Over the past 40 years, Americans have been moving to more disaster-prone regions of the U.S. South and West. “A hurricane cutting the Gulf side of Florida now just encounters way more houses, way more businesses, way more roads, way more infrastructure than it did 40 years ago,” Keys said.

At the same time, climate change has been increasing the frequency and severity of extreme storms and wildfires in those fast-growing regions. Finally, when disaster strikes, inflation and labor shortages have driven up the cost of rebuilding.

All of these factors have made disasters more expensive, and contributed to the rise in premiums. But the biggest factor behind the rise, according to Keys, is the way that climate change is reshaping a fundamental pillar of the insurance industry.

Insurance is built around the assumption that disaster doesn’t strike everyone at the same time. For many types of insurance, that assumption is mostly true — a car insurer, for example, knows that it’s unlikely that every driver will get into a fender bender on the exact same day. But when it comes to home insurance, climate change is causing this assumption to crumble. A major wildfire could easily burn down an entire town, or a hurricane could easily rip the roofs off all the homes in a neighborhood. For this reason, insurance companies in disaster-prone regions end up purchasing their own insurance policies, known as “reinsurance.”

Reinsurance protects regular insurance companies from going bankrupt from a string of major disasters. Since reinsurance companies cover the epicenters of extreme weather, they’ve recently become extremely sensitive to climate risk. Since 2020, premiums for reinsurance have doubled, and will likely continue to rise. In states that experience frequent extreme weather disasters — like Louisiana, Texas, and Florida — insurance companies end up purchasing a lot of expensive reinsurance, and those costs get passed down to customers.

This is the biggest factor behind the recent surge in home insurance premiums, and Keys doesn’t expect it to stop anytime soon. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Jacques de Vaucleroy, the chairman of the major reinsurance firm Swiss Re, said that reinsurance premiums will continue to rise until people stop building in dangerous areas.

Good article, several interesting specifics and a food overview. The last bold is mine.

Two full systems were donated using German funds. I hope more are in the pipe.

Each Skynex system is composed of four Revolver Gun Mk3 cannons, a CN-1 control node, and an X-TAR3D radar.

Exactly true in the newpipe comparison. Same with YT-dlp variants.

I’m an always on VPN sort of guy, but most are not. So yes the fingerprint tradeoff is one I accept within my ability to deal with inconvenience. Mostly upside at this point with no ads, just sponsors that slip through sponsor block.

My fingerprint it’s perfect, but I know it’s working as I can see other peoples feeds are more adaptive and directed then whatever I get. I know I have a hole when I see something spammy too.

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ always worth a check.

I appreciate the cogent context and solution oriented post.

I’d also say though that from a privacy standpoint self-hosting invidious is still allowing GeoIP info to be attached to downloaded videos, which is a fingerprint which can be used by data mining. Admittedly rather abstract as in this case the primary point of deplatforming might just be to de-ad, or give better video control, etc, and not obfuscate for privacy sake.

As I said though great points!

Economists at JP Morgan, the largest US bank by assets, published a research paper on de-dollarization in 2023.

In reference to the global economy as a whole, they concluded that, “while marginal de-dollarization is expected, rapid de-dollarization is not on the cards”.

However, they argued that, “Instead, partial de-dollarization — in which the renminbi assumes some of the current functions of the dollar among non-aligned countries and China’s trading partners — is more plausible, especially against a backdrop of strategic competition”.

The JP Morgan economists added, “This could over time give rise to regionalism, creating distinct economic and financial spheres of influence in which different currencies and markets assume central roles”.

This seems inline with the Chinese leadership game of influence, as well as the clown show that the US has become. Even with the interest still there from the US standpoint two decades of GWT, the lack of prioritize spending on following our so called values, the very high debt to GDP ratio we are running, the lack of real legislative ability, plus other challenges, all make the fundamentals seem less fundamental. Although China very much has it’s own issues such as an excess of manufacturing, a housing bubble, and a very steep demographic bubble. So their fundamentals are seemingly similar in question, but they have a marked ability to pivot quickly and do seem to be using their status as the 2nd largest economic to garner the same level of influence.

Whether either has staying power of economics and global influence for the next 50 years is a very interesting question.

I certainly don’t count the US out yet, but even if the election settles things down, there is some real work to do which has little to do with the current hotly discussed policy topics. I’d be curious about your opinions?

Want countries to re-dollarize, you have to incentivize the, which probably means making the US the dynamic yet stable economic it was. Punishing countries, how laughable.

I think that ship has sailed though, as globalization has caught up yet again.

