Janitor wipes out 20 years of ‘groundbreaking’ research RT (Kevin W)
A Proto-Pizza Emerges from a Fresco on a Pompeii Wall New York Times (furzy)
Nuclear fusion reactor in Korea reaches 100 million degrees Celsius Interesting Engineering (Chuck L)
The myth of mirrored twins aeon
Is liberal society making us ill? Unherd
#COVID-19
How Over Is Covid? Ian Welsh (Randy K)
Matt Hancock says UK’s pandemic strategy was completely wrong BBC (Kevin W)
Climate/Environment
EU to consider blocking out Sun – Bloomberg RT (Kevin W). The capitalization first lead me to think this was about the UK tabloid The Sun…
World’s first carbon-eating concrete blocks are weeks away for commercial use Interesting Engineering (Chuck L)
China
‘Mr. X’ would not approve of China containment Responsible Statecraft
Chinese military conjures world war Z scenario of all-out conflict to test and evaluate new navy weapons South China of Morning Post
US considering new restrictions on AI chip exports to China – WSJ Yahoo! Finance (Kevin W)
India
Comparing Narendra Modi to Deng Xiaoping is absurd. Deng's reforms came after China had a revolution and implemented comprehensive agrarian and land reform – something India desperately needs.
China's incredible development was only possible because of that foundational step,… https://t.co/Uw3pGfP1XK
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) June 23, 2023
European Disunion
E.U. Border Agency Considers Pulling Out of Greece Over Migrant Abuses New York Times (furzy)
I genuinely thought/believed the ECB could achieve a softish landing, and that the data would offer it to them. Now, however, real M1 (best leading indicator) is plunging to new depths, while the ECB is getting more hawkish, focusing on unit labour costs (most long-lagging…
— Claus Vistesen (@ClausVistesen) June 28, 2023
Old Blighty
UK government convenes emergency talks over Thames Water https://t.co/JaA71whyWf
— FT UK Politics (@ftukpolitics) June 28, 2023
The UK government could temporarily nationalize Britain’s biggest water supplier Thames Water as concerns grow over its more than £13 billion debt pile https://t.co/nXSgMFre5d
— Bloomberg (@business) June 28, 2023
Here's my copy of Sun Yat-Sen's THE VITAL PROBLEM OF CHINA (1917). I recently discovered that the mere possession of this book will get you on the British blacklist of suspected Russian agents. To see why, read the highlighted text. pic.twitter.com/pm98fKx4Fi
— Richard Poe 🇺🇸 (@RealRichardPoe) June 27, 2023
New Not-So-Cold War
How To Plant Propaganda: “Putin has been weakened. Russia is crumbling.” Moon of Alabama (Kevin W)
Lukashenko Says That During Revolt, Putin Suggested Killing Mercenary Chief New York Times (furzy)
Address to citizens of Russia President of Russia.
Vladimir Putin says Wagner paramilitaries paid billions by Russian state Financial Times. Looks like Wagner and the catering biz will be subjected to a big audit, and Prigozhin is also being investigated. Expect an effort to claw back funds and possibly other charges, since the amnesty was only for the original charge of armed insurrection.
Russian General Knew About Mercenary Chief’s Rebellion Plans, U.S. Officials Say New York Times. Another “anonymous US officials” story, designed to achieve a twofer: put some meat on the thin “Putin is weak” claims and try to foment suspicion of Surovkin, the man behind some of the most important war measures, such as the building of massive layered defenses in the South and the relentless air strikes which have denuded Ukraine’s air defenses and also destroyed a lot of ammo depots and missile and howitzer platforms. Surovikin had been assigned to be Prigozhin’s babysitter, so easy to smear him by virtue of being in communication.
Countdown has begun to end of Putin, say Kyiv officials BBC. Lead story. Given that just about all the bad stuff Ukraine says about Russia is projection, does this new spin mean we should start a betting scheme on how many days Zelensky has left as head of state? Of course, we have to define what that means, as in being downgraded to mayor of the Free City of Kiev would be included in an official end to him.
* * * Ukraine updates: Kramatorsk attack death toll rises DW. Note the last Kramatorsk shelling that killed civilians was by Ukraine and Ukraine aggressively pushed the line that Russia done it….until a photo of one of shells in an Italian publication showed serial number that established it was Ukraine materiel. So I’d wait to see the receipts.
Seymour Hersh: The Ukraine Refugee Question Sheerpost (Kevin W). Some sour notes again due to spook dependence.
All aboard the gravy train: an independent audit of US funding for Ukraine The Grayzone (Kevin W)
Russian liberalism’s false dawn Canadian Dimension (Chuck L). ZOMG:
The war in Ukraine has horrified liberal intellectuals, writes Bogomolov, but not because they dislike the bloodshed. What really bothers them, he claims, is that it has deprived them of the opportunity to get subsidies from the state to produce works saying how terrible the state is.
The War Between My Two Words Between Two Worlds (Anthony L). A fine site and I keep neglecting to check it.
* * * I missed that Tucker had a clip on RFJ, Jr. that has gotten nearly 30 million views. Good for Tucker here! He takes up Gonzalo Lira’s case.
Ep. 7 Irony Alert: the war for democracy enables dictatorship. pic.twitter.com/tk7aOZ4H6n
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 28, 2023
Syraqistan
Foreign Intel: Iran Close To Testing First Nuke OilPrice
U.N. urges Israel and Palestinians to halt West Bank violence Politico
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Apple Joins Opposition in UK To Encrypted Message App Scanning BBC
Imperial Collapse Watch
America’s Suez moment? Almayadeen. A must read.
A Wild, Conspiratorial, Fantastical View of World Politics: Might It Be True? Richard Cook, Scheerpost.
Moving Past Neoliberalism Is a Policy Project American Prospect (Kevin W)
Serbia Almost Bought Russian S-400 Missile Systems: What It Would Have Meant For NATO and Why it Stopped Military Watch
US Navy’s DDG(X) destroyer design is full of holes Asia Times
Remembering Pompeo’s Cruel Foreign Policy Record Daniel Larison
GOP Congress Shocking Disgrace!!! House Armed Services Committee Passes Amendment to Make it ILLEGAL to Communicate with MRFF!!! — With New Video from Mikey Weinstein Military Religious Freedom
2024
The three Democrats (not Biden or Harris) Republicans fear most in ’24 The Hill
Trump
In Nazi diatribe, Trump calls for mass deportations of socialists and communists WSWS
Biden
Harris on the hot seat: Veep has critical stretch ahead as campaign heats up Politico. Another warmed-over corpse.
Hunter Biden privately SETTLES with baby mama over child support payments for their four-year-old daughter: President’s son’s contributions drop from $20K to $5K a month and daughter cannot use family name Daily Mail. How tacky.
Supremes
Supreme Court Rejects Theory That Would Have Transformed American Elections New York Times (Kevin W)
Supreme Court Guts Protections for Cyberstalking Victims Fast Company
L’affarire Jeffrey Epstein
How Jeffrey Epstein’s island politics helped elect Stacey Plaskett Business Insider (Kevin W)
Landmark Study Shows Higher Suicide Risk for Transgender People New York Times (furzy)
Libertarian Squillionaire Titanic Submersible Darwin Award Winner
What I Learned on a Titanic Submarine Expedition New York Magazine (furzy)
Attorney sues Microsoft for $1.75M, claiming his email has been useless since May The Register
Why the RFK Jr., Rogan, Musk Outrage Machine Doesn’t Bother Big Pharma Dean Baker, Counterpunch
U.S. new home sales jump in May; median house price falls Reuters
Fed Fails To Cool US Services Sector, Risking Prolonged Inflation Battle Heisenberg Report (resilc). From last week, still germane.
