The Biden administration just approved a rail merger, because of course they did.

I’ve got a couple longer pieces in the works right now, including a followup on the Norfolk Southern disaster in East Palestine, OH. This is sort of peripheral to that. I think I’ve mentioned in the past that railroads are “natural monopolies“, and monopolies are a serious problem for society, if they’re being operated for private gain. From that point of view, I suppose one could argue that a rail company merger is no big deal – they’re already monopolies of a sort, so does it really matter if they become more monopolistic? Well, I think so. At the very least, it’s a matter of principle. As I’ve already said in the past, I’m in favor of the government having a monopoly on rail in the United States, but that’s with the (optimistic) assumption that it would be run for the benefit of the general population.

Unfortunately, that’s not what we’re talking about today. In the midst of national scrutiny on the industry, the Biden administration has apparently decided that they’re just fine with at least some corporate mergers:

U.S. federal regulators on Wednesday approved the first major railroad merger in more than two decades, a move that follows the East Palestine rail disaster and that critics warned would reduce competition, raise prices, cost jobs, and threaten safety.

The Surface Transportation Board (STB) approved Canadian Pacific Railway Limited’s proposed $31 billion acquisition of Kansas City Southern Railway Company, a merger that will create a single railroad linking Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The agency said the merger will take roughly 64,000 truckloads off the road and add more than 800 union jobs.

“The decision includes an unprecedented seven-year oversight period and contains many conditions designed to mitigate environmental impacts, preserve competition, protect railroad workers, and promote efficient passenger rail,” STB said, adding that it “also anticipates the merger will result in improvements in safety and the reduction of carbon emissions.”

However, opponents of the deal pointed to the East Palestine, Ohio disaster and other recent railroad accidents, which they said underscored the need for a more cautious approach to consolidation.

“The merger brings the total number of Class 1 railroads to six, down from over 100 just a few decades ago,” the progressive news site More Perfect Union noted on Twitter. “Corporate consolidation in the railroad industry compromises safety and risks lives by prioritizing profits and cutting corners to reduce costs.”

That shouldn’t even have to be said. Corporate consolidation always goes badly for working people. It’s only ever done to benefit those at the very top, whose class interests directly conflict with the interests of humanity as a whole. Even if one were to argue that this doesn’t change the motivations at play, a larger corporation has more power. It has more power over labor because it controls more of the job market, and it has more power over the government by virtue of the share of the economy represented by the newly merged corporation.

That latter factor may be the bigger concern, for me. As I’ve mentioned, when it comes to opposing labor power, the government is already on the side of the capitalists, but when it comes to lobbying, and making bids for special treatment, the only real limit seems to be the scale of resources available to the corporation in question.

This feels like yet another example of how the people running our society are either utterly clueless about the state of the world, or actively trying to make things worse.

Researchers say IPCC models under-estimate Arctic warming

Last month, I wrote about the likelihood that we’re under-estimating the amplifying feedbacks that can cause global warming to push itself along, even without further help from us. Today’s bit of news adds to that worry, though it’s focused on the Arctic. If you saw the video I posted about diving in an Antarctic lake, you’ll have some notion of the conditions involved in polar expeditions. Antarctica may be a harsher place than the Arctic in some ways, but in both cases, the brutal conditions make research extremely difficult, and often dangerous. This means that we’re pretty much always short on data from those regions, despite their importance in understanding the single biggest threat facing humanity.

In case it’s not clear to anyone, I think that climate research in general is underfunded, and that includes polar research. It’s so bad that at least one research team turned to crowdfunding (a campaign to which I contributed) to finance research in Greenland. This dearth of data seems to have lead to an unsurprising result – the climate models that the IPCC has been relying on seem to be falling behind the actual rate of change:

Two recent scientific studies involving researchers from the University of Gothenburg compared the results of the climate models with actual observations. They concluded that the warming of the Arctic Ocean will proceed at a much faster rate than projected by the climate models.

