Sand cat: the amazing animal that doesn’t need to drink water ZME Science
Father of hundreds gets sperm donation ban from Dutch court Reuters
Is There a Wrong Way to Take a Midday Nap? MedPage Today
Climate/Environment
Climate change: Spain breaks record temperature for April BBC. (Kevin W)
‘Endless record heat’ in Asia as highest April temperatures recorded The Guardian
Swiss National Bank rejects demands of climate change activists Reuters
TotalEnergies urges rejection of climate resolution submitted by shareholders Reuters
BP shareholders reject climate activist resolution but support grows Reuters. (Kevin W)
#COVID-19
“We’re letting you know that several people who attended the [Epidemic Intelligence Service] Conference have tested positive for COVID-19,” a CDC branch chief wrote in an email to staff on Friday.https://t.co/5OzTB7bmgE
— Soo Youn (@lalasoo) April 28, 2023
Thread. In August 2022 we learned:
“COVID-19 may be linked to a rise in bacterial brain infections in children. Doctors at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital of Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids, Mich., saw a worrisome 236% rise in these infections & wondered why.” https://t.co/3ull9SOePs
— Laura Miers (@LauraMiers) April 28, 2023
Fatal fungus outbreak worries Nevada lawmakers, more help wanted Las Vegas Review Journal. Separate from above.
Old Blighty
All state schools in England may shut in ‘unprecedented’ coordinated strikes The Guardian
The Lucky Country
SE Asia schools Australia in art of strategic equilibrium Asia Times
India
The Koreas
There Is No Case for South Korean Nuclear Weapons Eunomia. The deck: “The U.S. would also be a poor ally if it allowed one of its principal Asian allies to make a serious error like this.”
China?
Congressional China panel preps proposals to rapidly arm Taiwan Defense News
Taiwan detects mainland Chinese combat drones circling the island ‘for the first time’ South China Morning Post
US friend-shoring hurts China’s industrial profits Asia Times
New Not-So-Cold War
U.S. Wires Ukraine With Radiation Sensors to Detect Nuclear Blasts New York Times. The deck: “The federal National Nuclear Security Administration is setting up an advanced network that can verify an attacker’s identity.”
***
China shifts gear on Ukraine mediation Indian Punchline (K Warner)
Kremlin spokesman terms Xi-Zelensky call as ‘sovereign matter’ for China, Ukraine TASS
The EU can’t find most of Russia’s $300bn of frozen reserves Intellinews
Ukraine warns grain import bans play into Russia’s war propaganda Euractiv
Kazakhstan spooked by US warning of secondary sanctions Eurasianet
***
Denmark’s Armed Forces confirm Russian ship was seen near the site of Nord Stream explosion Ukrainska Pravda. So now it wasn’t just six guys on a yacht?
US corporations cash in on Ukraine’s oil and gas Geopolitical Economy Report
India is on track to become Europe’s largest supplier of refined fuels this month while simultaneously buying record amounts of Russian crude, according to data from analytics firm Kpler https://t.co/6EaSP9Bt9N
— Bloomberg Energy (@BloombergNRG) April 28, 2023
Is Serbia a pro-Putin outpost? Unherd
Soviet Operational Art: Troubled Beginnings Big Serge Thought
Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party backs Erdogan’s rival for president Al Jazeera
South of the Border
US sanctions Mexican resort timeshare fraud linked to cartel AP
Syraqistan
Unease in Israel as US depletes reserve stockpiles to fuel Ukraine war: Report The Cradle
Iran FM says embassies in Saudi Arabia, Iran to open ‘within days’ Dawn
B-a-a-a-a-d Banks
First Republic most likely headed for FDIC receivership, sources say; shares drop 40% CNBC
Fed report on SVB collapse faults bank’s managers — and central bank regulators CNBC. The full report.
Biden Administration
Biden has a new pitch to reup a controversial surveillance program. And Republicans might like it. Politico
Government report shows steep decline in FBI’s ‘backdoor searches’ on Americans Politico. The deck: “The data strengthens the administration’s case that the bureau doesn’t need new civil liberties safeguards from Congress. But early reactions suggest lawmakers remain unswayed.”
The Orbán government acquired the secret photos and emails of Hunter Biden Daily News Hungary
2024
Ron DeSantis in Guantánamo: how questions about his past haunt the Florida governor The Guardian. Poor Ron.
The DeSantis School The Baffler
Jan. 6 convict embraces Trump at campaign event, calls for Pence’s execution The Hill
Trump Could Definitely Beat Biden New York Magazine
Democrats en déshabillé
American Liberalism Is Exhausted Jacobin
The Supremes
U.S. Supreme Court justices take lavish gifts — then raise the bar for bribery prosecutions Ohio Capital Journal. (Paul R): “Dept. of you can’t make this up.”
Alito: I Know Who Likely Leaked the Dobbs Decision Jonathan Turley
Healthcare
FDA warns of security vulnerability in Illumina’s DNA sequencing machines STAT
Illumina to chase $100M-plus in cuts as margins narrow Fierce Biotech
‘More than half of my paycheck goes to rent’: young US doctors push to unionize The Guardian
Police State Watch
“A way to throw kids away”: Texas’ troubled juvenile justice department is sending more children to adult prisons Texas Tribune
THE DOJ IS USING “FOREIGN AGENTS” ACCUSATIONS TO REPRESS BLACK LIBERATION ORGANIZERS The Real News Network
Resisting AFRICOM and beyond MR Online
AI?
Judge slams Tesla for claiming Musk quotes captured on video may be deepfakes Ars Technica (Kevin W)
Tencent Cloud announces Deepfakes-as-a-Service for $145 The Register
Abortion
Nebraska abortion ban tied to cardiac activity falls one vote short; 20-week limit remains intact Nebraska Examiner
Imperial Collapse Watch
Industry Out of Phase With Supercomputers IEEE (ctlieee). The deck: “Chip-industry changes threaten U.S. supercomputing.”
Supply Chain
Threat to freighters as parts shortages hobble airlines, manufacturers and MRO The Loadstar
Class Warfare
UAW president ‘disgusted’ by automaker buyout: Stellantis to offer deals to 33K workers ClickOnDetroit
Private Equity Is Gutting America — and Getting Away With It New York Times
‘Dirty Dozen’ Dangerous Employers Named for Workers Memorial Day Labor Notes
Tech
Washington passes law requiring consent before companies collect health data The Verge
The Bezzle
Coinbase’s “Wells Response” Vs. SEC: Is The Crypto Firm Digging Its Own Grave? The Deep Dive
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
179 comments
Comments are closed.
Goooooooood Mooooorning Fiatnam!
It’s 0420 hours. From the delta factor of reserve banking, to the DMZ (demonetized zone) of crypto, back to Bitcoin all in one byte. Today’s forecast calls for a hundred percent chance of clout crowding the market in the cloud, not that any of it exists except in fertile mind fields we’ve carefully laid utilizing furrowed brows pecking away furiously.
Here’s a song coming your way right now for those of you back in the First Republic. “Nowhere To Run To” by Martha and the Vandellas. Yes! Hey, you know what I mean! Too much?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQRIOKvR2WM
Very very. Thanx!
I don’t remember if this was already linked. From Lee Fang.
Pfizer Quietly Financed Groups Lobbying for COVID Vaccine Mandates
Many of the supposedly independent consumer, medical and civil rights groups that created the appearance of broad support for the mandate received funding from one of the vaccines’ manufacturers.
https://www.leefang.com/p/pfizer-quietly-financed-groups-lobbying
Vampire cat?
Sand cat, first article up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_cat
I want one.
My first thought, too.
Depending on how hungry it is, it might want us too.
Maud’fur. Ruler of the sands.
Yep, me too and I prefer dogs, but that’s kitty’s a cutie. Looked to see if they can or have been domesticated.
https://a-z-animals.com/animals/sand-cat/
One of those pics in the above linked tweet, I would swear there is a paw holding down something that was conquered. Looks an awful lot like a snake, possibly.
indeed a headless snake.
Gathered as much, but i was kinda taking a jab at its ability to survive without water via the bodily fluids of its prey.
From the Fang article.
‘The Biden administration later faced a string of rulings from federal courts declaring the mandate unconstitutional. The Supreme Court in January 2022 overturned the OSHA requirement that mandated workers at businesses with 100 or more employees receive COVID-19 vaccinations, but left in place mandates for workers in medical facilities.’
I do wonder if this is part of the reason there’s a sudden Dem estab attack on sitting justices. Is it prompted by some the estab’ bigggest pharma donors? Guess I’ll never know.
Given the number of lobbyists…and this is from L Fang in 2014!
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/shadow-lobbying-complex/
Thanks for the link. The uniparty in action.
Fed report on SVB collapse. Risk management 101, as I heard at least one bank executive comment earlier in the month. Failure at the management and board, and worse still failure by the very institution that is supposed to be rigorous and thorough as the ultimate enforcer. Shame on the executives and the board, more shame on the SF Federal Reserve. The stupid should cause a few jobs to be lost.
Added thought, industry exposures and concentration risks, and the deposit flight risk, are not something new but it reveals a very unique problem. It’s like 2008 – 2009 was not the reminder seared into their memories, like it is mine and many others around these parts.
