Author: A.T.

Is here:  “Daydreaming In Germany.”

On Yom Kippur, last month, I was in Berlin. I am not a religious Jew, but on the High Holy Days I like to be in a synagogue, listen to the ancient lilt of Hebrew prayer and allow my mind to drift from daily cares. It is a form of respite. We all need that these days. Worry has become an early riser. . . .

. . . This is a time of growing fears, in Europe and the United States. Ghosts have stirred. Humanity never quite grows out of the buffoon’s attractions: the scapegoats he offers; the fast money; the rush of violence; the throb of nation and flag; the adrenaline of the mob; the glorious future that will, he insists, avenge past humiliations. . . .

. . . An autocratic, nativist, xenophobic, nationalist reaction is now in full swing on both sides of the Atlantic — as the election in Austria demonstrates again. It demands resolute vigilance. It also demands that we listen, try to understand and resist fracture. . . .

. . . We find ourselves once again “on the cusp of avoidable disaster.”

There is way more to the column than that snippet.  Click.

But first: billionaire Mark Cuban offers this investment advice on CNBC.  Bless his heart.

Okay.  Are you ready?

Occupy Florida tells it this way in a two-minute video.  Executive summary: Florida’s Governor is a truly bad guy.

Rolling Stone tells it this way:

. . . Politically, Scott is Trump without the bluster and the golf clubs. On climate change, Scott refuses to acknowledge its existence. During his 2014 campaign, whenever the subject came up, he would shrug and say, “I am not a scientist” – as if that absolved him of any responsibility for thinking about the risk posed to millions of people in the state he proposed to run.

As governor, Scott has done everything he can to do nothing. He made sure the state of Florida contributed zero dollars to Miami Beach’s $400 million plan to improve storm drainage. He took more than $1 million from Big Utilities, who tried to stop rooftop solar power in Florida, which could help reduce carbon pollution. He effectively dismantled the Florida Energy and Climate Commission, which had been assembled . . . to help Florida officials think strategically about climate adaptation. . . .

. . . In 2014, after months of lobbying, a group of scientists scored a meeting with Scott, hoping to convince him that climate change was real and Florida was in the crosshairs. “He just sat there and stared at us with lizard eyes,” one of the scientists at the meeting told me. “I don’t think he heard a word we said.”

On the other hand, maybe he did. The following year, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that Scott’s administration had commanded state employees not to use the terms “global warming” or “climate change” in any state business.  . . . Scott supported Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord. He also signed legislation, pushed by real-estate developers, to weaken Florida’s building codes, even though the legislation was opposed by Florida’s emergency management director, as well as Craig Fugate, the former head of FEMA under President Obama, who argued that by loosening the building codes in a hurricane-prone state like Florida, lawmakers “are putting your state and your citizens at risk.”

Even if Al Gore had been governor of Florida, Irma would have wreaked havoc in the state. But Scott’s negligence was so extreme it was almost as if he were inviting a catastrophe. . . .

With Christmas and Chanukah around the corner, consider an Echo Show ($229) — or two of them, to save $100 on the second.  (Or the soon-to-be-released smaller, $129 Echo Spot.)  I love that it shows me the lyrics in big fat type as I listen (for years I thought Lady Gaga was singing “cherry pie, cherry pie” when in fact it was “can’t read my, can’t read my” . . . which made more sense once I realized that the next two words were “poker face”).  And it suggested I watch Mr. Robot on its perfectly adequate little screen — I’m hooked.  And it can do more or less anything else.  (“Alexa, how much is $138 euros in dollars?”  “Alexa, when is Chanukah?”  “Alexa, who is Mark Cuban?”)

If you’re an investor, well worth the read (thanks, Pete): Smart Money And Dumb Money Are Moving In Opposite Directions. The smart money is heavily in cash.

(And if you have time, William O. Cohan, writing in Vanity Fair, says “the Bond King” is worried, too.)

One reason the market is high, some believe, is its expectation of a “massive” tax cut on corporate profits and wealthy investors — both of which make stock ownership more appealing.

