Germany won't join mindless U.S. Russophobia and Sinophobia

In several blog posts, such as one about the Bastille Group, I mentioned the geopolitical differences increasingly separating France – which sort of intends to preserve its status of a power in the oceans – and the English-speaking countries (the abolished submarine project is just a tip of an iceberg).



But there is another, larger country in Europe which may not be ambitious in the oceans but it's economically stronger. How does Germany fit into the geopolitical plans of the English-speaking countries? With its new left-wing government, Germany has escalated the destructive internal and intra-European policies (its "green" plans are totally insane yet the consumption of fossil fuels is rising) but indeed, it remains the ultimate calm country when it comes to violent geopolitical questions.

Trouble with emotions assigned to flavors of stringy results

An anonymous critic of string theory wrote something like this at his peers' forum:

In the swampland program, string theory is shown to only allow a tiny subset of the parameter space of approximate (quantum field) theories, and that's a great thing. In the \(\alpha\geq 0.1389\) research, string theory allows the whole parameter space, and that's a great thing, too. You may eat a cake and have it, too.

The funny thing is that I agree with that and I have always agreed with it – and in fact, I have always actively made this point in this situation and many others. It is wrong – because it is logically inconsistent – to hype both the trait A and the trait anti(A) as virtues! An even funnier fact is that the bulk of string theorists agree with me, too. Needless to say, the idea that string theorists disagree with that is a childish straw man designed to sling mud at string theory in the eyes of undemanding readers.

Some string theorists prefer the equality "the parameter spaces are the same" as the appealing zeroth approximation while others prefer "they are very different". But (almost?) no string theorist would ever take an internally contradictory position and which of the two comparisons of string theory and quantum gravity is "more right" depends on how you define "very" and what constraints are allowed to be used. It is clear that with typical (not unrealistically refined) definitions of either, the truth is in between: the string theory vacua are distributed to have representatives close enough to any point that is allowed by some conditions in effective quantum field theories; but they don't really allow "every point" to be represented in a stringy way. The devil is in the details. And string theorists want to understand these details.

Greens brought coal to Ostrava (from Australia)

...because bringing sand to the beach is no longer green enough...

Ostrava, a city of 285,000 in the far Northeast near the Polish border, is Czechia's 3rd largest city (just ahead of Pilsen). It's been a synonym of miners, black coal, and steelworks. There's been a lot of coal on the Polish side of the border, too.



The European Union, its gr@tins, and their carbon indulgences have turned coal into a Cinderella. (What happens to Snow White exposed to 440 kilovolts? A Cinderella, i.e. a cinders/ashes girl.) That's by far the main reason why the mining dropped and the current Czech plans want to end coal mining on the Czech territory completely by 2030 or 2033, depending on whom you ask. Meanwhile, what happens in the real world of early 2022? Czechs like me who follow events related to the climate hysteria were shocked by the news reports yesterday.

We're already routinely importing coal on railways but the capacity of trains is insufficient for our needs now. So we received our first ship filled with coal which came from... Australia.

Václav Klaus on the pandemic law: Let's stop the attack on constitutionality

Video recording of the statement of the former Czech president Václav Klaus on the pandemic law (CZ)

Dear fellow citizens: In these moments, there is an extraordinary attack by state power on freedom, democratic order and constitutionally protected rights.



In an abbreviated process – i.e., through a legislative emergency that bypasses proper public social and legal debate – a government bill is being debated to allow the state – in a crude manner and under threat of draconian sanctions – to restrict constitutionally protected fundamental civil liberties by decree of three ministers.

In a war restricted to Ukraine, NATO would get totally humiliated

My recent blog post focusing on the U.S.-Russian tensions surrounding Ukraine was written on December 6th. The situation seems more tense today. Both sides are piling troops and weapons near the Russian-Ukrainian border although the U.S. only does so on the territory of NATO members. Meanwhile, the U.K. and especially the EU say that there is no reason to dramatize the situation in Ukraine and they aren't evacuating the diplomats from Kiev at all.



Almost all the dudes in the Alexandrov Ensemble Choir who sang the Czechoslovak folk song "On the St Catherine Day" above died in an air accident but the choir was refreshed and it exists almost just like it did in 2015.

Biden recently indirectly said that a moderate-size Russian invasion to Ukraine would be OK with him. So he was unsurprisingly attacked (not only) by the hawks and he had to say something that sounds totally different, namely that he's eager to launch a full-blown war. Meanwhile, 1,000-5,000 U.S. soldiers are being transferred to NATO members bordering Ukraine (none in Slovakia so far, as far as I know), with promises to increase this number to 50,000. The risk of a war is serious but the risk that the tension will completely fade away and we're seeing some incredible waste of resources is very high, too.