5 out of 4 experts agree that it is oh so easy to panic on the internet, and one of the things about lining up to get your money as in days of olde was the implicit thing being you were there because you didn’t trust the bank to hold your money-along with others sounding the alarm, but now its a silent bank alarm on a QWERTY.
This could get out of hand in the Summer of Shove, with SF banks.
…and now we know that postal bank or direct accounts with Treasury or Fed will not be allowed.
??? treasurydirect.gov is the real thing. Funky as hell, a PITA UI, but it’s there. Got a few series I in the most recent fuss.
That’s for purchase of bonds, not for banking.
Be careful what you wish for. Given the rampant failing upwards going on in modern society, any bank managers dismissed for abject stupidity will probably just wind up on the FED Board of Governors.
Unless they are really experienced and have lengthy credentials, the above seems a little unlikely to me. The stench of failure is easily detected. Could they land on their feet into a consulting firm or a plush spot at a boutique investment firm? Absolutely.
I don’t immediately recall anyone hunting down Dick Fuld of Lehman infamy, or the former CEO (Kerry Killinger) of Washington Mutual for their expertise at blowing up an institutional finance or bank giant. They should quietly live a life of “sainthood” with some of their ill-gotten gains. We are a long, long way from the early 1990’s when the S&L crisis saw quite a few people serve actual jail sentences.
“U.S. Wires Ukraine With Radiation Sensors to Detect Nuclear Blasts”
If it was found that the Ukrainians were doing funny stuff with nuclear materials, would these sensor’s results be known? The US has also been running around and saying that the Russians are planning a nuclear weapons test, even though there is a moratorium on doing so. The U.S. Ambassador to Moscow told a Russian newspaper that Russia was the only country talking about the possible resumption of nuclear testing. Of course Russia is wondering if in fact this is projection and that it is the US that is wanting to have a nuclear weapons test. With a Biden White House, who can tell?
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-plays-down-idea-that-russia-is-preparing-nuclear-weapons-test-2023-04-28/
Whatever the sensors say, we will know of this if and only if the right spin can be put on it. I’m more worried about the yanks doing funny stuff with nuclear materials there. The sensors being some sort of a Chekhov’s gun. Put there to be used later in the game. In any case, nothing good will come out of this.
There’s a whole international infrastructure (not limited to the IAEA) dedicated to detecting nuclear weapons tests, mainly by seismic instruments. This is how people are reasonably sure that N Korea has carried out tests (underground, like all such tests since the 1960s.) What’s being discussed here is an entirely different technology, designed to reveal the technical characteristics of a nuclear explosion so as to identify the originator. For that you need to be quite close by.
Are those technical characteristics limited to one nation? Or could — just for the sake of the argument — the United States build a bomb that had technical characteristics shared by bombs of another nation? Perhaps a smallish bomb…
After Nord Stream, I do think we have to agree that there is very little that could be ruled out….
Loose nukes sink ships.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/loose-nukes
(Could’ve linked to a different source, but the irony of this one was too tempting to pass up )
Even more interesting since the Brits sent the Ukies depleted uranium ammo. Maybe they just want to see if the crap is still works? After all, China War Number one is around the corner.
The choice of reactor design and subsequent purification technology leaves telltale Pu etc. isotope ratios and trace isotopes of various elements in the warhead and the choice of warhead design adds further identifying fingerprints, like tritium, beryllium, lithium etc. So, in theory, one could identify a warhead unexploded from a sample and potentially assign a warhead to an explosion from the fallout.
But I don’t think this is the angle. I think the issue here is a dirty bomb, where all sorts of nuclear materials will be involved with conventional weapons, not just nuclear bombs.
I say that because fallout analysis would need a lot of chemistry as well as nuclear physics, at the very last various kinds of spectroscopy, and the nature of nuclear attack doesn’t leave much lab equipment standing. Whereas analysing a dirty bomb is about picking up the mixture of spent fuel etc being packed around conventional explosive. This will have a much clearer hallmark of the nuclear reactor design it originally came from than the transmuted admixture of rocks and lakes and gases and houses and people and bomb components that fallout is composed of.
The detectors to do this work by detecting the distinctive radiation profile of each isotope involved in terms of the energy spectrum of the emitted particles (alpha, beta, gamma). I know because I invested in the UK company which pioneered this type of detection for homeland security purposes after 9/11. Unfortunately, DHS was a better customer than the medical physics applications we originally hoped for!
http://Www.symetrica.com
So, I read this as a prelude to a false flag dirty bomb operation, where like at the UN Security Council in the Iraq War, the Americans and Ukrainians will produce ‘”evidence” that Russia Did It, having carefully concocted a dirty bomb package from ex-Soviet spent fuel lying around Ukraine (plus the residual Ukrainian factories from the Soviet nuclear weapons industry).
Nuclear warhead design is something that states don’t talk about and don’t share, so, whilst the principles are well known, the details will be different in each case. This means that (at least in theory) exploding warheads will produce different signatures, although you’d need fairly sophisticated techniques to measure them. So in theory at least, a warhead designed in Russia will have a different signature from one designed in the US. By contrast, producing the signature of another country’s warheads would be very difficult, because you’d effectively have to know the fine details of the design, bearing in mind that, say, ICBM warheads are very different from tactical warheads.
If the bombs are so secret (and I’m not disagreeing on this point), how does one go about matching an explosion signature to a specific country? Seems like we can say whatever we want… imagine that!
There’s no need for conspiracy theories.
The specific ratios of various uranium, plutonium, and other elemental isotopes are often a huge clue as to where the nuclear material originated. Impurities in the Uranium ore can tell you a lot about where it was mined.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15008-2
I would assume the fact that most modern warheads have variable yields would make it very difficult to be able to fingerprint a specific warhead design from its geotechnical signature.
I would guess the only way to be sure of a weapons source would be actual sampling of the uranium/plutonium or breakdown products. I would imagine it would be easier to fake the results of testing than faking another countries bomb design.
Agreed, it would be a garbage in garbage out modelling exercise but I will bet that Los Alamos and Livermore Labs etc have tried. In theory, a design has a signature, and some of our information on Soviet designs came from analysis of the seismic data and atmospheric sampling from overflight etc. I bet most if it came from paying people to leak the designs though!
Anyway, if I wasn’t clear, you could *theoretically* identify who made a warhead (or rather what it is made from) and you could stack assumptions on what signature it has when detonated, if there’s anything left other than rubble (and error bars!) but the obvious and actually validated application is identifying what un-detonated radioactive material is in front of you from the energy profile of its emissions, I.e. dirty bomb residue rather than actual fallout.
Agreed, it would be a garbage in garbage out modelling exercise but I will bet that Los Alamos and Livermore Labs etc have studied and tried modelling fallout signatures, if only to validate the explosion physics model and to calculate lethality, contamination area and period etc for US weapons and incoming attacks. In theory, a design has a signature. Some of our information on Soviet designs came from analysis of the seismic data and atmospheric sampling from overflight etc. (but I bet most if it came from paying people to leak the designs though!)
Anyway, if I wasn’t clear, what I meant is that you could identify the origin of the nuclear material from a sample of a warhead pit and you could *theoretically* stack assumptions on what signature it has when detonated, if there’s anything left to collect other than rubble (and error bars!) but the obvious and actually validated application is identifying what un-detonated radioactive material is in front of you from the energy profile of its emissions, I.e. bananas, cat litter (both confusingly naturally radioactive) or dirty bomb residue.
Given the Ukraine is full of ex-Soviet civilian nuclear material, this is not subtle.
“Public knowledge of such defensive planning, nuclear experts say, can deter Moscow by letting it know that Washington can expose what is called a false-flag operation.”
Well. That oughta be good enough for anyone, eh?
I’m at the point where a US government/CIA/military aligned organization could tell me the sun was out at 12 Noon and I’d still check three other sources to be sure.
I have zero confidence the results from any of these sensors will be used correctly, reported reliably, and provided to citizens or honest observers to ever be evaluated in a unbiased fashion. What are the odds a minority report on any data would ever be treatedly fairly too? The OPCW fiasco in Syria is still too near.
I love my country. I do not trust my government.
Why love this country? It’s a murderous regime that has brought the world to the precipice of extinction. And there is no way to differentiate the gov’t from the corporate. So really, to not trusting the gov’t is really not trusting 95% of institutions that directly affect our lives.
Well, neglecting everything else, all my stuff is here. Also, a lot of the people I love and care about live here too.
Beyond those considerations, this is a beautiful place full of good people. We have systems in place to help educate poor people the likes of which the world has never seen before. Even with all of the problems we discuss on NC this is still a country with incredible opportunities. The rights enshrined in our constitution, especially free speech, are with fighting for and preserving. I love my country. I wish that the fascist corporate toads would realize what they’re doing is evil. I wish that our pols weren’t so old and selfish. I wish the billionaire class would acknowledgethey’re part of some God blessed elect and would start living in the real world. I wish that we could come together to solve the problems we have as a country and a people. Maybe those are foolish desires. But it is still what I hope for.