That this is exactly the wrong time for a tax cut — 4.2 unemployment; National Debt that needs to shrink relative to the economy as a whole; infrastructure in woeful need of revitalization — is the stuff of another post.

And that “relief for the wealthy” — the lion’s share of what’s being proposed — is clearly not what most Americans would prioritize as a key concern is so obvious as to need no elaboration.

(But when has that ever stopped me?  Most would place a higher priority on lowering health care deductibles and co-pays; putting people to work modernizing infrastructure; allowing federal-student-loan holders to refinance at today’s low rates; funding scientific research.)

But — if the Republicans get their way — here we go again.  Bush promised a massive tax cut “by far the vast majority” of which would go to people “at the bottom of the economic ladder.”  This was a multi-trillion lie.  Plain and simple.

What’s more, it did not trickle down.  It did not create employment gains or wage hikes — employment and wage growth were largely stagnant under Bush; only inequality rose.

Now the Republicans are out to do it again.  A supposedly massive tax cut for average Americans that will in fact be, instead, a massive tax cut — again — for the wealthiest Americans.

(For many Americans, it is the Social Security and Medicare deductions from their paychecks — which will not be cut a dime — that are the main federal tax they pay.)

And you know what they say: “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice . . .”

So much stuff.

Did you see the one about Breitbart and Sarah Palin blaming an immigrant for the 12 Northern California wildfires?  He had nothing to with any of them — read the story — but then again, neither did Hillary run a child porn ring out of a DC pizza parlor. In Trump/Putin/Palin world, truth is not a concern.

Our president — inducted into the fake-professional-wrestling hall of fame — is matched against Vladimir Putin, the genuine martial arts expert who installed him, and who continues to attack our democracy.

Do you know a guy named Melvin Reddick, from Harrisburg, PA?  Backward-facing baseball cap with a young daughter?  Nice guy — maybe you want to friend him on Facebook?  As the New York Times explained last month — read that story, too? — he’s just one of many remarkably convincing fake Americans created in Russia to set us against one another.

Have you read conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan in New York Magazine? 

. . . Trump is careening ever more manically into a force of irrational fury. I watched his infomercial with Hannity Wednesday night and see a sharp decline even from his previously unhinged and malevolent incoherence. He riffed for a while on how the rise in the stock market since he came to office somehow halves our national debt. He asserted, like an American Erdogan, that no citizen can disrespect our flag, anthem, or country … or else. He claimed that the economy — which a year ago was a “total disaster” — is now a staggering overnight success. He boasted of unemployment numbers he described as fraudulent only months ago. In his interview earlier this week with Forbes, he sounds like someone so stoned he can barely parse a sentence, let alone utter a coherent thought, and whose utter indifference to reality still staggers.

But it’s the impossible reactionary agenda that is the core problem. And the reason we have a president increasingly isolated, ever more deranged, legislatively impotent, diplomatically catastrophic, and constitutionally dangerous, is not just because he is a fucking moron requiring an adult day-care center to avoid catastrophe daily. It’s because he’s a reactionary fantasist, whose policies stir the emotions but are stalled in the headwinds of reality. He can’t abolish Obamacare because huge majorities prefer it to any Republican alternative, so he is sabotaging it. He hasn’t built a huge wall across the entire southern border because it’s a ludicrous project that cannot solve the problem it was designed for. Ditto ripping NAFTA to shreds, which would cause immense disruption to three countries’ economies and ricochet around the world. Or attempting to ally with Russia against the E.U., as if Merkel was worse a threat than Putin. Or removing NBC’s license, which it doesn’t actually have, for political reasons. Or deporting 11 million people. Or pretending that climate change is not happening. Or a massive tax cut on the wealthy, and arguing, as Trump did Wednesday night, that it would create surpluses as Reagan’s did, which, of course, Reagan’s didn’t.

These are not conservative reforms, thought-through, possible to implement, strategically planned. They are the unhinged fantasies of a 71-year-old Fox News viewer imagining he can reconstruct the late 1950s. They cannot actually be implemented, without huge damage. And so he resorts to executive sabotage — creating loopholes in the enforcement of Obamacare to undermine the entire system. Or he throws a temper tantrum because Obama’s Iran Deal is actually working as promised, and attempting to undermine that as well. At this point, the agenda is so deranged and destructive almost every sane senior member of his cabinet is trying to rein it in. . . .

