France's President Macron is still in hiding

And the protests in 40 cities or more all over France continue!

What the heck is wrong with this dude (or his old rich wife)!

Was the summit between President Trump and President Xi Jinping a dud?

It appears no announcements of major results were made. However, perhaps in coming weeks or months we may learn more. Maybe, there is something in the pipeline.

Xi Jinping has been the President of China for about 13 years. Maybe China needs a new president!

At least President Trump offered a very warm welcome to President Xi Jinping and his wife. Whatever that is worth!

Home delivery of groceries in the US is very disappointing

I spent a few hours checking out Instacart, Uber Eats, Aldi, Fry's Food Markets, Doordash here in the Phoenix Metro area!

Compared to how easy it is to get almost anything (including fresh) delivered to your home in China, this is a total failure in the US! The US is far behind!

There at least two issues that make it quite inconvenient to place orders for groceries to be home delivered:

1. Separation of groceries and alcohol (a typical US problem)
2. Separation of grocery stores. Do I as the customer care which store delivers the item that I ordered? At least one of the above mentioned services than has customer stuck with that same store for any following order for other items. This needs fixing! My suggestion have stores deliver ordered goods to a distribution warehouse and then to customer. 

For now, I have settled on Amazon for home delivery of groceries. The ordering process was much more intuitive than those of the competitors. Unfortunately, Amazon only offers Bashas and Whole Foods. Amazon also tries to sneak in their Amazon Prime offerings. What I did not like was the goods were delivered to our entrance door without being boxed nor bagged.

The search function on many of these websites are a disaster! Here is a very typical example, I looked for "box red wine 5 liters". What did Doordash show me: White wines, 3 liter boxes, other bottled wines and so on.

What went wrong with the triple infanticide by mother in 2023 aka the Clancy murder case in Massachusetts

A lot! The news reporting about this case was incompetent and atrocious! Very lazy journalism!

Caveat I am not familiar with the details of the case. I did not follow the case very closely.

Here are some of the issues:

• Why did the prosecutor not indict the husband as well? What did the husband know and what did he do about it? My guess is the prosecutor in this case was a dilettante!
• Was it a postpartum depression or a postpartum psychosis? Which one was confirmed?
• When did the claimed postpartum psychosis first occur in the defendant? Only after the birth of the third child? If it occured after the first child, why did she have two more children?
• It appears an acute postpartum psychosis (was it acute or chronic ) usually occurs within the first two weeks of child birth. The youngest child of Clancy was 8 months old.
• What kind of suicide attempt was it that the defendant committed? Very few news reports mentioned this at all that she cut her wrists and jumped out of the window after the infanticide.

I think, the news media did a very lousy job reporting about this triple homicide. Caveat I read only a few articles.

How likely is it that a mother with acute postpartum psychosis kills her children?

"Research estimates that untreated postpartum psychosis is associated with an approximately 4% risk or rate of infanticide.

Key Facts and Statistics
Frequency of the illness: Postpartum psychosis is a rare medical emergency that affects about 1 to 2 out of every 1,000 women after childbirth. ..." (Google Search)

Do mothers with acute postpartum depression kill her children and then commit suicide?

"Mothers who harm their children and attempt or commit suicide are typically suffering from postpartum psychosis, rather than acute postpartum depression alone. 

While severe, acute postpartum depression involves deep sadness, exhaustion, and sometimes suicidal thoughts, a mother generally maintains her grip on reality." (Google Search)

Will transgender women make permanent facial hair removal simple, easy, fast and cheap?

I have been waiting all my life  for a fast, simple, permanent, and very affordable removal of facial hair.

Unfortunately, this has not happened yet. It is still electrolysis or laser hair removal.

I wish I did not have to shave every day of my adult life! What a waste of time etc.!

Living in a multipolar world with more intergovernmental organisations

While the UN, G7, G20 lose their attractiveness, influence and standing more and more other international organisations are winning with China and Russia behind it.

Take BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) for example.

How far and how fast will the post WW II global order change?

How much of the effects of the landslide and flash flooding in Nepal are to be blamed on China?

It appears again like with Covid-19, China was not very forthcoming with disclosures and relevant information regarding this natural disaster.

E.g. did China warn Nepal of the impending landslide? As far as I know, China did not warn Nepal despite early warning signs.

Also this natural catastrophe started in China not in Nepal as I understand it.

Caveat: I am not following this event closely nor am I familiar with it's details nor did I do any specific investigations.

What are the consequences of data center gigantism?

If I am not wrong there is strong trend to build more data centers across the globe. However, size matters here. The bigger the data center, the more protest from the local population etc. is to be expected.

Be modest is perhaps a good advice developing much needed data centers.