We are thus saddled with a ruling Elite that is like Satan in your namesake’s “Paradise Lost.” They would rather reign in H— than serve in Heaven. The corollary to this is that those same Elites will thus bring H— to earth. The better to reign in, my dears.
It would make me feel better if I thought the ruling elite were consciously making the decision. I think instead they’re just brainless parasites, feasting on whatever they’ve infected.
I see them as the outward sign of the rot of a dying empire (one meaning of “corrupt” relates to decomposing, putrefying, spoiled).
I used to tell a story about a dead raccoon in a ditch that I saw on my daily walk back when I lived near Seattle. I marveled that it looked intact for weeks, other than the initial bloat, and concluded that the cold, wet November weather must have been acting as a refrigerator. Then, one day, it was a pile of guts and fur, crawling with maggots. Literally overnight, the entire structure had collapsed, having been eaten from within, rotting from the inside out. A few days later, it was a layer of melted fur coating dead grass, and within a week, no sign of it remained at all.
At the time, I was well on my way to understanding the danger of a one-party state, and I immediately put two and two together. I took the raccoon as a message, courtesy of nature. Gardeners in the commentariat no doubt know what I mean.
I don’t hate this country at all. I loathe the rotten system — all the more, as I’m close to the bottom of the income ladder, where the falling debris of the crumbling structure hits first.
Sounds as if the U.S. might be preparing to frame Russia. Would there be independent verification? Would the MSM contradict US findings?
“The reason behind Washington setting up sensors across Ukraine to detect a potential nuclear blast may involve shifting the blame to Russia if a radioactive weapon is used, or even if it is not used, but only reported in Western media, Karen Kwiatkowski, former US Department of Defense analyst and retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, told Sputnik.”
“There is an argument to be made that this is one more way the US hopes to ‘win’ the narrative, and threaten Russia, by reporting a nuclear release, and immediately blaming Russia (as the story is already structured to do) and protecting the last Ukrainian war enthusiasts from accountability. To this day, despite evidence and logic to the contrary, most of the Western world still believes it was Russians shooting at Zaporozhye [Nuclear Power Plant] last year from Ukrainian territory, while those same Russians were holding and operating the reactor.”
“Congressional China panel preps proposals to rapidly arm Taiwan”
‘The committee is drawing on lessons learned from the Taiwan tabletop wargame it held last week as it drafts its proposals, which aim to ramp up production of high-priority munitions, help clear the $19 billion arms sale backlog to Taipei and bolster Pentagon cybersecurity cooperation with the island nation.’
Finally saw a few minutes of that stupid wargame and it was bad. The woman playing the Chinese side, in retaliation to US moves, said that American can forget their latest iPhones if they did. If you saw that or were there, you would figure that that would be a small price to pay. They literally have no idea of the range of dependancies that the US has with China. Try most medications for a start. But they would never ask about that at that war game as the whole idea was just more MIC contracts – and kickbacks for those Congress people.
“…and kickbacks for those Congress people.”
Wait till it dawns on them how little they get compared to the POTUS and the executive branch, or even compared to Judiciary and start pimping even harder (See – Robert’s wife above, Also Don’t start me on EU or Australia) People think I’m joking when I say there is less corruption in China or even the ASEAN, because what goes for legal and suppressed in the corrupt press in the EU/USA is illegal over there and thus newsworthy.
And the Chinese responding
…”Important story that’s been completely missed by Western media but is making the round in China.
In retaliation to Japan increasing support for Taiwan independence, China has started to put its weight behind the independence of the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa, etc….”
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1652215863389585409
Congressional China panel preps proposals to rapidly arm Taiwan Defense News
Given the website at the State Department of the United States says Taiwan is part of China, is it possible the Congress folks in that article’s picture shown working to “rapidly arm Taiwan” can properly be called terrorists or state sponsors of terrorism and should be arrested and prosecuted as such?
A JAG lawyer assigned to Gitmo:
Can DeSantis handle the truth?
Old Jack was at the Lakers game last night. Glad he can still get around.
That scene is an all timer, for sure. Everyone wants answers and the truth! I’m sure Nicholson enjoyed a front row view of the Lakers actually knocking off the higher seeded team.
Between that performance in the above film, and his performance in the Shining, I have a hard time picking the better job at an excellent role. “Wendy…I’m not going to hurt you…”
My two favorites are George Hanson in Easy Rider (“used to be a hell of a good country”) and when he plays my ancestor on the Moon side and Quantrill’s cook, Henry Moon, in “Goin’ South.”
From “Chinatown”: Jake Gittes (Nicholson), sporting a heavily-bandaged nose courtesy of Roman Polanski’s knife, is talking to LA’s water commissioner:
Yelburton : My goodness, what happened to your nose?
Jake Gittes : I cut myself shaving.
Yelburton : You ought to be more careful. That must really smart.
Jake Gittes : Only when I breathe.
Garland Nixon and Brian Berletic. Interesting discussion towards the end regarding US military having increasing recruitment issues. Berletic says to the affect a growing number of people are realizing the military is increasingly run by political folks with agendas they find offensive, and incompetent to boot, and when you realize this you share it with your friends who might be considering joining the military.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0hYnUbxrVE
Maybe more and more people have smelled a VA hospital/facility in the flyover states? Heard about the cancer rates among enlisted, etc. That and it’s one thing to kill people at a distance who can barely shoot back. That game is going away.
A sliver of potential recruits might not join the military for political reasons… either anti-woke or antiwar. But the vast majority of potential recruits, 75%, do not qualify for other reason such as obesity, mental illness or othe medical conditions, inability to pass entrance exams, criminal records, ad infinitum. Of the pool that qualifies for enlistment many may have embarked on careers or study. Political awareness and resistance to the military has to be a very small component of recruitment problems, but every bit helps. While conscription is being renewed in Europe, I have a difficult time seeing it ever renewed in the US.
Another factor may be the sheer number of vets that have finished their service but have accumulated all sorts of medical problems with their joints, hips, backs, etc. through sheer wear and tear. If I was a young guy and saw this as a likely outcome of joining up, I would give it a miss as who would want to suffer health and injury problems while still relatively young?
Yet “another factor,” in three words: random drug testing.
Recruitment standards can be adjusted. I flunked my NROTC physical for defective visual acuity (I’m sure most of you already guessed that my original career path called for me to be an intelligence officer on a Blue & Gold crewed nuclear submarine) but later got a notice from my draft board telling me while I wasn’t officer material, I was 1-A for draft purposes (being 20/200 in my left eye disqualified me for officer school but I still could train to be a sniper).
The army will find a way, they always do.
FYI: I got #47 in the draft lottery (they went to 49 that year) but that was the time they threw out the first drawing and did it again and my new number was 341.
Supposedly it already has, as there is now apparently an early special boot camp for the overly rotund.
I think that you will find the field track has a table with chocolate cake at the end of it so any overly rotund that want a piece have to complete the distance from the start line to that table first.
Long ago I went through Parris Island boot camp. This was in peace time* and they did accept some overweight guys but put them in a special platoon in which the guide flag had the image of an elephant. Regular platoon flags had a number.
* That should date me.
Speaking as a person involved with scouts, watching the first year kids come through for the past 9 years has been an amazing wake up call. They are mainly fat, weak, out of shape, and have zero tolerance for any discomfort. 70% come in to the scout troop at 5th grade and can’t walk a mile with a light pack on a flat, paved, road. The ones who make it to Eagle or who have parents who enjoy the outdoors turn out OK. As for the rest, I can’t imagine they would make good soldier material.
current enlistment bonuses range from $7k for culinary fields to $40k for infantry specialties to $600k for neurosurgeons.
Pretty much says everything about who wants to do what in the US Army.
(And this is have the Pentagon has its own dedicated medical school system to train its own physicans, which means above average # of people are leaving after 10 years)
…and don’t forget, with such bonuses, graduates with large college loans are even more motivated to enlist. Gee, I wonder why Biden reneged on his promise to forgive student loans?
I (re?)watched We Were Soldiers last night, and it occurred to me how completely pathetic our current leadership is on Ukraine. Personally, I don’t think we ought to court World War III. But if you are of that persuasion, as the neoconservatives are, why f**k it up? Why aren’t we on a war footing? Why isn’t Biden forcing private industry to produce munitions? Why aren’t we investing heavily in domestic capacity? Why aren’t we sending more of our reserves?
These people really know how to phone it in man.
And if it’s not worth doing any of that, maybe we shouldn’t be involved. Maybe this is entirely nonessential to the security of the United States. This country is run by hedonistic, selfish children.
Why aren’t we pushing physical fitness like we used to? Why aren’t we encouraging responsible firearms training like we used to? Why aren’t we encouraging trade skills like digging, carpentry, engine repair like we used to? Why aren’t we encouraging more kids to learn foreign languages? It goes on and on.
It’s amazing to see so many people actively fetishize concepts like “being a Spartan” when so many in our country have run the complete opposite direction. I’m not sure what putting the US on a war footing would look like now. How good of a soldier can you be if you can’t carry a 40 lb pack over rough country for 5 miles, and have enough left to do some work when you get to where you’re going? Or keep your gear properly maintained?
I think our reserves of people are just as spent as our stock of ammunition.
