The worst 10 weather disasters of this year cost $150bn in insured damage. The total damage is much more. 400 billion? One can only guess.

This is just the beginning. By 2030 it may be several trillion a year. By 2050, the sum will be much larger, except that money will no longer be a meaningful measure of it, as the disasters will ruin people's lives.

Measuring damages in money is useful when society can repair them and the cost of said repair is small compared with overall economic activity. When the damage is enormous and irreparable, money ceases to measure it. If a farm's crops are lost one year, their value can be estimated. When the farm (along with thousands of others) must be abandoned because agriculture in that area is no longer viable, is it not so easy to estimate the cost to society of the resulting scarcity. If the shortfall of food can be filled by buying it on the world market, the cost of that can be determined. If it is impossible to purchase that food, what then is the cost of the resulting hunger? It has to be measured in lives.

There is a small but growing Covid-19 outbreak near Sydney. In its spread, unidentified people, probably with no symptoms, have played a significant role.

Could a contact-tracing app identify the unidentified intermediaries? It could, if it worked reliably. I've seen arguments the apps, knowing nothing but bluetooth-measured proximity, could not distinguish real transmission opportunities from large numbers of other pseudo-opportunities.

Awards for the worst customer "service" nastiness in the UK.

Has anyone done this for the US?

England (not the whole UK) will prohibit supermarkets from putting fattening products at checkout isles to tempt undisciplined shoppers into buying them.

I am in favor of this. It won't stop you from buying those products if you really want to, but if your preference is not to buy them, this will help you stick to that.

*Indian police charge army officer with killing three Kashmir civilians.*

There must have been hundreds of Kashmiris killed or maimed by Indian soldiers without justification. What puzzles me is that this killer went to so much effort to pretend.