Richard Painter, formerly of the Bush White House, asks: “Is America today in need of an unprecedented constitutional intervention?” The answer, surely: an emphatic yes.

. . . The 25th Amendment is the ultimate constitutional “check” — a corrective mechanism for an American president who is physically or psychologically unable to lead. Most important, it grants legal authority to those closest to power — first, the vice president and Cabinet members, then members of Congress — to stage an intervention. At the very least, these individuals are authorized to call a temporary timeout if the president is judged unfit to govern.

Is America today in need of such an unprecedented intervention?

The amendment, ratified in 1967 after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, was constructed to assure a smooth transition when a president becomes incapable of leadership. (Its vague wording leaves room for both physical and psychological justifications.) By the 1960s, the dangers of an incapacitated president were far greater than at the founding of our country. But arguably, the stakes have only gotten higher. With tensions flaring around the globe, there can be no doubt as to the fitness of the man or woman in possession of U.S. nuclear codes.

Pundits and politicians alike have called for the amendment’s implementation over the past few months. But it is both practically and philosophically a tool of last resort. Unlike impeachment, which is controlled solely by Congress, the 25th Amendment requires action by the majority of the president’s Cabinet and potentially Congress. This means that even in today’s polarized climate, partisan removal is unlikely. In addition, the bar for diagnosing mental health conditions is quite high.

It’s crucial to note that having a mental illness does not automatically disqualify a person from serving successfully as president. Indeed, as a Duke University Medical Center study estimates, up to half of the first 37 U.S. presidents displayed clinical features consistent with mental illness at some point in their lives. Two of our 10 most respected presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, displayed symptoms suggestive of depression and anxiety disorders.

So how would one diagnose a sitting president — if it is indeed even possible?

. . . [Read the piece to find out, after which it continues] . . .

Nearly 800 mental health professionals have joined a coalition asserting that they are so alarmed by Trump’s mental health that they feel a duty to warn the public. An online petition, intended for mental health professionals who believe the president is unfit to serve, has been signed by roughly 62,000 people.

At this juncture, waiting for unfitness to manifest beyond the types of observable and highly predictive behavior patterns studied by psychiatrists and psychologists is, we believe, naïve. Though remote, we cannot rule out the possibility that a president in a downward mental health spiral could destroy important global partnerships, alter centuries-old alliances and leave the United States vulnerable to terror attacks or war.

The 25th Amendment was created so that those closest to the president could respond in the event of a physical or psychological crisis. In turn, it is the duty of these individuals to be vigilant and act in the best interests of both the president and the citizens who rely on him — because responding to danger from within is as crucial to this nation’s survival as responding to danger from without.

Have a great weekend.

Before I get some of you really mad (Charles was frequently mad, but only occasionally “really mad” — a nerve-jangling concept with which I had not theretofore been familiar, may he rest in peace), let me share this, from the Guardian: “How Russia used social media to divide Americans.”

“Russian trolls and bots focused on controversial topics in an effort to stoke political division on an enormous scale – and it hasn’t stopped.”

We’re under attack, boys and girls —

. . . What has now been made clear is that Russian trolls and automated bots not only promoted explicitly pro-Donald Trump messaging, but also used social media to sow social divisions . . .

And, even more pertinently, it is clear that these interventions are continuing as Russian agents stoke division around such recent topics as white supremacist marches and NFL players taking a knee to protest police violence. . . .

. . . On Facebook alone, Russia-linked imposters had hundreds of millions of interactions with potential voters who believed they were interacting with fellow Americans, according to an estimate by Jonathan Albright of Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, who broke the story wide open with the publication of a trove of searchable data earlier this month. . . .

— and maybe if we can come to accept that, we can find common ground against a common enemy.

You know: the way the whole world might come together if we were suddenly attacked by space monsters.