That is abundantly clear if you spend a few minutes out in western NC. People here often look thoroughly spent.
This is very suggestive of a society-wide spirit of resignation (i.e. “phoning it in.”). That recent report that even the Italians can build transit projects for one sixth the U.S. price mentioned that people have to give a sh*t or the expenses mount up. Project managers in the U.S. get a huge signing bonus, then resign before the project is finished, for one “phoning it in” manifestation.
In my political conversations, I encounter a lot of pre-emptive resignation. You know: “Let’s don’t bother dealing the cards, let me just hand you my money.”
Things may be going according to plan, but I’d guess those doing the planning haven’t thought things through.
And speaking of thinking things through, I came across this petition to build something besides sprawl. I’ve signed, please do so too.
I think the courting of ww3 is more State’s priority than Defense.
‘Phoning in World War 3’ hits me. We’re taking on two peer nuclear powers and no one has a say in it?
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/04/27/7399763/
Ukraine Pravda believes in Russian supermen now, finally. Dropping divers or submersible from a ship steaming is quite a trick, catching up with the vessel later even more so. I believe the Russians did that instead of using one or more of their submersible and drone equipped submarines just to show off how manly and strong they are.
Did they say what the name of that mini-submarine was? Could it have been the SS Minnowski? Liberal use of words like could and might in that article. This is just throwing narratives against a wall to see which one might stick. At this stage I don’t think that such a story’s purpose is to convince the majority of nations in the world that it wasn’t Biden that did this. I think that it is to convince people in the west that it wasn’t Biden.
Notice that he claim is coming from the Danish investigators. Wonder how much of the investigation time has been spent scouring the ship traffic logs to find any Russian vessel to blame events on.
“A way to throw kids away”: Texas’ troubled juvenile justice department is sending more children to adult prisons”
Texas has 92 facilities to deal with housing the 150,000 inmates in that State. Why don’t they just designate a sixth prison for juveniles only. Putting kids in an adult prison does not solve a problem. Doing so only defers a problem and probably will make it worse.
https://texas.staterecords.org/prison
That might make the other 86 prisons more crowded though. Of course they might consider having prisons only for those that really deserve it and releasing those that would be in their for only minor infractions of the law but that is another can of worms.
You’re forgetting how big Texas is. How many parents will drive up to twelve hours on a Sunday to see if their child is permitted to visit with them that week?
Drive… that’s a good one. More like a 1 day bus ride followed by a half-day hike.
re: the Luke Savage/Jacobin bit about liberal exhaustion:
again with shades of Toynbee.
from the wiki on “A study of history”:
“Toynbee does not see the breakdown of civilizations as caused by loss of control over the physical environment, by loss of control over the human environment, or by attacks from outside. Rather, it comes from the deterioration of the “Creative Minority”, which eventually ceases to be creative and degenerates into merely a “Dominant Minority”.
He argues that creative minorities deteriorate due to a worship of their “former self,” by which they become prideful and fail adequately to address the next challenge they face.
Results of the breakdown
The final breakdown results in “positive acts of creation;” the dominant minority seeks to create a Universal state to preserve its power and influence, and the internal proletariat seeks to create a Universal church to preserve its spiritual values and cultural norms. ”
but then there’s the pesky internal and external proletariat,lol…the former is Us’n’s, btw…chewing through the restraints, increasingly withholding consent and belief in the authority…
when i first read this book, some 25 years ago(on breaks at work, no less…the 12 volume version, via the now defunct interlibrary loan system), this tiny portion of volume 1 knocked my socks off.
it’s stuck in my mind ever since, as a lens through which to observe the evolution/devolution of our vaunted and yet moribund civilisation.
and, just like with orwell, huxley, et alia(and Thucydides!)…it appears that many of the elite have read it too,lol…but taken it as a manual, rather than a warning.
Good one!
“”…the dominant minority seeks to create a Universal state to preserve its power and influence…””
So 800+ military bases around the world linked to the DC Blob is the plan. On to 1000!
Alastair Crooke told Napolitano a few days ago that Italy alone hosts 100 US bases.
I like your Toynbee references Amfortas. But in the shorter term, I have real problems with articles like this Jacobin piece. This whole “exhaustion” and “status quo” emphasis, Biden’s age, etc., makes it sound like the Establishment Democrats are not doing anything but just trying to hang on,
“… evidently content to rest on their laurels, make broad appeals for tolerance, and pitch themselves as the only alternative to an increasingly menacing Republican right. Revealingly, Biden’s reelection announcement cast the president as the person best qualified to defeat the Trumpian right and win the “battle for the soul of America.”
This appeals to some Americans’ desire for “normalcy” as an alternative to Trumpian chaos. But it is not an accurate depiction of reality at all. In reality, the Democrats are pushing an insanely aggressive foreign policy that is purposely driving a wedge through Europe, antagonizing China, and could start WWIII with one or both major nuclear powers. Domestically, they have drastically accelerated the expansion of the National Security/Surveillance State in which privacy and all alternative voices are repressed and censorship is rapidly expanding. The tired, “sleepy Joe” meme does not capture the damage that is being very actively pursued under the Democrats. I’ll go along with the “battle for the soul of America” line. But critics like Luke Savage need to did a little deeper.
i definitely agree with all that.
but if you read Savage as if “Democrat” and “Republican”(etc) are really the same thing…
He obviously doesnt see it that way…Team Blue, for him, is better than Team Red…
i find that i hafta overlook lots of stuff like that in my wandering…Sam Husseini to …well…RFK, jr.
or that McCoy guy yesterday.
everybody has their shibboleths and blindspots…some purposeful and defensive…some ingrained and regarded as the deepest of Truths.
but if we’re after a broad, get-all-around-the-problem view, i figger this is how we must approach it.
i remember wife was taken aback that i was regularly reading Iminadinnerjacket’s blog, when he was Iranian Prez, and Lil George was waving dynamite.
but i also regularly visit the Kremlin website, and grew up listening to Granma’s english service on the shortwave dad gave me.
I got my Toynbee through Somervell’s abridgement, which was in my high school library (not a bad library for a small town high school in central British Columbia). Toynbee has his tendencies, but over time I am reminded again and again of things he wrote. Schism of the soul, withdrawal and return, etc.
Toynbee also wrote, late in his life, a more ecologically-oriented work, Mankind and Mother Earth. It’s not as insightful as A Study of History, but it shows that he was already thinking that the next “universal religion” to emerge might be focused on the relationship between people and the environment.
“The EU can’t find most of Russia’s $300bn of frozen reserves”
That must really hurt that. The idea was to steal this money and send it on to Zelenski – after of course they had taken out their “commissions” first. Their cut from some $300 billion would have been mouth-watering and could have been put into any number of slush funds. The cut from only some $37 billion would be taken as that Russia has cheated them and stolen their rightful money. And added to that, you would have the same number of officials fighting over a much reduced pot.
When the chips were down, the EU in its present form turned out to be a big racket, just like critics of the federal-superstate fantasists always said it would.
Corruption is directly proportional to size. This is axiomatic. And this is why the powers-that-be are always trying to amalgamate, to incorporate, to form a “union” while fighting hard against entities who would prefer to remain independent or break away.
The critics of UK’s “Brexit” (and there were many) ought to question themselves. If only they’d read the opinions of the bankers, who were strongly opposed to it. If the bankers are against it, I’m for it. This is not to say that it will necessarily turn out well for the UK in the short run, but at least it is free of the shackles of an unelected undemocratic body.
The problem with that is the UK has a lot to do with how the EU is today – special status being in the single market and and not the currency one. Also pushed its inclusion so it might effect the trend of socialist tenancies in the EU at the time.
Then one has to remember that Brexit was a political gambit that went a bridge too far and the tories had to stick with it or have egg on their face, narrative control supersedes everything else.
So Brexit had nothing to do with bankers or economics and all the distortions from it are and have been passed down on the lower classes. As such its got nothing to do with freedom or democratic anything.
Whatever the process of arriving at Brexit, the result is that British laws are made in Britain again. Yes, we have myriad treaty obligations which binds us to international standards but we will participate in these bodies as Britain and we can in theory leave these treaties on a case by case basis. Within the EU, British laws were made by an unelected technocracy and everything had to be accepted as a package as a condition of membership, however terrible (hullo, Greece).
Exercising the freedoms of Brexit may be costly, self-harming etc. but they were simply not possible in the EU. And the Westminster Parliament may be an elective dictatorship but it is still elected at least once every five years and in the five years since the Brexit referendum it has had three general elections and one of them nearly elected a socialist government! So it does have a lot to do with freedom and what passes for democracy in the West.
As I noted it was never a plan in the first place and the fall out has been put on the lower socioeconomic classes. Currant leadership is more ideologically fervent than even thatchers mob or those after. Its all looking like one of those ideological libertarian jungle experiments in the latter stages a the moment.
It has only increased the pace of selling off or privatizing social goods, without any indication that any of this will increase the freedoms of those not in the wealth set. Unless that is the opportunity to fall through the cracks or be diminished/die from some preventable cause.
If they had had a plan it might have been different, just winging it and calling it freedom blows me away ….