How the sun's galactic journey shapes Earth's climate

Amazing stuff! How does the temporal dynamics of the heliosphere (shrinking/expanding) influence climate on Earth while our solar system travels through the Milky Way?

Notice the researchers limit the frequency of such disturbances to "every couple of million years", while I would propose it may happen more often.

If I am not mistaken, we still know very little about the trajectory of our solar system traversing the interstellar space within the Milky Way galaxy. For example, the researchers investigated only the extreme event when the heliosphere shrank so much that the Earth was no longer protected by heliosphere anymore.

Notice Merav Opher (the author of the paper below) has extensively written about the influence of the heliosphere on paleoclimate on Earth for several years (see e.g. her webpage on this subject).

I have been arguing here on blog for some years that the climate (e.g. long warming and cooling periods) on Earth may significantly be influenced by our solar system traveling or its trajectory through the Milky Way galaxy.

"... In new research ... trace the trajectory of the heliosphere, the massive bubble created by our sun that envelops our solar system, as it moved through our galaxy and influenced Earth's climate along the way. ...

Our heliosphere orbits around the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Throughout the sun's 4.6-billion-year existence, our heliosphere has traversed various regions within our galaxy. In a paper ..., researchers ... used computer modeling to reverse-engineer the path of the heliosphere through our galaxy, revealing that the environments it passed through may have triggered changes on Earth. ...

ran simulations that showed the sun has encountered frigid expanses of gas and dust at least three times in the past few million years. In these instances, massive interstellar "cold clouds" pushed against the heliosphere to such an extent that it shrank to smaller than Earth's orbit, stranding our planet outside the sun's protective shield. 

These exposures—approximately 2–3 million years, 6–7 million years and 13–14 million years ago—would have exposed Earth's atmosphere to different surroundings. The simulation results match geologic evidence: Elements prevalent in interstellar dust appear in deep-sea sediment core samples, Antarctic snow and lunar samples from these periods.

These heliosphere collapse events may also explain ancient climatic patterns on Earth. In the simulations, when Earth's atmosphere was exposed to a cold, dense galactic hydrogen cloud, water vapor content increased and upper-atmospheric dynamics shifted, ultimately altering conditions at the surface. In summary, our heliosphere's trips through colder regions in our galaxy may be a key factor in driving some of Earth's ancient climate changes, including possible ice ages. ..."

From the abstract:

"This article reviews today's open issues, frontiers of research, and advances in our understanding of the heliosphere throughout the Sun's last 10 million years. Today's heliosphere, the cocoon formed by the solar wind as it moves through the Galaxy, engulfs all the planets extending in the nose direction to ∼120 astronomical units (AU).

• ▪  The Sun moves at 19 pc/Myr and has traversed many different structures in the interstellar medium that affect the heliosphere, at times collapsing it to sub-astronomical-unit scales. These periods of collapse introduce climate and radiation changes in Earth's environment.
• ▪  The frequency of such encounters could be as often as every couple of million years, making it a major external disturbance to the development of life on Earth.
• ▪  Stepwise shifts in past global climate, seen in deep-sea sediment cores, indicate intervals of more rapid cooling at 13–14 Mya, 6–7 Mya, and 2–3 Mya, for which the driving mechanisms are subject to ongoing debate. Such cooling events might be triggered by heliosphere collapse."

How the sun's galactic journey and superflare-filled youth shaped Earth's climate

Understanding the Heliospheric Shield: Laying the Groundwork to Predict Habitable Astrospheres (open access)

Source

Fig. 1 Schematic of the heliosphere. Several elements that form the heliosphere are noted (see also the definitions in the margins throughout this article). The width of the sector region is expected to vary with the solar cycle.

Figure 3 

(a) The heliosphere of today is immersed in a warm ISM ...

(b) The heliosphere of the past after the Sun encountered dense cold clouds ... that compressed the heliosphere to sub-astronomical-unit scales

Abbreviation: AU, astronomical unit; ISM, interstellar medium.

President Trump’s Fondness for Oppressive Strongmen. Really!

I am so sick and tired of these kind of articles and op eds etc.!

Reality is that there are several important dictators around the world (e.g. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran) so a US president can not ignore them.

To criticize and ostracize those dictators or rogue states has been tried many times over several decades by Western leaders without much success!

President Trump e.g. is not responsible for the apathetic and lethargic Russians to finally kick out Putin the Terrible or the peaceful, submissive and very civilized Chinese to abandon the Communist Party of China for a multi party system, pluralism, and democracy or the submissive North Koreans to rid themselves of their Dear Great/Supreme Leader. 

For President Trump to explore The Art of the Deal with those dictators is well worth trying it. Judge President Trump by his results not by his approach!

"Kim Jong Un runs the world’s largest prison camp—it’s called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. ... And President Donald Trump says, “I get along with Kim Jong Un very well. He’s going to be fine.” ..."

