Police Nab Fugitive Tortoise on Slow Run to Freedom New York Times (furzy)
Banksy rhino artwork in London defaced with graffiti tag Guardian
Sea lions are suddenly dying in huge numbers along beloved coastline Daily Mail
The first post-quantum cryptography standards are here TechCrunch (Kevin W)
Pradeep Natarajan: Preventing Heart Disease Eric Topol (Robin K). “. We didn’t get into lifestyle factors here since there was so much ground to cover on new tests. drugs, and strategies.”
Why overcoming your cynicism could be key to a healthier, happier life New Scientist (Dr. Kevin). Ahem. Lady Tyrell was cynical as hell but still seemed to have a marvelous time putting that on full display: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_lFzL6TXaA
Real world analogues include Gore Vidal and The Fruitcake Lady (Truman Capote’s aunt, who had a run on late night TV in her 90s).
Why Does Ozempic Cure All Diseases? Scott Alexander (Paul R). Great piece for many reasons.
#COVID-19
The Paris Olympics is the first Games that let COVID run free, and it impacted how the event played out ABC Australia
Climate/Environment
Singapore adds 16 insects to list of approved foods for consumption YouTube (furzy). Calling them superfoods, whether true or not, would greatly increase uptake.
WHO To Scrap Weak PFAS Drinking Water Guidelines After Alleged Corruption Guardian
HISTORIC ALPINE HEAT WAVE
33 consecutive hours above freezing on Mt Blanc !
(Col Major 4750m,just below European roof)
MORE RECORDS *=all time
🇦🇹
15.2 Sonnblick 3106m
15.7 Brunnenkogel 3437m *
17.9 Pitztaler Glacier 2864m *
🇮🇹
31.9 Dobbiaco
🇨🇭
Tmin 12.3 Segl-Maria *
🇫🇷
36.6 Douai https://t.co/qHcyd6Erix— Extreme Temperatures Around The World (@extremetemps) August 12, 2024
Heat aggravated by carbon pollution killed 50,000 in Europe last year – study Guardian
The climate impact of feeding ourselves is getting worse and worse New Scientist
We’re Burning More Climate-Warming Coal Than Ever. Why? Bloomberg
China?
US ill-prepared for a nuclear showdown with China Asia Times
China’s Rising Diplomatic Power Libertarian Institute (Kevin W)
Japan PM Fumio Kishida quits LDP leadership race as low ratings, scandals take toll South China Morning Post (Tom H)
Venezuela
‘The CIA Writes Her Paycheck’: Venezuela’s US-Backed Opposition Flounders Sputnik
Gaza
As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel Omer Bartov, Guardian
Weekend carnage in Gaza shows Nagasaki mayor was right South China Morning Post (furzy)
Israel has a problem with targeting population centers you guys. pic.twitter.com/L5yM5Wz62Q
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) August 12, 2024
‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 311: International condemnations of Israel’s massacre at Gaza school as pressure grows on Netanyahu to reach ceasefire deal Mondoweiss (guurst)
The Fajr massacre: Every 70 kg bag of human remains is considered a martyr Mondoweiss
Israeli forces disguised as UNRWA workers to carry out military attack in Gaza, report states Quds News (guurst)
@PeruginiNic and I have studied the history of human shields and this is UNIQUE. The fact that the Israeli military dresses the Palestinians in IDF garb, means that the Palestinians, some of whom are youth, are used not as human shields, but simply as shields. 1/2 https://t.co/8phpUhniYg
— Neve Gordon (@nevegordon) August 13, 2024
BREAKING: Protesters with IfNotNow have blocked off the 405 freeway in West LA.
They are calling for all elected democracts ahead of the DNC to call got a lasting ceasefire in Gaze, reject AIPAC money, and call for an arms embargo to Israel: pic.twitter.com/fiFFzkkv3o
— Jon peltz (@JonnyPeltz) August 13, 2024
Germany says Israel’s massacre at Gaza school justified in ‘self defense’ The Cradle (Kevin W)
The U.S. Is Accelerating Towards Disaster Daniel Larison
Iran finesses its deterrence strategy Indian Punchline
Could Iran and Israel Drift Into a Full-Scale War? International Affairs (Micael T)
War With Iran Imminent? Ken Klipperstein
New Not-So-Cold War
More Of The Visuals… Andrei Martyanov
Versus Another Russian region declares emergency as Ukraine offensive enters second week BBC.
First arrest warrant for Nord Stream attacks Tagesschau via machine translation. PJH:
A German court has issued an arrest warrant for an Ukrainian diving instructor, who is suspected of participating in the Nord Stream sabotage.
The problem: he was last seen in Poland, Poland doesn’t want to extradite him to Germany (and allegedly tried to block investigations). Now the guy has vanished, but his spokesperson says he’s innocent.
Nice solution, right? An arrest warrant for a person who has vanished and who unlikely will appear in German court. Maybe he’s been selected as a credible scapegoat.