From what I get from other articles (also published in last February) the actual amount “frozen” (or immobilized) is around $110 billion in all REPO (Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs) countries.
About half of that is oligarch assets and half Russian Central Bank and Russian National Fund assets. While some kind of semi-legal case could be made that the Russian assets can be
lootedconfiscated and offered for Ukraine, I doubt any law can be stretched to include the sanctioned people’s assets. While EU may will it to be a crime to be a Russian, the law contains no punishments for it. Yet.I think that the US has already done it for a sanctioned Russian individual about a month or so ago. They made a big song and dance about it at the time but when I saw that, I had a bad feeling as to where this might end. I guess that under a rules-based order, you can do stuff like that.
Two weeks ago, straight from the hippo’s mouth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sS10IooBRU&t=465s
(Starts around 8:05). Per “Toria,” seized oligarch funds are being released through the authority of Congress and DOJ. As for the $300 billion in frozen reserves, “discussions are ongoing” between U.S. and its allies. No mention of whether those discussions include, “Where the hell is it?”
Polar Socialist, in case you didn’t see it yesterday, I left two longish responses to your very important reference to the land market under “To the Losers Go the Spoils?” (great article title, BTW), in which I linked to a new report by the Oakland Institute, War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land. Wasn’t sure if you’d seen it yet, but figured you’d be interested.
Thanks. Noted. Commented.
And a terrific comment, too; valuable addition to the topic. Linking to it here, hoping to entice others to go read it:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/04/to-the-losers-go-the-spoils.html#comment-3880962
What would happen if Russia takes all the farm land in Ukraine? Are Ukrainian farmers in Russian territories of Ukraine allowed to sell on the open market or are they required to sell through Russia?
As to the first question, they couldn’t take “all the farmland in Ukraine” without taking all of Ukraine. And anyway, a lot of that farmland is already sold, as the market has been open for nearly 2 years, with limits on who can buy and number of hectares. Also, there was a free for all between Ukraine’s independence and the start of the moratorium (2000, I think; could be wrong), during which a lot of farmland was gobbled up by oligarchs. As Oakland Institute reports notes, even the Ukr govt doesn’t know exactly where all of those parcels are or who officially owns them.
I read some time ago that the Ukr govt agency tracking land ownership removed parcels in Russian-occupied territories from the publicly accessible land database. At one point early on in the SMO, they apparently shut down public access to the entire database. Not sure where it all stands now; what little info I’ve found was accomplished by typing search terms into a certain search engine’s machine translation tool, doing the search in Ukrainian, and then translating the results back into English. Time-intensive process, can’t do more right now.
As for your second question, this is a very good question and one that’s on my list to look into when I have time. Russia no doubt has its own system of land ownership registration, but the special circumstances of the war undoubtedly have complicated their process as well. Off the top of my head, I’m guessing (note caveat) that Russia will respect the land rights of landowners who have jumped through all the bureaucratic hoops necessary to get certificates of ownership from the Ukraine govt, and maybe even those who can show that they submitted all the paperwork and were waiting for an official response. The last thing Russia’s going to want to do is steal land from rightful owners in areas it claims to have “liberated.” What happens to parcels that have been abandoned due to the conflict or otherwise fall into some gray area, one might assume will be declared Russian state holdings, to be dispensed according to their own land laws. A safer assumption is that it’s as big a mess for the Russians as it is for the Ukrainians.
In any case, I’ll post a comment if and when I know more, along with any credible links I’m able to find. Or maybe someone else will beat me to it. :-)
They have found them. They’ve just told Ukraine they haven’t!
The 10% cut is for Ukraine, not for them….
Re Private Equity, I hope someone finds a financial link from China/Russia to US PE as it’s the only way our pols would banish it to the hell it deserves. Given that it’s just good ol’ American capitalism, they’ll take the their $$ and let it continue to do destroy US from within…
Re: EU can’t find frozen Russian assets
Well, that’s a damn shame.
I guess they aren’t really “frozen” then, are they?
Reminds me of my favorite South Park episode… “and… it’s gone”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DT7bX-B1Mg
Arf! I recall laughing at that when it became a meme during the bank crash in 2008.
In April 2020 Australia entered into a lease agreement with the US to store oil in their Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). Australia also purchased and put 1.7 million barrels of oil into the SPR.
…and…it’s gone
Re: The DeSantis School, in The Baffler
Good read to get an idea of what the (anti)Republicans are doing to Florida’s education systems.
Leaves me thinking that if teachers and college professors really were able to indoctrinate students, DeSantis and his fellow (anti)Republicans would simply be unable to win elections.
Re Jacobin American Liberalism is Exhausted–a new Gallup poll puts Biden’s approval at 37 percent. It’s likely that his now annouced intention to foist himself on the American people for another four years is making him even less popular. Even if one likes Biden the notion that he should be president at 86 in 2028 must strike most people as absurd. And yet the media will try to pretend it isn’t.
Jacobin says
Some of us think it’s time for the Democratic Party to go. The Republicans represent who they have always represented. We don’t need two of them.
The Dems only seeming response to this is to pretend the whole world revolves around Trans or immigrants and therefore they are vital. Populism = “fascism.” Exhaustion is too mild a word.
It was painful watching Sanders preemptively endorse his “friend” Joe Biden for 2024 who has given him nothing in return and has only delivered proverbial gut punches to both Sanders and the remaining “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party.
This has only cemented the realization that the Democratic Party is completely useless and that the only thing that they care about is making sure they keep grinding down the left in the name of neoliberalism. The trouble is that I am not sure where to go from here as if the Democratic Party dissolved, the Republican Party would prevent any new parties from arising to fill the void using all of the legal tricks available to an established political party.
The problem is that third parties are even easier for our political system to marginalize, and even if everything went well, it would take decades or even a century for a third party to amass the political infrastructure needed to represent a serious challenge to our political duopoly…which is time the US does not have to waste…provided that the pachyderm and jackass parties do not band together to ban third parties outright in the meantime should one arise as an actual threat to their power.
I don’t think Biden is going to make it to the nomination. Other people also have such theories.
The DNC might even try pulling a “Dave”, then. I should watch that movie tonight as I have not seen it in years.
Well, they already tried “Being There”. How’s that working out?
I’d almost guarantee it.
The argument could be made that it would be worse for biden to run against Trump again and lose, a repudiation of the 2020 claim that anyone would be better than Trump, than to just not run against him at all.
Anyone aligned with the “New Dems” is a dead man walking. Nostalgia was Biden’s strength. They need Biden or an enraged Trump is the alternative.
The only thing I can think of for reading into the mind of sanders is after the night of the long knives he decided to no longer propose left principles as he could see as well as us here that it was only providing talking points to the dems and giving them left bona fides It’s obvious only right principles will advance in congress…by not talking about m4a he starves them of the ability to claim that view is represented by the dems. In a sense (if this view has any merit) by not providing that overton anchor sanders is also an accelerationist. Let’s get it over with…it’s the silicon valley way, break it so you can remake it…
I know it’s a stretch, but seeing sanders as a jesus figure was always a bridge too far for me, no one person can do that.
Sanders considers Trump and the Republicans to be America’s Fascist Party-Movement. As such, he wants them defeated. So he doesn’t view his pre-emptive endorsement of Biden to be a “favor” for which he should get something “in return”.
He considers it defending America from Republican TrumpoFascist takeover. He may be right. He may be wrong. But that is what he believes.
To be fair, I would not trust any promises or concessions that would come out of Biden’s mouth, as there would be nothing stopping him from completely going back on all of it or betraying Sanders.
I understand that Sanders is afraid of the consequences of Trump winning again, but Biden’s policies are not that much different from that of Trump as Biden actually continued most of them after he took office. Plus, surely Biden in his current mental state is especially vulnerable to losing to Trump, to say nothing of being too mentally incapacitated to run a country. Even if Biden truly was a good friend of Sanders, he should realize that Biden should step aside for the sake of a better candidate who would not be so weak as a presidential candidate. Finally, the stress of campaigning for president might be too deleterious for Biden and so why would Sanders want to endorse somebody who is mentally unfit to hold office?
Sanders is hardly a spring chicken himself, but as people age at different rates, look at the difference between the two, as Biden seems like he is in a constant mental fog.
Bernie Sanders is a Judas Goat.
What’s “exhausted” is the contention that there are no alternatives to biden but the loser retreads the author mentions. RFK, Jr. is running, polling at 21.4% approval among democrat voters last week, and is exactly the candidate this author claims to want. But he remains unacknowledged.
What may not hold up over the next 19 months are the obvious, clumsy “strategies” like canceling debates and rigging the primary schedule, calculated to reinforce the fiction that there is no alternative to the flailing, failing biden.
While democrat “leadership” may be “exhausted,” constantly peddling a pig in a poke will do that to ya, the rank and file may just be ready for an RFK, Jr. second wind.
And yet we’ve been promised so many up from the bottom Dem insurgencies that never come off. Twenty percent may be a name recognition high water mark. I believe the country may simply be tired of the Dems next cycle and the Repubs, whoever they put up, will take it. After all it’s not just Biden who is trashing the brand.
Those insurgencies were carefully beheaded by careful DemParty establishment primary-electoral engineering. They did it to Sanders twice, for example.