Class Warfare
We’re Now Finding Out The Damaging Results of The Mandated Return to Office — And It’s Worse Than We Thought. Entrepreneur (Paul R)
Antidote du jour. mgl:
Female common merganser & 6 chicks in stream in Seward, Alaska 26 JUN 2023. The youngsters like to ride on the female’s back. I don’t know if they take turns.
A bonus (guurst, Chuck L):
A crane operator saves a calf….incredible timing.
Turkiyepic.twitter.com/Y2QhZOsNX1— Figen (@TheFigen_) June 26, 2023
And a second bonus (Chuck L):
Am I the only one who has never seen a baby kangaroo?! pic.twitter.com/COuQPAEyKg
— B&S (@_B___S) June 25, 2023
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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“A Proto-Pizza Emerges from a Fresco on a Pompeii Wall”
I’d call that a pizza. The archaeologists said that ‘Most of the characteristic ingredients are missing, namely tomatoes and mozzarella’ but the idea is still there. Anyway, Pompeii was buried in 79 AD and it was not until about 1,440 years later that tomatoes first arrived in Europe. And Mozzarella cheese? It had its origins in this exact region in the 1st century so if given enough time, it might have made it’s way onto this Roman pizza. Still, I could go for one right now. Mmmmmmm….pizzaaaa-
https://traditom.eu/project/history/
https://www.mozzco.com/mozzarella_history
About an hour from Pavlovegas is the magnificent Valley of Fire state park, and on one of the wall panels are 2,500 year old petroglyphs and if I didn’t know any better, i’d swear one of them is a proto-Roulette wheel, and my advice would be to put everything on the double zero.
It’s a great panel, and to the left of the roulette wheel is an atlatl, and lots of bighorn sheep~
https://peripateticbone.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/cliff-petroglyphs-2.jpg
The “wheel” is actually a common symbol for the solar year divided into lunar months — 13 here (the 354 lunar year often has an extracalendrical year). That symbol is thousands of years old.
Ok, place it all on Aquarius
Visited Valley of Fire last November! I decided I was too decrepit to ever try for the Wave, so did the Fire Wave instead.
…and depictions of lizards, newts, and the (now) endangered Desert Tortoise.
Nevada has some impressive geologic features of which Valley of Fire is but one. The geologic time scale is also seen in the preserved fossils of the 225 million year old Ichthyosaur, the volcanic activity at Cathedral Gorge, and the soon to open Ice Age Fossil Park near Las Vegas: https://parks.nv.gov/parks/ice-age-fossils
I like an anchovy & dormouse pizza every now and then…
Personally, I prefer to have my dormouse Roman style – dipped in honey and poppy seeds. Come to think of it, I should go check my Glirarium-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glirarium
And it took even longer for the pineapple to arrive…
ha ha!
When I was in Italy over the course of maybe 4 or 5 visits in the 1980’s and 1990’s, it was really difficult to find an American style pepperoni pizza, they had no equivalent.
Related: I was recently hunting around for a pizza stone. I didn’t want to drop 50$+ though. I went to my local hardware store and bought the largest unglazed clay plant pot tray I could find. Works like a charm, I crank up the heat to max and put it on the bottom of the oven for like 45 minutes. Not the rack, the actual bottom. Add the dough, back on the bottom for 3 mins then onto the middle rack for 4 or 5. Nice crispy bottom!
Also, proto-pizzas don’t “emerge” from walls, Mr. Newspaper of Record.
That was good thinking on your pizza stone. I’ve used a couple of “outside the box” items. I salvaged a rectangular cast iron griddle surface from a discarded gas grill (found at the dump) and still use that from time to time. My favorite story here is from Christmas a handful of years back. Long story short, the oven shat the bed, so we managed to suspend an old marble splash guard (24x16x2 inches) that I’d salvaged from a local farmhouse in the fireplace. It took hours to heat up, but once there performed admirably.
Who says—besides these soi-disant pizza-expert archaeologists of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, that is—that tomatoes and mozzarella are the constituent ingredients of a pizza? There are, after all, dessert pizzas without any tomatoes and mozzarella in sight. And Korea is known for its unconventional pizza toppings—who couldn’t go for a fig and snail pizza, maybe with a sweet potato crust, right about now? (Then again, speaking of Korea, maybe those Pompeii archaeologists are on to something and the “true origins” of pizza lie elsewhere.)
Of course, Korean cuisine in its modern form is much newer than ppl think–chili peppers are a new world crop that didn’t arrive in Korea until 16-17th century …
>”Who says…that tomatoes and mozzarella are the constituent ingredients of a pizza?”
Well, having made “North American” pizza at home many times my humble advice is not to chintz on the tomato sauce or the mozzarella. Look for the best of those ingredients and then be willing to pay for them. Tomato sauce ought to be “tomato-y” and mozzarella melty and goopy. With that foundation in place, everything else is cherries on the cake—or rather, toppings on the pizza.
Per your comment, I recognize that tastes the world over will obviously vary.
The diet of the Wukchumni and all of the foothill tribes in elySierran Fields was 2/3rds acorns, and if we can have cauliflower crust pizzas, why not acorn flour pizzas back then?
Those are post-pizza. If Italy didn’t get it from Korea, then your “first to invent” theory of origins is all wet.
Re: Matt Hancock —
“What is the Covid Inquiry?
It is about going through what happened and learning lessons
No-one will be found guilty or innocent
Any recommendations made do not have to be adopted by governments
The inquiry has no formal deadline but is due to hold public hearings until 2026
Scotland is holding a separate inquiry in addition to the wider UK one”
***
So I can only gather that the lessons to be learned are: there are no consequences for homicidal decisions and actions; neither individuals nor governments will ever be held responsible; and this naval-gazing can continue indefinitely, since there is “no formal deadline.”
I keep thinking (hoping?) I’ve seen government at its worst, and it keeps proving me wrong. Maybe just at this particular moment, y’all in the UK have us Yanks beat.
The Harris redemption tour, coming to a city near you. Be forewarned, average American planning to vote in 2024, she truly could become a President in the coming years if Scranton Joe succumbs to something, anything really, as he is headed into an 8th decade of living. Think of the shoes she would have to fill ( nope, not a sarcastic note at all ).
A tour might be good, after all, if our elected politicians are traveling and kissing babies, then maybe they’ll cease in the short term at ruining our American lives.
Look guys, I am sick & tired of people picking on poor Kamala Harris. Just consider all her accomplishments over the past two years as Vice President. She, umm – lemme think. Ummm. Wait a minute, let me check Wikipedia as they are sure to list all that she has managed to achieve. I mean it has been over two years so surely they will list everything that she has done-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris#Vice_presidency_(2021%E2%80%93present)
Yeah, I’ll have to get back to you on this one.