Trump’s Fondness for Oppressive Strongmen | American Enterprise Institute - AEI

What happened to pacifism and the non violence principle in the 21st century?

I am afraid the historic lessons of the 20th century with two World Wars, the Cold War and the use of the first nuclear weapons have been unlearned by the end of the first quarter of the 21st century!

This is a sad state of affairs at the beginning of the second quarter of the 21st century! It is certainly a regression/reversal for humanity! What will be the consequences?

What do popular terms like disparity, equity, equality, and justice have in common

They are perfect examples of terms in the toolkit of alarmists, ideologues and demagogues! One of their most favorite terms "disparate impact".

Whenever you see these terms or their derived terms used in research and journalistic articles be immediately alert! It is almost like a red flag! If there is a combination of these terms used in an article be alarmed!

Often the use of these terms identify the author immediately as a simple minded terrible simplificateur!

Then there is the pretense of knowledge that these authors implicitly invoke. E.g. so called intellectuals want to appear as smart and convincing!

Like Karl Marx, many times the world/subject is divided into two supposedly distinctive dogmatic categories aka as dichotomy (e.g. capitalists and laborers). Many times this division is artificial or too coarse or is very incomplete and ignores dynamics/interactions etc.

If we want a better humanity going forward, then this cheap demagoguery needs to stop!

Why is climate change ideology so powerful?

It is the perfect excuse/cover for many unwanted things! Global warming and climate change is to a shockingly large extent junk science!

It gives numerous governments of Western countries a perfect excuse/cover to impose socialist central planning on their economy and businesses and other restrictions on individual freedom! It guides their interventions in other countries in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere.

It gives a plethora of mediocre political, social and scientific researchers a perfect excuse/cover to do more junk science!

It gives many non profit organisations a perfect excuse/cover for their existence, activism and for more funding!

The Wolf Solar Grand Minimum roughly between 1270 and 1350 CE and of other grand solar minimums and grand solar cycles

Here is another reason why the global warming is a hoax and why climate change is a religion! 

Anthropocene greenhouse gases is an obscene explanation! What has probably more influence on climate on Earth when comparing trace gases and varying solar activity? Varying solar activity!

Let's not forget that the world population also increased tremendously over the past several centuries from about 1 billion around 1800 AD/CE to now about 9 billion (aka as the Population Bomb since 1968). Of course, so many humans and their activities largely concentrated in urban areas contribute to warming (e.g. urban heat island effect). However, world population growth might be at an inflection point.

Much more likely are variations in solar activity and solar cycles over short and long term periods that cause warming and cooling periods on Earth than trace gases in the atmosphere! We know for a long time about the 11 year solar activity cycle, but most likely there are other, yet to be discovered cycles like the grand solar cycle.

Grand solar minimums is the missing link I was looking for to possibly explain changes of extended warming to cooling climate periods.

Thanks to the incessant daily climate change demagoguery, the effect of solar activity on Earth climate is heavily suppressed, avoided and omitted! 

"The Wolf Solar Minimum is a grand solar minimum—a prolonged period of sharply reduced sunspot activity and magnetic output on the Sun—that lasted roughly from 1270 to 1350." (Google Search)

This Wolf Solar Minimum roughly coincides with the end of the Medieval Warm Period from about 950 AD/CE to 1250 AD/CE (not medieval climate anomaly) or it falls between the MWP and the Little Ice Age from about 1400 AD/CE to 1850 AD/CE. Or in other words, we are currently in another, modern warm period!

"Major historical grand solar minima identified in solar physics include the following:
Homeric minimum: ~750 BC – 400 BC
Oort minimum: 1040 – 1080
Wolf minimum: 1280 – 1350
Spörer Minimum: 1450 – 1550
Maunder Minimum: 1645 – 1715
Dalton Minimum: 1790 – 1820
Modern Minimum: 2020 – 2053" (Google Search)

From the abstract (1):
"In this editorial I will demonstrate with newly discovered solar activity proxy-magnetic field that the Sun has entered into the modern Grand Solar Minimum (2020–2053) that will lead to a significant reduction of solar magnetic field and activity like during Maunder minimum leading to noticeable reduction of terrestrial temperature. ..."

From the abstract (2):
"Recent progress in undersatanding a role of the solar background magnetic field in defining solar activity is presented using eigen vectors derived with Principle Compnent Analysis.
This approach revealed a presence of not only 11 year solar cycles but also of grand solar cycles with duration of 330-380 years.
We demonstrated that these grand cycles are formed by the interferences of two magnetic waves produced by solar dynamo with dipole magnetic field in two layers of the solar interior with close but not equal frequencies.
These grand cycles are always separated by grand solar minima (GSMs) similar to Maunder minimum type, with the modern GSM started in 2020 and to last until 2053.
This GSM leads to a reduction of solar irradiance by about 0.22% from the modern level and a decrease of the average terrestrial temperature by about 1.0C in the cycle 26.
The reduction of a terrestrial temperature can have important implications for different parts of the planet on growing vegetation, agriculture, food supplies and heating needs in both Northern and Southern hemispheres."