NFTs, a new level of cryptoinsanity

A long-time TRF commenter sent me an e-mail showing not only that he was thrilled by the NFT craze but he even expected me to be thrilled as well. And I was like: Uhm? Surely the IQ around 80 is enough to figure out that I would probably not be a sympathizer with the NFT craze, right?

Indonesian student’s selfies fetch US$1 million in NFT sales - South China Morning Post https://t.co/SdF6eDUXX5 #nft #art pic.twitter.com/uatQLuxidA

— Crypto Scoop (@cryptscp) January 15, 2022

An NFT is a non-fungible token. It is a token (a virtual coin) that you may associate with a particular file (a precise sequence of bits) and the rules of the blockchain (along with some extra encoding rules that had to be added on top of the blockchain) guarantee there is only one token on the Ethereum blockchain for every precise file, every precise sequence of bits. Effectively, for every file, someone claiming to be the creator by "signing the token with his signature" – someone who obviously doesn't have to be the real creator because the Ethereum blockchain has no way of checking (more obviously, it is not doing any checking of) the vague and "human" question who has the moral or legal right to claim the ownership – may create his new special cryptocurrency which has 1 indivisible coin, and this coin, the NFT, may be sold further. The transfer of the ownership proceeds analogously to the transactions involving cryptocurrencies themselves.

How string theory correctly predicts that an \(\alpha\) isn't below 0.1389

...and why you should find the numbers on both sides more precisely or derive them analytically...



Natalie Wolchower, a boss at the Quanta Magazine, promoted a February 2021 preprint in her

In a Numerical Coincidence, Some See Evidence for String Theory

where she wrote some introductory things and asked numerous physicists whether they like the work as gold or as salt (I hope you know the Czech fairy-tale by Ms Božena Němcová, if you don't, you are a racist sexist homophobic pig). The Swiss-Brazilian preprint (currently at 20+ cits)

Where is String Theory?

was written by Guerrieri, Penedones, and Vieira. They discussed a particular example of evidence suggesting that string theory is unavoidable, string theory is basically equivalent to "a consistent theory of quantum gravity". In this case, they focused on a subleading term in the scattering amplitude of "2 to 2" gravitons in an extended supersymmetric gravitational theory in 10 dimensions.

A review of the weak gravity conjecture

...and thoughts about the faked excitement and the genuine purpose of research...

The last hep-th preprint today is a large one,

The Weak Gravity Conjecture: A Review,

by Harlow, Heidenreich, Reece, Rudelius (HHRR: MIT, UMass, Harvard, Berkeley): the PDF file has 121 pages. Four authors come from four places. I think that this fact emphasizes the Covidism-related virtualization of collaboration and while it's always been possible (and normal for me), I find this transition counterproductive.

The authors are pretty bold to write such a review at all. On one hand, I think that this result of ours isn't another relativity yet. On the other hand, there are 913 followups according to Inspire (and 1055 by Google Scholar) and the authors of the review run the risk that the hundred(s) of authors may be dissatisfied how their work was represented or overlooked.

The Czech-German declaration: a bridge over the past without apologetic gestures

IVK for MF Dnes on its 25th anniversary

Twenty-five years ago, on 21 January 1997, the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus, and the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Helmut Kohl, signed an important document in Prague – the Czech-German Declaration on mutual relations and their future development, which turned the relations between the Czech Republic and Germany from the tragic past to a more promising future. The quarter of a century that has passed since then has proved that this was a necessary and correct step. Czech-German relations have shifted from disputes over the past to the development of an all-round partnership and broad cooperation, which is the only way to overcome the pitfalls of the past in time.



However, history has not disappeared; we need to know it and learn from it. It cannot be left behind, it cannot be re-lived years later, differently and better. We should be aware of the causes and consequences of historical events, understand the times in which they happened and their wider context. Unfortunately, in relation to Czech-German history, such an informed view is still mostly rare in this country (Czechia).

Why Jordan Peterson left the supercorrupt university enterprise

Jordan Peterson is a famous psychologist, author, and center right YouTube personality who has worked as a professor at McGill, Harvard, and – recently – at the University of Toronto. He was 59 in June but he recently resigned and became an emeritus professor. The National Post published his essay

Jordan Peterson: Why I am no longer a tenured professor at the University of Toronto

yesterday. You know, it is a rather intense description of his conflict with the cancer of DIE (diversity-inclusion-equity). Peterson has always been a deep thinker and a full-blown warrior for sanity and some traditional values. But at some level, I have always considered his environment rather safe. After all, he had tons of fans, lots of money from them (not only books), and he wasn't dependent on some workplaces. And he was a tenured professor in a place where they didn't really go after his neck, I thought. Well, I was probably too insensitive.

Czechia escapes the Nazi mandatory vaccination route

Omicron is ending the Covid-19 troubles and bulks of nations finally start to see that the caution has become totally ludicrous

On Sunday, my town of Pilsen was the only place where "The DOG has kicked the bucket" organized a rally: my pictures+minivideos. One-half of our Republic Square at the very center, 129 x 192 meters, was filled and it was the greater half. Because this square of ours is 150% larger than the Old Town Square in Prague, we may have had over 10,000 people there as well, but some sources claim it was just 2,000. I couldn't see the whole crowd in a clear way.



