"Bayes Arrows" (probability, causality, other stuff)

From 3:AM Magazine:

Clark Glymour worked in the 1970s  on traditional issues in the philosophy of science, especially formal accounts of the confirmation of scientific theories. In this same period he worked on philosophically interesting global properties of models of general relaivity. In the 1980s, in collaboration with John Earman, he worked on historical topics in late 19th and early 20th century psychiatry and physics, especially on the genesis and testing of the special and general theories of relativity. In the same period he became interested in the possibility of automated procedures for finding causal explanations in the social sciences.

A collaboration with his students, Kevin Kelly, Richard Scheines and Peter Spirtes developed automated heuristic procedures for respecification of linear latent variable models. In the 1990s Scheines, Spirtes and Glamour had developed the causal interpretation of Bayes nets, and outlined a program of research: to find feasible search algorithms, characterize indistinguishability, and generate algorithms for prediction from interventions on partially characterized causal structures. His current research applies previous work on causal Bayes nets and formal learning theory to a variety of topics.
Here he discusses different kinds of uses of  probabilities in science, causality, Hume and Bayes, why thinking causality is a fiction isn’t even wrong, causal Bayes nets, social sciences poor record of making inferences, free will, why Aristotle’s approach to philosophy bests Plato’s and why there’s not enough of that approach in contemporary philosophy at the moment, Laplacian demons, why in general scientists are right to criticise contemporary philosophy on the grounds that it doesn’t do anything, and the threats that Bayesians will avert. This’ll wake you up…

3:AM: What made you become a philosopher?
Clark Glamour: When I was sixteen, after reading the Origin of Species I decided I wanted to know everything, or at least to know what could not be known. As a freshman at the University of Montana I sat in on a one night a week adult course on the history of philosophy taught by the late Cynthia Schuster, who had been Hans Reichenbach’s doctoral student. My fate was decided. I had to hide my interest from my father, who expected me to become an attorney.

3:AM: First, looking at science generally, would you say the use of probabilities is one of the biggest changes in science over the last century or so? Could you sketch for us the landscape as it looks to you now, how it developed and how you’d characterise the explanatory virtues of probability?

CG: There are two kinds of uses of probability in science. One is that probability claims may be intrinsic to a theory, as in statistical mechanics or quantum theory; the other is the probability is used in the assessment of theories, as in most of applied statistics. In the first role, probability claims are built into whatever explanation a theory provides; in the second role, they have no such function. For technical reasons, the division is not quite so sharp as I have stated it. In many forms of data assessment, the theory itself must specify a probability distribution for the data. Those specifications are usually ancillary to the “substantive” claims of a theory; for example, in the social sciences they are typically about the probability distribution of unobserved “disturbance” or “noise” variables that are themselves usually of no substantive interest. This contrasts, for example, with certain classes of theories in psychology, and of course in quantum theory, where the relations among the variables of interest are specified to be probabilistic.

It is often forgotten but should be emphasized that some of the foundational theories in scientific history were not probabilistic in either of the ways I have just described. Among many others, Newtonian dynamics and Darwin’s theory of evolution are but two examples of a-probabilistic theories and theory assessments. Probability entered theory assessment early in the 19^th century, I think beginning with Legendre’s (1808, I think) appendix on estimating the orbits of comets by least squares, although I believe Gauss claimed credit, as he did for much else. In the 18^th century probability had a role in speculative theories of human abilities, but its first intrinsic role in physical theories seem to have been in the kinetic theory of gases in the 19^th century. By the 20^th century, probability was increasingly (and now almost universally) required in data assessment.

3:AM: Does this mean that really causality is no longer scientific and that what science will look at instead is probabilities connecting distinct events and so forth? Do causality and probability come apart necessarily, or can they be unified?

CG: Phooey! Try to plan getting out of a room by computing the probability that you try to turn the doorknob conditional on the doorknob turning…versus…computing the probability that the knob will turn given that you try to turn the knob. The conditional probabilities are different. Causality makes the difference, and is why when planning to get out of a room, we use the second, and not the first, conditional probability. For planning actions and policy interventions, probability is useless without causality. Once upon a time yellowed fingers were highly correlated with lung cancer later in life. The surgeon general recommended against smoking; he did not recommend that people wear gloves to prevent yellowed fingers....

... 3:AM: When asking the question about whether there can be mental causes, why did you ask ‘Why is a brain like the planet?’ and what’s the answer to both?

CG: Damned if I remember.

...MUCH MORE

Der Spiegel: "The Approaching End to Merkel's Tenure"

Considering the source is about as mainstream, centrist, establishment and influential as you are likely to find in Germany, this piece should probably be taken seriously.

From Spiegel Online, June 22:

With the chancellor under heavy fire from Bavarian conservatives, Germany's political landscape may be facing radical upheaval. Angela Merkel might lose her job and the country's traditional center-right partnership could soon end. By DER SPIEGEL Staff

"At some point, I would like to find the right time to leave politics," Angela Merkel said. "That's a lot more difficult than I had imagined. But I don't want to be a half-dead wreck when I leave politics."  

The comments came in response to a question about her life goals outside of politics way back in 1999. Merkel had just become secretary-general of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and sat down for an interview with the photographer Herlinde Koelbl for her book "Spuren der Macht" (Traces of Power).

That was also the year in which Merkel's rise within the CDU began, along with the almost revolutionary restructuring of the party. In subsequent years, Merkel jettisoned so many traditional CDU positions that it is more accurate to speak of a re-founding of the party than a process of modernization. Many conservatives have since been unable to recognize their old party. And all the while, discomfort with Merkel's leadership continued to grow, year after year, within the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU's Bavarian sister party.

Since fall 2015, when almost a million people arrived in Germany as a result of Merkel's liberal refugee policies, this discomfort has mutated into open rejection. And now, in June 2018, the CSU has had enough, even if there isn't currently an obvious trigger for their vexation aside from approaching Bavarian state elections scheduled for mid-October. They would like to see the immediate end of the Merkel era -- there is really no other way to interpret comments made recently by CSU party leadership. And to achieve that goal, they are prepared to sacrifice the decades-long partnership between the two conservative parties.

"Merkel's political approach has reached the end of its tether," says a CSU parliamentarian. Discussions about Merkel within the CSU are characterized by rage and malice. And CSU leader Horst Seehofer is threatening to defy Merkel's constitutionally guaranteed power to determine policy guidelines.

Formally, the chaos we are seeing in the German political landscape these days stems from just one of the 63 items on Seehofer's so-called "masterplan" for reforming refugee policy: his call for people to be turned back from the German border if they have already applied for asylum or been registered as a refugee in another European Union member state. For quite some time, the CSU itself seemed unsure as to exactly who it wanted to turn away at the border, but the main thing was to take a tough line.

The Fall of Merkel?
Merkel, meanwhile, views such a policy as the kind of unilateral German move that she would like to avoid. She insists that there must be a "European solution," by which she means a reform of EU migration policy negotiated with all of Germany's European Union partners.

