Anecdotally, here in the western suburbs of Minneapolis, supply-chain woes show no signs of getting better. If anything, they seem to be getting a bit worse. Yesterday at Target, I saw numerous empty shelves, scattered throughout the store. More dramatically at a Dollar Tree two days ago, it looked to me as if, overall, shelves were at well less than 50% capacity, maybe 30%, reminiscent of a place that had had a Going out of business, all sales final sign up in its window already for several days. This in the 14th largest metro area in the USA. And I’ve been seeing YouTube videos from people in rural parts of the country showing shelves even more bare.
Anyone here live in rural America? What are you seeing where you live?
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, and Debt:
Cranking the FUD up to 11: China declares all crypto-currency transactions illegal
Sound familiar? September 2017 China Bitcoin ‘ban’ sparked $20K all-time high in 3 months
China’s Latest Crypto Crackdown Draws Yawns From Bitcoin Market Vets
Costco is limiting how much toilet paper you can buy again
Lines at U.K. gas stations as Brexit, Covid-19 and global price hikes bite
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
Anti-Vaccine Groups Push People to Leave ICUs
Anti-vaccine Facebook groups have a new message for their community members: Don’t go to the emergency room, and get your loved ones out of intensive care units.
Consumed by conspiracy theories claiming that doctors are preventing unvaccinated patients from receiving miracle cures or are even killing them on purpose, some people in anti-vaccine and pro-ivermectin Facebook groups are telling those with Covid-19 to stay away from hospitals and instead try increasingly dangerous at-home treatment.
Man punches nurse in the face multiple times after his wife is vaccinated for COVID-19
Politics:
Wailing And Gnashing Of Teeth: Trumpers React To Draft ‘Audit’ Report Showing Biden Win
Fascism is a mind-killer — and Trump’s version is destroying Americans’ grasp of reality
Biden decides it would be inappropriate to assert executive privilege in January 6 investigation
FWIW, China Is a Declining Power—and That’s the Problem
The United States needs to prepare for a major war, not because its rival is rising but because of the opposite…
The Thucydides Trap doesn’t really explain what caused the Peloponnesian War. It doesn’t capture the dynamics that have often driven revisionist powers—whether that is Germany in 1914 or Japan in 1941—to start some of history’s most devastating conflicts. And it doesn’t explain why war is a very real possibility in U.S.-China relations today because it fundamentally misdiagnoses where China now finds itself on its arc of development—the point at which its relative power is peaking and will soon start to fade.
There’s indeed a deadly trap that could ensnare the United States and China. But it’s not the product of a power transition the Thucydidean cliché says it is. It’s best thought of instead as a “peaking power trap.” And if history is any guide, it’s China’s—not the United States’—impending decline that could cause it to snap shut.
When I was at law school with Clarence Thomas
Adam Kinzinger: Republicans Are ‘Frigging Crazy’
Madison Cawthorn can invoke coming bloodshed, and Paul Gosar can flirt with white nationalism, and they’re signing a letter asking to have me kicked out of the caucus. This is how far the Republican Party has fallen. They call me a RINO but I haven’t changed. The Republican Party has changed into an authoritarian Trump organization. They’re the RINOs. Trump is a RINO.
Serendipity:
How Japanese Breakfast Crafted The Sounds Of The New Game 'Sable'
How a team of musicologists and computer scientists completed Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony
Meme credit: turtletimez (source)