Models underestimate the consequences

“These climate models underestimate the consequences of climate change. In reality, the relatively warm waters in the Arctic regions are even warmer, and closer to the sea ice. Consequently, we believe that the Arctic sea ice will melt away faster than projected,” explains Céline Heuzé, climatologist at the University of Gothenburg and lead author of one of the studies.

Warm water flows into the Arctic Ocean via Fram Strait between Greenland and Svalbard. However, the volume of water in these ocean currents and its temperature in the climate models are too low, which is one of the reasons why the climate models’ projections will not be accurate. Even the stratification of the Arctic Ocean is incorrect. The researchers argue that since roughly half of the models project an increase and the other half a decrease in stratification, the consequences of global warming cannot be estimated accurately.

These days, I often feel a bit fatalistic about our ability to accurately estimate what’s coming. We’ve a solid understanding of what’s coming for longer than I’ve been alive, and the older I get, the more that fact makes the lack of drastic action unconscionable. What’s the point in having good warnings if they’re just going to be ignored in favor of insatiable greed? Well, part of the point is the effort to reshape society so that we can heed those warnings, and until we do reach that point, I think there’s at least some utility in being able to point to all the missed opportunities and corrupt choices from the aristocracy.

One of those “corrupt choices” is the ongoing under-funding of Arctic and Antarctic research (fossil fuel “research” doesn’t count, and will doom us all). It’s always hard to tell, in liberal societies, whether this kind of thing is deliberate neglect because a lack of certainty benefits fossil fuel corporations, or just a “passive” effect of a societal infrastructure primarily designed to serve capitalists. I think the lack of certainty about that is also something that benefits corporations, as neutrality and stagnation generally only serve those at the top. Regardless, whether its through political efforts or through crowdfunding, I agree with the conclusion of this research report:

Acquiring hard data must be prioritised

“This is a serious situation. If governments and organisations all over the world are going to rely on these climate models, they must be improved. Which is why research and data acquisition in the Arctic ocean must be prioritised. At present, we cannot provide a useful prediction of how quickly the Arctic sea ice is melting,” Céline Heuzé explains.

[…]

“We need a climate model that is tailored to the Arctic. In general, you can’t use the same model for the entire planet, as conditions vary considerably. A better idea would be to create a specific model for the Arctic that correctly factors in the processes occurring in the Arctic Ocean and surrounding land areas.”

If I do come across a funding project for research like this, I’ll be sure to post it.

It’s the first really nice day, so I’m writing outside!

I decided to try a slightly different process than normal for the update on the movement to Stop Cop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest, so that post will be up tomorrow, and today you get something like a stream of consciousness.

Work on The Inner Tower is going well, for the most part. I think I will never understand why my brain just refuses to cooperate sometimes, for no discernible reason. Even so, I’m following the map I laid out, and discovering an interesting landscape. There are a few geographic locations in that world that were established before I began the exploration that is writing a first draft. Beyond that, it’s been mostly blank, and the landscape has been filling in as I go.

When the plot of this thing started falling into my brain like Tetris blocks last year, I decided that I was going to be deliberately formulaic with my writing, and see what sort of interesting story I could create within more conventional limits. I say “more conventional”, because my first novel, Exits and Entrances, was very much experimental. The biggest difference you’ll probably notice, should you decide to read it, is that every other chapter is a short story that’s peripheral to the main plot. I don’t recall why I thought that was a good idea, but I think it turned out decently for a first novel. I don’t think I was a particularly good writer at that point in time, but I try to remember that there are books out there that are much worse by every metric I can think of, save popularity.

I will have to return to that particular laboratory, because there are two books still to write for that trilogy, but for my current project, I’ve chosen to run with a version of The Hero’s Journey, with a few other constraints and rules from bits of writing advice I’ve encountered over the years.

I guess you could say that this series just a different kind of experiment, but I think it’ll be a more familiar reading experience for regular “young adult” fantasy readers, at least for the first couple volumes. After that, things will get a little stranger, because I just can’t help myself.