In truth, though, it's not about that one item on Seehofer's list. The CSU would like to put an end to the refugee policy that is closely linked with Merkel's name. If Seehofer and his party fulfill their promise to soon begin turning people back from the border -- on which no senior CSU politician leaves any doubt -- then Merkel would only be left with two options: that of abandoning her own convictions or of consummating the break between the CDU and CSU.

Ironically, it is Merkel's own sister party has triggered the most significant political crisis in her almost 13-year tenure as chancellor. It remains unclear how it will end, but chatter about the chancellor's potentially imminent demise has now become a constant at every water cooler in Berlin....MUCH MORE

AI: "Experts Bet on First Deepfakes Political Scandal"

From IEEE Spectrum:

Researchers wager on a possible Deepfake video scandal during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections

A quiet wager has taken hold among researchers who study artificial intelligence techniques and the societal impacts of such technologies. They’re betting whether or not someone will create a so-called Deepfake video about a political candidate that receives more than 2 million views before getting debunked by the end of 2018.

The actual stakes in the bet are fairly small: Manhattan cocktails as a reward for the “yes” camp and tropical tiki drinks for the “no” camp. But the implications of the technology behind the bet’s premise could potentially reshape governments and undermine societal trust in the idea of having shared facts. It all comes down to when the technology may mature enough to digitally create fake but believable videos of politicians and celebrities saying or doing things that never actually happened in real life.

“We talk about these technologies and we see the fact you can simulate Obama’s voice or simulate a Trump video, and it seems so obvious that there would be a lot of financial interest in seeing the technology used,” says Tim Hwang, director of the Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative at the Harvard Berkman-Klein Center and the MIT Media Lab. “But one thing in my mind is, why haven’t we seen it yet?”

Deepfake technology enables a source actor (bottom left) to fully control a faked video portrait (right).

The Deepfake technology in question first gained notoriety in December 2017 when a person going by the pseudonym “DeepFakes” showed how deep learning—a popular AI technique based on neural network computer architecture—could digitally stitch the faces of celebrities onto the faces of porn actors in pornography videos. Since that time, social network services such as Twitter and Reddit have attempted to clamp down on a slew of amateur-created Deepfake videos that are typically being used for pornographic purposes.

Such technology relies upon a “generative adversarial networks” (GANs) approach. One network learns to identify the patterns in images or videos to recreate, say, a particular celebrity’s face as its output. The second network acts as the discriminating viewer by trying to figure out whether a given image or video frame is authentic or a synthetic fake. That second network then provides feedback to reinforce and strengthen the believability of the first network’s output.

Experts have been investigating and refining the deep learning techniques behind such Deepfake videos. Beyond just face swapping, researchers have shown how to digitally mimic both the appearance and voice of individuals in order to create the equivalent of digital puppets. Stanford University researchers recently unveiled some of the most realistic-looking examples to date in their “Deep Video Portraits” paper that will be presented at the SIGGRAPH 2018 annual conference on computer graphics in Vancouver from August 12 to 16....MUCH MORE

Recently:
"The US military is funding an effort to catch deepfakes and other AI trickery"
But, but...I saw it on the internet.... 

"Talk down to Siri like she's a mere servant – your safety demands it"
The "mere" is troubling for some reason but it's CPI day so no time to reflect on why....

Seventy Years Ago Today The Soviets Blockaded West Berlin and Began Their Attempt to Starve the City Into Submission

At the time it wasn't known as West Berlin but rather the French, British and American Zones of Occupation. But the Sov's did cut it off from from what, less than a year later, May of 1949, was to become West Germany

As with many crises, this one began with a disagreement over money, specifically the surprise currency exchange by the Western powers of the new Deutsche Mark to replace the seriously debased (by the Russians overprinting) Reichsmark.

Our last mention of the currency swap was in 2016's "Whoa: India Messes With Currency Big-Time":

Although not as dramatic* as the 1948 German currency reform when 10 Reichsmarks were swapped for 1 Deutsche Mark in the Western zones of occupation, this is still a stunning move....

***

...*Four days later the Soviets blockaded the city of Berlin to starve and/or freeze the population into submission which led to one of my favorite examples of clear thinking...

We'll have more on Tuesday, another anniversary of the events of '48 - '49.

"Meet the Art World’s Most High-Profile Detective"

From Garage:

In Garage Magazine No. 6, Charles Hill spilled the secrets to investigating high-profile thefts of Vermeers, “The Scream,” and more.

 

Like the viking sagas, art-crime sagas can be bloody, redemptive, and exhausting. Heroes and monsters abound. The legendary bloodhound Charles Hill recounts three spectacular art heists and reveals to GARAGE the psychology of the cops, the robbers, and the criminal masterminds who populate the art world.

Case 1
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, was robbed on the night of St. Patrick’s Day, 1990, by two men dressed as Boston police officers. They stole a number of paintings, including Vermeer’s The Concert, three Rembrandts (one his only seascape, The Storm on the Sea of Gahilee), and Manet’s Chez Tortoni, along with the finial to a banner from Napoleon’s Imperial Guard and an ancient Chinese beaker. The most important painting in the Gardner Museum is probably Titian’s Rape of Europa, but is was too big to shift. The finial was possibly stolen as some childish game of Capture the Flag, and the beaker was simply attractive and available. Nothing has been seen of them since.

Isabella Stewart Gardner put together her collection in the late 19th century, largely on the advice of Bernard Berenson and Lord Duveen. Not every piece in the museum is exactly what Berenson and Duveen claimed it was when they sold it to her, but the masterpieces at least are genuine.
In my opinion, the main villain was a top-echelon informant for the FBI named James Joseph Bulger, nicknamed Whitey. There is no hard evidence for this but I combat art crime both rationally and irrationally, intellectually and viscerally. That technique serves me well as a style and measure of success.

Through Whitey, the FBI had eviscerated two New England Mafia families, the Patriarca and ANgiulo clans. He went on the run in the late 1990s lot was captured in California in 2011 and imprisoned for 11 murders and other crimes. It is inconceivable to me that Whitey did not know why the Gardner Museum paintings were stolen and where they went. Even the dogs in the streets of South Boston on the new morning of March 18, 1990, must have known that Whitey was involved in some way before, during, or after the robbery took place. However, he is saying nothing. What can he say?

There are three strands of inquiry about what happened to those paintings, the finial, and the Chinese beaker. In March 2013, the FBI announced that they knew who the culprits were and are concentrating their efforts in South Philadelphia, presumably among Italian Americans. I think that is speculative bullshit, because they want it to be true. The second strand is based on information from a variety of sources acquired by Richard Ellis, formerly head of the Art & Antiques Squad at New Scotland Yard. I would not vouch for the probity of any of his sources, but they all seem to sing from the same hymn sheet and place those stolen Gardner Museum paintings in Ireland.

