yet the FDA claims to be unpersuaded that flavor variety plays an important role for smokers who have made that potentially lifesaving switch or might be interested in doing so.

The FDA contradictorily insists that flavor variety is important to teenagers. It thinks at least some of them will eschew vaping if tobacco is the only flavor they can find. The possibility that some teenagers therefore will smoke instead does not enter into the FDA’s calculations at all. And it dismisses the danger that the same thing will happen among adults, saying ENDS manufacturers have not produced enough evidence to that effect.

Contrary to its legal duty, the FDA has not carefully weighed the costs and benefits of its supposedly youth-protecting policy. Instead, it refuses to admit there are any costs to consider.

The post New Survey Data Cast Further Doubt on the FDA's Opposition to Flavored E-Cigarettes appeared first on Reason.com.

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via IFTTT

Back In The Studio

In 2017 and 2018, Randy Barnett and I spent nearly eight hours in the studio to create the thirteen-hour video library for An Introduction to Constitutional Law. Four years later, we were back in the studio to record videos for the Second Edition of the book. The new collection will include some new recent cases like Dobbs, Bruen, and American Legion. We also recorded several classic cases that should have made the cut in the First Edition, including Gideon, Engel, Baker, Mirada, and a few other gems. Stay tuned for more information. The book be published in November.

(Pro tip: we only use footage above the waist, so wear comfortable shoes.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Back In The Studio appeared first on Reason.com.

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Japan Is Reopening Nuclear Power Plants and Planning To Build New Ones


A nuclear plant in Japan

Rationality about nuclear power seems to be breaking out across the globe over the past month. First, Germany announced as a response to Russia’s natural gas blackmail that it will keep open three perfectly good nuclear power plants that it was planning to shut down this year. Germany has already closed 14 other plants in an absurd overreaction to the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns caused by a giant tsunami hitting those coastal nuclear power plants.

Even la-la land politicians have begun to realize that running California using electricity generated solely from unreliable wind and solar power is a fantasy. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has now proposed a plan to keep the Golden State’s only remaining nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon operating for at least another 10 years. That plant currently generates enough electricity to meet the needs of nearly 3 million households.

Speaking of Fukushima, according to the Financial Times, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has announced that the government plans to allow the restart of at least 10 more of the nuclear power plants it shuttered after the 2011 disaster. In addition, Kishida is pushing for research on and the construction of new safer nuclear plants as a way to protect Japanese consumers from erratic global fossil fuel markets and reduce his country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Kishida foresees Japan becoming a major exporter of nuclear generation technology to power hungry developing countries around the world.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) finally took another tiny step toward nuclear power rationality in late July when it directed its staff to certify NuScale’s small modular reactor design for use in this country. It’s worth noting that NuScale submitted its application to the NRC on December 31, 2016. As I have earlier reported, at the NRC’s stately pace of regulatory reform, the first innovative nuclear reactors designed by American companies may well begin operation in Eastern Europe before they get built in this country.

The post Japan Is Reopening Nuclear Power Plants and Planning To Build New Ones appeared first on Reason.com.

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California Advances Plan To Ban Gas Vehicle Sales by 2035


Electric car recharging

Two years ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom called on state regulators to develop a plan to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035. This week, those regulators are obliging him.

The New York Times reports that regulators with the California Air Resources Board today are expected to vote to implement a ban that will be phased in over the next decade:

The rule, issued by the California Air Resources Board, will require that all new cars sold in the state by 2035 be free of greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide. The rule also sets interim targets, requiring that 35 percent of new passenger vehicles sold by 2026 produce zero emissions. That requirement climbs to 68 percent by 2030.

Supporters of the ban see California as leading the way to what will eventually become a new standard, the elimination of gas-powered vehicles as a mechanism of reducing polluting emissions across the country and replacing them with electric vehicles (E.V.).

The Times notes that it’s not clear that this goal is even achievable within this time frame. John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, warns that factors like inflation, availability of infrastructure, and pricing issues could affect any attempt to force this goal.