Part of the reason you’re getting this particular blog post, is that I was getting tired of video posts, and I doubt I’m alone in that. The other part is that, after a cold snap in which we actually got snow, it’s the first classic Beautiful Spring Day since the sun went away. That means that I’m sitting at a folding table out in the middle of our little walled village, while His Holiness Saint Ray the Cat explores.

While there are cats and foxes that use the walls as a convenient path, His Holiness is to lazy, and too much of an indoor cat to even realize that that’s an option. This means that if I set myself up in the center of the village, I can keep an eye on both of the gates through which he might escape into the wilds of Dublin.

The birds around here are used to avoiding better hunters than he, and the only rodents I’ve seen have been invasive squirrels, so while I very much doubt he’s a threat to them, if he somehow manifests far more energy than he’s ever shown to date, and gets very lucky, Ireland will be no worse off for it. So far, though, while he occasionally looks very intently at a bird, he mainly just eats grass. Honestly, my main concern is that another cat will come in, because His Holiness is an asshole when other cats are present. I don’t know if it’s childhood trauma, lack of socialization, or some sort of territoriality, but every other cat he’s ever interacted with, has been The Enemy.

And on that note, I think I’m going to end this post and go indoors, because it looks like it’s going to rain soon. If you ever think that the weather where you live is too constant, come visit Dublin, where it really does change every hour or so.

Thank you for reading! If you liked this post, please share it around. If you read this blog regularly, please consider joining my small but wonderful group of patrons. Because of my immigration status, I’m not allowed to get a normal job, so my writing is all I have for the foreseeable future, and I’d love for it to be a viable career long-term. As part of that goal, I’m currently working on a young adult fantasy series, so if supporting this blog isn’t enough inducement by itself, for just $5/month you can work with me to name a place or character in that series!

Check out this interview about the movement to #StopCopCity

I’m working on an actual post catching up on events in Atlanta, but for tonight, I encourage you to check out this interview. Matthew Johnson does a great job breaking down what’s going on with “Cop City”, the dubious history of Atlanta PD, the very dubious police account behind their killing of a peaceful activist, and how things got to this point in the first place. The whole situation is a nightmare, and really underscores just how little say people have in the government that supposedly serves them.

Video: 10 Fascinating Lion Facts You Need To Know

Just a short post today. This video’s from a new channel that I might dip into again in the future. I’m not a huge fan of the clickbait-y content style, but I cannot deny that this video contains some cool facts about lions, and it also has… a certain something that I can’t quite put my finger on. Watch to the end, and let me know what you think.

 

Short-term and Long-term: Democratic Governor Makes Minnesota a Sanctuary for Trans People

I am, in general, pretty cynical about the U.S. electoral system. It’s designed to empower conservatism, and has been shaped to make change that benefits the working class nearly impossible. Yes, there are victories, but every single one has come as a result of decades of grueling and dangerous work by the people who most need that change. The Republicans want the U.S. to be a fascist, white supremacist state, in which the power of capitalists – the aristocracy – is unchallengeable, as long as they support the fascist agenda. The Democrats, or at least their leadership, still seem to want the world to be held in stasis in the mid 1990s, but will go along with social change when someone else does the work.

That’s not exactly a difficult choice to make, but neither is it a pleasant one. When it comes to foreign policy and the military-industrial complex, the two parties are virtually indistinguishable, though the Dems are, on rare occasions, a bit less hawkish. Biden won’t try to hunt down and murder trans people, but he’ll continue working to undermine any alternatives to capitalism, and to prevent things like universal healthcare.

In a lot of ways, at least to someone who pays attention, workers have become alienated from politics in a manner similar to how they’ve been alienated from their labor. It’s something that affects our lives on a daily basis, but we have very little say in how it goes. In both cases, getting change that helps us, and not just the capitalist class, requires us to work together outside of a system that very much does not want us to do that.