My strand of enquiry leads to Ireland as well, although I admit it may be as speculative as the FBI’s ideas. The robbery at the Gardner Museum was inspired, if that is the right word, by Martian Cahill’s art thefts in Ireland, including the great heist at Sir Alfred and Lady Beit’s home, Russborough. It’s like unraveling the storyline of Sophocles’ Antigone, perhaps best read in Seamus Heaney’s adaptation of that play in The Burial at Thebes: I believe the two Gardner thieves have died, and the before the second the second one went to meet our Maker, he asked me to help find the body of his brother for a proper burial.

The most important consideration regarding the Gardner Museum’s stolen paintings is to recover them intact, and secondly, to recover them without excessive hassle. Prosecuting the thieves would be a pointless exercise. The people who hold the artworks now are not the ones who stole them. In my opinion, the reason they are hidden away is because no one wants to get caught in possession, and those who now hold them are unsure what to do with them. As I see it, my task is to provide them with a few good ideas about how best to deliver those pictures, the finial, and the beaker back to Boston. The advertised reward is a consideration: at last count, on the FBI’s stolen-art website, it was $5 million.

Case 2
Edvard Munch’s original version of The Scream was stolen from the National Gallery of Norway. Oslo on the first morning of the 1994 Winter Olympics, which were held in Lillehammer, north of Oslo. Two men put up a ladder against the window of the room in which The Scream hung—that’s what Norwegian organized crime was like in those days, The first attempt to climb the ladder failed. I supposed because it was cold outside, but the second succeeded and the two took off with the painting, all watched on CCTV by the security guard inside, who took his time to phone first his supervisor and then the police.

Four months later, posing as an agent of the Getty Museum in California, I located the painting in the basement of a summerhouse along Oslo Fjord. I had driven down there with a dodgy art dealer known to the thieves. We all stopped for a coffee along the highway first and made a plan. I would continue south and collect the picture, while my minder (who they reckoned was an English thug based in Amsterdam) went back to Oslo to sort out the money for its recovery.

In fact, though he looked like a gorilla, he was the most highly decorated officer in London’s Metropolitan Police, the denouement of the drama came when I was invited to go down to the basement to claim the painting. I was not prepared to be held in that basement until the following Christmas, so I told my host, the dodgy art dealer, what I thought of that idea in language that could best be described as Old English vernacular. So he went and brought it upstairs himself. I unwrapped it from a blue sheet and saw first where Munch had started painting on what’s now the back. The picture is painted on heavy cardboard, which surprised me, but I turned it over and there was the famous image, including the original splatter marks where Munch blew out a candle on it. I said something original like “Holy mackerel” while I admired it. We then drove with it in his Mercedes boy racer coupé to the Asgardstrand Hotel (that hotel is depicted in another painting by Munch of young girls on a pier) and when he left (ostensibly for me to get some sleep) I called my Norwegian police colleagues to come and collect it.

Meanwhile, my gorilla-lookalike undercover police colleagues had a fight in Oslo’s Grand Hotel with a psychopath and a sociopath, aided by two Oslo Police Officers Who sauntered into the room with their snack packs of Big Macs and cokes, and the money—big bucks in krona. The two fighting fruit-and-nut cases were arrested.

The dodgy art dealer was later arrested and released without charge. At their trial the thieves’ lawyers claimed that I was in Norway Illegally under a false name and with false papers (provided by the government of Norway and the UK) which is prohibited by post-Second World War Norwegian law to prevent secret police actions, so they work free, too. Still, the painting was recovered and that was the important thing.

Munch was an artistic genius and a reprehensible creep. When he died he was given a state funeral by Vidkun Quisling’s Nazi collaborationist government. He produced four, possibly five, versions of The Scream, and lithographs of the image. The blow-up dolls and key-chain fob came later.

In 2004, a police officer was murdered during an armed robbery at cash depot in the Norwegian city of stavanger, and to divert the police’s attention from the investigation into that, an armed robbery was committed later in the year at the Munch Museum in Oslo, during which versions of The Scream and Madonna were stolen. The armed gang responsible were mostly Albanian ethnicity, living in Oslo and the Swedish city of Gothenburg, and were completely unconnected to the 1994 thieves, who were local no hopers. One of the organizers of the 2004 theft, David Toska, claimed an advertised reward of one million dark chocolate M&Ms when that version of The Scream was recovered in 2006. All types of people commit art crimes, including chocoholics....MUCH MORE

If interested we have quite a few links on art theft and recovery including the above-referenced prior piece from Garage.
The Case of the Mafia and the Stolen Caravaggio
Loot From World's Biggest Art Heist Probably In Ireland-Investigator (plus the 'catalogue' of the Hermann Göring collection)
Valuation: "Dark-Web Shoppers Are Bidding $350,000 in Bitcoin for a Stolen Painting—and It’s Likely a Fake"
Art Basel/Art Miami: Diddy Dislocates Drake's Shoulder, Picasso Stolen
Italy's Anti-Mafia Police Find Stolen Van Goghs
Assets that Ain't Going to Germany: "Picasso, Mondrian works stolen in Athens art heist"
Picasso, Matisse, Monet paintings stolen from Dutch museum in daring heist
How Do You Sell a Stolen Painting?

In the wake of last night's epic theft from a Dutch museum, the founder of the FBI's art crimes team explains why stealing masterpieces is a terrible business plan. Serbian special police guard a recovered Cezannne taken in an armed robbery. (Reuters)

Okay, One More: An Art School of Fish

Couldn't leave the series at cockroach milk.

From John Atkinson at his Wrong Hands blog, where he has "Another Art School of Fish"

Also at Wrong Hands: 
Canadian security threats

Scientists Swear Cockroach Milk Is the Next Big Superfood

Rounding out today's Surf-n-Turf special, a repost form June 23, 2017:

But how do you milk the wee vermin?
From Grub Street:

Wonderful news, everybody: Scientists say milk from the world’s only species of lactating cockroach is showing real potential as a thing humans can ingest. The Diploptera punctata, or Pacific beetle cockroach, as this freaky bug is known, gives birth to live young instead of laying eggs, and a team that included researchers from India, Japan, France, Canada, and the NIH here in the U.S. has discovered that the momma roach’s milk secretions actually are a “fantastic” source of nutrition, as they contain “all the essential amino acids” and supposedly more than three times the energy a person can get from cow’s milk. Each individual milk crystal is basically a fully balanced meal unto itself: To quote one author of the study, which ran in the journal IUCrJ, “The crystals are like a complete food — they have proteins, fats, and sugars.”...MORE

Roach milk? I'm still having trouble with that picture of the prime ministers of Finland, Sweden, Denmark,  Iceland and Norway eating their bugs and plankton a couple weeks ago:

"Nordics could become 'Silicon Valley' of food" (and Norway goes big on seaweed cultivation)
Please don't
As the bumper sticker says: "Mealworms aren't food, mealworms are what food eats".
Or something.

