Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – AI Goes to War

A compact comprehensive discussion of the present state and future prospects of AI technologies applied to armed conflict is an impossible mission, but I will undertake it here. What gives me encouragement is the great difficulty of prognostication regarding AI. I believe AI will be the most profound transformation of human affairs in the history […]

Insurers Dump Catastrophe Risk of Climate Change and Earthquake to Chump Bond Investors. What Could Go Wrong?

Garden variety investors, including retail, are signing up to insure climate change and other disaster risk via catastrophe bonds.

Links 7/15/2025

What Birmingham’s Towering Trash Heaps Say About Starmer’s Britain

In the land that gave us Margaret Thatcher’s “there is no alternative” and “there’s no such thing as society”, the provision of even the most basic public services is becoming a problem.

U.S. Political System Is Bought, Not Broken. A New Party Won’t Fix the Basic Problem.

Real reform in American politics won’t come new parties — but from breaking investors’ grip and rebuilding power from the ground up.

Message to Trump: Incompetence Is Not Virtue. Also, People Will Die

The main and possibly only qualification for Trump’s top appointees is the ability to tell blatant lies with a straight face.

Coffee Break: Texas Floods, Biblical Divorce Complicate US Senate Primary

Texas floods, Biblical divorce complicate US Senate race for Ken Paxton as Democrats search for a candidate.

Possible Kraft Heinz Breakup: A Buffett Investment Failure, Thanks to Healthier Tastes Among the Better Off and Need for Better Bargains for the Rest

A badly under-perfoming merger, Kraft and Heinz, is set to be reversed. Did that deal undermine the giants adapting to changing tastes?

Links 7/14/2025

What Does the US’ Increasing Emulation of Israel Augur for the Country’s Future?

As cooperation in the killing fields of Gaza continues, the genocidal ideology comes home. What is the way out of this madness?  

FEMA’s Flood Maps Often Miss Dangerous Flash Flood Risks, Leaving Homeowners Unprepared

Even where FEMA identifies a flood risk, the overreliance on historical data and political influence leads to maps that don’t fully represent true risk.

“Europe Won’t Need Russian Gas in the Future”

Europe celebrates its economic suicide by continuing down the path of achieving independence from cheap Russian gas.

Links 7/13/2025

The Sunday Morning Movie Presents: Cloak And Dagger (1946) Run Time 1H 46M

Cloak and Dagger is a noir spy thriller about a physicist turned secret agent in WW2.

Housing a Basic Right or Playground for Global Capital? – Paul Jay

How the financialization of housing destroys the societal fabric and why we need to make housing public infrastructure—like schools or libraries.