Her most impressive accomplishment, imo, is campaigning in 3 inch high heel shoes. / ;)
Incorrect. This is her most impressive accomplishment:
Kamala Harris Is WORST RATED Vice President In NBC News Poll HISTORY At -17Pts
Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave discuss Vice President Kamala Harris’ latest approval rating.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56LaMdGf0ds
How do you even get to -17 points?!
Didn’t she get 1% in the 2020 primary? [looks] Apparently not even!
Since we rarely—if ever—see her, that poll puts the lie to the old chestnut, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
She might be hanging out with Pete Buttigieg—also AWOL—cramming for her courses in elocution, or merely waiting to inherit the Presidency from an enfeebled Biden. Silence, in her case, might be golden.
Now, if she only would campaign in leather outfits and carry a whip.
Maybe fish net stockings too? Brrrr.
When Kamala said she did dope, how was anybody to think it could be anything other than marijuana?
Technically, he’s heading into his 9th decade, but who’s counting?
I always thought we would get Biden after Trump – all the moderates who said “why not” to Trump in 2016 had lost their appetite for him in 2020. This would be followed by a dark horse candidate in 2024 that was not on peoples radar.
Michelle Obama is a fascinating option. Barak has been on the political path recently and I couldn’t really figure out what his end goal was – he isn’t really going all in on Biden – more just re-asserting himself into the Democrat machine.
Maybe he is testing the waters with the Obama name to see if Michelle should run.
People adored her when she was First Lady and the attacks on her never landed because she was too damn nice and likeable. She would be a refreshing candidate and could run a positive (see Obama Hope from 2008) campaign which I think people would gravitate too after the last 8 years of political muckraking.
Michelle. She seems like a very nice lady. She’s best buds with W. Ya gotta be nice for that to happen. On the other hand…. I know O’s record for his 2 terms. I’d really, really hate to see a repeat of that rolling disaster. (And I voted for the guy. What soaring rhetoric…)
adding: The O’s and the C’s already have enough millions and millions after the guys were in office. Isn’t time to give another family…er… person a chance at, ahem, upward mobility? / ;)
upward nobility?
Don’t tempt me. At this point in time I would accept any form of government so long as the leadership was visibly non-sociopathic.
I haven’t just lowered the bar, I’ve dug a trench to accommodate those who tyrannize differently. Also open to sortition thanks to Lambert and my thoughts are that random selection should create a large candidate pool and then voters would get to pick from those nominees. Still pretty random but a bit more optimized.
…that’s wishful thinking! (But induces many people to join the charade.)
Obama once commented to the effect, “Who could have figured I’d be so good at killing people?” I don’t think Michelle has that talent.
Yes! We need more positivity! An uplifting narrative lifts all boats! Hopefully Oprah will be on hand to share her wisdom and insights…
invoking the “obama hope” might not work so well because the reality was “obama nope”, I’m sure you could get the rich to vote for her though since obama shoveled money at them with a non union front end loader and they love, love, love him for that…
Napoleonic Obama part?
I’m hoping this is snark.
End the muck raking, please, not gonna happen.
But I would bet it would take less than two years of a Michelle Obama administration for a lot of the remaining delusions about her and her husband to be in tatters, including how nice and likable she is.
I don’t see Michelle running while the Clintons hold team blue sway. No way. Hillary would have a freaking fit.
Give it time, soon trans-Siamese twin surgery will be an in thing with the Donkey Show, and it’ll be Michillary 2024!
In 2020 I informed family and friends that as disgusted as I was with the Democrats, and as much as I enjoyed seeing them go crazy about Trump, I could never bring myself to vote for the Donald… *unless* Hillary came back and gained the nomination. If that happened, I informed them I would drag myself out of my deathbed to the polling place and punch in ‘Trump’ with my dying breath. I did get the pleasure of seeing the liberal members of my family react accordingly. But I ended up throwing away my futile protest vote on Green Party pretender Howie Hawkins.
I made the same pledge for 2024, but in addition to Hillary I added another name: Michelle Obama. And I was serious. But if Trump can’t do any better than spout “socialist/communist” bulls**t from the 1950s then he doesn’t even deserve my futile protest vote. I hope Bobby Jr. and the good Dr. West up their game a bit. I may end up writing in Mickey Mouse
My dark horse is J. Pritzker. It all started with a jello shot at a pride parade.
He’s running. He will probably remain unannounced till Biden blows up, but he is most assuredly getting support lined up and getting his name out there in the meanwhile. And if Biden doesn’t fall apart, he’ll be ahead of the pack for 2028.
I am thinking Governor Gavin “Goodhair” Newsom is likely to be snuck in as VP Harris’ replacement. The man is ambitious, soulless, and slick, but with more brains and ability than Harris, which is not hard to do, it’s true.
What are the chances that Harris refuses to spend more time with her family at whatever well paid sinecure is offered? Who then either has a tragic illness, is found to have child porn on her personal laptop, or is discovered spying for Putin? Completely unexpected of course.
Not that our security agencies have ever done this of course. I am too cynical? Or not enough?
Not enough. Just ask people as far apart philosophically as Carlos Allende or Manuel Noriega.
>”Michelle Obama is a fascinating option.”
Yup, Michelle Obama. Married for many years to a serial liar. No problem for Michelle however. After all, he’s provided her with two fancy residences and he continues to bring home the bacon. And Michelle is not one to question where all that bacon is coming from.
What are her ethics? Not too many apparently. Sadly, that makes her prime Presidential material. But she had better start a Book Club in order to fend off a potential challenge from Oprah.
Michelle/Michael? Obama was also a Harvard law graduate. Need we say more?
Probably just money. Would you tune into Obama’s take on CW shows? No, of course not. He needs to make noise. It’s a reboot like the Friends special.
Barack once commented to the effect, “Who could have figured I was so good at killing people.” I don’t think his wife has that talent. I don’t want to vote for Trump, but after Biden’s many betrayals I sure can’t vote for him, and I’ve never considered it possible to vote for Kamala Harris. Maybe I just won’t vote for the President.
Sorry, I don’t have an edit button. I realized after I hit that I should have included a link in the above. Many readers love Obama, and probably didn’t hear the above quote. This one is from Business Insider, but Duck Duck Go brought up several.
The Kamaleon emerged from the same San Francisco political colon as Newsom, extruded by Willie Brown. He didn’t get a new BMW though for services rendered like she did.
Newsom’s billionheiress wife’s non-profit, a vendor to all the schools in the state, has raked in most of a million dollars, plus his campaign donations from PG&E, the criminal corporation which is supposedly regulated by the Public Utilities Commission, 100% appointed by newsom.
“In one report, Open the Books reveal that large corporate campaign contributors gave campaign cash to Gov. Newsom and separately received significantly more in state payments – corporations gave $691,615 in campaign donations and received $1.9 billion in state payments. That’s a very nice return on investment – a $10.6 million investment for a $6.3 billion return.”
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/open-the-books-exposes-the-legalized-pay-to-play-scheme-by-newsom-inc/
Purple hearts apparently take the blame for Eden’s adventurism – a combo of amphetamine & the barbiturate drinamyl of which the latter was banned in the UK in 1978 which he took to lessen the pain of a debilitating illness – , they can impair judgement, cause paranoia and even make the person taking them lose contact with reality.
Of course these days we don’t have to worry about politicians on drugs continuously pushing up the ante.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eden-was-on-purple-hearts-during-suez-crisis-6230247.html
A government run by speed freaks: what could possibly go wrong?