Modern Grand Solar Minimum will lead to terrestrial cooling (1, open access)

Modern grand solar minimum and its impact on the terrestrial environment (2, open access?)

Figure 3. Solar activity (summary) curve restored for 1200–3300 AD

Figure 4.
Top plot: restored total solar irradiance from 1600 until 2014 [Notice the dip around 1812 AD. This when Napoleon tried and failed to conquer Moscow due to an extremely cold winter.]
Bottom plot: Central England temperatures (CET) recorded continuously since 1658. Blue areas are reoccurring cool periods; red areas are warm periods. All times of solar minima were coincident with cool periods in central England.

What does AI watermarking of digital content mean?

Update of 8/21/2026: How Claude’s text watermark works "... we, along with several other major AI providers, are implementing this change to comply with the EU AI Act. ... 

Claude’s text watermark is a version of the SynthID-Text approach published by Google DeepMind in a Nature paper in 2024. It belongs to a family of approaches that go back to a proposal by Scott Aaronson in 2022, all of which share the same design principle that we described above—the watermark only changes the source of the randomness used to pick among words. ..."

The term watermarking in the digital age seems to be an oxymoron and antiquated  itself! It sounds very cute, familiar too many and may convey reliability and peace of mind to some.

However, when it comes to e.g. text content is such watermarking feasible and robust? I have serious doubts. Apparently one simple technique seems to be to insert unusual/unexpected terms into a sequence of regular/usual terms. 

With other media/content like photos, images or video this might be more feasible.

Or are some tech companies just primarily trying to please some ridiculous EU regulations? You bet!

When will the cursor finally follow the eye on your computer display?

This is a long overdue innovation! How often does it happen e.g. that you look in one area of the computer display and start typing while the cursor is still somewhere else on the computer display?

If you stare for a moment at one point on the computer display, the cursor should perhaps follow so you can immediately e.g. continue writing.

When women become omitted, called "people" or mere patients in recent science and medical news reporting

When gender ideology gets in the way of using the proper word woman or women in human female related subjects!

In particular, the so called American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has become very guilty of this practice in recent times.

To call women "people" e.g. like "pregnant people" is disgusting! It happens again and again especially in AAAS news reporting!

Whenever possible AAAS avoids to mention woman or women by either omitting these words entirely in their news reporting or they use the term patient/patients even though it is improperly applied.

Another form of avoiding woman/women is to use "individual" in the context of e.g. pregnancy.

Besides the words woman or women, the word maternal is also avoided as much as possible.

I wait patiently for a correction of this absurd practice motivated by ideology!

One of the most egregious mistakes in journalism: Comparisons with same period last year

On a daily basis tons of news media articles are published including such annual comparisons per month, quarter, semi annual.

Often times this information is rather useless or even disinformation! What if e.g. last year's number was an aberration from normal or an extreme value or unique for some reason. Some journalists note this deviation from normal, but often without further analysis.

Much better would be comparisons to some normal value e.g. moving averages or monthly/quarterly,semiannual averages over several years etc. Practical suggestions: A 12 months moving average for monthly data and a 16 quarters moving average for quarterly data. You get the idea!

Given that it is now the second quarter of the 21st century with so many data sources and analytics easily available, this journalistic failure is even more difficult to excuse!

However, too many journalists are lazy or lack understanding!

A lot of Western universities have a lousy website search function

This is incredible in the second quarter of the 21st century! I notice it again and again when I frequently visit various university websites. 

Maybe these universities are relying too much on Google Search to substitute for their lousy website search function! Unfortunately, Google Search has its flaws too when it comes to content from Western universities.

Often, the search results are undated!

It is not obvious how the search results were selected or how they were sorted.

An option to sort the search results by e.g. recency is often missing (see e.g. example below)

Here is an example: University of Manchester. I searched for bilayer graphene, because very recently Physical Review X journal published an article from researchers of University of Manchester. 

Stanford University

The Dimocratic Party is trying the big-tent approach instead of distancing from the far left influence

One more reason why the Democratic Party has become the Dimocratic Party! For years, it is moving from the center to the far left trying to capture extra votes (but loosing traditional votes)!

What a cute sounding approach to deal with the Democratic Socialists of America and their ilk!

The Dimocratic Party urgently needs a new leadership (away with e.g. senile Chuck Schumer and DEI Hakeem Jeffries)! A biparty system like the US is in jeopardy if one of the two political parties constantly fails!