Whereas the Republican Party runs honest open non-engineered primaries in which an insurgency can rise to its natural level. As the Trump insurgency did.
> the Republican Party runs honest open non-engineered primaries
Indeed. Memorably, Eric Cantor, the second-most powerful GOP member of the House at the time, was defeated fair and square in a primary, by a Tea Partier in 2014.
Haven’t listed to this one yet, but it looks like an interesting discussion on the current geopolitical situation with Margaret Kimberly and Garland Nixon among others – https://blackagendareport.com/russia-and-china-win-big-us-hegemony-dies-w-garland-nixon-dr-wilmer-leon-danny-haiphong-margaret
Kazakhstan…
“As Seoul-based newspaper The Korea Times has reported, while exports from South Korea, an important global supplier of high-tech, to Russia fell by 37 percent to $6.3 billion in 2022, exports to Kyrgyzstan spiked over that same period by 231.4 percent, to $373 million. Observers have concluded that this dynamic points to the likelihood that goods are being bought by companies in Kyrgyzstan for re-export to Russia.
Discrepancies in the value of those exports as reported by South Korean and Kyrgyz authorities may further raise questions about potential problems with transparency in all this flow of goods.
Millions v billions, no matter the flashy percentages, don’t compare…
Kyrgyzstan’s National Statistics Committee this week estimated the value of Korean exports in 2022 at only $156.5 million – far lower than the $373 million reported by the Korea International Trade Association.
When pressed on this point by Eurasianet, the statistics committee said the discrepancy may be accounted for by a difference in methodology in how the two governments compile trade data.”
millions v billions
The immune debt hypothesis isn’t even internally consistent at this point! Both of the pathogens involved in the brain abcesses and fatal fungal infections are routinely found on skin! How in the world are kids supposed to have avoided coming across these for years?
U.S. Supreme Court justices take lavish gifts — then raise the bar for bribery prosecutions
Does someone know where I can pick up a Dummies Guide to Lawful Forms of Bribery and Influence Peddling as a gift for some public officials I know?
Check the Library of Congress. Has its own shelf.
‘Endless record heat’ in Asia as highest April temperatures recorded The Guardian
‘Temperatures hit 42C in the capital on Saturday, and the heat index – meaning what the temperature feels like combined with humidity – reached 54C.‘
I would like to see the wet bulb temp for this measurement. Looking up comparisons with heat index, it looks like this temp/humidity exceeds the human ability to survive an extended exposure (about 35 C wet bulb). It looks like Kim Stanley Robinson’s prediction of a high wet bulb temp combined with power failure for the first climate change mass mortality event is getting more likely.
Take out the electric system and air conditioning and large parts of the US gulf coast will be uninhabitable at current population density.
It would be miserable, but I don’t think Gulf Coast wet bulb temps have exceeded 35C yet. In the future, it seems likely, but I haven’t seen the region on the very most dangerous list yet. It is South Asia that seems to be most at risk. KSR picked India for his novel, the Ministry for the Future, as the location of the wet bulb catastrophe.
It might not be deadly, but I at least cannot sleep at night drenched in sweat, which is what happened the few times my AC died, many many years before our current climate woes, so it is probably doubly awful today. Without sleep, how effectively could anyone maintain employment? Without earnings, you can’t live in a region anyway. Because this is America, capitalism isn’t going to slow down just because it’s too hot for people to perform mentally and physically at work.
I think we ought to shut stuff down because weather. When it snows, do we really need everything up and running? In Boston even during blizzards everything is open and the subway is running. It’s really crazy.
In hot regions, we ought to just shut it all down from 11 am to 4 pm or whatever.
That’s smart thinking, but given that The Economy was so important that we’ve allowed Covid to become endemic, it’s more likely that stories about people dying from heat exhaustion or freezing when their car got stuck on the way to work will be news for a while, then fade from the public attention. We have a group of people in charge to whom loss of life is a trifle, a loss of profit a crisis.
” We” didn’t allow it. The governments and the ruling classes imposed it.
the latter is called “Siesta”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siesta …and is how i run things around here, as best i can.
(ie: boys’ sports, wife’s work, etc, rarely accommodated my preference for a rational schedule that takes account of the weather…caravan of busses driving through heavy rain/ice storm because the ball simply must be chased…(it is for this same reason that my many attempts to simply ignore the biannual timechange fuckery have failed))
yesterday and today, due to the frelling wind and chill*, ive done the minimum.
(* 35 mph, w/ gusts up to 60—5pm:92 dgr…5am:43 dgr—doesnt really feel like almost may)
eldest and I did finally get the charcoal retort built…
and its windless manana, so we’re finally getting the tin on the roof of the cabin.(easy-peasy from there to being all dried in)
and I’ll be remote cooking(!) carnitas at the Wilderness Bar(short Falconride from cabin) for when we’re done.
“In hot regions, we ought to just shut it all down from 11 am to 4 pm or whatever.”
It’s called the siesta.
Terran humans are quite adaptable. The real question is how large a population we will have globally by the end of this century.
I used to sort of think that the CTs swirling around the Club of Rome Report and the Powell Memo were just that, CTs. Now I am more than halfway to the position that they are blueprints for a loosely coordinated experiment in social engineering.
‘United Front’ works as well for the Elites as it does for the “deplorables.”
The Red Sea area seems at even greater risk…
I don’t think ChrisFromGA meant literally lethal-within-hours. He/she probably meant not worth living in if escape exists. If the electrosystem went down and stayed down, millions of people would leave the Steam Zone before the wet bulb lethality temperature was reached.
Perhaps a New Nomadism would be invented. Millions of people would keep living in the Steam Zone during the winter, and all leave the Steam Zone to live in the North or Far North every Spring-Summer-Fall.
Follow the dinosaur trackways.
UAW president ‘disgusted’ by automaker buyout: Stellantis to offer deals to 33K workers – ClickOnDetroit
“In response to today’s increasingly competitive global market conditions and the necessary shift to electrification, Stellantis is thoroughly reviewing its North American operations to improve efficiency, reduce costs and protect the competitiveness of our products to allow for further strategic investments to support our transformation…”
For crying out loud, when are they going to admit: the competition is also going to be stiff because this will ultimately be about manufacturing fewer cars for fewer people.
And fewer car companies needed.
Otherwise, there would be more concern about workers being able to afford a car.
Additional profits to be made from subscriptions for services/features for the car.
The EU can’t find most of Russia’s $300bn of frozen reserves Intellinews
I would like to understand the technical details of international transfers of money, verification of sources of money, and how ‘offshore’ tax havens work. It seems like to prevent someone from just creating money and then transferring it into the banking system a tight system of bank verification and a catalog of their assets and transactions is needed. How is it possible to ‘hide money’ and at the same time prevent fraudulent creation of money like just typing in numbers in an offshore tax haven account?
“Unease in Israel as US depletes reserve stockpiles to fuel Ukraine war: Report ”
Of course there would be unease about this in Israel. It says it right there in the article. ‘These are Israel’s reserve stockpiles for times of war.’ With those stockpiles reduced by half and it looking like they will not be replenished for month if not years, that means that Israel is not free to launch any military campaigns against any of it’s neighbours. The last time they attacked Gaza the only reason that they stopped when they did was because they ran out of ammo. Congress had to pass a special bill to stock them up again. With Saudi Arabia making up together, Iran receiving modern Russian fighters and the Turks helping shut down the last campaigns of the Syrian war, that leaves the Israelis out in the open. They could used diplomacy to arrange some sort of security for themselves but right now they have some of the biggest religious nut-jobs in government and these maniacs under Netanyahu have the potential to drive Israel into a deep ditch.
The immediate aftermath of the Rabin assassination was the last opportunity the Israeli Labor-Left and Security Establishment had to functionally exterminate the Likud-etc. right from political and cultural existence. It might have required a Civil War to achieve it even then.
Now it is too late. The Christian Evangelical/ Seven Mountain Dominionist/ Biblical Inerrancy Literalist/ CUFI/ etc. community in America has invested money and time in elevating the Likudists and etc. to total supremacy in Greater Likudistan. Their reason for that goes like this: Biblical Prophecy decrees that Israel must re-emerge as a country and must demolish the Muslim Mosques on the Temple Mount and must build the Third Temple on that site. Then the War of Armageddon can happen after which Christ will return to rule for a thousand years and 140,000 Jewisraelis will be chosen to convert to Christianity while all the rest of the Jewisraelis will be sent to the Eternal Lake of Fire to burn forever and forever.
The American Christianists are so close to achieving that goal that they can taste it. Do you think they will allow anyone in Israel to alter the timetable now? The only hope which non-Likudist Jewisraelis now have to survive is to emigrate and leave the Lidudistanis behind in Greater Likudistan, and let whatever happens happen.
The dollar problem: Troubleshooting our way out
So many novel schemes have been announced that one can hardly keep track of how many new or existing currencies are set to replace the dollar, never mind the question of how they would potentially overlap and interact with each other.