In Nazi diatribe, Trump calls for mass deportations of socialists and communists WSWS
~~~~~~~~~
Can’t recommend the diary of Victor Klemperer enough, he was a WW1 Jewish vet who was a professor at the university in Dresden and kept a clandestine journal from 1933 to 1945, and being a critical thinker he reads between the lines to ascertain the truth, and of course we all know how things go, but its uncanny how often he figures out what is really going on.
This passage from I Will Bear Witness is especially poignant…
March 23, 1936
“He flies from place to place and gives triumphal speeches. The whole thing is called an “election campaign”.”
Re: Russian liberalism’s false dawn
Not a fan of Bogomolov, but he is not wrong about the typical Russian self-identified liberal in my experience of such. Though from what I recall, they whined more about the jamon than the cheeses. Personally I haven’t noticed cheese quality to have gotten any worse (there have been some decent local substitutes IIRC), but then I’m not a connoisseur. In any case, those people were politically marginal even before the SMO and are even less important now – nothing short of utter catastrophe would give them any shot at a political comeback, though they will doubtless hang on to some level of cultural influence.
As for the countdown to the end of Putin, that started when he first became president and somehow never stopped. I have clear recollection of those predictions among the liberals every time there is some major political kerfuffle. Talk about “false dawns”.
“How Jeffrey Epstein’s island politics helped elect Stacey Plaskett”
Oh, it’s the one who called Matt Taibbi a so-called journalist, isn’t she? I knew she sounded familiar.
Good catch that. I had forgotten that little episode. That was where they tried to threaten Matt Taibbi with up to five years in prison for ‘perjury’.
And the Internal Revenue Service sent an agent to Taibbi’s door to ask about some supposed tax payment irregularity from years ago. Agent showed up the same week (iirc) when Taibbi was scheduled to testify before the Congressional committee. Just a coincidence I’m sure.
That investigation began on the Christmas Eve prior to the visit:
https://nypost.com/2023/05/24/irs-opened-probe-into-matt-taibbis-taxes-after-twitter-dump/
And she’s not even a voting member of congress. So, she’s a so called lawmaker.
K-street is where the real lawmakers work. Capitol Hill is just a sinecure for the clerks.
She can vote in committee, so she’s a semi-non-voting lawmaker.
From We’re Now Finding Out The Damaging Results of The Mandated Return to Office — And It’s Worse Than We Thought.
There’s some discussion that this might simply be stealth layoffs. It isn’t like employers don’t know there will be attrition from this.
It says right there that they did, but that they (or events) overshot the mark. Good. Let these organizations die simply for even trying.
No Kern River raft trip for me (they had lots of fun w/o yours truly-the nerve of them!) as my sister called on Friday that it was time to gather together as mom was fading, so we converged on SoCal-my 3 sisters and I for a vigil, and wow has she faded since we saw her after our cruise and had a birthday party at her assisted living place earlier in the month.
Words would struggle to come out and she has the strongest memory of anybody I know and that too slipped away, and then the next day they figured out she still has C.diff, which she got when in Kaiser for 8 days in May (er, don’t let your parents go to the hospital when they are 97, if you can help it) and took a regimen of antibiotics, which apparently didn’t take, and was the cause of her misery.
So we got her back on antibiotics and now she could talk in complete sentences, and hungry?
She kept asking us what else was in the fridge? So I think rumors of her demise have been greatly exaggerated.
We all took turns sleeping next to her, and there’s a 24/7 nurse on hand.
She’s probably not that long for the world, but not just yet!
We’re driving down to see her on Friday and then on Saturday it’s my sister’s mother-in-law’s* 100th birthday, imagine the average age there @ 99 years for the dynamic duo?
Anybody ever been to somebody’s 100th birthday party?
* don’t be pulling no Betty White on us, Jean.
Sorry to hear that your mother is faring not so well though it sounds like she may be on a bit of a rebound. My own mother made it to 94 but was not the same women as she once was. Agree that letting people that old go to hospital not being a good idea but I am glad that your mother is once more taking an active interest in the world – along with the contents of the fridge. Shows that she has her priorities right so here’s to the dynamic duo come this Saturday.
Thanks~
Round 1 of battle of mom versus a new house in 1968 that got slowly filled up a bit by a save everything! child of the Great Depression, was a technical knock out for her progeny some seven years ago, not that she gave in easy to us being better discriminators than her…
Among the goods that were grave to her was 10 bankers boxes full of photos from the 1920’s onward. We all knew of these and had a lot of down time, so we each went through all of them, picking out what we wanted, with some going to relatives and friends.
Mom lived in a boarding house in Calgary in the later 1940’s and her room-mate {quite the beauty) was in many of the photos and her name was Thelma, and after having this insider knowledge, hit mom up with a Thelma Waterman?
And she responded, ‘oh she was my room-mate.’
Intercept has come out, with a new sub-sea tour, we could send policymakers on (hopefully streaming video, showing our tax-money at work?) It includes the single (SAWL) weld-seam, where Nord Stream didn’t blow-out as our explosive charges detonated?
https://anderssonerik.substack.com/p/a-trip-to-the-nord-stream-blast-sites
Bit rich that. It’s like taking a tour of a crime scene – several months after a cleaning crew has gone through it. I don’t suppose they got to look at the sections of pipeline that the Swedes raised from the sea floor? Or did the Swedes classify those as well as the investigations?
I’m still perusing, his other post, about G7 media (frigging Bellingcat!) purported “debunking” of consensus reality. Status, quo?
I’d sent this to folks working at Panama City’s former sister plant to EuroPipe Mülheim (it’s changed hands: Borusan Mannesmann bought both US Berg plants & apparently an Indian owned “old” US Steel 48″ pipe mill in Baytown? So no need to blow up US made pipelines, at least from the outside!
https://anderssonerik.substack.com/p/aircraft-and-vessels-in-seymour-hersh
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/28/nord-stream-pipeline-bomb-investigation/
Epstein – Plaskett
tap tap tap… (sung by Epstein) / ;)
What a friend I have in Stacey
All my sins and griefs to clear,
I’ll send her up to serve in DC
She’ll do good work for me up there.
Oh, what peace I often forfeit,
When Stacey bristles on offense,
All because she does not care,
If she slanders Taibbi in voir dire.
This completes the first stanza of What A Friend I had in Epstein. There are four stanzas. Just sayin’
“E.U. Border Agency Considers Pulling Out of Greece Over Migrant Abuses”
A bit rich that. Ever since some of the EU nations helped in the destruction of the once stable Libyan state and opened up a malevolent cornucopia of refugees from Africa and the Middle East, they have sat back and let countries like Greece and Italy bear the brunt of refugees and arranged matters so that if they arrived in these countries, that is where they had to stay. In fact they made it worse by having EU citizens lease boats to run a form of taxi service from North Africa to southern Europe. Perhaps if the EU took in refugees on a proportional allocation, this would have reduced the pressure on countries like Italy and Greece who would be willing to help refugees more. So maybe destroying Libya was not such a bright idea after all. Maybe they start should bussing some of these refugees to Ursula von der Leyen & Charles Michel’s neighbourhood.