It’s frustrating, and for those working to make things better, it’s often exhausting. I can easily understand why so many people often try to avoid thinking about it. We can have massive demonstrations to change policing, and after paying a bit of lip service, the Democrats go ahead with giving cops more money, while the GOP accuses them of defunding – something they have neither the courage, nor the desire to do – and howls for more violence from police

That’s why I advocate for systemic change, outside of electoral politics. Our system does change, but it does so slowly, and at great cost. The decades it took to ban leaded gasoline, or to end segregation, or to get gay rights, or to get trans rights – people died during those delays, because of those delays. People are dying right now, because of the backlash against advances in trans rights.

And as hard as people fight for their right to their own damned lives in the United States, that barely touches the horrors of the military-industrial complex, and colonial economic policies. Find me any politician in the U.S., and I can find you a reason why they should not be trusted. Bernie defended the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and has voted for any number of objectionable things. Katie Porter just talked about how impressed she was by the far-right ethno-nationalist Benjamin Netanyahu, and her support for Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. I’m certain that a great many politicians are pressured into supporting stuff that they don’t like, but it’s often hard to tell when that’s the case, and when they just support bad things.

It’s discouraging. I said I get why people just tune out, but I also get why people become intensely invested in a version of anti-establishment politics that says, “both sides are the same, so let’s burn it all down”. If only it were so easy.

The road to revolutionary change is slow, difficult, and full of frustration. Personally, I lean towards the opinion that – for all their evils – it’s better to vote for the Democrats in the short term. I say that not because I think they’ll do what I want, but because I don’t think that what I want can even be done, within the U.S. political system. From that perspective, I’m not looking for who will fix things for me, I’m looking for who will do the least harm and/or the most good, within the confines of our unjust and corrupt government. The revolution, of course, will have to come from the bottom.

I think there’s a danger in that perspective as well, however. We need systemic change, so anything short of that is inadequate, right? Well, no. I don’t think so.

I was, for a short time, intrigued by accelerationism – the idea that real change will arise spontaneously when conditions become unbearable. This is basically identical to the justification for the cruel and deadly sanctions placed on places like Iraq or Cuba – sure, it hurts the populace, but that’ll just give them incentive to rise up and free themselves from their oppressive rulers! Maybe that’s how it worked in France that one time, but in general, when people are struggling to survive, that takes up most of their time and energy. I think that the social networking that can come from that struggle can, in theory, become the foundation for a future revolution, but that requires the addition of time and resources beyond bare survival.

That’s why it’s so important that, as we work for a better future, we do what we can to save and improve people’s lives now, even if each improvement is far to small, and far too slow for any real satisfaction.

Fortunately, some changes are pretty big, especially for those people directly affected:

[Minnesota Governor Tim Walz] signed Executive Order 23-03 on Wednesday. It orders state agencies to protect people seeking gender-affirming healthcare in Minnesota, as well as the entities that provide it. State agencies are also specifically forbidden from providing information or assisting investigations to penalize trans people and their allies for seeking transition-related care. Judgments from other states that terminate parental rights because the parent provided their child with transition-related care will not be recognized by the state of Minnesota, and the state will also refuse to comply with subpoenas that seek information about trans people who travel to Minnesota to obtain care.

Additionally, the executive order tasks the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) with preparing a report that summarizes the literature on the safety and effectiveness of gender-affirming care, to be presented to the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Legislature by the end of the year. The order also strengthens protections for insurance coverage of transition-related care and mandates MDH to refuse to approve HMO contracts that discriminate against people on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

Noting that other states have “curtailed access to, or even criminalized” transition-related care, Walz’s executive order recognizes that “these actions pose a grave threat to the health of LGBTQIA+ individuals by preventing them from affirming their gender identities through safe and scientifically proven treatments.”

The executive order will be effective 15 days from the date of publication. It comes alongside a bill, HF 146, that would enshrine these same protections into Minnesota state law. Introduced by Rep. Leigh Finke, the state’s first out trans legislator, the bill will likely pass the House in the coming weeks, but Governor Walz told PBS that the escalating attacks on trans rights in other states made the need for such protections more urgent.

