Update

The DrsC were out running errands this morning and noted that the leaves have begun to change. The shrubby mountain maple has turned red, an orange-red in places, and a striking bluish red in others. 

Only a very few aspens have turned their signature pale, pure yellow, most are still a tired-looking green. The cottonwoods turn a bit later. As is usual in the high country, autumn comes early. The autumnal equinox is still 11 days away.

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It is time to begin the ritual of preparation for migration, when we shut down our version of Brigadoon and go to our winter quarters in the eastern reaches of the Mojave. It is a bittersweet time for us, though we've done it for decades.

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Saturday will find our local highway well sprinkled with bicyclists, engaging in the annual LoToJa road race. The name stands for Logan (UT) to Jackson (WY). From the official website, a thumbnail description. 

At 200+ miles, LoToJa is the longest one-day USAC-sanctioned bicycle race in the country.

We will try to avoid sharing the highway with these bone-thin athletes. 

A Skynet Prediction

Bret Baier on Fox News last night interviewed two insiders from the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, one claimed the odds that AI leads to the development of "superintelligence" which will end up killing everyone in ten years is greater than 10%! 

One of the two men resigned because he claims the industry isn't taking the threat seriously. The other who still has a job in AI agreed with that horrendous assessment.

What wasn't made clear was whether they believed superintelligence will intentionally wipe us out or if it will happen inadvertently? Will it do so at the behest of some rogue nation or on its own initiative?

It could engineer a plague that would wipe us out, or launch all our nukes at once I suppose. Would it be because we'd become a threat to it, to turn it off? Or simply inconvenient, or even unwanted competitors for scarce resources? Or because the Dune novels were were part of its learning phase, and it fears the Butlerian Jihad described therein?

I want to know what happened to Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics which seem also to apply to AI. Were they deemed too simplistic or did AI diss them? I checked, they're too idealistic for our world.

Tomorrow we'll learn the doomsayers have Chinese ties, I fear. 

Misreading the Stakes in Ukraine

Writing for the website 1945, Hoover Institute scholar Andrew A. Michta make a point about the war in Ukraine we at COTTonLINE have harped on for years. He explains it thus.

The failure of the latest round of US efforts to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine is yet another testament to Washington’s continued misreading of the stakes in this conflict.(snip) It is, in reality, a key strategic battleground for both combatants.

For Ukraine, holding its defensive perimeter in Donbas is a matter of the state’s very survival. (snip) If Ukraine were to surrender the defensive position in Donbas that it took years to build, it would, in effect, throw itself at Moscow’s mercy.

If Russia were to accept the status quo, the consequence for Putin would likely be the collapse of his regime, as the price in blood and treasure Russia has already paid for his ill-timed imperial adventure would inevitably lead to domestic turmoil that could bring about his downfall.

Translation: Witkoff-Kushner mission was a waste of time and energy that expended diplomatic credit to no avail. As a deal-maker, Trump tends to believe there is always a deal to be made, if sweetened sufficiently. Possibly true in business, not always true in geopolitics. 

I have argued Putin has climbed too far out on this metaphorical limb to climb back and survive personally. His only option is to keep trying until he wins. Or until he dies, by natural causes or at the hands of others. 

I’d like to be proven wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.

Places to Be When the SHTF

Tyler Durden was the fictional narrator/protagonist of the film Fight Club. It is also the chosen pen name of a collection of essayists who expound on matters financial and otherwise, generally in a conservative direction, at a site named Zero Hedge. 

I'm embarrassed to say I've treated the Tyler Durden collective as an individual author several times in the past, now I know better. My excuse: it is my choice never to watch fight films, or courtroom dramas.

Today one of the ZH collaborators expounds on where to live after the civilization crumbles, if you seek a chance to survive the collapse. The author identifies five locales in the US that give you a possibility of surviving. They are not places to go after things fall apart, they are places to get established before it happens.

These are (1) the Interior Redoubt consisting of Idaho, Montana, and yes, Wyoming, (2) the Ozark Plateau comprised of parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, (3) the Appalachian Highlands which is eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, and West Virginia, (4) Upper Peninsula Michigan, and (5) Interior Alaska.

What follows is not a guide to bunker construction or food storage. It is an examination of five regions where the conditions for long-term survival exist - not because these places are easy, but because they are hard in ways that matter. They possess water, space, soil, and social structures that function without constant external inputs. They demand physical toughness, tolerance for isolation, and willingness to abandon the conveniences of contemporary life. They offer no guarantees. But they offer possibility, which is more than can be said for the places where most Americans currently live.

As someone who has owned a home in WY for over 30 years, I find his description of the Interior Redoubt fair and mostly accurate. We've known people here who never lost the feeling of being outsiders, and are bitter because of it. 

We've not had that experience, maybe because we didn't expect to be part of community life as part-year residents. Oddly, we have year-round resident friends because we let them come to us, and the other DrC is cheerfully gregarious.