“E.U. Border Agency Considers Pulling Out of Greece Over Migrant Abuses”
hehehe
https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1672791664564240384#m
Dean Baker’s partisan slip may be showing in that Counterpunch linked column where he repeatedly denounces the “Kennedy-Rogan-Musk gang” who are practically the same as Trump. Surely the last thing Kennedy wants to talk about would be his vaccine history, and so it’s unlikely that he is one of the media “gang” egging this thing on. And one doesn’t even have to speculate as to which Dem candidate benefits from keeping the controversy roiling.
Of course Baker is right that intellectual property protections are hurting our health but offers no evidence that RFK wouldn’t agree with him on that. And even if he doesn’t we may need a new gang rather than the old one that is creating damage in so many ways other than medical.
It’s eye-opening if a little depressing to see people I once thought highly of now writing what I can only assume are “proving I’m still a member of the club, the Dem estab ingroup”. Sy Hersh wrote what imo amounted to a hit piece on the Kennedy’s of the 1960’s after RFKjr announced. It’s only purpose as far as I could the was to announce to the “right people” that Hersh was declaring himself still a member of the “right peoples” team. / my 2 cents.
‘Moving Past Neoliberalism Is a Policy Project’
‘They say that Democrats must “construct a social identity,” speak to social isolation and disorder, make clear who the culprits fueling this discontent are, and offer a vision of the good life through organizing that fosters a sense of community.’
Neither the Democrats or Republicans can do this for us; we have to do this for ourselves. We might try skipping past the political discussions altogether.
My neighbors are Republicans, but she just survived cancer. I saw they were out in the yard and took them some cold kombucha which they enjoyed. He gave me one of his potted black irises to plant. I’ll return the empty pot (plus another) so he can use it again. Later this summer I’ll ask him for some pointers on smoking brisket, maybe offer some salmon in trade if he’ll smoke it for us.
We avoided those two for the last twenty years and though they were morons.
There’s flat of white peaches ripening on the kitchen counter. Two cups will go into peach ice cream today, a pint of which I’ll deliver to another neighbor right next to the first two, because I promised her that ice cream over tea at Christmas. She probably thinks I forgot. She’s a Democrat and religious but I’m not holding it against her. She in turn watches the house while we’re away. This year it will be for a month and I need some neighbors to walk over and finish harvesting the garden. We’re also hiring her lawn guy to cut the grass while we’re gone.
He fixes our pipe, we give him cash and say thank you very much for responding so quickly so we can finish our deck. She gives me tatsoi and mustard seedlings and I pass a small bouquet of radishes to her over the fence later and we talk about roses.
Production, reciprocity, trust, basic commonality in food and gardening… better those than politics. It’s not ‘reliance’ but it’s what those relationships can bear for now and it plays out in the polls.
There is a great truth there. When people think about surviving they think about guns and ammo so it is kind of like a reflection of the early 19th century Mountain men-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_man
But tens of thousand of years of human history show that it is not these loners that make the real survivors but the people that build local friendships and communities that help each other. Those are the true survivors. As for the modern survivalists, John Michael Greer suggested that years after a disaster that people will find their lone skeletons, still bearing weapons and armour, strew over a patch where they tried to learn how to make a garden after the rations ran out.
re: Unherd’s tough love:
«Many of the misfortunes that befall you will not be your fault, but if you seek explanations for your suffering in things beyond your control, you risk falling prey to a culture and industry that are motivated to keep you feeling ill.»
And don’t worry about climate change, or the homeless, or, if you’re a pre-natal female, with the fact that you can’t afford to bear and raise children on a small, over-populated planet. Read Ayn Rand, learn contempt for the suffering of all living things. Become a self-reliant Conservative, and be happy!
The Calvinist auth-right has been vending the same morality tales of the value of petulant obstinacy for 350 years, even as the relations on which their growth depended became steadily less accessible to them. They’re familyblogging liars and celebrate their will to be such. They should be called out on their senile perseverations and their judgments excised from the conversation for it.
Except that the point of “democracy” is to determine and legitimize who gets to lie their feelings into reality so situation normal and nothing will be done.
$4.01k update
30,000 pieces of digital silver is the going rate on my modest 1-figure investment in Bitcoin, which has prospered and is now close to double the price off its lows of what now seems like such a long time ago.
My mom has hospice nurses now and all of them are Filipinas, and talking to one of them, she was so proud of having bought in @ $11k and $13k on the way up to $56k or whatever was the highwater mark, and was confident of things now that Bitcoin had crested $30k and was surely going to go higher. It was her only savings.
Regarding the piece “ A wild Conspiratorial…”.
I think it is a mistake to use those terms. I think much or most of what he says is true, but if you want to sound sophisticated and intellectual, you use terms like “ structural” and talk about incentives and tendencies. Nothing so crude as “ conspiratorial”. ( Am I being sarcastic here or serious? A bit of both.)
Anyway, it doesn’t have to be a conscious conspiracy most of the time. People in think tanks, the government, and the press all echo each other in perfectly natural ways because there is no incentive to be honest for its own sake and every incentive to sound like everyone else. I’ve noticed that even some of the dissidents regarding US imperialism walk on eggshells when discussing either the Ukraine war or before that, Syria. It doesn’t matter if you don’t approve of Putin’s invasion or Assad— if you don’t put 100 percent of the blame on them you are an apologist.
I was quite taken aback with this piece. First, because it was so *all in* – talk about your “conspiratorial ideation” (reference to yesterday’s Links), this article had everything. Second, because it appears in Scheerpost, which generally publishes critical pieces that are a little more, um, “nuanced.” As you say, there is a lot of truth in here, but the way it is packaged makes it easy to ridicule and reject the whole for those so inclined. We don’t need to provide our media gatekeepers any more excuses for ignoring our controllers by calling them ‘Controllers,’ if you know what I mean.
But for me the effect of this article was magnified by the overall contents of Links today. So much material for CTers and anti-CTers alike! Stacey Plaskett and Epstein! Trump *actually* sounding like Hitler (according to WSWS at least)! Lots of RFK Jr., pro and con. The usual Ukraine disinformation. Michelle Obama for President? Even Mikey Weinstein’s stuff on the MRFF seemed even more disconcerting than usual.
It’s a gray day here in upstate NY, and I hear the Canadian smoke is rolling in again. Maybe it’s just me.
I didn’t know what MRFF stood for. This article has more detail.
defense-bill-targets-religious-freedom-group-for-its-advocacy-work
This article makes Weinstein sound like one of those dogmatic hard-core atheist activists that do more harm than good. But he has exposed some pretty disturbing examples of Christian militarism in the armed forces, especially in the Air Force. Some of these guys are true believers in America as God’s Nation, and some are pretty highly ranked. You don’t really want people yearning for the Apocalypse in positions where they could trigger one.
I think words like “structural” and talk about incentives and tendencies ring as anything but sophisticated and intellectual. When I hear or read the word “structural” I associate the word with a text on the engineering of building structures or some sophomore student of the humanities who just discovered structuralism in some anthropology class or English literature class. As for “incentives” and “tendencies” the former echoes economic texts and the later echoes psychological patter. The word “conspiratorial” is widely used as a all-purpose pejorative in political discussions — as if there were and are no conspiracies outside of the imagination of cranks. I believe the author of this link adopted the label as a rhetorical device. After all, how might he expect his link be would be labelled? By adopting the label he can attempt to undermine it in his introduction, as he did. In Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar”, in his funeral speech for Caesar, Mark Anthony gives Brutus the label an “honorable man” and proceeds to destroy its meaning as a laudatory label for Brutus and his co-conspirators.
