My weekly reading for May 19, 2024

by Charles Oliver, RodeMay 10, 2024.

Extract:

a The German court has ruled that the robots of the Tegut supermarket chain should be given Sundays off, just like human employees. According to German law, shops must close on Sundays and Christian holidays to give employees a day of rest. Tegut has circumvented that law by fully automating its stores, and makes 25 to 30 percent of its turnover on Sundays. A union representing store workers has filed a lawsuit to force the stores to close on Sundays, fearing the company’s success could undermine support for the country’s blue laws.

My comment: A good reminder of one of the many ways the United States not suck.

by Alex Tabarrok, Marginal revolutionMay 14, 2024.

Extract:

Alec Stapp points out that Canada is the only NATO country that has a free trade agreement with the United States. That’s quite remarkable when you think about it. NATO allies are bound by mutual defense obligations, support for military cooperation and commitment to democratic principles. Despite these shared commitments, the US continues to maintain tariffs and quotas on our NATO allies, including France, Germany, Britain, Denmark, Portugal and Spain. This is the same as getting married and not having a joint checking account. If they are good enough partners to commit to their defense, surely NATO allies are good enough partners to commit to free trade? (bold added)

by Doug Bandow, The American ConservativeMay 9, 2024.

Extract:

Biden took office and spoke of his commitment to human rights and his determination to become MbS, as the crown prince is known. to a ‘pariah’. Now the government is proposing to turn the U.S. Army into a modern Janissary Corps. a bodyguard for the thousands of royal princes who rule their countrymen. It is well past time to stop postponing KSA.

And:

For years, American policymakers justified their fixation on the Middle East on the grounds of protecting Israel and importing oil. However, Israel has become a regional military superpower, threatened more by its brutal mistreatment of Palestinians and bitter internal political strife than by external attacks. The oil market is diversified and supply is largely limited by US sanctions, which could be liberalized or lifted at any time. Terrorism is a problem of endless and disastrous US military intervention. Growing Chinese and Russian activity in the region is a diplomatic challenge, not a threat that warrants greater military commitments. Today, like my Cato Institute colleague Jon Hoffman explained“What Washington needs from the region on issues traditionally central to the Saudi relationship, especially oil, stability and terrorism, is quite limited and easy to achieve.”

Any support for Riyadh is difficult to justify. Saudi Arabia is one of the worst dictatorships in the world. According to Freedom Housethe Kingdom is more repressive than Russia, China and Iran: “Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy restricts almost all political rights and civil liberties. No officials are elected at the national level. The regime relies on ubiquitous surveillance, the criminalization of dissent, appeals to sectarianism and ethnicity, and government spending supported by oil revenues to maintain power.” MbS’s mismanagement was highlighted by the gruesome murder and dismembering journalistic critic Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. More than five years later, the official cover-up continues.

by Anonymous, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, May 15, 2024.

Extract:

Traditional cataloging practice requires the cataloger to describe the book as objectively as possible; there are even specific guidelines that remind catalogers not to select subject headings (the hyperlinked subject descriptions in the record) based on their own values ​​and beliefs. One of the first questions I was asked during my interview was whether I would confirm that I would be cataloging material that I personally found offensive. After all, libraries – and by extension catalogers – are supposed to safeguard freedom of expression and intellectual freedom. We don’t know who will look for the materials and for what purpose, so we must be fair, accurate and objective to make it easier to find the materials. But it seems that the cataloger’s primary duty is now to protect patrons from the harm that the documents (not even the material!) may cause them.

In the discussions I mentioned above, fellow catalogers unapologetically stated that certain marginalized groups should decide how a book should be labeled. If a cataloger who is a member of a marginalized social group believes that the book in question is harmful or offensive, he has every right to add a note in the catalog stating his beliefs. For example, we now have four books in the International Catalog (used by libraries around the world) labeled “Transphobic Works.” Several books critical of the current gender affirmation model of care now have the subject heading “Transphobia.” These books are not about transphobia, so the subject heading is likely used as a way to warn the reader of the document (and possibly the librarian choosing which books to order for the library) that these are “bad books” and not so may be. read or purchased.

by Jacob Sullum, RodeMay 15, 2024.

Extract:

“This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal spending, to silence people who had anything bad to say about his behavior,” said the lead prosecutor. Matthew Colangelo. said at the start of Trump’s trial last month. “It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Contrary to what Colangelo claims, there is nothing “pure and simple” about the case against Trump. For starters, Trump is not accused of ‘conspiracy’ or ‘election fraud’. He is charged with violating a New York law against ‘falsifying corporate documents’ with ‘intent to defraud’.

by James Bruegel, RodeMay 15, 2024.

Extract:

Nuclear energy could be a game changer in terms of energy affordability, electricity grid reliability and reduction of CO2 emissions. However, it has been suppressed for decades based on one deeply flawed scientific model: the linear no-threshold (LNT) model. The theory underlying this model suggests that any exposure to ionizing radiation, no matter how small, increases the risk of cancer and that the risks increase linearly with the level of exposure. It’s not true.

The roots of LNT’s dominance are more political than scientific. Its influence dates back to Herman Müller, a geneticist and 1946 Nobel laureate. Muller’s research from the 1920s and 1930s purported to show that radiation induces mutations in fruit flies, with no safe threshold. He became an ardent evangelist for the idea that even small doses of radiation could cause this hereditary defects.

However, it appears that Müller deliberately misled his followers. For example, Müller wrongly claimed in his 1946 Nobel Prize speech that there was “no escape” from the conclusion that all radiation is harmful, despite being aware of evidence to the contrary.