“Families who have fled are already here, and many more are planning to come,” Finke told the Minnesota Reformer. “We’re going to be ready to take care of them, and to provide them with the health care they need.”

This is great news, and it’s why I tend to prefer Democrats. Trans people, and the parents of trans kids, have been fleeing Republican-controlled states for a little while now, because of the growing efforts there to carry out a trans genocide. The problem is, there are so many anti-trans laws, and they’re coming so fast, it can be hard to know where to flee to. Moving is expensive, especially if you’re moving to a different state, so it’s not hard to believe that someone could move to a place that seems safer, see that change, and be stuck because they used up their resources. Journalist and activist Erin Reed has been maintaining a risk assessment map for just this purpose, and while she still needs to update it to include the latest info, she has said that this bill will upgrade Minnesota to being among the best states in the U.S. for trans people to be able to live their lives in relative peace.

I am especially glad to hear that Minnesota will, explicitly, not help those states seeking to persecute trans people. The companion bill, as far as I can parse the language, expands emergency jurisdiction over children present in Minnesota even if that’s not officially their home state. I believe the standing law gives that jurisdiction in cases of abandonment or abuse, while the new law expands that to include the inability to get gender-affirming care. I think there’s a strong argument for that inability being a form of abuse, but given how many people clearly disagree, it’s good to see it spelled out like that.

In the long term, the USian fascist movement is still going strong, and there’s still a very real danger that the GOP will take over the federal government again, and do far more damage than the last time. As I said earlier, the U.S. is set up to empower the aristocracy, and to empower conservatism. It will take much, much more than this to actually safeguard trans rights, or any other civil rights, for that matter. It will take more than this to end US support for fascists and their ilk in other countries. It will take more than this to build the world we want. There’s a lot more work to do, for the long-term.

Humans don’t experience life in the long-term, though, and this isn’t just me saying “people can’t plan ahead”. When we’re hungry, we need food. When we’re cold, we need warmth. When we’re being attacked, we need defense. It does no good to promise that those things will be available to us in 20 years, because if we don’t get them now, we won’t be here to collect then, even if that promise isn’t a lie.

Laws like this save lives, and while that should be enough to support them as-is, laws like this also move us towards our long-term goals. Those lives that are saved or improved by legal protections, are very likely to be a powerful part of continuing movements for liberation. Our dream of a better world depends on our collective power, and that depends on all of us caring for and protecting each other now. That doesn’t mean we try to make the movement risk-free, but rather that we do everything we can to ensure that people can choose what risks they take on. All we have is us, and so it’s extremely important that we take care of, and empower “us”.

I doubt that governor Waltz wants all the same changes I do, and I’m sure he’d be happy to send in the police to oppose a movement for economic democracy, for example. I won’t say that none of that matters, but it matters far less than this does, at this point in time. This executive order is a clear win, and I hope that HF 146 is passed into law very soon. The fascists are coming for trans people right now, and it’s great to see people in government fighting back in a materially effective manner.

Thank you for reading! If you liked this post, please share it around. If you read this blog regularly, please consider joining my small but wonderful group of patrons. Because of my immigration status, I’m not allowed to get a normal job, so my writing is all I have for the foreseeable future, and I’d love for it to be a viable career long-term. As part of that goal, I’m currently working on a young adult fantasy series, so if supporting this blog isn’t enough inducement by itself, for just $5/month you can work with me to name a place or character in that series!

Important Video: “Gender Criticals” & Autism

I’m not sure where I first encountered the despicable practice of using autistic people as a political weapon, but it was probably the anti-vax movement. Some time after that, I learned why so many autistic people hate the organization Autism Speaks, and not long after that, I started to become more aware of how our society systematically fails, abuses, and kills people with all sorts of disabilities and neurotypes. In recent years, the reactionary “Gender Critical” movement has been using the bigoted notion that autistic people don’t know themselves or their own experiences, to attack trans people. It’s something that requires dismissing what autistic trans people have to say, often while claiming that those same people “don’t have a voice”, and so need some Rowling-style “feminist” to speak for them.