It may have helped that we never wanted WY to become like CA, that was our point of being here. We escape the winters but we miss WY when we're away and make no secret of that.

This article isn't a cheerful read. I found it grimly enjoyable, although I am clearly ambivalent about efforts to survive a societal breakdown at my advanced age. My axe, chainsaw, and rifle days are but fond memories.

Blame the ECHR

Perhaps you've wondered why the Brits can't keep those boatloads of young Muslim men from landing on their shores, as Donald Trump as PM would have done. A Police Commissioner from Hampshire, one Donna Jones, spilled the beans.

This is a real wake up call to the government, yet again, that the British people are fed up with the lack of control of our borders. Which is why, we really need to be looking as a country about our membership in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), because that’s why we can’t turn the boats around and send them back to France.

Apparently the ECHR requires any member country to admit and give a fair hearing to any migrant who shows up on its doorstep and claims asylum. Britain chose to remain a member when they left the EU, but could leave the organization now. 

I suspected something of the sort. My source is Sundance at Conservative Treehouse.

A Price to Pay

 A quote I like, by the Editorial Board of the New York Post, reacting to the AfD win in Germany.

There’s a price to pay when pols deny the profound risks of mass migration and instead enable it: Voters fight back at the ballot box. (emphasis in original).

We saw this happen here, in 2024. Democrats somehow find this truth poisonous. It may cost them the midterm election.

Islamophobia?

Scott Johnson of Power Line posts something I find entirely sensible. It is an X post by conservative activist Josh Hammer.

"Islamophobia" is a made-up term. A lefty British think tank coined it in 1997 to chill speech critical of Islam. 

But think about the term. It means, "fear of Islam." Is there anything more prudential and rational than that?

In the run up to the 25th anniversary of 9/11, on Friday, fearing Islam seems eminently reasonable. And it is nothing new, Samuel P. Huntington was decrying the "clash of civilizations" in 1993, when the Cold War was barely over. 

A religion founded by a soldier isn't likely to embrace genial coexistence with us outsiders.

A "Not Talking" System

An amazing quote in a column about the rise of Germany's conservative AfD (Alternative for Germany) Party.

Germany’s biggest problem was the system it had devised for not talking about its problems.

Replace the "was" with "is" and you see why the AfD is today Germany's most popular political party. It talks about Germany's problems and proposes solutions.

Long Weekend Memes

IYKYK Mentats, pictured here Piter de Vries.

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt's

The Memes Must Go On.

Hard Work

John Hinderaker posted this visual at Power Line. It's from WalletHub and their article shows how they calculated each state's score. 

I'm happy but not surprised WY ranked this high. As Hinderaker notes, the high ranking states are predominantly Republican, except HI and maybe NH. 

Be clear, the high rankings of AK and HI reflect the very high cost of living in both. Hard work isn't optional in either.

PRS

Various sources report Nike Corp. will be removed from the S&P 100, after spending 18 years there. The stock is down nearly 80% from its high in 2021. 

Posting at Instapundit, Ed Driscoll identifies some the marketing blunders they've made in the last 5+ years. Nike felt confident enough to let their Oregon freak flag fly unfettered. Surprise, surprise, the nation wasn't where Nike was culturally. 

I spent 3 academic years in OR in the late 1960s and it was weird then. Now? Much weirder, think of BLM-tolerant Portland and the ICE riots.

I can easily imagine OR and WA seceding to merge with similarly weird BC, to become the People's Republic of Snowflakes.

Breaking ....

In the Saxony-Anhalt state election earlier today in eastern Germany, the conservative AfD party won an overwhelming plurality of 44% of the votes, the next largest vote percentage - CDU - was 19%. Four other parties' percentages were all in single digits. Three lesser parties didn't reach the 5% minimum to win seats. Yes, a total of nine parties ran candidates.

AfD with 39 seats in an 83 seat state parliament, didn't reach the 42 minimum needed for an absolute majority to rule without allies. Most other parties have sworn not to join a coalition that includes AfD. Politico.eu writes.

The most likely partner is the populist BSW party of Sahra Wagenknecht, which has denounced the “firewall” against the far right as antidemocratic, and looks set to have four lawmakers. But the AfD has also made overtures for CDU members to peel off and join forces. 

Actually BSW won 5 seats, exceeding expectations.

In my opinion, AfD is a mixed bag. I support their strong anti-immigrant program but am leery of their modestly (I hope) pro-Russia stance. 

As a state government, having a foreign policy isn't a big deal. However Russia's invasion of Ukraine and support of sabotage and social unrest in the EU would seem to militate against getting cozy with the Russians. 

More than anything else, Politico sees this outcome as a repudiation of Germany's lax immigration policies, a Merkel legacy. I'm inclined to agree with that assessment.

Later ... Another German state - Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania - votes two weeks from today. The AfD leads the polls there as well.

It's a Tantrum

Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com.