California currently has more than 560,000 registered electric vehicles as of December 2021, the most of any state. While that sounds like a lot, California has nearly 14 million registered vehicles operating in the state. So, even though Californians have been more agreeable to adopting electric cars (thanks in part to all the government-funded subsidies, of course), the percentage of those who drive them is still very low. Even the governor’s office’s own bragging notes that only 12 percent of light-duty vehicle sales in California in 2021 were electric vehicles.

Then there’s the question of where all the energy needed to power these vehicles will come from. When Newsom first announced this plan two years ago, he was also essentially declaring war on fracking and fossil fuels in general. At the same time, the state’s renewable energy systems weren’t providing nearly enough electricity to power the state’s grid, and they still aren’t. While E.V.s may not emit carbon gases on their own, they are dependent on a power grid that is heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

Newsom also seemed to have no interest back then in nuclear power as an important tool in producing the energy needed to make his plan a reality. Replacing all gas-powered vehicles with E.V.s could increase energy consumption by around a third, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

It appears that Newsom may finally be acknowledging that he’s not going to be meeting these goals without nuclear power. California regularly struggles to produce enough electricity for residents in the summer as it is. Imagine millions of E.V.s plugging into the grid. Earlier this month, Newsom called for Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant to remain open. It’s the state’s only remaining nuclear plant and had been scheduled to be closed in 2025. He wants to extend the power plant’s life by another 10 years to make sure the state keeps the lights on.

The Associated Press notes that environmentalists see this as a betrayal, which should be treated as an example of how some (but not all) of these activists operate off vibes and feelings and don’t really grasp what needs to be done to transition away from fossil fuels. If you don’t want to pave over the entire Mojave Desert with solar panels, you need a plan to not just stabilize California’s power grid but also expand it to account for all these E.V.s that are supposed to help the environment.

Of course, bans are just generally bad ideas, and most certainly Californians who want to buy gas-powered vehicles are going to purchase them in other states and bring them to California. Since Newsom isn’t willing to wait for technological advancements and market forces to naturally expand E.V. sales, California will probably spend billions in subsidies and rebates to encourage adoption. This will likely result in a wealth transfer upward as poorer taxpayers who can’t afford vehicles end up subsidizing E.V. purchases. And a massive state-funded plan tossing around the billions necessary to pull all this off will foster possible corruption and fraud along the way among people who are looking to cash in on whatever money the state is tossing out.

The post California Advances Plan To Ban Gas Vehicle Sales by 2035 appeared first on Reason.com.

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Japan Is Reopening Nuclear Power Plants and Planning To Build New Ones


A nuclear plant in Japan

Rationality about nuclear power seems to be breaking out across the globe over the past month. First, Germany announced as a response to Russia’s natural gas blackmail that it will keep open three perfectly good nuclear power plants that it was planning to shut down this year. Germany has already closed 14 other plants in an absurd overreaction to the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns caused by a giant tsunami hitting those coastal nuclear power plants.

Even la-la land politicians have begun to realize that running California using electricity generated solely from unreliable wind and solar power is a fantasy. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has now proposed a plan to keep the Golden State’s only remaining nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon operating for at least another 10 years. That plant currently generates enough electricity to meet the needs of nearly 3 million households.

Speaking of Fukushima, according to the Financial Times, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has announced that the government plans to allow the restart of at least 10 more of the nuclear power plants it shuttered after the 2011 disaster. In addition, Kishida is pushing for research on and the construction of new safer nuclear plants as a way to protect Japanese consumers from erratic global fossil fuel markets and reduce his country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Kishida foresees Japan becoming a major exporter of nuclear generation technology to power hungry developing countries around the world.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) finally took another tiny step toward nuclear power rationality in late July when it directed its staff to certify NuScale’s small modular reactor design for use in this country. It’s worth noting that NuScale submitted its application to the NRC on December 31, 2016. As I have earlier reported, at the NRC’s stately pace of regulatory reform, the first innovative nuclear reactors designed by American companies may well begin operation in Eastern Europe before they get built in this country.

The post Japan Is Reopening Nuclear Power Plants and Planning To Build New Ones appeared first on Reason.com.