Mica of the Youtube channel Ponderful does an excellent job dismantling this bullshit, and giving her perspective as an autistic cis woman of the sort that the transphobes claim to speak for. Fair warning, this video does get a bit dark, as it goes into topics such as the frequency with which disabled people are murdered by their parents and other caregivers, and abusive “treatments” for autism. It’s an informative video, and it closes out with comments from autistic trans people, because it turns out that they actually do know their own minds, and they have voices with which to speak for themselves.

 

Terrifying dive in Antarctic lake reveals bizarre, ancient life

This video follows a couple divers and their support team, as they cut through nine meters of ice (just under 30 feet, for my USian readers) to dive in the appropriately-named Lake Untersee, a large, freshwater lake on the edge of East Antarctica. It’s frozen over year-round, but there’s still plenty of liquid water, and as Jeff Goldbloom would say, life finds a way.

The picture shows fossilized stromatolites, cut into squares to show the many layers that made up the structure. The upper surface is covered with conical shapes, and you can see how the layers underneath built up to form them.

Normally when I cover research on or around Antarctica, it has to do with this planet’s climate, but Untersee is such a harsh and isolated location that the main interest, aside from studying what’s down there, is in how it might help us find life in extreme conditions on other planets.

What’s down there, it seems, is stromatolites. These are layered structures formed by microbes gluing sand and other stuff together into their microbial mat. Over many generations, they form the alien shapes you can see on the lake floor in the video below. These structures fossilize well, which is probably why stromatolites represent the oldest evidence of life we have on this planet.

The divers’ first attempt, after a few days of digging a hole in ice, was aborted after the rebreather apparatus malfunctioned and started putting chemical-tainted water into the tube one of the divers was supposed to be breathing from. Just after they got the divers out, there was a storm with 100mph/160kph winds that lasted 24 hours, after which they had to dig all the snow out of their diving hole.

I’ve never had a whole lot of interest in learning to use scuba gear. On the one hand, I think it’d be pretty cool to be able to poke around underwater for a while like that, but on the other hand, there are a lot of ways it can go wrong, not to mention that I definitely don’t have the money for a hobby like that. Even if I do take up diving someday, I can guarantee I’ll never try it in a place like Antarctica. I definitely see the appeal, but as with cave exploration, I’m afraid I may just be too much of a coward. As for diving in caves? Yeah, I’ll pass on that. Honestly, I think I’d lump Antarctic lake diving in with cave diving – it may be that there’s less of a maze, but if you’re in an enclosed bubble of water that you had to drill through 30 feet of ice to get through, that counts as a cave, to me.

That said, I’m very glad that there are people who want to take on challenges like that, because I love being able to see this footage.

 

 

.

Video: How pseudoscientific “911 call analysis” became a weapon against US citizens

Back in October, I posted a Münecat video dismantling the bullshit of “body language experts”, and one of the problems she points to is the destructive use of these so-called experts in the legal system. 911 call analysis seems to be a version of that, but instead of body language, we have cops and their ilk “analyzing” 911 calls, and arbitrarily deciding whether they think the person making the call is lying. This fits in well alongside polygraph tests and lying about evidence, as another tool police can use to try to bully or gaslight a person into making a false confession:

As you heard, her [20 year old] son initially said that his mom had killed herself, before realizing that she had been bound with a belt and stabbed many times.

The cops pulled him into an interrogation room and kept him there for 13 hours, convinced that he was the murderer. Why? Well, why on earth would he have assumed his mom committed suicide? (3:23)

They were convinced it was him, but eventually, the cops checked his location data on his phone and found that he was nowhere near his home when his mom was murdered, and DNA at the scene was connected to a man who had been arrested multiple times for burglary in the past and who was eventually convicted of the crime.