In his book “Power Elite”, C. Wright MIlls took pains to describe several factions of the Power Elite and described how they could act in conflict and concert without what I believe you mean by “conscious conspiracy”. I believe it is a mistake to regard the echoes of opinions “in think tanks, the government, and the press” as anything other than the slavish toadying of tools of the Power Elite. Though his writing style is denser and less colorful than Mills, G. William Domhoff elaborates on the structure and mechanism of the Power Elite in his book “Who Rules America?”, now in its 8th edition, and many other writings and lectures. [I believe he does apply some implicit structuralism in his analysis.]
I suppose the words “coincidence”, “random”, “deranged”, or “lucky” might one-day acquire pejorative taints if we lived in a country where we still enjoyed some freedom of speech and the ability to calmly debate issues. Nancy Pelosi is certainly lucky in her stock trading. There certainly were a lot of deranged random shooters assassinating leaders in the 1960s. What a remarkable coincidence so many populist leaders were clotheslined, imprisoned, or assassinated through the middle decades of the 20th Century.
Judging from the article at the link Richard Cook’s forthcoming book may meet the same fate of Flertcher Prouty’s The Secret Team and Russ Bakers Family of Secrets. After several days of brisk sales of the first edition of Prouty’s book, circa 1972, it was suddenly pulled from bookstores world-wide. Baker was interviewed by numerous reporters from various “top drawer” print and broadcast outlets but the promised book reviews never appeared.
While not as blatant as this, controversial books like them often do not have second print runs in the United States. Since there were many more publishing houses and their editors available for printing even extremely controversial books and books in demand still disappeared, just how many books never get published or at least get the attention of a good editor?
He rode into town on Willie Brown’s horse
Got a parking & traffic job up north
His chances were swingin’ in the breeze
All the recall election posters had pictures of he
Tied what was left of his hopes to a meal Prix Fixe
Walked into a restaurant, they called the French Laundry
He ordered up sans mask, they called for his head
He survived the likes of Elder, then he still led
He used to have Kimberly Guilfoyle right by his side
He’s the California Kid, I hope you’re quite prepared for his 2024 ride
You can only imagine the electorate was eyeballing he
Staring down from their screens you see
Some women claimed he caused a lack of breath
He was winning hearts being handsome & not near death
Some found him tragically hip, as good as it gets
He’s got Getty, right by his side
He’s the California Kid, I hope you’re quite prepared for his 2024 ride
He uncorked a bottle, the pro wino whined
Why drink anything from the late teens?
’bout that time the paparazzi snuck in
And there sat some asshole all uncovered in sin
Do as I say-not as I do, he said ‘That’s no lie’
Almost blew a hole in his chances just as big as the sky
He’s got DeSantis, as a thorn in his side
He’s the California Kid, I hope you’re quite prepared for his 2024 ride
California Kid, by the Beat Farmers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGQC1rPjOeU
Yup, gavin the great and gorgeous is a comin’. Count on it.
The one ray of “sunshine” is that he won’t be able to wriggle out of a debate with RFKJ.
Should be fun.
And the media will schedule it for 11:00 pm on a Friday night.
Just logging off for the night but came across a story that bears watching-
‘A large number of cats have inexplicably become ill over the past few weeks across Poland, with some of the felines dying from a mysterious disease, Polish media are reporting. Initial tests have reportedly found that some of the deceased animals were contaminated with avian flu, according to news outlet Notes From Poland.
The affected felines reportedly suffered neurological and respiratory symptoms, including high fever, loss of appetite, apathy, seizures, shortness of breath and difficulty breathing. Experts suspect that the symptoms point to some kind of contagious illness that is spreading through the country.
Paulina Grzelakowska, director of the Tri-City Veterinary Clinic in Gdansk in northern Poland, said that the disease has a sudden onset and progresses rapidly. “The animals die in a short time,” she told TVN24, noting that cats of all ages have been affected, regardless of whether they were kept indoors or outdoors or had been vaccinated against infectious diseases.’
https://www.rt.com/news/578856-poland-cat-killing-disease/
I hope that I am wrong but this has a January 2020 feel to it.
When the neighbor’s cat passed away a year ago, it was our hair’m’s last link to other pussy galores and as far as they know, they are the only cats in the world (except for visits to the vet) so that should come in handy if something comes out of the Łódź,
Frightening news though, imagine it spreading?
Ukraine is getting desperate. It wouldn’t surprise me to find them deploying some of the CBRN they saved at the very beginning of the SMO.
It seems this avian flu has turned up in pretty much every mammal species that might be expected to take advantage of an enfeebled bird, but last I knew intra-species transmission has still only been confirmed in farmed mink. My wag is that we will see it make its way into humans, maybe by way of dogs and/or cats. How that might play out in our SARS-afflicted population seems hard to predict.
Influenzas appear to have done pretty poorly at functioning in populations that were taking Covid precautions. It seems possible that flu which causes severe acute illness might trigger sufficient individual risk assessment to keep it tamped down, leading to it evolving to be ‘milder’ as seems to have happened with Cholera in places with effective sewerage.
“Regardless of whether they were kept indoors or outdoors”?????!!!!!!!
Yikes. How would an indoor cat catch avian flu??? The likely answers are scary.
I had read about these Polish cases and was going to warn my friends with cats to consider keeping them inside, but if it can reach indoor cats that is dreadful.
I am very worried about wild felines.
Wonder if it is food contamination.
The most propagandized people on earth.
https://www.reuters.com/world/most-americans-support-us-arming-ukraine-reutersipsos-2023-06-28/
Ah, “democracy” as managed inverted totalitarianism, in motion.
And also the least able to comprehend cartography.
Re: ‘Mr. X’ would not approve of China containment Responsible Statecraft
The writer pointed out wisely that it was the late in life George Kinnon who would disapprove of current attempts to “contain China.” This certainly would not have been the case during his ‘Mr X’ days:
“ . . we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population…”
“We”? Assumes facts not in evidence. “Federal Reserve data indicates that as of Q4 2021, the top 1% of households in the United States held 32.3% of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 50% held 2.6%.” Wikipedia
As noted that document was issued in 1948. The quoted data is likely from a year or two before.
“We’re Now Finding Out The Damaging Results of The Mandated Return to Office — And It’s Worse Than We Thought.” Entrepreneur
It’s not a back to the “office” proposition for the majority of administrative types.
It’s back to the open room cattle pen.
And businesses are trying to convince themselves and others that there is a “lack of productivity” among the administrative workers due to work from home and not that there is a lack of the low interest rate, easy money that disguised a variety of problems for many.
“lack of productivity”
Sure corporate profits are high, but they could be higher…
We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in finance, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in wealth conjured out of thin air, we shall defend our island of inanity, whatever the cost may be.
And we shall let you and him fight in Ukraine!
I love Churchill quotes (or paraphrases thereof). For all his flaws he got the British through the Battle of Britain and World War II. He inspired a whole nation to fight and bear the necessary burdens. From a famous radio speech:
“Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
Not bad for a reputed heavy drinker. I am sure he didn’t die rich, because he chose to be a “statesman” rather than an opportunist, interested more in the welfare of his nation than his bank account, trading stocks, or providing favors to donors.