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California Advances Plan To Ban Gas Vehicle Sales by 2035


Electric car recharging

Two years ago, California Gov. Gavin Newsom called on state regulators to develop a plan to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles in the state by 2035. This week, those regulators are obliging him.

The New York Times reports that regulators with the California Air Resources Board today are expected to vote to implement a ban that will be phased in over the next decade:

The rule, issued by the California Air Resources Board, will require that all new cars sold in the state by 2035 be free of greenhouse gas emissions like carbon dioxide. The rule also sets interim targets, requiring that 35 percent of new passenger vehicles sold by 2026 produce zero emissions. That requirement climbs to 68 percent by 2030.

Supporters of the ban see California as leading the way to what will eventually become a new standard, the elimination of gas-powered vehicles as a mechanism of reducing polluting emissions across the country and replacing them with electric vehicles (E.V.).

The Times notes that it’s not clear that this goal is even achievable within this time frame. John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, warns that factors like inflation, availability of infrastructure, and pricing issues could affect any attempt to force this goal.

California currently has more than 560,000 registered electric vehicles as of December 2021, the most of any state. While that sounds like a lot, California has nearly 14 million registered vehicles operating in the state. So, even though Californians have been more agreeable to adopting electric cars (thanks in part to all the government-funded subsidies, of course), the percentage of those who drive them is still very low. Even the governor’s office’s own bragging notes that only 12 percent of light-duty vehicle sales in California in 2021 were electric vehicles.

Then there’s the question of where all the energy needed to power these vehicles will come from. When Newsom first announced this plan two years ago, he was also essentially declaring war on fracking and fossil fuels in general. At the same time, the state’s renewable energy systems weren’t providing nearly enough electricity to power the state’s grid, and they still aren’t. While E.V.s may not emit carbon gases on their own, they are dependent on a power grid that is heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

Newsom also seemed to have no interest back then in nuclear power as an important tool in producing the energy needed to make his plan a reality. Replacing all gas-powered vehicles with E.V.s could increase energy consumption by around a third, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

It appears that Newsom may finally be acknowledging that he’s not going to be meeting these goals without nuclear power. California regularly struggles to produce enough electricity for residents in the summer as it is. Imagine millions of E.V.s plugging into the grid. Earlier this month, Newsom called for Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant to remain open. It’s the state’s only remaining nuclear plant and had been scheduled to be closed in 2025. He wants to extend the power plant’s life by another 10 years to make sure the state keeps the lights on.

The Associated Press notes that environmentalists see this as a betrayal, which should be treated as an example of how some (but not all) of these activists operate off vibes and feelings and don’t really grasp what needs to be done to transition away from fossil fuels. If you don’t want to pave over the entire Mojave Desert with solar panels, you need a plan to not just stabilize California’s power grid but also expand it to account for all these E.V.s that are supposed to help the environment.

Of course, bans are just generally bad ideas, and most certainly Californians who want to buy gas-powered vehicles are going to purchase them in other states and bring them to California. Since Newsom isn’t willing to wait for technological advancements and market forces to naturally expand E.V. sales, California will probably spend billions in subsidies and rebates to encourage adoption. This will likely result in a wealth transfer upward as poorer taxpayers who can’t afford vehicles end up subsidizing E.V. purchases. And a massive state-funded plan tossing around the billions necessary to pull all this off will foster possible corruption and fraud along the way among people who are looking to cash in on whatever money the state is tossing out.

The post California Advances Plan To Ban Gas Vehicle Sales by 2035 appeared first on Reason.com.

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Apple’s Diabolical Plan To Control The Ads

Apple’s Diabolical Plan To Control The Ads

Authored by Jack Raines via Young Money,

Season 19 of the popular comedy television show “South Park” premiered in Fall 2015. If you are an avid South Park fan, you may remember this season for its introduction of “PC Principal,” an over-the-top social justice warrior/elementary school principal.

However, there was an underlying sinister plot to the entire season as well: Internet ads had become sentient, and they were taking over the world by manipulating human behavior.

In the clip linked below, Eric Cartman gives a detailed monologue about the rise of ads from simple television advertisements to cleverly disguised internet ads.