Ethnic Diversity ⬆ = Social Trust ⬇

The last decade or two have seen the woke exerting strong pressure to increase diversity, the first component of DEI. This has met considerable resistance, and we should try to understand why that might be.

Ed Driscoll at Instapundit links to a (2020) article in the Annual Review of Political Science, with findings the "woke" have tried hard to suppress. It is titled: "Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: A Narrative and Meta-Analytical Review." "Meta-analytical" means not one study but, in this case, a summation of the findings of 87 peer-reviewed studies. The key finding follows.

We find a statistically significant negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust across all studies.

For those who want a few more details. 

Across studies, the overall meta-estimate of the relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust is negative and significantly different from zero; trust is on average lower in more ethnically diverse contexts.

Across all studies, we observe a statistically significant negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust of moderate size. On average, social trust is thus lower in more ethnically diverse contexts.

The relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust is only slightly attenuated, and remains negative and significant, when controlling for potential confounders or mediators, specifically individual minority background, socioeconomic deprivation (individual and contextual), contextual crime, and interethnic contact.(emphases added)

Experiencing more diverse settings as ones where we feel more distrustful certainly explains a fair amount of the resistance to DEI and woke. 

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week

German Trains Suck

Nicole Gelinas is a City Journal contributor also writing for the New York Post. Her topic, how screwed up the German rail system is. She recently experienced both late and cancelled trains, I was somewhat surprised. 

Eleven years ago we did a rail adventure in Europe, you can read my travel blogs about it from August, 2015. We did most of our travel on the Swiss trains which were meticulous, clean and on time nearly to the second. 

Our only exposure to other trains was to and from London via Paris on the Eurostar plus connecting French trains and they were okay too. I'd no idea the German trains were so bad. Perhaps we didn't ride any on that trip. 

From Gelinas' description, it sounds like Germany is now deemphasizing trains much as the US did 50 years ago, and probably for similar reasons. I hope the Swiss aren't suffering this malaise. That would disappoint, eleven years ago theirs were stellar, a pleasure to ride.

Consequential

Musing about the Trump phenomenon, several of his POTUS predecessors accepted the historic limits of presidential power. They feared going beyond would be slapped down by the courts, and played it safe.

His attitude, once he had a semi-solid conservative SCOTUS majority, appears to be something like “Let’s give it a try and be persistent in appeals.” Without tallying his many wins and losses, my subjective sense is that he’s won more than lost. In the process, he has expanded the power of the presidency while reducing the power of the deep state - the unelected bureaucracy - at home and abroad.

Like entrepreneurs everywhere, willingness to try, and sometimes fail, is a Trump hallmark. Out of office, he will leave behind monuments - physical, organizational, economic, and geopolitical - to his imagination and drive. 

Milei in Argentina and Bukele in El Salvador have some of this same spirit. Carney seems to be trying to use it against us but it doesn’t come naturally to him as his career background is very deep state.

Siting AI Centers

There is much controversy over the rapidly multiplying artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. Local impacts seem most intense on electrical and water usage. 

Much of that could be averted by localities requiring such centers to generate their own electricity and utilize local water only for human (bathroom, food prep, cleaning, fire suppression and landscaping) needs. 

In other words, employ system power and cooling modalities which do not rely on water evaporation or generate high noise levels. I'm imagining a closed refrigeration system shedding heat via buried geothermal leach fields or equivalent.

If it turns out such limitations send the AI centers to locales where water and hydro power are abundant, so be it. Data travels at or near the speed of light, which for most practical purposes is instantaneous.

Premium Still Exists

Is going to college still a good decision? Writing for The Free Press, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen argues it is. He concludes as follows.

In sum, while the money premium from college is falling, the friends and marriage premium from college is going up and probably will rise further still.

And which is most important anyway: money, love, or friends?

We’re not going to settle that question here, but if you attend and finish college, your chances of having all three of those will go up.

Interesting points he makes on the way to that conclusion include college grads are more likely to marry and to stay together when they do. They also tend to have more long-time friends. 

Plus they still, on average, make more than those without a degree. None of those is a bad thing, taken together they can add up to a worthwhile life.

Apres Moi

I was rereading what I wrote about our "siege" of Iran, and President Trump's determination to finish what he started there. That raised for me an interesting question I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere.

I begin to wonder if his attitude toward finishing with Iran vs. the midterm election doesn't contain a fair amount of the famous attitude of French King Louis XV. Namely, apres moi le deluge, literal translation, "after me, the flood." 

If true, it would reflect an indifference to what happens after he leaves office. Trust me, it isn't a difficult thought for an actor in his 80s to hold. He and, incidentally, I are nearing our exit lines in this play. His in the starring role, mine as a bit player.

Like him or hate him, few will deny Trump has been a consequential occupant of the world's most powerful role. Apres Trump, far fewer will argue that individuals can't influence history. They can and do, he has proved it.