I believe the phrase “gathering storm” — the title of the first book of Churchill’s six volume history of the Second World War has become commonplace as some phrases from Shakespeare.
>The myth of mirrored twins aeon
It’s about time this popular myth was put to bed. The article does that. A few examples from it: “Over the past few decades, twin studies have been used to test everything, from whether Vitamin C can prevent colds (it can’t) to whether homosexuality has a genetic origin (minor with gay men, and even smaller with lesbian women).”
I have identical twin nieces now in their thirties. Physically, yes, they are almost identical and I’ve always had difficulty telling them apart without looking closely. Two peas in a pod, so to speak. But that’s where their similarities end. Briefly, one is ambitious and conscientious, the other is a procrastinator and lackadaisical; one is level-headed and down-to-earth, the other is high-strung and flighty. These differences began to manifest when they were still toddlers (before nurture could have had much effect) and persist to this day.
As the article states, twin studies suggest the genetic origin of homosexuality in men appears to be minor. What can account for this? A study done thirty years ago attributes it to something it calls a “prenatal biological mechanism”. In this case, fraternal birth order:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_birth_order_and_male_sexual_orientation
As usual, things are never as simple as they seem. Nature, nurture, or now, prenatal biological mechanism? I’ll go with the latter as an explanation for the differences in my nieces’ personalities.
‘Tis a mystery. I’ll stick with Iris Dement on this one.
I think the biggest flaw in twin studies may be very fundamental. They may be based on a false, though widely accepted, notion of how twinning occurs: Specifically, fraternal twins are unlikely to be the result of multiple ovulation.
I first was clued into this by a piece here at NC that was speculating on a possible organic origin for transgender identity. Unfortuately my links to sources are on a computer whose power supply appears to have died. There’s one researcher, recently deceased, most particularly associated with this, but I can’t recall his name. Searching on ” human chimerism twinning” or “monozygotic fraternal twins” or “dental symmetry fraternal twins” might get one to his stuff.
C.E. Boklage was the researcher.
Thanks for the tip on “The War Between My Two Worlds.” Unless it is somehow the work of AI and intended to dupe us all, it’s absolutely golden to the the perspective of an American citizen (now dual Russian) on the state of play over there.
The description of events in the Ukraine and in Russia seemed far more reasonable and self-consistent than the accounts in the news in the u.s.
“Putin also gave a three and a half hour Q & A to Russian reporters who are actually covering the war.”
I cannot think of a single u.s. politician, among our present leaders, who could stand up to a 3 hour press conference in front of reporters, some of whom hostile to his presentation, and many of whom “…had been on the ground with the troops.” For that matter, I do not believe there are many if any u.s. reporters who have been on the ground with Ukrainian troops.
“Putin also gave a three and a half hour Q & A to Russian reporters who are actually covering the war.”
I’ve seen what looks like a believable report that the Q&A continued in camera allowing both Putin and reporters to bring up some more sensitive issues.
, I do not believe there are many if any u.s. reporters who have been on the ground with Ukrainian troops.
There have been some Western , not sure about US, reporters but I think I have seen complaints that their freedom of movement is very tightly controlled and IIRC at least one UK reporter temporarily lost accreditation for some “unkind” words.
Patrick Lancaster (US), Eva Bartlett (Canada), and Alina Lipp (Germany) are reporting on the ground from Ukraine. Lipp has been charged by Germany with lying about what she’s reported and faces 3 years in prison if they ever catch her. Gonzalo Lira, with dual U.S.-Chilean citizenship, has been arrested by Ukraine with no protest by U.S. authorities and no status reported.
The UK’s Graham Phillips has also been reporting from here since the days of the Maidan so HM government went after him and his father still in the UK.
The Putin address to the Russian people was interesting as well. There’s a certain degree of patriotic bombast, but by and large the tone is reminiscent of a competent CEO in the wake of a major internal incident or episode of bloody infighting. Calls for calm, thanks (many of them) to those who acted rationally and moderately, direct appeals to the troublemakers and a face-saving offramp to return to the fold if they so choose.
In short: de-escalation, and competently done. I wonder if any officials in the US still have this skill, or even know what it is or why it’s important.
>Attorney sues Microsoft for $1.75M, claiming his email has been useless since May The Register
He ought to sue for more and then send me some of the proceeds.
Over a period of about ten years I’ve been locked out of three Microsoft accounts (hotmail, live, and outlook) for what it arbitrarily deemed “unusual activity”. No definition of what that is, no further explanation, no way to get back in, just hurdles and barriers impossible to clear whenever I tried.
Funny thing is, I scarcely used the accounts (I’m not a big emailer). If MS’s reason had been “unusual IN-activity” I perhaps could have lived with that.
Well, if you scarcely use your accounts, then any activity will be unusual, no?
Does Microsoft also kindly remind you to actually use your accounts at least every six months or every quarter lest it be closed?
If I email once a week, is that unusual activity or unusual inactivity. Only MicroSoft knows for sure and it ain’t sayin’.
>”Does Microsoft also kindly remind you to actually use your accounts at least every six months or every quarter lest it be closed?”
Nope. Never. In the event, I have left Microsoft. I’m with gmail now. So far no ridiculous lockouts or stupid messages about unusual activity.
This is why I will be off on MS window devices if they make it any harder than in Windows 11 already has achieved to set up a machine account. I’m not going to have to do a hard re-install every time their middle management decide they need to create jobs for employees or lose their management position.
We’re Now Finding Out The Damaging Results of The Mandated Return to Office — And It’s Worse Than We Thought. Entrepreneur (Paul R)
“According to the same Greenhouse report, a staggering 76% of employees stand ready to jump ship if their companies decide to pull the plug on flexible work schedules.”
It seems like he’s trying to write 100% remote down into “flexibility”. I mean, that’s what companies pay him to do, but.
If the Fed is trying to cool the services sector, does that mean that everyone whom they rely upon for service can spit in their faces and deny all obligations to them, from the sandwich artist on up?
The author of the Aeon twins piece is reduced to cant when it comes to the topic of psychic abilities. Here are some more up to date takes on it from the inestimable Mitch Horowitz:
Is Precognition Real?
“More than ten years ago, a prominent research psychologist, Daryl J. Bem, published a paper in a respected academic journal that presented evidence for precognition. The response was swift and withering. Critics in academia and news media called Bem’s work an embarrassment; skeptics reran his trials and said they failed; one journalist argued that the clinician’s results themselves proved “science is broken.”
A decade on, however, the unthinkable has occurred. Bem’s data has stood up.”
https://mitch-horowitz-nyc.medium.com/is-precognition-real-a01805e3d723
and
Parapsychology: Evidence & Resources for the ‘Elusive Science’
In 2020, parapsychologist Rick Berger, Ph.D., broke down Rhine’s ESP data for the Parapsychological Association, a professional society for parapsychologists, which since 1969 has been affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): “In the five years following Rhine’s first publication of his results, 33 independent replication experiments were conducted at different laboratories. Twenty (20) of these (or 61%) were statistically significant (where 5% would be expected by chance alone).” The Parapsychological Association’s president Charles Honorton noted, “This is 60 times the proportion of significant studies we would expect if the significant results were due to chance or error.”[1]
https://mitch-horowitz-nyc.medium.com/parapsychology-evidence-resources-for-the-elusive-science-f216a70dfe00
Now on to Dr. Edward Kelly at the UVA Department of Perceptual Studies:
The Science of Consciousness: Dr. Edward Kelly on Idealism and Psychic Phenomena
Dr. Edward Kelly joins the podcast to discuss consciousness, idealism and the paranormal. During the discussion we touch on phenomena such as the stigmata, precognition, psychic abilities, mystical experiences, psychedelics, NDEs, reincarnation and so much more. We even get into the potential dangers of accessing higher levels of consciousness and if there are darker forces at play.