From EU Observer:

 Plankton, seaweed and edible insects were on the menu, when the prime ministers of Finland, Sweden, Denmark,

 Iceland and Norway met in Austevoll, southwest of the city of Bergen in Norway on Tuesday (30 May).

They launched an initiative called Nordic Solutions To Global Challenges, which aims to achieve the UN's sustainable development goals for 2030....

Earlier:
Roboburger Review
"How Iceland Beat the British in the Four Cod Wars"

Roboburger Review

Following up on Bloomberg's deep dive: "The World’s First Robot-Made Burger Is About to Hit the Bay Area", TechCrunch weighs in:

Taste test: Burger robot startup Creator opens first restaurant
$6 of algorithmic deliciousness

Creator’s transparent burger robot doesn’t grind your brisket and chuck steak into a gourmet patty until you order it. That’s just one way this startup, formerly known as Momentum Machines, wants to serve the world’s freshest cheeseburger for just $6. On June 27th, after eight years in development, Creator unveils its first robot restaurant before opening to the public in September. We got a sneak peek…err…taste.

When I ask how a startup launching one eatery at a time could become a $10 billion company, Creator co-founder and CEO Alex Vardakostas looks me dead in the eye and says, “the market is much bigger than that.”

Here’s how Creator’s burger-cooking bot works at its 680 Folsom Street location in San Francisco. Once you order your burger style through a human concierge on a tablet, a compressed air tube pushes a baked-that-day bun into an elevator on the right. It’s sawed in half by a vibrating knife before being toasted and buttered as it’s lowered to conveyor belt. Sauces measured by the milliliter and spices by the gram are automatically squirted onto the bun. Whole pickles, tomatoes, onions and blocks of nice cheese get slices shaved off just a second before they’re dropped on top.

Meanwhile, the robot grinds hormone-free, pasture-raised brisket and chuck steak to order. But rather than mash them all up, the strands of meat hang vertically and are lightly pressed together. They form a loose but auto-griddleable patty that’s then plopped onto the bun before the whole package slides out of the machine after a total time of about five minutes. The idea is that when you bite into the burger, your teeth align with the vertical strands so instead of requiring harsh chewing it almost melts in your mouth....MORE

We'll be back with MIT Technology Review when they're done noshing.

Stanford CS230—Deep Learning: "Project Reports and Posters, Spring 2018"

Stanford Computer Science is pretty darn happenin'.

From Stanford University's Deep Learning course (CS230):

Course Description   Deep Learning is one of the most highly sought after skills in AI. We will help you become good at Deep Learning. In this course, you will learn the foundations of Deep Learning, understand how to build neural networks, and learn how to lead successful machine learning projects. You will learn about Convolutional networks, RNNs, LSTM, Adam, Dropout, BatchNorm, Xavier/He initialization, and more. You will work on case studies from healthcare, autonomous driving, sign language reading, music generation, and natural language processing. You will master not only the theory, but also see how it is applied in industry. You will practice all these ideas in Python and in TensorFlow, which we will teach. After this course, you will likely find creative ways to apply it to your work. This class is taught in the flipped-classroom format. You will watch videos and complete in-depth programming assignments and online quizzes at home, then come to class for advanced discussions and work on projects. This class will culminate in an open-ended final project, which the teaching team will help you on. 

Final Project Prize Winners

• First place: Image-to-Image Translation with Conditional-GAN (Weini Yu, Jason Hu, Yujo Zhouchangwan Yu)
• Second place: Deep Knowledge tracing and Engagement with MOOCs (Klint Kanopka, Kritphong Mongkhonvanit, David Lang)
• Third place: Deep Learning for Improving Power-Accuracy of Heart Rate Monitors (Albert Gural)

Outstanding Posters

• First place: Painting Outside the Box: Image Outpainting with GANs (Mark Sabini, Gili Rusak)
• Second place: LeafNet: A Deep Learning Solution to Tree Species Identification (Krishna Rao, Elena Herrero, Gabrielle Pacalin)
• Third place: Earthquake warning system: Detecting earthquake precursor signals using deep neural networks (Mustafa Al Ibrahim, Jihoon Park, Noah Athens)

Submissions

• LSTM Music Generation by Xingxing Yang: report poster
• Extracting High-Quality Poster Images From Videos by Katie Fo, Nat William Gardenswartz, Tam N Dinh: report poster
• Image Colorization by Alex Avery, Dhruv Amin: report poster
• Sketch Classification by Sushan Bhattarai: report poster
• DeepSecurity Cybersecurity Threat Behavior Classification by Giovanni Sean Paul Malloy, Isaac Justin Faber, Isha Thapa: report poster
• Predicting the Success of Crowdfunding by Chenchen Pan, Yan Chen, Yiwen Guo: report poster
• Classification of blood cell subtypes by Sharon Shin Newman, Therese Maria Persson: report poster
• Simulating nanophotonic neural networks at a component level by Ben Bartlett: report poster
• Image Restoration of Low-Quality Medical-Diagnostic Images by Fariah Hayee, Katherine Lee Sytwu: report poster
• Automatic Chord Arrangement from Melodies by Shuxin Meng, Yulou Zhou: report poster
• Project Sunroof by Pranjal Patil, Vedang Hemant Vadalkar: report poster
• Brain Computer Interface: Using Neural Activity to Predict Cursor Kinematics by Jonathan Henry Zwiebel, Robert Terrell Ross, Samuel Lurye: report poster
• Guaging Political Bias on Twitter by Catherine Frances Lee, Jacob Shiff, Sridatta Thatipamala: report poster
• DeepFugue: a model to generate Baroquestyle fugues by Aditya Chander, Samantha Elinon Silverstein, Marina Barbara Cottrell: report poster

• Deep Learning for Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) by Bella Shi, Kailai Xu, Shuyi Yin: report poster
• ChexNet2: Improvements for The Detection of Pneumonia with Deep Learning by Alexander Kucy, Liam Hassen Neath: report poster
• Neural Network based Building Earthquake Vulnerability Prediction by Haiwen Wang, Zhaozhuo Xu, Zhiyuan Li: report poster
• Image Super-Resolution for Facial Recognition by Corey Tze-chung Shih: report poster
• Neural Networks for Baseball Data Analysis by Yifan Pi: report poster

...MUCH MORE

The kids are alright.

WEF: "Three scenarios for the future of geopolitics"

From the World Economic Forum:

To understand events in the international arena, it helps to distinguish whether our current period is essentially stable or in significant flux. In an article written a quarter of a century ago, during another time of rapid and relentless change, my co-author and I described the former type of period as a plateau phase, and the latter as one of historical transition.

A series of recent developments suggests that the domestic political situations of several key players in the international arena are undergoing significant shifts, as are relations between players. Everything seems to indicate that the world is in another period of historical transition.

A shortlist of the developments that point in this direction include: the breakdown of the political centre in several advanced democracies; centrifugal tendencies in the long-prevailing regional and international structures, of which the Brexit vote is one example; the accentuation of authoritarianism in Russia and China; and last, but certainly not least, the collapse of American moral leadership.