Only here, we just need our fellow country-folk on the left and right to realize how much more unites than divides us . . . and that we’re being played by Vladimir Putin.  (And that his biggest defender is Donald Trump.)

So read all about it.  I hope it makes you mad.

But what will make some of you really mad is my plugging Hillary’s book, What Happened.

> Some of you hate her — whether for “policy” reasons (pro-choice, etc.); Trumped up reasons (amplified by Russian trolls); idealistic reasons (she’s a pragmatist in service of idealism*) . . .  or simply because she “rubs you the wrong way.” (We’re human. We like who we like.  We vote for the candidate we’d rather have a beer with.  We wouldn’t choose a surgeon that way, but to some, the choice of a president seems less important.)

> Others of you adore her — or abide her — but are so shattered by what happened, you just want her to go away.  It’s simply too painful to think about, or to hear her voice.

Yet I urge you to, anyway — whether with your eyeballs or her actual voice** — because she’s a brilliant woman who’s spent 50 years trying to help solve the problems we all face . . . with her writing informed by experience as First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, and a candidate who won more votes for president than anyone else, ever, save Barack Obama.

I promise you: Hillary has some interesting things to say.  And, yes, we’d have been vastly better off if Putin had allowed her to serve.

*To such people, “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” whereas to others — Ralph Nader springs to mind on the left, the uncompromising Tea Party on the right —  it is pragmatism and compromise that are the enemy, from which the ideal must be defended.

**17 hours, but 13.5 if you listen at 1.25x-speed as I do.

Following up from yesterday, where we learned about qubits and quantum computers that may within the decade render today’s supercomputers quaint — Hurtling Toward The Future — here’s  Wired: Google’s AutoML Project Teaches AI To Write Learning Software.  More hurtling.  After Trump gets “everyone great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost” and a massive tax cut that, though directed almost entirely at the best-off, will help him not at all (maybe it will help some 400-pound guy on a couch — what, you think our country is so innocent? just carry Tic-Tacs) — after that, he should figure out a way to organize society to share in the great good fortune of all this astounding, accelerating technological progress rather than see it destroy us.  It is the central economic question of this century.

Meanwhile, I’m not sure who Gregg Popovich is or which Hall of Fame he was inducted into for coaching, because I don’t know what sport the San Antonio Spurs play.  But apparently, this is a big deal: Gregg Popovich Eviscerates Soulless Coward Donald Trump In Fiery Takedown.

Following Trump’s latest bald-faced lie in which he claimed former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush didn’t call the families of fallen soldiers, the San Antonio Spurs coach gave a quick interview to Dave Zirin of The Nation in which he torched the president.

“I’ve been amazed and disappointed by so much of what this President had said, and his approach to running this country, which seems to be one of just a never ending divisiveness,” Popovich said. “But his comments today about those who have lost loved ones in times of war and his lies that previous presidents Obama and Bush never contacted their families, is so beyond the pale, I almost don’t have the words.”

But Popovich wasn’t finished . . .

“This man in the Oval Office is a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others. This has of course been a common practice of his, but to do it in this manner–and to lie about how previous Presidents responded to the deaths of soldiers–is as low as it gets.  We have a pathological liar in the White House: unfit intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically to hold this office and the whole world knows it, especially those around him every day. The people who work with this President should be ashamed because they know it better than anyone just how unfit he is, and yet they choose to do nothing about it. This is their shame most of all.”

And then Popovich hung up.

By 2026 — my passport will still be valid, it’s so five-minutes-from-now —  there may be quantum computers that can do in a second what today’s most powerful take 45 minutes to complete.  Read How Google’s Quantum Computer Could Change the World.  And it’s not just Google hot on this trail, as the Wall Street Journal explains.

It will change everything, with all manner of scary (and a few glorious) implications.

. . . “It isn’t just a faster computer of the kind that we’re used to. It’s a fundamentally new way of harnessing nature to do computations,” says Scott Aaronson, the head of the Quantum Information Center at the University of Texas at Austin. “People ask, ‘Well, is it a thousand times faster? Is it a million times faster?’ It all depends on the application. It could do things in a minute that we don’t know how to do classically in the age of the universe. For other types of tests, a quantum computer probably helps you only modestly or, in some cases, not at all.”