…
…We might begin with one of the rare sources of doubt on this issue, Naked Capitalism; a platform which avidly reports on the Empire’s trials and tribulations. Yves Smith, the outlet’s founder, makes the point that many commentators who consider themselves to be geopolitical realists when it comes to Ukraine, for example, actually paint a distorted picture of the feasibility of rapidly ditching the dollar. Well aware of making themselves “unpopular” by adopting this position, Yves Smith has compared her dissent to the insightful skepticism she once voiced regarding Greece’s hopes to thwart the Troika, when there was a similar excitement surrounding Greece’s ability to leave the Eurozone and transition to a new currency.
…
https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/blog/the-dollar-problem:-troubleshooting-our-way-out
On Trump Could Definitely Beat Biden
But, murdering 700,000 Americans, imposing mandates for a non-sterilizing shot, and thoroughly discrediting public health, are most definitely not liabilities for Team Biden, curiously. Not for NY Mag at least.
It is astonishing that the entire Pandemic is such a collective shock to the national psyche that there’s little to no acknowledgement at all of its costs, unless it is on loss of freedom or children’s education. This is the stupidest timeline. And even people that do vote are affected by COVID, it’s not just working class and poor people. There’s literally no political price at all for the deaths and mass disability, that is ongoing… wtf
This is a case where civil disturbances and revolutionary activity are lagging indicators.
During the ‘Arab Spring’ upheavals, the ‘popular displays of dissent’ followed mass public “food insecurity,” the result of “retail inflation” in foodstuffs and transport fuel prices.
America is seeing the “retail inflation” in food and household goods prices now. When the “heightened mass food insecurity” hits, watch out.
The harvest is gonna be way down in Cali this year along with much of the rest of the world, where usually some region has a bumper crop to make up for shortfalls elsewhere, but i’m not seeing it.
Can I interest you in some nourishing Virtual Green?
“Soylent E-Green?”
There’s an app for that!
Stay safe in the Golden West.
yeah.
but when the egg crisis was in full swing, my chickens werent ready(old enough) to do anything about it(dozen plus per day, now)
similarly, due to all the infrastructure/construction representing an additional full time job, i’m halfassin on the garden this year…us and wife’s familia(and my 2 builder guys).
i expect the weather affecting crops wont stop, though…so, next year, i make my debut.
we’re coming off of a 3 year la Nina…= dry from you to me.
and heading into a potentially extraordinary El Nino…=wet from you to me.
last time, 2018, we had 30+” in under a month.
i’ve been on mom to get tanks, tanks, tanks, whenever she wonders aloud what to do with her $,lol.
I understand that you can get all sorts of “tanks” shipped direct from Odessa. I suggest the older Abrams. Time tested and plenty of spare parts available here at the training range south of town. Ammo should not be too hard of a problem to solve. There are several mothballed ammo plants here in the North American Deep South. Once production is restarted to supply the Forever War, the “diversion” of ordinance shouldn’t be too difficult.
However, I view locally retrofitted “technicals” as being a better choice. How many times do we come up against ‘problems’ requiring high energy rounds? Compare that with cases where roving gangs of “soft targets” need discouraging. A “technical” is the way to go for small holders.
Viva los Rurales Tejanos!
But America is highly atomized; Maybe we just have more deaths of despair, more gun violence (see post about AR-15 shooter in comments today), more road rage, more individual acts of aggression and thoughtlessness?
Meanwhile the virus marches on apace, unperturbed by whatever disagreements might animate conservatives or liberal Democrats. And the CDC is a big fail whale.
If the CDC’s unstated secret agenda is actually to keep the virus spreading, then the CDC is a big success whale.
It all depends on what CDC’s secret mission actually is.
Where are the next trades people going come from?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dept-of-energy/the-great-electrician-shortage
Long but worth the time
and stone carvers: https://sculpturedigest.com/stone-carvers-needed-to-restore-notre-dame/
Thank you for that article. Very cool. Since I started cleaning headstones in our historic campus cemetery last year, I’ve become fascinated by the carving, artwork, history, and craftsmanship involved in their creation. I would give my right arm to take a workshop to learn how to do it(make them)-and then transition out of science for a career. sigh. I see the faint score marks on them and it brings the creator to life again. It is beautiful and calming for some reason.
Thanks. The electricians and plumbers I just employed were both Ukrainians. Immigrants have their uses, no?
A man using an AR-15-style weapon shot and killed five people Friday, including an 8-year-old — an angry response to the neighbors’ request that he stop shooting in his yard while their baby was trying to sleep, Texas authorities said Saturday. The gunman then fled, prompting an ongoing manhunt. (WaPo)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Another Steely Dan (possibly with accessory strap-unconfirmed at this point) mows em’ down, but lets give credit where credit is due as the index finger really does all the heavy pulling, a pinky being superfluous while the other unnamed digits are capable of getting off a shot-but awkwardly, and forget about the rule of thumb… as its too big and pointed the wrong direction.
RE: CDC meeting
So the CDC had its own superspreader event…
It’s hopeless.
smh
Seems on-brand, though!
retweeted by Nate Bear
https://twitter.com/laurabaranik/status/1652225056494215177?cxt=HHwWkoCz1ev78O0tAAAA
Patients walk out of a @StanfordMed
#LongCovid trial after medical staff stop masking while tending to LC participants
Now for something completely different.
Greatest video of all time….
https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1650581322640027648
Bloody sweet! Kids lead the way. It’s a shame they have to “grow up.”
However, when I look at our present ruling Elites in the West, I realize that how you “grow up” is very important. Some never “grow up” in the sense that they cannot divorce their self image from the ‘Magical Thinking’ that characterizes childhood. That lot seem to be ‘in charge’ now. The rest of us inhabit a vast amorphous zone comprising the region between full on Magical Thinking and rigourous Logical Thinking. Where we end up in that ‘grey zone’ determines our World view and our degree of “competence” in navigating the reefs and shoals of society. That ‘point of view’ spot shifts for the “average” person depending on the inputs. Such is necessary for the smooth functioning not only of society in general, but also for the individual’s ‘relationship’ with society.
The rule of thumb is that the rigid eventually break, and the flexible bend. Alas, when the rigid are in positions of power and control, when they break, the society they guide breaks with them.
Stay safe. We live in interesting times.
From Useful Idiots.
Matt Taibbi Reacts to Dems’ Prison Threat
https://usefulidiots.substack.com/p/matt-taibbi-reacts-to-dems-prison#details
Just listening to Matt and Kirn puzziling over the Tucker firing. And interesting tidbit is that Carlson is still under contract and being paid so perhaps not even allowed to join a competitor?
https://www.racket.news/p/episode-36-america-this-week-with
Husseini has a theory and a good one
https://husseini.substack.com/p/tucker-carlsons-attack-on-big-pharma
Tucker said pharma controls television. Tucker is gone.
Thanks, Flora. That was excellent. That’s a pretty chilling picture Taibbi presents of all our institutions–media, business, academia, political parties, etc.–instead of remaining a collection of different interest groups contesting for power, have decided to coalesce together into one Inside.
So Turley writes in part . . . ” In a weird way, it seems even more troubling that the likely culprit may have been identified, but has proceeded into practice as an attorney. As I have previously written, this was a crushing blow to the Court and its traditions of integrity and civility. You cannot be an attorney after violating these core principles of our profession. This is akin to being an atheist priest or an arsonist architect. It is simply incompatible with our core identity, including being “officers of the court.”
Really, Mr. Turley? Really? The Court’s ” traditions of integrity and civility”?
That garbage barge sailed and sank with Bush v. Gore. And the Supreme Court has been raising and sinking that same garbage barge over and over again from then to now.
So, us, er, um, the 3rd branch of govt is a garbage barge? Uh, got it, I guess. ( I don’t’ like the current court’s decisions much but I’m not going throw the institution itself or its justices under the bus. I mean, in earlier times it was importantly instrumental in progressive civil rights litigation. (And don’t throw Taney up to me.) “The court follows the elections” has a well known meaning. Just sayin’. )
Not the 3rd branch of govt as such, but rather its so-called “traditions of integrity and civility”. Those so-called “traditions” are the garbage barge which has sailed and sank with Bush v. Gore, and which the Federalist Society Operatives on the Supreme Court have kept re-raising and re-sinking over and over again, just to make sure the point is made.
Some key impeachments to decontaminate the Court of its Federalist Society infestation could permit the re-establishment of some “traditions of integrity and civility”.
Or we could decide those traditions will never exist again, and simply treat the Supreme Court as the political ideological-agenda power center which it now is, and figure out how to pack it with enough liberal and / or liberadical justices to outweigh and outvote the Federalist Society Infestation on the Court. If we take enough total power over the House-Senate and the Presidency to be able to do that.
er,,,, “traditions of integrity and civility.” Now do the Congress. / heh.
I don’t disagree with your Bush v Gore complaint. Justice Brennan put it very well. On the other hand, just where the hell has the so-called Dem left been? If the Dem left can’t mount a forceful rebuttal gaining majority public support then that’s on them. All else sounds like special pleading.
A Muslim commentator from Malaysia, the ‘Middle Nation’ channel on youtube explains why EU leaders cooperate with destabilising Europe. Applies equally to the US, Britain etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLdhYkUzPHU
As a member of the Global South it is interesting how much of his views accord with analysis & commentary on this site. The following seem to be representative.