Against this backdrop, how might we expect strategic relations to evolve in the next 20 years? In the short to mid-term, the key issue is the relationship between those powers that have been largely responsible for creating the post-WWII order, and those that are challenging it, in an effort to erect a new paradigm calling that order into question. In which direction this relationship is moving should become clear within the next five to ten years, and perhaps much sooner. There are essentially three possible outcomes.

One is that the current Western-dominated paradigm manages to overcome its current weaknesses and disunity, creating space for and movement towards a renewed democratic revolution. In the process, it forges an environment in which the challenging powers can be successfully encouraged to integrate. Call this 'liberal internationalism renewed' - a revamped version of the paradigm that has prevailed since the end of the Second World War.

A second possible outcome has the challengers to the Western-led paradigm - primarily, but not exclusively, Russia and China - succeed in taking advantage of its contradictions, to more or less peacefully establish the basis for the multi-polar world for which they have long been militating. Call this '21st-century concert', after the 19th-century Concert of Nations.

A third possible outcome resembles the second, but with one crucial difference. The rise of the multi-polarists turns violent, characterized by spiraling patterns of conflict that encompass ever more regions of the world. The resulting situation is similar to the strategic free-for-all that prevailed as the Concert of Nations was weakened, and ultimately condemned, by inter-state conflict rising to critical levels. Call this 'geostrategic meltdown', a new period of global conflict.

As for the factors driving these developments, there are five key ones....

...MUCH MORE

"The Political Power of Global Corporations"

From Progress in Political Economy, April 21:

We have long been told that corporations “rule the world”, their interests seemingly taking precedence over states and their citizens. Yet while states, civil society, and international organisations are well drawn in terms of their institutions, ideologies, and functions, the world’s global corporations are often more simply sketched as market actors which are mechanisms of profit maximisation.  In The Political Power of Global Corporations I seek to demonstrate why they should be seen as explicitly political actors with complex identities and strategies that should be more the focus of our analysis than is often the case.

According to Peter Nolan, Dylan Sutherland and Jin Zhang by the end of the twentieth century no more than five global corporations controlled each of the world’s major industries, with around a third of these having one corporation accounting for more than 40 per cent of global sales. Colin Crouch observes that there has been a “corporate takeover of the market” by these enormous entities. As such, the free market, not just ideologically but conceptually, is defunct for understanding them. They may have been aided in their growth and expansion by free market policies and the neoliberal ideology underpinning them, but by their nature and their actions, global corporations themselves give the lie to, and as such undermine the veracity of, this vision. With the evidence that markets are neither free nor competitive but controlled by global corporations, in identifying them as political actors we should also declare them anti-market actors.

If one of the ways in which their political power is hidden is in being cast in competitive market terms, another is in seeing them as truly ‘global’.  It makes them seem like one of the ‘forces’ of globalisation, when in reality they are not as global as is often claimed.  For example, Alan Rugman and Alain Verbeke demonstrate that only nine of the world’s top 500 global corporations have sales in so many regions of the world that they may be regarded as truly global, while 320 of them still derive 80 per cent of their sales from their home region. 

The same may often be said of where their productive assets are located (for example, see Hinrich Voss). They may have global interests, but we need to re-territorialise global corporations because their home states and regions are the geographical source of their political power, just as their market control is its economic source....MORE

The US startup is disappearing

From Quartz:

Historically, startups have been the engine of US economy. By creating new jobs and surfacing new ideas, startups play an outsized role in making the economy grow.
It’s too bad they are a dying breed.

The share of companies that are startups has been falling
While companies that were less than two years old made up about 13% of all companies in 1985, they only accounted for 8% in 2014.

A far smaller share of people work for startups

From around 1998 to 2010, the share of private sector workers in companies that were less than two years old plummeted from more than 9% to less than 5%.

The startup decline is happening across the economy

A new report from the Brookings Institution, finds that in nearly every industry, from agriculture to finance, the share of new companies is falling.

So what’s going on?

It’s not entirely clear, but the authors of the Brookings report have some ideas.

One possibility: Startups are struggling in this era of rising market concentration. In most industries, since the 1980s, the share of all sales going to the top firms is increasing. Startups may have a hard time competing with these mega firms, which can out pay them for the best talent and sometimes attempt to drive them out of the industry. Previous Brookings research found there are fewer startups in states where a smaller number of companies dominate the market (pdf).

Another related possibility is that the most-educated American workers are no longer attracted to entrepreneurship. In 1992, 4% of 25-54 year olds with a master’s degree or PhD owned a small company with at least 10 employees. In 2017, this was true of only 2.2%. Companies started by the highly educated are often unusually productive....MORE

Related:

January 2013 
One More Time: It's Not Small Businesses that Create Jobs...
...it's small YOUNG businesses.

Long time readers are probably getting sick of the topic but it really matters when targeting government efforts at job creation. The sole-proprietor attorney making a couple hundred K in Chattanooga is not going to be creating jobs even if you cut his top marginal tax rate to 5%.

There are millions of people who have small businesses as a way to create a job for themselves and don't want the headaches and/or risks of expanding. There are millions more that are in declining businesses that can't expand. And on and on.

Here's FT Alphaville with a couple different pieces of the puzzles:...

Something Odd Is Happening In the Arctic: At Midsummer, Tankers Get Trapped In the Ice

From The Barents Observer, June 21:

Shipping in the Gulf of Ob is paralysed and the situation complicated, icebreaker company Rosatomflot says. 

It is late June, but the winter has not abandoned the Gulf of Ob. The shallow bay, which houses two of Russia’s biggest Arctic out-shipment terminals for oil and gas, remains packed with fast ice.

It has created a  complicated situation, Rosatomflot says. The state company which manages the Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers, confirms that  independent shipping in the area is «paralysed» and that LNG carriers and tankers are stuck.

The shipping companies had expected the Gulf of Ob to be free of ice in the course of June and that icebreaker assistance would not be necessary. They were wrong.

According to Rosatomflot, there appears to be a need for icebreaker services in the area at least until after the first week of July. There are currently two nuclear-powered icebreakers in the Gulf of Ob, the «Taymyr» and the «Vaygach». In addition, there are several smaller tugs and icebreakers working in the waters around the Sabetta port.

According to the icebreaker company, this is the first summer in four years that the Gulf of Ob is packed with this much ice.

«The global warming, which there has been so much talk about for such a long time, seems to have receded a little and we are returning to the standards of the 1980s and 1990s,» says company representative Andrey Smirnov.

The Yamal LNG plant is fully dependent on smooth shipping to and from the port of Sabetta. A fleet of 15 powerful top ice-class carriers are being built for the project. The ships are capable of independently breaking through more than two meter thick ice. Commercial shipments from Sabetta started in early December 2017.