For nearly three decades, these machines were considered the stuff of science fiction. Just a few years ago, the consensus on a timeline to large-scale, reliable quantum computers was 20 years to never.

“Nobody is saying never anymore,” says Scott Totzke, the chief executive of Isara Corp., a Canadian firm developing encryption resistant to quantum computers, which threaten to crack current methods. “We are in the very, very early days, but we are well past the science-fiction point.”

Companies and universities around the world are racing to build these machines, and Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., appears to be in the lead. Early next year, Google’s quantum computer will face its acid test in the form of an obscure computational problem that would take a classical computer billions of years to complete. Success would mark “quantum supremacy,” the tipping point where a quantum computer accomplishes something previously impossible. It’s a milestone computer scientists say will mark a new era of computing, and the end of what you might call the classical age. . . .

“Classical” is a funny word to use in connection with something so new — I’m older than the first UNIVAC computer — but apparently “bits” may soon be replaced by “qubits.”

“What’s a cubit?” a certain now-disgraced comedian famously asked God when, as Noah, he was commanded to build an ark “300 cubits by 80 cubits by 40 cubits.”  But trust me: qubits are waaaaay more difficult to understand.  The Journal says Bill Gates acknowledges he can’t follow the PowerPoints he’s presented on this — and quotes the magnificent Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist Richard Feynman: “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”

Yet — like electricity that most of us don’t understand either — it seems to work.

. . . Adding one bit negligibly increases a classical chip’s computing power, but adding one qubit doubles the power of a quantum chip. A 300-bit classical chip could power (roughly) a basic calculator, but a 300-qubit chip has the computing power of two novemvigintillion bits—a two followed by 90 zeros—a number that exceeds the atoms in the universe.

Trump sees a future in coal.

Oh, how we need, instead, a leader like this one.

Click to see who I mean and what he’s up to.  If you’re like me, it will bring a tear to your eye — and fresh hope for the future.

So much to catch up on and share, but let’s start with “the dumbest goddamn student I ever had” — I presume you’ve seen this by now?  We really have to impeach this man, fast — our country and world are in peril.  But you know that.

Did you know that a volcano 12 miles west of Vesuvius erupted 40,000 years ago with 300 times the explosive force?  (And even Vesuvius released 100,000 times the combined thermal energy of the two bombs dropped to end the last world war.)

Did you know that when Yellowstone blows (and there are signs it may be waking up), it could produce 2,000 times the force of Mt. St. Helens — possibly rendering humans extinct?

So Trump is not our only worry; just more immediate — and remediable (you can’t impeach a volcano).

Not using his last name, for reasons that may become evident, but the breakfast where we’re staying is free, included in the price of the room, and today is our last day here — I have learned to say “you only live once” in Italian — at a resort so fancy it sports a Michelin-starred restaurant we have not tried — I can’t afford even the peanuts above the minibar — “DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT THOSE PEANUTS,” I have gently urged Mikey (who is trying to figure out how to get the light in our private pool to work) — converting from grams and euros, the 2.88-ounce jar of peanuts cost $8.28 — so here is what Mikey ate just now for breakfast (after a large dinner at Tito’s the night before): two glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice, one mimosa, a pot of coffee; salmon, tomatoes, and bruschetta from the buffet; an order of French toast; an order of poached eggs with large strips of bacon; which he liked so much he got a second order of poached eggs with large strips of bacon. Overlooking the Mediterranean.  Si vive solo una volta.  And it was free.  La dolce vita.  (See?  Italian’s not so hard.)

Meanwhile, back in America, Rome burns.

Trump is hard at work wrecking the health care system — which could make sense if he had even a notion of what he’d like to see in its place.  (Could his secret plan be “great, great health care for everybody at a tiny fraction of the cost” — which is not too much of an exaggerated description of what they already have in Canada and throughout Europe, Great Britain, Singapore and Japan?  No, I don’t think so.  He has no idea what he’s doing.)