Glad the MLS is no longer used.

Cool map! Do you have a source? Curious if they’ve done other countries.

Good write up!

What’s the privacy criteria you are thinking about?

[# Systematic Destruction (Hacking the Scammers pt. 2)

Taking on the “Smishing Triad”](https://blog.smithsecurity.biz/systematic-destruction-hacking-the-scammers-pt.-2) g

His blog on the topic if you don’t want the wired summary.

A brief technical summary from iMAP reveals what happens when users attempt to access sites using Cloudflare and Google DNS.

• On Maxis, DNS queries to Google Public DNS (8.8.8.8) servers are being automatically redirected to Maxis ISP DNS Servers;

**

• On Time, DNS queries to both Google Public DNS (8.8.8.8) and Cloudflare Public DNS (1.1.1.1) are being automatically redirected to Time ISP DNS servers.

“Instead of the intended Google and Cloudflare servers, users are being served results from ISP DNS servers. In addition to MCMC blocked websites, other addresses returned from ISP DNS servers can also differ from those returned by Google and Cloudflare,” iMAP warns.

…

"Users that are affected, can configure their browser settings to enable DNS over HTTPS to secure their DNS lookups by using direct encrypted connection to private or public trusted DNS servers. This will also bypass transparent DNS proxy interference and provide warning of interference,” iMAP concludes.

Essentially Malaysia law required ISP to drop DNS entries for some sites, local users started using public DNS. ISP started redirecting public DNS requests, and local users started using DNS over HTTPS.

The pirate wars continue in their arms races.

Should have remembered they do an English version. Thanks!

It was noted that more than half of the KN-23 missiles lost their programmed flight trajectory during flight and likely exploded in the air, as the launches of these missiles were recorded, but their debris was not found.

Translated sources beyond Google?

I’m all for the enthusiasm I’m seeing with Harris, but am happy to see someone like Axelrod pointing out the polling. He’s absolutely right in that it will take work to win, and mistakes to lose. Fortunately Harris seem to be working and Trump seems to be making mistakes for now. Let’s hope it doesn’t flip soon.

Alternative link https://archive.ph/Upz8j

Based some of the revealed history of some of these agencies, I feel like Hollywood is both closer and much further off than the reality of what happens. Closer in that history is stranger then fiction, and much further off in that these agencies are not monolithic decision makers and the hydraheaded nature of a political/bureaucracy makes for some strange decision.

In 2021, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, denounced women for leaving abusive husbands. The same year, he also decried allowing rape victims to abort their pregnancies, claiming all pregnancies should be forced to term, “even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient.” Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson also spoke. In the past, he has argued that raping underage girls is less bad if the rapists marry them first, and complained about rape shield laws that protect the identity of victims.

This is part of the Trump campaign’s strategy of shoring up support among younger men by appealing directly to the Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson fanboys. The tactic runs the risk of backfire. If female swing voters learn how much the GOP is built on apologia for sexual violence, focus group information suggests it will turn them away from Trump. With Biden as the nominee, there was a real chance this issue would stay on the back burner. Even though he was the author of the Violence Against Women Act in the 90s, Biden has proved incapable of making Trump’s sexual violence a defining issue. He’s tried, even using the word “rape” to describe Trump’s behavior. But Biden’s overall problems communicating got in the way of this message.

Harris, however, is not hobbled by the issues with talking that plagued Biden in the end. More than that, sexual violence is an issue that she can speak about with a level of authority that Biden — really, most male politicians — never could achieve. Her gender is only part of it. As she often discusses on the campaign trail, Harris got her start in criminal law by working in the sex crimes division of Alameda County. She spent years talking about these hard issues in a court setting, and it shows in the way she strikes a deft balance between sensitivity and frankness when speaking about sexual violence. I recommend watching this co-interview she did on MSNBC with Hadley Duvall, a child sex abuse survivor who has been speaking out about abortion rights. Harris tells the story of her high school friend who told her that her stepfather was molesting her. “I said to her: ‘you have to come live with us. I called my mother and my mother said, ‘of course she has to come stay with us.’”

It’s going to be a much better race.

What in the world are they digging for?

As of January, Ukrainian forces were firing in the range of 200,000 a month, according to internal estimates seen by Bloomberg. …

Russia was firing an estimated 10,000 shells a day.

So Russia is firing 3.65 million estimated shells per year and Ukraine is aiming at 2.4 million shells, while the EU is producing .55 million per year, and the US is producing somewhere between .42 and .72 million per year. I can’t find domestic production in Ukraine, but it’s a huge shortfall no matter how you calculate it.