Further south, company Gazprom Neft is operating the Novy Port project, which is built to be able to deliver up to eight million tons of oil per year.  A fleet of six tankers are being built for the Novy Port....MORE

Possibly related:
"U.S. Navy Releases Proposal Request for Coast Guard’s New Heavy Polar Icebreaker"
Arctic Doings: "Teekay’s New Icebreaking LNG Carrier ‘Eduard Toll’ Makes Historic Northern Sea Route Passage"
"Russia Official Announces Plans to Build Space Age Nuclear Icebreakers"
"How To Avoid A Naval Cold War In The High North"

Here are the sea ice thickness and volume measurements for the Summer Solstice 2018 and for the same date in 2008

 

Danish Meteorological Institute 

Danish Meteorological Institute

"How Iceland Beat the British in the Four Cod Wars"

From Gastro Obscura:

For decades, two island nations came to blows over fish. 

Our Hero

In Icelandic, they were known as Þorskastríðin, “the cod strife,” or Landhelgisstríðin, “the wars for the territorial waters.” In English, they were simply “the Cod Wars.” Between the late 1940s and 1976, the two island nations of Iceland and the United Kingdom all but declared war—despite the fact that there were almost no casualties, and the former had no army.

In the frigid waters between these two nations, four confrontations took place between Great Britain, a world superpower, and Iceland, a microstate of just a few hundred thousand people. Each time, Iceland won. And it all happened because of cod—and the right to fish it. These were the Cod Wars.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a nation surrounded by hundreds of square miles of ocean on all sides relies heavily on fish. It has long been Iceland’s main food supply and primary export product. But of all fish, cod is the most important: a raison d’etre, a source of national pride to rival their soccer team, and a favorite thing to eat. Sometimes, it’s dried into a kind of fish jerky and smeared with butter. Sometimes, it’s salted (one of Iceland’s biggest exports). Sometimes, it’s simply the fish’s gellur (the fleshy triangular muscle behind and under the tongue) boiled or served in a gratin. It is Iceland’s very own watery white gold, and the country carefully guards its bounty.

But in the lead-up to the Second World War, Icelandic fishermen grew concerned about a preponderance of British ships in their waters, which affected how much cod they could catch themselves. Anxiety mounted until, in 1952, they announced new rules, limiting the Icelandic waters where British fishermen could trawl, and expanding Icelandic fishery zones from three to four nautical miles from the shore.

The United Kingdom, incensed by this swat from its tiny neighbor, retaliated by imposing a landing ban on Icelandic fish in British ports. It was a costly sanction—the U.K. was Iceland’s largest export market for fish. It backfired, however, when the USSR found homes for Iceland’s unsold fish. In the midst of its own Cold War, the U.S. followed suit, perhaps fearing greater Soviet influence, and encouraged its European allies to do the same. The sanctions thus minimized, Iceland could maintain their new limits. Eventually, in 1956, Great Britain capitulated the first Cod War, in the wake of a decision from the Organisation of European Economic Co-operation that sided with Iceland.

That might have been that, but in September 1958, Iceland expanded its national waters still further, from four nautical miles to 12, deep into waters that had previously belonged to no one. NATO, the Western military alliance, was up in arms, and Britain refused to cooperate. With the backing of virtually every western European country, Britain insisted they would continue to fish where they had before, under the protection of Royal Navy warships.

During the first Cod War, sometimes described as the prequel to the later three, Iceland had done little to enforce its ban: Its Coast Guard arrested only one British trawler. This time, however, skirmishes were frequent and shots were fired.

In one such altercation, in November 1958, the Icelandic gunboat V/s Þór fired warning shots at the British trawler Hackness. Eventually, the British navy ship HMS Russell intervened, and pointed out that the British ship was well outside the four-mile limit (that the British recognized as legitimate). Þór’s captain would not retreat, and ordered his men to man their guns and approach the wayward trawler. Russell, a comparable titan, made it clear that they would sink the boat if it shot the trawler. A brief stalemate followed, until the arrival of more British ships forced the Þór to back down....MORE

Also at Gastro Obscura:

The Turkish Roots of Swedish Meatballs
The Dying Art of Fishing for Shrimp on Horseback

The “Facebook Nevers” (the kids are alright)

The author is a general partner at Google Ventures GV.

From 500ish Words:

The fall of Facebook has nothing to do with people quitting the service…

The numbers are in and the trend is clear. That is, there is no trend. Despite months of controversy, users don’t seem to be leaving Facebook. Certainly not in any meaningful way.

This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone because this has been the story of Facebook since nearly the beginning of the network. It goes like this: There’s some outrage around something. There’s a lot of talk about and stories written about people quitting Facebook. Then no one actually quits.

Okay, sure, some people quit. And actually in the U.S., the number of active users has dipped a bit in recent quarters. But growth in the rest of the world is more than making up for those losses. Yes, believe it or not, there are still people on this planet not yet on Facebook — billions of them, even.¹ 

And so Facebook grows.

And yet, the tectonic plates are shifting. But they’re shifting under Facebook, as tectonic plates do. The fall of Facebook was never going to be people quitting the service en masse — it’s too interwoven into the fabric of the way many of us use the web these days — it was always going to be the people who never really use the service in the first place. Kids.

In this regard, the situation is similar to cable. For years and years we’ve heard about “cord cutters” — that is, the people who cancel their cable service (I’m one of them!). But the real story, the one that is and will be far more impactful, is the “cord nevers” — that is, the people who never got cable in the first place. Again, the young people....MORE

Twitter To Acquire the “Trust and Safety as a service” startup, Smyte

From TechCrunch:

Twitter ‘smytes’ customers

Twitter today announced it was acquiring the “trust and safety as a service” startup Smyte to help it better address issues related to online abuse, harassment, spam, and security on its platform. But it also decided to immediately shut down access to Smyte’s API without warning, leaving Smyte’s existing customers no time to transition to a new service provider.

The change left Smyte’s current customer base stranded, with production issues related to the safety of their own platforms.....MORE

So much for all that 'trust' and "safety" stuff.

"Personalisation is Asymmetric Psychological Warfare"

I believe I shall purloin the term "Uncanny Valley of Sincerity".

From Terence Eden's Blog:

Another privacy nightmare. An airline wants its cabin crew to know your birthday and favourite drinks order, to better personalise its service to you.
My first instinct is to recoil in horror. It sounds like every dystopian sci-fi epic.

But why do I feel this way? Partly it is the lack of genuine personality behind the interaction. It is the Uncanny Valley of sincerity. When Facebook wishes you happy birthday, it is a purely mechanical response - not an outpouring of genuine feeling.

There's also the issue of why they do this. At a base level, it is money. They want you to feel a positive association with their "brand" so that you will spend money with them.

They are hijacking your emotions. Nothing new here - the half-naked woman on a billboard trying to get you to buy car insurance, the catchy pop-song designed to make you pick one brand of cola over another, the ruggedly handsome man telling you how white your shirts can be...