There had to be lots of ex-Pilsner people there, dozens of SUVs with Czech and Slovak flags were blowing the horn, and speakers represented many occupations, teachers, principals, nurses, cops, firemen etc. Lawyer Jindřich Rajchl gradually rose to a public hero – the main lawyer fighting against Coronazism in various ways – and he suggested a vague plan to run for the Prague Castle (presidency), too. The participants tended to be working-class people.

Cathie Wood and ARK Invest: Noah's Ark that will sink investors?

By Finhacker.cz (translated)

Asset manager Cathie Wood has seen phenomenal success in 2020 thanks to the truly above-average performance of its ARK Invest funds. Her flagship ARK Innovation ETF appreciated by a whopping +148% in the same year. Her other funds achieved similar performance. But as it happens, winning streaks may not last forever...

After a glittering past, Cathie Wood and the performance of her funds is being closely watched by the general investing public and all the various media, especially at a time when she is underperforming and the major indices are at all-time highs. Each of its ETFs has seen declines ranging from -29% to -55% over the past 12 months. It's been a ride, judge for yourself:



Price chart of the ARKK ETF, source tradingview.com. Click at any image to zoom in.

About a year ago, I wrote two articles here titled: "Cathie Wood and Ark Invest – Noah's Ark to Save Investors?" (Part 1, Part 2) and somewhat ironically I titled the article alluding to Wood's proclamations that most old economy companies had no future and these same companies would be the final nail in the coffin of passive investing. In today's article, I will loosely build on the previous two pieces and focus on what I consider to be the most pressing issues facing the ARK Invest group and whether they could have been avoided.

Malone vs Berenson

A somewhat unexpected war erupted between two of my fellow warriors against the vaccination mandates and many other deeply counterproductive Covid-19 policies. On

Friday's Ingraham Angle, Segment 2, Fox News (video),

two guests were invited mostly to agree with one another that the attempted censorship of Joe Rogan at Spotify is atrocious. Joe Rogan has been a comedian and a reporter from wrestling and he naturally doesn't look like the class of opinion makers that I would listen to. Well, his physique resembles the wrestlers and he is too centrist for me politically. But otherwise I think he's rather brilliant and perhaps #1 in his knowledge of the Covid issues among the people who present themselves as journalists.

Witch hunt on Djoković: when Coronazism and anti-Slavic racism team up

Technical: A 12-year-old useless Statcounter widget started to malfunction on PC browsers yesterday, redirected TRF to an empty page with a number around 34 million (visits since 2010). I removed it. Mobile devices should have always worked. On PC, you may need to erase some TRF-related cache or something if you are still redirected.

Novak Đoković (I won't use the Yugoslav Đ, it is too difficult to type, it is just Dž for me, anyway) is usually considered the greatest tennis player ever. Such a judgement is unavoidably subjective to some extent and it is composed of some partial data that are mostly subjective and some data that are objective.



His colleague, the president of Czechia's oldest tennis club, Prof Václav Klaus recently called Djoković's game style intelligent. He remains himself. As this page reminds us, Djoković isn't surpassed by anyone in most objective quantities. He leads by the prize money, by the number of weeks at the top of the ATP, and is tied with Sampras in the number of year ends where they were at the top of the ATP (Sampras is unlikely to take the lead now). He is the only one with four Grand Slams in a row, leads by the number of Australian Open victories, and is tied in the number of Grand Slam victories with Nadal and Federer (much more likely than them to take the lead), tied with Nadal in the number of Masters 1000 titles, and so on.

Webcasts: CERN director and a jolly Weinberg funeral

I had tons of things to write about but didn't find any motivation. So just two links to events in the near future.



As von Stock told me, CERN's director Ms Fabiola Gianotti expects a very exciting year ahead, especially because LHC Run 3 gets under way. Tomorrow (January 13th) at 3 pm Swiss time (9 am Boston Time), there will be

Directorate Online Meeting (CERN).

---

Update: there is no public webcast here! Sorry, von Stuck just sends me garbage all the time and he has a crush on Gianotti, too.

CERN has to operate in the Covid Hysteria Level 4, whatever it exactly means (it doesn't mean a full curfew, she tries to calm us down), and the director seems to realize that Omicron is both more transmissible and far less deadly. Indeed, Washington University research concluded that the case fatality rate of Omicron is a whopping 100 times lower than that of Delta. Of course, I told you it was insane to be anxious about Omicron in Minute 1 of the Omicron hysteria; the hard data proving the near-zero fatality rate already existed at that time and the memes claiming to beat the data could have seen to be atrocious pseudoscience.