Trump is treating the Puerto Rican crisis as if, well, let’s face it, Puerto Ricans were not real Americans — a view many of his faithful probably share.

And then there’s his work to undermine the State Department, t0 undermine our moral leadership in the world, to undermine the agreement that brought Iran back from the brink of nuclear proliferation; to undermine trust in the free press, undermine environmental protections, undermine respect for the judiciary.

How did we get here?  Read this long, really interesting piece in the Atlantic: Facebook changed the world.  Vladimir Putin seemed to grasp aspects of this before, even, Mark Zuckerberg.

Tomorrow we see the Last Supper.  Not the one we already saw in Rome — the real one.  No disrespect, but in terms of the menu, at least, and quantity (!), I’m not sure it can compare to Mikey’s breakfast.

Not presidential?  Here’s what Obama did to get people upset (he wore a tan suit).  Contrast that with what Trump has done?  And now he wants ten times as many nuclear weapons? Everywhere we go we apologize for him — to cabbies and waiters and busboys, to the train station information lady, to the concierge — and whether in sign language or perfect English, they instantly get it and share our dismay.

Italy is magnificent.  You knew that, but wow.  And if you’re lucky enough to be able to go in October instead of the hot and even more crowded summer months?  Here are some random things I’ve learned (but have not verified, in case I misheard): Rome’s population was about a million back in the day (we saw the spot Caesar was assassinated, three or four hundred meters from the site of the house where Michelangelo lived while painting the Sistine Chapel — which is NOT the dome of St. Peter’s (magnificent and adjacent though that is) — but over time and invasions and plagues it shrank to ten or twenty thousand . . . before recovering over the centuries to, now, more like 3 million (5 million in the greater region) . . . but the population of native Italians is again dropping — by 200,000 just last year — which makes me sad, because who can watch “Moonstruck” (as we did on the flight over) and not want there to be as many Italians as possible?  (“Old man, you give those dogs another piece of my food, I’m gonna kick ya till you’re dead.”)

So that’s the first thing I learned.

And did you know the Italians had no tomatoes — no tomatoes! — or potatoes, for that matter, until they arrived from the New World (discovered by Christopher Columbus 525 years ago today)?  Not sure whether Columbus brought them back himself or the Italians had to wait longer, but there could be no tomato pizza without America.  And did you know Italians did not invent pizza until 1898?  (I am particularly unsure of that factoid; but it could be accurate. [UPDATE: That was the year Pizza Margherita was invented for Queen Margherita: red, white, and green, tomato, cheese and basil.])

Or that most of the perhaps 20,000 residents of Pompeii escaped (and that no lava ever touched the city) — because the eruption was at 1pm or so (just ask Pliny the Younger, who witnessed it from across the Bay of Naples) and it was not until about 5am the next morning that the huge mushroom cloud of pumice and ash and poison gas suddenly collapsed onto the city, suffocating those who had chosen — or been ordered — to stay behind and protect their houses from looting.  And those who died were NOT turned into stone figures on the spot (as Apollo turned Daphne into a tree, which you can see in Bernini’s astonishing statue at the Borghese Gallery — see her toes beginning to sprout roots? her flesh turning to bark? her fingers sprouting leaves?),  but rather their bodies decomposed even as the surrounding ash solidified, leaving a sort of “negative.”  Drill a hole into the top of that cavity; pour in plaster; wait a few days for it to set; and then chip away the exterior: that is who you see when you visit this remarkable city.

(Others escaped the volcano but died in the fairly minor tsunami.)

And then there was touring the Colosseum at night, down below what would have been the sand-covered arena floor, where the gladiators and beasts were corralled into 24 cages, any combination of which could be elevated to the arena floor on cue.  We saw all that.  We stood where the gladiators (and rhinoceri) stood.

And more!  But there’s a 5-euro margherita pizza with my name on it waiting at Tito’s in Vico Equense, and I must not be late.

Hurray for Italy.  My sense is that Italians, like much of the rest of the world, are praying for us to regain our senses.  I don’t know whose IQ is higher, Trump’s or Tillerson’s, but I know we are in deep trouble.  Which bodes ill for the world at large.

Have a great day!