But in the airline example, there is a sinister asymmetry. They know everything about you - and you know nothing about them.

Let's correct that.

Imagine as you get on the plane you smile at the pilot, glance at your phone, and say "Hope this landing is smoother than your last few, Sandra! Still, you should be fine as you only had two gin-and-tonics last night."

As the cabin crew serves you a drink "Dave! Can I get more peanuts? I know you're on your final warning from HR - and I'd hate for someone to put in another complaint."...

...MORE

Alphaville's Dan McCrum Directs Our Attention To Sharks

Mr. McCrum, whom we last visited as he emceed Wednesday's Kaminska Live!:

DM: Welcome to the thing with the words, a special edition of Markets Live to collectively watch an evidence session of a parliamentary committee

DM: That doesn't sound nearly as weird as I thought it might in print

Today retweeted:

Can’t wait for the Vox article explaining how Great White Sharks are really sex-positive vegan Universal Basic Income advocates.

— TED (@EpicureanDeal) June 22, 2018

Although likely not familiar with the latest research, Dan intuitively gets onto a major story:

"SHARKS are not merciless killing machines — but ­sensitive souls with a passion for jazz, say experts"

Sharks are fans of jazz and swing music, scientists discover 

Scientists found Port Jackson sharks would swim towards spots where they played jazz more than any other genre of music

A study that trained sharks to associate music with food rewards learned they were not the aggressive flesh-crunching monsters of the Jaws movies. 

Instead, scientists discovered intelligent, sensitive creatures who responded well to training and showed a preference for the sophisticated jazz sounds associated with stars such as Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis....

Major, major story:

We’ve Pinpointed the ‘Shark Week’ Doc Stormy Daniels Said She Watched With Donald Trump

But not without precedent:

Mr. McCrum may already regret triggering this train (wreck) of thought in yours truly.

Speaking of Sales Tax: "Avalara goes public, rings opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, stock rises 87%" (AVLR)

From GeekWire, June 15:

Original story: Shares of Avalara spiked 50 percent from its initial public offering price on Friday as the Seattle-based company rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

Avalara on Thursday priced its initial public offering at $24 per share, above the company’s expected range, reeling in $180 million. It is trading on the NYSE under the symbol AVLR.

Shares were trading around $37 per share on Friday morning, and by the end of the day Avalara stock sat at just under $45, up 87 percent from its IPO price.

Avalara, which sells sales tax automation software to more than 20,000 customers, initially looked to raise $150 million when it first announced its IPO intentions last month. It upped the expected stock price twice, most recently at $21 to $23 this week.

The final share price and Friday’s response on Wall Street indicates strong public market interest in the sales tax automation company, which sold 7.5 million shares of its common stock. Underwriters also have the option to purchase up to 1.1 million additional shares.

Avalara is one of nine SaaS businesses to go public this year; the companies produced returns of more than 40 percent on the first day for investors who received shares on the offerings, according to institutional research provider and IPO expert Renaissance Capital.

“Those who think the IPO market is dead are mistaken,” said Kathleen Smith, a principal at Renaissance Capital.

Avalara is the third Seattle-area company to go public in the past three months; Smartsheet and DocuSign also had strong IPO debuts in April and both continue to perform well on the public markets.

Stay tuned for more coverage of Avalara’s IPO this morning.

Follow-up: Orange crush: Avalara’s colorful culture helps sales tax company go public after 14 years

GeekWire, June 21: "Avalara stock soars following Supreme Court e-commerce sales tax decision"

Opportunity: The Algos Misread the Supreme Court Sales Tax Ruling (AMZN)

The story so far:

June 4: "Just a Reminder: "South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc." Is Yet To Be Decided (AMZN)"

The retail behemoth says something like 80% of the transaction tax due gets paid, either as sales tax collected by the retailer or self-declared as use tax by the purchaser but that seems awfully high.
I've a sneaking suspicion we are about to find out what actual compliance is this Supreme Court session.
Here's the background at ScotusBlog:...

June 5: "GDPR, China and Data Sovereignty are Ultimately Wins for Amazon and Google" (AMZN; GOOG)

As will be the sales tax case mentioned yesterday. Amazon has the resources to deal with the 12,000 taxing jurisdictions, while its smaller competitors have no chance.

June 21 (ZH)  
Internet Stocks Tumble After SCOTUS Rules On State Internet Tax Collection

Wrong reaction from the 'puters: AMZN $1730.22 down $19.86 (-1.13%)

June 22 early pre-market: $1736.75  up $6.53 .

Reuters Exclusive - "Tesla to close a dozen solar facilities in nine states: documents" (TSLA)

Jim Chanos weeps at what might have been.*
From Reuters:

Electric car maker Tesla Inc's (TSLA.O) move last week to cut 9 percent of its workforce will sharply downsize the residential solar business it bought two years ago in a controversial $2.6 billion deal, according to three internal company documents and seven current and former Tesla solar employees.
The latest cuts to the division that was once SolarCity - a sales and installation company founded by two cousins of Tesla CEO Elon Musk - include closing about a dozen installation facilities, according to internal company documents, and ending a retail partnership with Home Depot Inc (HD.N) that the current and former employees said generated about half of its sales.

About 60 installation facilities remain open, according to an internal company list reviewed by Reuters. An internal company email named 14 facilities slated for closure, but the other list included only 13 of those locations.

Tesla declined to comment on which sites it planned to shut down, how many employees would lose their jobs or what percentage of the solar workforce they represent.
The company said that cuts to its overall energy team - including batteries to store power - were in line with the broader 9 percent staff cut.

"We continue to expect that Tesla's solar and battery business will be the same size as automotive over the long term," the company said in a statement to Reuters.
The operational closures, which have not been previously reported, raise new questions about the viability of cash-strapped Tesla's solar business and Musk's rationale for a merger he once called a "no brainer" - but some investors have panned as a bailout of an affiliated firm at the expense of Tesla shareholders. Before the merger, Musk had served as chairman of SolarCity's board of directors.

The installation offices that the internal email said were targeted for closure were located in California, Maryland, New Jersey, Texas, New York, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Arizona and Delaware.

The company also fired dozens of solar customer service staffers at call centres in Nevada and Utah, according to the former Tesla employees, some of whom were terminated in last week's cuts. Those employees spoke on condition of anonymity because making public comments could violate the terms of their severance packages....

...MUCH MORE

*See also:

Dec. 2017
So, How Was Tesla's Purchase Of SolarCity Not a Fraud? (TSLA; SCTY) 

We've been posting on this nasty bit of alchemy for years, some links below.
Today FT Alphaville's editor commends to our attention a Reuters article from Friday:

Tesla largely responsible for slide in U.S. home solar sales...