On increasing Globalist control vs the Nation State: The West isn’t collapsing, it’s being conquered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmPT27tucS4
And
…”The US proxy war against Russia is really a proxy war against Europe, and Poland is Honduras. The US embassy in Honduras was the staging ground for a regional destabilization project in Central and South America in the 1980s..”
https://twitter.com/vicktop55/status/1648390159409217537
adding: while I disagree most often with the current Court’s decisions and outlook, I think Chief Justice Roberts was entirely correct to give a cold shoulder to Congressional attempts to ‘manage the Court’ – the 3rd branch of co-equal govt of the Constitutions institutions of govt responsibilities.
Larry “the Light-bulb” Summers does it again. He was giving an interview where he was demanding bailouts for the wealthy while also demanding a recession for workers to bring down their wages. The same interview!
https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1652084493082152961
Larry should have a nice warm mug of STFU.
Summers as Beaker, the company man at Muppet Labs. / heh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVnmIbzExOA
Hope this is an inaccurate take on Evgeny Prigozhin’s interview and/or that Prigozhin is just bluffing to mislead the US and Ukraine. Viktor is generally not a doomer.
“I watched a long interview (1 hour 20 minutes) by Evgeny Prigozhin for the WarGonzo project. If what the head of PMC Wagner said is not deliberate misinformation, then you and I should not be surprised that the offensive of the Ukrainian army of the United States and NATO may be very successful. I don’t think this is misinformation. According to Prigozhin, the Russian army is not ready to fight due to the lack of a normal management organization, lack of discipline, lack of shells and the presence of traitors in the Russian elites. The meaning of what has been said can be conveyed in one phrase: It seems that Russia will start to really fight after the Ukrainian army of the United States and NATO reaches Moscow.”
https://twitter.com/vicktop55/status/1652343278186971137?s=20
For the last few days he’s been saying a lot. Obviously he will close down Wagner organization soon. Also, if they don’t get more artillery shells immediately, they will start pulling out of Bakhmut. And yet Wagner organization has offered the position of late Dimitri Utkin* to the sacked colonel-general Mikhail Mizintsev, who was responsible for the logistics of special military operation.
During one day to one journalist he says Warner has lost 96 wounded due to lack of shells, to other he refuses to give any numbers. His way of communication reminds me a lot of the late Zhirinovsky – he will use provocative language, troll enemy and friend alike, exaggerate, make stuff up, whatever it takes to get people’s attention. Whether it’s about attention to him or his message, that is often hard to figure out.
I must say I’m quite confused about the whole PMC Wagner’s presence in Bakhmut/Artemovsk at all. Why the Russian army is allowing this entrepreneur to have his private battle in the middle of all this? I kinda get why Wagner appeared in the news during the battle of Popasna, because that’s were the group was born in 2014 when Ukrainian forces took it from the separatists. So I can understand why they would participate in taking it back from UAF.
When Prigozhin earlier complained about not getting enough shells, I saw comments that it was the way for the Russian military to bring PMC Wagner to heel the general strategy and integrate them with the common command structure. If that is true, there are obviously some friction between Army and Wagner, which makes it even harder to understand why Wagner is still on the front?
If Bakhmut/Artemovsk is an important logistics hub and The Key to break the Ukrainian defense line, why the task of taking it has been left to a relatively small group of mercenaries and convicts? Why is Peskov’s son fighting in the ranks of Wagner while technically Russian law forbids mercenaries in Russia?
I wish I had at least some of the answers because, frankly, if you look at this a little more closely, it really doesn’t make much sense in the bigger scheme of things. It only raises more questions.
* call sign “Wagner”, thus the name Wagner’s Group. It was originally a team of LNR special forces, lead by former Russian Spetsnaz leutenant-colonel Utkin. After things cooled down in 2015, Prigozhin hired them and they left for Syria.
Please no disinformation.
Prighozin has been actively seeking to expand Wagner assignments, particularly in Africa, based on the success in Bakhmut.
Prighozin is a drama queen and his whinging about ammo was a while back and appears to have been the result of logistics and once that was sorted, Pribhozin stopped complaining. He clearly relishes his high profile role.
The Wagner forces committed to Bakhumt are not small. It was a city of ~70,000 before the war. I’ve seen estimates of 20,000 to 40,000.
I suggest you watch some of the war porn/daily map sites to become better informed. Bakhmut is well situated for defense due to its number of factories, high rise apartments, and other sturdy buildings. You can’t do that quickly. This is is a brutal, block by block operation.
I also don’t see why you are dissing convicts who work in this caapcity. Prighozin himself is a former convict. Our Marines take ex cons. The French Foreign Legion was composed significantly of convicts.
A number of straight-shooting US ex-mil experts like Scott Ritter and Doug MacGregor have been thoroughly impressed by Wagner’s level of professionalism and effectiveness. They’re very experienced at this point.
I think it makes sense to think of them as an extension of the russian military, no more, no less. Don’t read too much into the Prigozhin drama. He’s not really in charge.
My apologies, my intention was not disinformation. Maybe I worded my comment badly, but the idea of closing down Wagner was Prigozhin’s statement, not mine. I brought it up precisely because it’s quite contradictory to what he’s actually doing to emphasize how one should approach everything he says with certain caution.
My estimate of the size of the Wagner group is based on the pre-war size, on the fact that they indeed went to prisons to get more men, and on the fact that they are mercenaries – 20,000 men would cost about $5 million per month in salaries (plus food and kit). Prigozhin is rich, but is he really that rich? Also, the convict’s contract is only for 6 months, then they are de-mobilized and Prigozhin himself said few in February no new convicts are contracted. By now most have already returned home.
I didn’t think I was dissing the convicts, either. I think they are fighting against stubborn, numerically superior enemy in the worst possible combat environment. What I was wondering is why they with the mercenaries (who dislike casualties even more than regular troops) are in Bakhmut doing this hardest of fighting.
Mini-Zeitgeist observation.
This weekend begins Jazz Fest, probably the biggest regular “event” in the New Orleans region. Well, this year, the entire venue has gone “cashless.” Hmmm….. I know that Jazz Fest has always featured World Music, but now New World Order too?
Local TV report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7WSAWJfHEQ
As Biden Runs Again, Black Voters’ Frustration Bubbles
Ya think? The Donald keeps increasing his margins with black voters, so we’ll see I guess.
Tonight is slated to be another huge spring migration event for migratory birds with 177 million migrating across the U.S.
Unfortunately, the greater Los Angeles and southern California areas have been experiencing dense nightly fogs for over a week with no end in sight, and fog makes bird flight very difficult and is sometimes associated with mass mortality events.
https://birdcast.info/
“Why go Lights Out?
Most birds migrate at night, employing an incredible sensory system to navigate and to orient in darkness. Light pollution attracts and disorients these migrating birds, disrupting these systems and increasing birds’ vulnerability to collisions with structures. An estimated 365 – 988 million birds die in collisions with buildings annually, including a number of species of high conservation concern. You can help dramatically reduce the hazards from light pollution for nocturnally migrating birds by turning off all non-essential lighting.
To see when birds are migrating over your area anywhere in the continental US, follow our Migration Dashboard here: https://dashboard.birdcast.info.”
Grandpa is off his meds again and is looking to start a fight with Mexico-
‘US President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Thursday authorizing Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to deploy active duty reserve troops to the US-Mexican border as needed to fight the illegal drug trade.
“The authorities that have been invoked will ensure the Department of Defense can properly sustain its support of the Department of Homeland Security concerning international drug trafficking along the Southwest Border,” Biden wrote in a message to Congress accompanying the order.
The measure is a response to the White House’s declaration of a national emergency in December 2021 regarding International drug trafficking. The president blamed “drug cartels, transnational criminal organizations, and their facilitators” for bringing “illicit drugs and precursor chemicals” and “drug-related violence” into American communities and imposed sanctions on senior cartel figures.’
https://www.rt.com/news/575551-biden-order-military-drug-trafficking/
Can you imagine if Trump had done that? Actually I think that he did but they were to be used to stop illegal emigrants.
Hmmm. Not so sure this is about Grandpa being off his meds. Being a bully is Biden’s preference, but it is also SOP for the worst foreign policy team in my history, thoroughly bought and deeply incompetent. Their corporate backers are unhappy and the only thing they can think to do is intimidate AMLO. (Expecting them to be realistic and tell their owners to grow up and get over themselves is of course not even a consideration.) So Biden and friends think the hamhanded massing of an army on Mexico’s border especially supposedly about the drug trafficking that it has secretly encouraged for decades is going to go unnoticed in the rest of South America?
This is just going to alienate our neighbors even further. They really cannot help themselves.
Follow up to NC post Russia and China Are Sending Biden a Message: Don’t Judge Us or Try to Change us. Those Days Are Over From March 21, 2021.
Explainer: who is Charles Lieber and why does his case matter for US research?
One, all this time he was forbidden to work or teach, talk about an own goal. There is something seriously wrong with the thinking in the Halls of (Fading) Power.
Two, That’s expedited sentencing, for a power figure in nano-chemistry. Now imagine some poor shmuck without that kind of pull held for sentencing.