The idea that internet ads are sentient beings trying to wipe out mankind is as comical as it is preposterous, but Cartman’s timeline of ad development is surprisingly accurate. A little bit too accurate.

On a long enough timeline, every large company eventually becomes an ad network.

Don’t believe me? Facebook (Meta?), originally a social network that allowed friends to connect over the internet, built a $500B business as an advertisement platform.

Alphabet, the parent company of both Google and YouTube, generated $55B in ad revenue in Q1 2022.

Amazon may very well be the fastest-growing ad network in the world right now.

Search for literally anything on Amazon. Maybe… vacuum cleaners. Check out the results. At first glance, it’s just a list of products, right? Look closely in the bottom-right corner:

Do you see it?

Tricky tricky, Hoover Vacuum Cleaners! These sponsored product placements are, in the world of advertising, prime real estate. Amazon is the one-stop shop to purchase literally anything online, and Amazon has more data on consumer product purchases and inquiries than any other e-commerce platform.

A gold mine of consumer data and millions of page views per day means that Amazon can charge top dollar for these ad placements. And charge top dollar they have. In 2021, Amazon’s ads were worth more than the entire global newspaper industry.

This is a feature, not a bug, of well-scaled businesses. While we traditionally think of “advertising” as a media-focused activity primarily allocated to television, print, and radio, advertisers aren’t worried about the medium. They are concerned with the reachable audience.

Pre-internet, massive audiences were only reachable through traditional media channels. Post-internet, massive audiences are reachable… everywhere. In scaling billion (and trillion) dollar businesses, the world’s biggest tech companies have all built large, engaged audiences.

These large, engaged audiences are extremely valuable.

Facebook built an audience of friends who want to connect. Amazon built an audience of online shoppers. Google built an audience of people who need to find information right now. 

You get the idea.

No one sets out to build an ad business from scratch, but every business, at a certain scale, eventually sells advertisements as a byproduct of its own success. If advertisers are willing to pay thousands, millions, or billions for access to your audience, it’s a no-brainer.

Last quarter, Netflix suffered its first subscriber loss in more than a decade. The result? They announced a partnership with Microsoft for an upcoming lower-priced, ad-supported subscription. Growth stalled on their primary product, may as well sell ads.

With large enough audiences, individuals can become ad platforms too. Look no further than TikTok and Instagram stars for evidence. Fitness junkies sell supplements and athletic clothing. Travel influencers shout out different hostels and vacation spots.

Even Uber also offers car-top advertisements through its “Out of Home” program, which lets your local barbershop buy ad space on the roof of your 3 AM ride home.

On a long enough timeline, regardless of the business model, everyone sells ads.

Yet for a while, one tech giant largely avoided the ad game altogether: Apple. Despite the rest of the tech giants building advertisement empires, Apple remained focused on its hardware and software products.

While Apple has long included app store advertisements at the top of its search results, its 2019 ad revenue was a “measly” $500M.

In comparison, Facebook did $69B in 2019 ad revenue, and Amazon did $13B in ad revenue in the same year.

However, everything changed in April 2021 when Apple launched its iOS 14.5. While iOS 14.5 brought several updates, the biggest by far was an overhauled stance on user privacy. With this update, targeted advertising became much more difficult.

Before 14.5, 3rd-party sites (read: Facebook and Google) could access your data through software development kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs) embedded in different applications. I could try to explain the intricacies of this, but I’m not a tech guy.

This Vox article, however, does a fantastic job of explaining what this process looked like.

For instance, if a developer wants to let users sign into an app with their Facebook accounts, they’d want Facebook’s Login SDK. If their app needs maps or map data, they could use Google’s Map SDK. Without SDKs, developers would have to build those things entirely from scratch. That’s time-consuming and could be beyond a small developer’s abilities or budgets. SDKs may also help apps communicate with third parties through what is called an application programming interface, or API. Using the Facebook Login SDK as an example again, the SDK helps the developer build and implement the sign-in feature in their app, while the API allows the app and Facebook to communicate with each other so the sign-in can happen…

Here’s where the tracking comes in. The data your device’s app sends to a third party can be used to build a profile of the app’s user, which advertisers can then use for targeted ads.