That was Izabella Kaminska with the heads-up. Her confrère, David Keohane (now FT-Paris) was also on SCTY with quite a few Further Reading posts linking to it—as well as SunEdison, another bit o'financial engineering gone wrong. Fond memories of SUNE; who can forget the time its death throes led to one of my favorite headlines:

SunEdison Investigates Itself, Finds No Wrongdoing, Stock Jumps 75% (SUNE)

and another, to which Mr. Keohane kindly linked:

Today In SunEdison: Down 50% But Still Trading (SUNE)

It appears we have entered the realm of one of Zeno's Paradoxes, namely the Paradox of the Tortoise and Achilles, that no matter how many days SUNE drops 50% it never reaches zero. 21 cents, down 22 cents last....

The stock had traded above $32 in July 2015. The bankruptcy wiped out $16 billion in debt with the equity having declined by an additional $10 billion.
Good times.

Anyhoo, back to some of our prior Solar City posts:

The Short Argument Against Tesla
Mr. Chanos was taken to the cleaners by Mr. Musk on SolarCity: had Tesla not bought it, SCTY was on its way to bankruptcy court. We have quite a few posts on the bad blood between the two, use the 'Search Blog' box search term SCTY if interested.... 

"Tesla cites performance reviews as it fires SolarCity employees, though workers say reviews never took place" (TSLA)
The question that comes to mind is: Was the acquisition of SCTY a fraudulent altruistic stupid brilliant bailout of the Rive boys and maybe even Elon himself? 

Whitney Tilson on Shorting Tesla (and other stuff) TSLA
April 1, 2013 
Why We Don't Short Tesla: The stock is up 16% On The Day (TSLA)
August 2016
...For the longest time we had a Don't Short Tesla policy because it showed signs of being a cult stock and cult stocks can kill shorts. Plus it can be very hard to locate stock and very expensive to borrow when you do,
However, after the SolarCity deal and Elon's purchase of SCTY debt (on top of his SpaceX buying SCTY debt) I'm more open to betting against the company, at least tactically if not to zero.
Remember, your mileage may vary, close cover before striking etc.

June 2017
"Einhorn Compares GM to Apple and Explains Why He’s Short Tesla" (TSLA; GM)
..It is just so dangerous to put valuation (as compared to fraud) shorts on in a bull market.
We have had a general rule, "Don't short Tesla" virtually since the IPO, that we've violated on three occasions, fortunately profitable but it is tough to tell if it was worth the risk. 

Why SolarCity Has Become a Shell of Its Former Self Since Tesla Buyout (TSLA)
This is a $3,000,000,000 scandal and no one seems to care.... 

SolarCity/Tesla: Analysts React (SCTY; TSLA)

Not only is Tesla taking on almost $3 billion in SolarCity debt, it is also buying into the problem of even more negative cash flows, both Operating and FreeCashFlow.

Which of course, along with the corp. governance nastiness, explains why Tesla has lost almost 11% of its market cap, amounting to $3.14 billion on the 133 million shares out and more than the entire market cap for SCTY (98,296,422 shares at $22.30, up 5.2%).

The market is saying SCTY is worth less than zero to Tesla.

We'll have a lot more to say about this in the coming days....

Tesla-Solar City: Cousins Shouldn't Get Married (to each other) TSLA; SCTY--UPDATED

So, Who Will Write A Fairness Opinion On The Tesla/SolarCity Deal? (TSLA; SCTY)
 
More On SolarCity/Tesla and Fairness Opinions (SCTY; TSLA)
 
"Elon Musk Faces Cash Squeeze at Tesla, SolarCity" (TSLA; SCTY)

"Short-Seller Chanos Calls Tesla-SolarCity Merger 'Crazy': CNBC Conference" (TSLA; SCTY)   

Today In Depreciation: Does Tesla Really Understand What It’s Buying in SolarCity? (TSLA; SCTY)

Tesla, SolarCity Tumble Ahead Of New Merger Financials (TSLA; SCTY)

Attentive reader may have noticed we didn't cover Mr. Musk's press conference on the roof tile solar panels last Friday. We've been at the market long enough to recognize a master magician's "hey, look at this" misdirection. The tiles aren't going to matter to anyone for at least a year, probably two, and by then I would expect the market to have changed to the  point that they will be recognized as a niche at best.

The oohing and ahing from the assembled journos was kinda funny though; in a naïve, never had to bet real money sort of way.... 

"Wait, Tesla Motors Might Need to Raise $12 Billion?!?!" (TSLA; SCTY)

We've been thinking $6 billion to cover the build-out of the factories in Fremont, CA and Nevada and the New York SolarCity plant along with funding the higher cash burn after the SCTY merger.

And we were at the high end....

How Do We Know James Chanos Got Under Elon Musk's Skin? (TSLA SCTY)

Chanos has been living rent-free in Elon's head for over a year.
The departure this week of the second of Mr. Musk's two cousins, the Rive boys who had been running SolarCity reminded me I had promised another example of the toll the stress of keeping all the plates spinning may be taking on Elon.
In Monday's "Being Told Tesla Exists Because of Tax Breaks and Subsidies Drives Elon Musk Crazy (TSLA)" I said:

Regarding Mr. Musk, it is starting to appear he's a bit thin-skinned, we'll have another example later today or tomorrow....

went into a meeting and forgot until today.

Here's the set-up for this example. Back in the fall of 2015 Chanos was pretty vocal about SolarCity being the quintessential short-it-to-zero-stock. The company was burning enormous amounts of cash, had no path to profitability, and couldn't get anyone but SpaceX to buy their debt.
On October 21 SCTY shared their financials and we posted "Pray For Elon Musk: SolarCity Drops 21% (SCTY)".

The public relations people earned their keep with "SolarCity pivots to slower growth mode" and I recounted how earlier, in August, Lyndon Rive, SolarCity's CEO was told Chanos was shorting his stock and  "SolarCity's CEO When Told Jim Chanos Is Shorting His Stock: "First I've ever heard of the guy" (SCTY)".

Oh dear.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
SolarCity's CEO is an ahistorical idot.
I mean we're all idots from time to time but most of us at least try to conceal our idot-hood from the freakin' media!

Well, Mr. Chanos apparently took note of Rive's comment and the next day, while being interviewed on CNBC started out with "One of our big short positions in the renewable space is SolarCity".
The interviewer says "Elon Musk's company" and Chanos replied "Who?"

Here's the video if you care to see it, it's pretty funny: "SolarCity: Jim Chanos On Elon Who? (SCTY)".

Fast-forward to the week before last and, via Sujeet Indap, the FT's Lex US editor:
The Journal does a story on Tesla's need for cash,
One of the fanbois tells Elon not to sweat it,
Mr. Musk uses a variant of the 2015 trash talk: ...["never heard of them"]...

...The upshot? Elon got to use the line, the Rive boys got to say "thanks cuz" for turning their going-to-be-worthless SCTY stock into TSLA, I get to do this post and Chanos got screwed by the self-dealing bail-out but hey, 3 out of 4 ain't bad.
Plus, the TSLA the cousins received may or may not be worth the current price after the model 3 roll-out.
We shall see. 

And many more.