Dr. Kelly is a wealth of knowledge, and was kind enough to spend over two hours discussing where he believes science is headed, and how physicalism (materialism) is an outdated model for describing the true nature of the universe. If we ever hope to understand what is actually happening around us, we must abandon our preconceived notions of what we believe reality to be, and open our minds to the possibility that the truth is much stranger than we currently believe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QFkUymPcjs
and
Theories of Consciousness, Rogue Phenomena & a Detailed History of Psi Research with Dr. Ed Kelly
“In my mind the evidence is overwhelming that the (psychic) phenomena really do exist, as facts of nature, science is just going to have to alter in some way that allows it to accommodate these phenomena.” – Dr. Ed Kelly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlC_OAsUgy8
The materialist paradigm must fall.
I thought the link was all too summarily dismissive of the claims about telepathy between twins. The statement that the claims failed “when tested under clinical conditions” made me think of Dr. Peter Venkman’s experiments at the beginning of the first Ghostbusters. [– although the scene also recalled watching a film of some of the Milgram experiments — unrelated to ESP.] I remember a lecture by Russell Targ describing his experiments with remote viewing. He suggested many of the clinical tests of parapsychology tended to simplify those tests to the point where there was “too much noise in the channel” for ESP adepts to demonstrate their abilities. He claimed his subjects were indeed unsuccessful at seeing wavy lines or shapes on cards but surprisingly capable at more complex tasks like remote viewing.
Thanks for the many links!
As a proud member of the 60% that wouldn’t consider getting a divorce from you, i’m with you come hell or high water-not necessarily in that order, Cali.
I’m somewhat concerned that I may experience an involuntary divorce of a deluvial or infernal nature.
On that book by Sun Yat-Sen, The Vital Problem of China, who is one the the giants of history of the past one hundred and fifty years, I thought it would be easy to get.
I can get almost anything written and saved by the Marquis de Lafayette in multiple english print editions. Yes, some of it would be a century old, but I can get it. If for whatever reason, I can’t somehow buy it, there will be a library nearby where I can get a loan. Worse outcome would be an interlibrary loan. Easily.
I cannot find any copy for sale and the nearest library to me that has a copy are UC Berkeley, Stanford, and in the state of Washington. Maybe, possibly, I might get loan of the ebook from Berkeley via my own college. I am surrounded by colleges and universities from lowly two year community to world class research ones and these are my pickings. Even the Open Library and the Gutenberg Project do not have it.
Thirty years ago I would have wandered around the then many, many used bookstores in San Francisco and perhaps the East and North Bay checking the shelves and asking the owners and their employees for help. I would have gotten that copy and cheaply too. Some wizened owner or a clerk with coke bottle glasses would know exactly where a copy was.
https://chinese.larouchepub.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/sun-yat-sen-the-vital-problem-of-china-eng.pdf/
Is that what you’re looking for? It’s PDF downloadable too.
I don’t know if it’s complete. Looks like the chapters are there.
https://chinese.larouchepub.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/sun-yat-sen-the-vital-problem-of-china-eng.pdf
Project Guttenberg has two further books I can recommend, one of which is an early insight into the thinking of a political physops warfare wonk who later had deep influence on USA policy, who was deeply influnced by Sun Yat-sen, having grown up in his orbit as the son of his Western Law Advisor.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39356
Government in Republican China by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger
Working Link for 2nd referenced item.
The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen: An Exposition of the San Min Chu I
Thanks.
This might seem to come out of left field, but censorship comes in many forms and there is a vast world of knowledge and thought outside the narrow socially acceptable limits.
I have been too parochial in my reading of political thought/theory/history mainly of the United States and Western Europe. It is the world I live in of course, but just as too many Americans just American English, to often we focus on that limited bit of history, religion, philosophy, and economics that is American with a bit of European thrown in and only that part that has some relation to neoliberalism; if it is philosophy and religion, we might thrown in Buddhism or something immediately adjacent.
Part of keeping us ignorant is not to outright ban anything, at least legally, but to make it just harder, more inconvenient to find, or if wants to look deeper, to deny the type of education and the skills that come from it to end our ignorance. Education, which even a good high school from decades ago would give one, but which even many “good” colleges do not do anymore.
Science-Fiction fans might be interested to know that Paul Linebarger also published under the name Cordwainer Smith.
Is there anything wrong with this online version?
http://chinese.larouchepub.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/sun-yat-sen-the-vital-problem-of-china-eng.pdf
I guess we can’t know if it has been altered without a hard copy to compare it with.
Mikel, tevhatch, and kareninca:
I don’t know if this is the whole thing either, but getting information like this from the commentariat is really appreciated!
Dr. Sun’s original was in Chinese, in particular Sun would have written in scholarly Mandarin (文言文）of the recently expired empire, which is well away from modern vernacular Chinese writing. Now, English material will be a translation. Translation into English from scholarly Mandarin leaves a great deal of maneuver room to the translator. I have no idea how many published translations exist, but before contacting the person who made the original tweet, I also would point out it’s not practicable to assign to Dr. Sun the precise wording of any translation.
Dr. Rudolf Flesch was a great admirer of scholarly Mandarin, and believe it’s study would lead to a refinement of English and the governance of public life. See: “How to write, speak, and think more effectively. Your complete course in the art of communication” It’s a good read to see the issues I mention with translation.
I’m not a native English speaker, but IMHO Dr. Flesch’s book is a good read to anyone concerned with writing well. He died in 1986, but his research is still used as a back-bone to many AI based grammar improvement bots. Even MS Word and WordPerfect offer versions of the Flesch-Kincaid readability tests as writing assistance tools.
Here’s an online copy:
https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/17767616/the-vital-problem-of-china-pdf
RE: Hunter Biden privately SETTLES with baby mama over child support payments for their four-year-old daughter: President’s son’s contributions drop from $20K to $5K a month and daughter cannot use family name
Is that last bit supposed to be some sort of negative for this little girl?! Given that her father is the adulterous, alcoholic, crack addled, no talent spawn of a racist, corrupt, warmongering, mendacious hair sniffer of a politician, I’d count not being known as a Biden a huge plus.
I guess Grandpa isn’t going to invite her to shower with him.
That site, like most other interesting pages, still has a working RSS feed – which remains my favorite tool to keep uptodate.
Re: the landmark study on suicide attempts for trans people
I bookmarked this link and only just got round to reading it.
This study has the hallmarks of being rubbish. I spent some time looking at the data and the incidence of “suicides” in the Danish trans group is lower that the general population. That the authors don’t mention this, but only discuss “suicide attempts” suggests to me that they knew their wanted conclusion at the outset and picked their data to achieve it.
Highly unlikely events like the conjunction of commiting suicide and being trans (there are only 12 cases in 40 years before one even tries to adjust for other factors) is a recipe for weak conclusions, something that modern bayesian statistics is trying to remedy.