Vox

Because Facebook and Google sign-ins were on pretty much every application, these sites had access through their APIs to a ton of consumer information. This information was then used by these sites to build a profile of “you”, which would be used to share more relevant ads with you when you were on these sites.

Your first reaction is probably “tracking is bad!” because we consumers tend to value our privacy. However, this “tracking” provides you with more relevant ads, and it provides many businesses with higher sales conversions.

If I’m planning a ski trip, and I’m researching different ski resorts, it would be much better for me, the consumer, to receive social media ads for ski rentals and lift tickets, not swimsuit discounts.

Because of the accuracy of these ads (especially Facebook ads), many small businesses, such as e-commerce shops on Shopify, would use Facebook ads to drive traffic. These ads were extremely effective for generating high conversion rates at low costs, making them a primary marketing method for online businesses.

Before 14.5, iPhone users could technically opt out of API tracking, but you had to dig deep into your settings for the switch. Since the release of 14.5, you have seen this pop-up window anytime an app wants access to your information.

This change, which Apple calls App Tracking Transparency (ATT), has been quite effective. Now, only ~20% of users opt-in to 3rd-party tracking.

Facebook was, of course, furious. Mark Zuckerberg launched a massive PR campaign saying that Apple was attacking the “free internet”, and small businesses could see a 60% reduction in sales per dollar spent on social media ads.

Facebook certainly wasn’t launching this campaign out of the goodness of their hearts; their bottom line would be materially impacted by less effective targeted ads, as business spend on these ads would drop. However, Zuck and Co still make a convincing argument: small business sales would be impacted.

Tim Cook didn’t back down. In fact, he painted Apple as a guardian of consumer data.

“Technology does not need vast troves of personal data, stitched together across dozens of websites and apps, in order to succeed,” Cook said. “Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it. And we’re here today because the path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom. If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform.”

And Cook makes a good argument! The case for minimizing the tracking capabilities of technology companies in the name of consumer privacy is respectable.

But was Apple really concerned with protecting privacy, or was it looking to kneecap the competition?

AppsFlyer released an advertising Performance Index that covered the second half of 2021, and guess who was the best ad network for mobile marketers on iPhones and iPads?

Apple Search Ads!

These are what you see in the App Store at the top of search results.

Apple’s ad network has significantly expanded since Apple changed marketing practices, hitting 60% of all its business from the first half of 2020 in just seven weeks in 2021.

Consider me shocked, and I mean shocked, that after implementing “privacy updates” that hurt other sites like Facebook Meta, Apple crushed its 2020 numbers in a fraction of the time in 2021.

Why the outperformance? Because of a quirk with iOS 14.5. This update prevented the sharing of information between different parties (i.e. Facebook accessing data from other apps). It did not prevent the exchange of information within a single platform.

Since iPhone owners are Apple customers, and Apple Search Ads is part of Apple, Apple Search Ads can use different standards and methodologies to identify the right people for marketers’ ads.

ASA shows ads primarily in the App Store, and if you’re there, you’re likely there to search for and install apps. If Apple can get the right ad in front of you, you’re very likely to click on it and install it.

Tl;dr: Apple can gather and share your data with itself, but different parties can’t share your data with each other.

Pretty convenient outcome from this privacy update, considering that 113M+ Americans have iPhones, isn’t it?

And to top everything off, earlier this week, Apple’s VP of Advertising, Todd Teresi, said that he wants Apple’s ad business to increase from $4B annually to “double digits.”

So to recap the whole thing, Apple made a new rule that makes it pretty much impossible for companies to share consumer data with each other, and they publicly vilified “data sharing” to paint themselves as a guardian of consumer interests.

Meanwhile, they quietly benefited from their own rules that they don’t have to abide by, thanks to having a near monopoly on cell phone usage in the US.

While the FTC has been busy shutting down every Mark Zuckerberg acquisition under the sun, Apple has quietly positioned itself to dominate the online advertising market of the 2020s.

Shoutout to evil emperor Tim Cook for the power play of a lifetime.

Calls on $AAPL.

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Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/25/2022 – 14:05

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3OpLaZY Tyler Durden