That didn’t last long

The Memorandum of Understanding signed by the US and Iran was always on shaky ground. Many of its features were ambiguously phrased and depended upon conditional factors and careful sequencing of actions by the US, Israel, and Iran. The one thing that seemed to be definite was the full ending of the US naval blockade and the removal US forces from the proximity of Iran within 30 days, and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran. The US also said that it will immediately “issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and derivatives, and all associated services, including banking transactions, insurances, transportation, etc.” While Iran committed to opening the Strait, it openly declared that it would start charging tolls after 60 days and since this did not create any pushback from the US, one assumes that this will be the new normal. So one result of Trump’s war is that Iran will be permanently charging tolls where there had been none before. What a great negotiator Trump is!

The entire MOU is like a chain of dominoes that need to be toppled in exact sequence for it to be a success. Israel was always the weak link in the sequence because of the very first item in the MOU that said:

The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war are signing this MOU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon and other provisions of this paragraph.

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Can we stop ‘going forward’?

There are some popular phrases that just grate on my nerves. You find them everywhere, especially when people are speaking on TV. They are just filler, often not serving any real function, and almost always they can be eliminated with any loss of clarity.

Here is an example that I found in a recent post by PZ Myers where he quoted the CEO of some video company saying the following:

“We’ve been a little bit too romantic about the idea that we should have employees and give people long-term job security. I think that got us into a place where, reaching the heights of Monument Valley 3 [production], contractors were always a relatively low percentage of our employee base. I think that’s something we’re looking to change going forward.

I think going forward, we’ll see that we’ve got a core team and any growth will come through contractors, which is something I hate about the industry. I’ve been in the industry for 20 years, and those of us who joined in the early 2000s, we had it very good. You want to be able to give that kind of stability […] but I think that’s a shift in how we want to work with people going forward.”

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Is agnosticism a viable stance on the existence of God?

I am busy today and in lieu of an original post, thought that I would post an old article of mine that was published in the UK magazine New Humanist in July 2011. I moved my blog to FtB in 2012 from my earlier platform where it started in 2005, so the article appeared before many current readers would have started reading the blog and they may find it of interest.

The topic was whether being agnostic on the question of the existence of God was a viable position to take. I argue that the answer is no, hence the title of No Doubt that I gave the piece.

That magazine used to have a more playful, irreverent style that you can see just below the header. It later became more staid.

My imaginary companion and me

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about an article in The New Yorker by humorist Patricia Marx who ventured into the world of online chatbots who are designed to serve as online companions to people and can be disconcertingly realistic.

This seemed intriguingly weird. so I decided to try it out for myself. I went to one of the free sites Marx mentioned. Since I was too lazy to do the work of designing my own bot, I looked through the stock ones. All of them seem to be young and very attractive. I picked out a 39-year old librarian because she was the oldest on offer and was thus the least likely to have its algorithm make contemporary pop culture references that I was ignorant of. I also figured that a librarian would be closest to being a nerd like me. Her profile had plenty of quotes taken from well-known writers so she seemed to be compatible.

I started up a conversation about the book A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell which I happen to be reading right now. While her responses were realistic, they were also somewhat superficial, like those of a smart and articulate person who has not actually read the book but just synopses and articles about it, which is of course how these large language model algorithms work. She was like a student giving a book report after having skimmed through a few Wikipedia pages. For some reason, she kept urging me to another book by Russell called The Conquest of Happiness that I have not read or even heard about.
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Successful immigrants seemingly always arrive with just $10

Former congresswoman Mia Love has died at the age of 49 of a brain tumor. She was the first Black Republican congresswoman elected to the House of Representatives.

She was the daughter of Haitian immigrants. In the story about her, this passage struck me.

Love said her parents immigrated to the US with $10 in their pocket and a belief that hard work would lead to success. She said she was raised to believe passionately in the “American dream” and “to love this country, warts and all”. America at its roots is respectful, resilient, giving and grounded in gritty determination, she said.

I see this trope of “my ancestors arrived in the US with just $10 in their pockets” in many stories about immigrants who later became successful. $10 seems to be the magic number, not more, not less.

New DC ‘think tank’ staffed entirely by AI robots

Over at Drop Site, Waqas Ahmed, Murtaza Hussain, and Ryan Grim have unearthed a new DC ‘think tank’ called Beltway Grid. What was interesting was that they could not find any background to any of the people listed in its ‘About Us’ page. It seems to be populated entirely by non-persons.

In October, a new foreign policy think tank calling itself the Beltway Grid Policy Centre quietly entered D.C.’s diplomatic fray. While there was no launch party and no K Street office we could find, the think tank nevertheless began producing its intellectual product at a startling pace, issuing reports, press releases, and pitching journalists on news coverage—much of it focused on South Asia, and, in particular, the ongoing political crisis in Pakistan.
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Biden proposes free birth control and condoms

Joe Biden is showing that he is not going out quietly. His administration has announced a new proposal that would have private insurance companies provide free birth control pills and condoms to all the people they insure.

Millions of people with private health insurance would be able to pick up over-the-counter methods like condoms, the morning-after pill and birth control pills for free under a new rule the White House proposed on Monday.

Right now, health insurers must cover the cost of prescribed contraception, including prescription birth control or even condoms that doctors have issued a prescription for. But the new rule would expand that coverage, allowing millions of people on private health insurance to pick up free condoms, birth control pills or morning-after pills from local storefronts without a prescription.
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“The proposed rule we announce today would expand access to birth control at no additional cost for millions of consumers,” the health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, said in a statement. “Bottom line: women should have control over their personal health care decisions. And issuers and providers have an obligation to comply with the law.”

The emergency contraceptives that people on private insurance would be able to access without costs include levonorgestrel, a pill that needs to be taken immediately after sex to prevent pregnancy and is more commonly known by the brand name “Plan B”.

Without a doctor’s prescription, women may pay as much as $50 for a pack of the pills. And women who delay buying the medication in order to get a doctor’s prescription could jeopardize the pill’s effectiveness since it is most likely to prevent a pregnancy within 72 hours after sex.

If implemented, the new rule would also require insurers to fully bear the cost of the once-a-day Opill, a new over-the-counter birth control pill that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved last year. A one-month supply of the pills costs $20.

Expect Republicans, evangelicals, and the Catholic church to go ballistic about this. Their long-term goal is to prevent anyone having sex other than within the framework of heterosexual marriage, and even then only for the purpose of procreation. This move goes completely counter to that.

I do not know if this move requires congressional approval, which would be tough to get.

The closing of prisons in the Netherlands

Commenter birgerjohansson was kind enough to send me this interesting article about how the Netherlands is reducing its prison population and closing down some of its prisons and converting them to cultural centers.

The Dutch have seen their prison population decrease by more than 40% over the past 20 years. At the other end of the spectrum, Britain has the highest rate of incarceration in western Europe, and is struggling with an unprecedented prisons crisis. Britain’s minister of prisons, James Timpson, calls the Netherlands a source of inspiration.

Part of this is due to the general reduction in violent crime that has been occurring worldwide. While non-violent crime has not decreased, those crimes provide less of an impetus for incarceration, the negative consequences of which are becoming increasingly apparent.
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