In the Rebecca Watson video below, you can hear the 911 call (there’s a content warning before that point, in case you need it), and yeah – the kid sounds all over the place, and initially mis-understood what he was seeing. Based on that, and some cop’s opinion of what he would do under those circumstances, they interrogated him for 13 hours. I think most of us are aware of how miserable it would be to be locked in a featureless room with a cop for 13 hours, constantly being accused of murder, and fed stories about what a shitty person you are. How much worse would that be if your mother had just been murdered? If you had found her body?

And all they had to do to avoid tormenting that poor man was check the location data on his phone, or wait for the DNA evidence. They didn’t do that first, because they care more about getting a conviction – any conviction – than they do about the danger of imprisoning, or executing, an innocent person. The more you dig into the policing system in the U.S., the more examples you find of cops just absolutely wrecking people’s lives because they’re too lazy, too cowardly, too sadistic, or too full of themselves to do their jobs properly.

Now, I don’t have a very large audience, but there’s always a chance someone will come along and read this, who might think I’m being too hard on cops. Maybe this is a technique that’s supported by science, or that was pushed on cops, right? Well, no.

In 2009, a cop named Tracy Harpster, from a small town in Ohio that rarely saw a murder, published a preliminary study in which he combed through 100 911 calls, half of which had been made by the person who was later convicted of the crime being reported. He did this to identify patterns, coming up with a list of features he noticed in the “guilty” calls, like not immediately pleading for help, not demonstrating sufficient urgency, being polite by using words like “sorry” and “thank you,” giving extraneous information, or insisting that the victim is dead when their condition isn’t 100% known to the caller.

Though Harpster had no scientific training, that kind of analysis IS normal and even necessary in science – it’s a first step that says “hey, here’s a pattern I noticed in THIS dataset.” But because the researcher at this point is specifically looking for ANY data points that stand out, literally looking for the anomalies, it’s impossible to say that those anomalies will be found in a larger dataset. For instance, if I have a bag of 100 different colored marbles, I can reach in, pull out a handful, and record what I notice: 7 blue marbles and 3 red. That doesn’t give me a definitive answer but a hypothesis: if you pull one more marble out of that bag, it has a 70% chance of being blue. The next step is to test that hypothesis by reaching in again and grabbing a new handful and seeing if the numbers line up. And then doing it again, and again, and again.

Harpster never bothered with that crucial second step of actually testing the hypothesis. Others did, with one study in 2020 and another from last year both finding no correlation between Harpster’s list and actual cases of deception. But those studies haven’t mattered, because Harpster’s preliminary analysis had already been shared by the FBI to law enforcement agencies across the country, who immediately started putting it to the test and finding great “success” at identifying criminals based on their 911 calls. These successes encouraged Harpster to start charging for 2-day training sessions, paid for by taxpayers, in which he trained investigators on how to use his magical checklist.

Investigators quickly realized that because there was no actual scientific backing for the checklist, they would have to sneak it into court cases without actually calling Harpster (or “trained” detectives) as an expert witness, since there are rules for what qualifies as expert testimony in court. ProPublica has reams of documents that catch prosecutors doing this red-handed, creating a playbook on how to use Harpster’s now-debunked pseudoscience in court without subjecting it to scrutiny:

“First, identify law enforcement witnesses who have taken Harpster’s course. Then tell them how to testify about the guilty indicators by broadly referencing training and experience. As Esteves, the prosecutor in Iowa, put it in an email: “Have them testify why this 911 call is inconsistent with an innocent caller, consistent with someone with a guilty mind.”

“Next, prime jurors during jury selection and opening arguments about how a normal person should and shouldn’t react in an emergency. Give them a transcript of the 911 call and then play the audio. “When they hear it,” a prosecutor in Louisiana once told Harpster, “it will be like a Dr. Phil ‘a-ha’ moment.” Finally, remind jurors about the indicators during closing arguments. “Reinforce all the incriminating sections of the call,” another prosecutor wrote, “omissions, lack of emotion, over emotion, failure to act appropriately.”

“Juries love it, it’s easy for them to understand,” Harpster once explained to a prosecutor, “unlike DNA which puts them to sleep.”

Cops lie. They lie all the time, and they lie to everyone. They lie to juries, they lie to attorneys, they lie to the general public, and they lie to judges. They’re trained to lie, encouraged to lie, and rewarded for lying, and they do not care how many lives they destroy. It seems unlikely to me that that will change so long as we maintain this unaccountable class of violent people, who are given rights and authority over everyone else. 

There is, of course, more to the story than these quotes. For the rest of it, check out the transcript linked at the top, or Rebecca Watson’s excellent video below:

 

The fossil fuel industry is pouring methane into the sky

A little while back, I shared the good news that the so-called “clathrate gun” was apparently no longer a serious cause for concern. I remain happy about that, but unfortunately there are other big sources of methane – all tied to fossil fuel extraction – that are contributing to climate change in a major way.

More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars.

This is why the focus on individual lifestyle choices has always been a massive red herring, and why I focus more on systemic/societal change. I haven’t owned a car since late 2009, and any decrease in humanity’s emissions from that choice was more than wiped out by the methane coming from any one of those facilities. Do what you can on the individual level, but if we don’t chance society, that won’t end up mattering. That’s doubly true, because fossil fuel corporations fully intend to extract every drop they can, no matter the harm done to everyone else:

Separate data also reveals 55 “methane bombs” around the world – fossil fuel extraction sites where gas leaks alone from future production would release levels of methane equivalent to 30 years of all US greenhouse gas emissions.

I guarantee you that there are more than 55 places around the world where new extraction is planned, and from which a horrifying amount of methane will leak. These 55 are just the really exceptional ones. Regardless, these findings support the long-standing view that we need to act a lot faster than we have been. The upside is that eliminating or dramatically reducing these emissions should, technically, be pretty easy:

Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today and there has been a “scary” surge since 2007, according to scientists. This acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say.

The two new datasets identify the sites most critical to preventing methane-driven disaster, as tackling leaks from fossil fuel sites is the fastest and cheapest way to slash methane emissions. Some leaks are deliberate, venting the unwanted gas released from underground while drilling for oil into the air, and some are accidental, from badly maintained or poorly regulated equipment.

Fast action would dramatically slow global heating as methane is short-lived in the atmosphere. An emissions cut of 45% by 2030, which the UN says is possible, would prevent 0.3C of temperature rise. Methane emissions therefore present both a grave threat to humanity, but also a golden opportunity to decisively act on the climate crisis.

“The current rise in methane looks very scary indeed,” said Prof Euan Nisbet, at Royal Holloway, University of London in the UK. “Methane acceleration is perhaps the largest factor challenging our Paris agreement goals. So removing the super-emitters is a no-brainer to slow the rise – you get a lot of bang for your buck.”

“Methane emissions are still far too high, especially as methane cuts are among the cheapest options to limit near-term global warming,” said Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency. “There is just no excuse.”

I believe the excuse is that solving these problems might slightly slow the rate at which fossil fuel executives keep getting richer. The world has been blessed with a great abundance of “low-hanging fruit” with regard to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and for the most part, those have been ignored. I full believe that this will also be ignored, unless there is real, scary pressure from the bottom.

It may be that as a movement rises, rooted in collective power, direct action, and the common good, the capitalists will begin making more dramatic changes in an effort to appease the masses, head off real change, and hold on to their power. I’ll celebrate those changes when they come, but given the past behavior of these people, I think it’s safe to say that they will not be enough. Not for dealing with the climate, and not for the goal of freedom, self-governance, and justice.

Methane leakage from the fossil fuel industry is not a new problem, and it’s already a crime against humanity that it hasn’t been dealt with. The longer this is allowed to continue, the more harm it does to all of us, and to future generations. They’ve shown that they will not voluntarily cease their campaign of destruction so they must be made to stop.

Edit: Someone on Mastodon pointed out that when methane reaches the end of its “life” in the atmosphere, it doesn’t just disappear – it largely turns into carbon dioxide, and keeps warming the earth that way.