Russian Iskander Missile Strike Destroys Rare Ukrainian Su-27 Fighter at Mirgorod Airbase Military Watch
Debt-Riddled Ukraine Blames ‘Slow’ US Aid, Scrambles to Pay Its Army Sputnik
Caucasus
The South Caucasus in Washington’s playbook International Affairs (Micael T)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Texas Sues General Motors, Alleging Illegal Selling of Driver Data CNN
US Senate takes up bill banning government purchase of Americans’ data Biometric Update
Advice from DEFCON: Turn off Bluetooth and WiFi NDTV (furzy)
Imperial Collapse Watch
Better Believe Israel When it Says it is a Reflection of Western “Civilization” BettBeat (Dr. Kevin)
Craig Murray: We Are the Bad Guys Consortium News (Chuck L)
Trump
Combined views of the conversation with @realDonaldTrump and subsequent discussion by other accounts now ~1 billion https://t.co/s8x8QmdmnY
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
Donald Trump showcases new lisp during Elon Musk interview Independent. Paul R suggest this could be an effect of Covid. How about a new, improved Churchill imitation?
But no, see below, something much simpler. Lambert had this in Water Cooler yesterday:
Trump isn't slurring his words, I've also had that weird thing happen on Spaces where it sounds like I have a comically outrageous lisp
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 13, 2024
Kamala
Kamala Harris running ads with fake news headlines – Axios RT. Fake news for me, but not for thee.
🐝 ‘I Will Fix Things If You Vote Me Into Office,’ Says Woman Currently In Office Babylon Bee
Crash the DNC’s Party Covert Action (Chuck L)
2024
Republicans split on tackling deficit, including Medicare, Social Security reforms The Hill
The Nation’s Best Hackers Found Vulnerabilities in Voting Machines – But No Time To Fix Them Politico
Omar gives progressives a needed boost: 5 takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries The Hill
Our No Longer Free Press
To be honest, I really wanted to respond with this Tropic Thunder meme, but I would NEVER do something so rude & irresponsible! https://t.co/jL0GDW5QUx pic.twitter.com/XhUxCSGFNP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2024
From Politico’s EU morning newsletter:
TRUMP ALLIES ACCUSE EU OF FREE SPEECH CRACKDOWN: Allies of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump seized on EU Commissioner Thierry Breton’s stern open letter on X to its owner Elon Musk, accusing Brussels of a China-style attempt to restrict freedom of speech online. The comments will certainly poke the hornet’s nest of transatlantic relations between the EU establishment and the possible next president of the U.S.
Brussels slaps down Thierry Breton over ‘harmful content’ letter to Elon Musk Financial Times. Oopsie! Politico wrong-footed this one.
Memes Pose a Threat to the US Financial System: RAND Report Hacker Noon (Paul R)
A Harris-Walz Administration Would Be A Nightmare for Free Speech Jonathan Turley (Li)
Woke Watch
The Case That Abraham Lincoln Was a ‘Lover of Men’ Vanity Fair (Dr. Kevin)
Antitrust
US Considers a Rare Antitrust Move: Breaking Up Google Bloomberg. Since the Trump Administration DoJ filed this suit, expect it to continue to be prosecuted seriously regardless of who wins in November.
Monopoly Money Ed Zitron
The Bezzle
Why VCs love obnoxious founders Business Insider
Study Finds 94% of Business Spreadsheets Have Critical Errors PhysOrg
Class Warfare
Part 1: Neither Horseshoes nor Fishhooks (book review: Three-Way Fight) Daphne Lawless (Micael T)
Antidote du jour. Stephen T: “This sheep at the Tillamook county fair looks like it’s wearing on of those clingy outfits the sprinters at the Olympics were wearing—though this one showed no signs of dashing off.”
And a bonus. Man, can these guys vocalize:
Best of Cheez bawlz meows 😭 pic.twitter.com/4ogZj08gmL
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) August 13, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
207 comments
Comments are closed.
Bonus, tomorrow’s links today!
The Guardian piece by Bartov is really worth a read.
yes, highly recommend!
It is difficult to get people to understand something when their ideology depends on their not understanding it.
All those words. Yet Bartov, the careful scholar, repeats early on, as a postulate, that Hamas on October 7 ‘killed 1200 Israelis in the most horrible ways imaginable.’ Flat out falsehood: IDF killed the majority of that set of casualties, including both IDF troops and Israeli civilians, invoking the outrageous Hannibal Doctrine. Most killed by by Hamas were IDF, the outfit that’s been murdering huge numbers of Palestinians (and others) since way back when, Not the only misrepresentation of actions of Palestinians and Israelis, all tipped to leave the impression that Zion must oppress and kill to prosper.
Still, a lot of telling detail on how Israelis have come to their “righteous” mindset. I especially like the detail that Samson went down to Philistine Gaza to frequent the whore houses, marrying one and killing a whole Philistine army with the jawbone of an ass “after offending groomsmen at his wedding” to a Philistine woman. All aboard for the one-way trip to Masada! The central image of Zionism any more, it seems.
At least the author recognizes the dead-end conundrum/Mexican Standoff down which the Zionists have been marching, jaws set and blood in their eyes.
Is there a place to lay a wager on when and where the likudniks detonate their first nuke?
Yes, I noticed that. This was debunked by Haaretz but still they cling onto this piece of propaganda. Really, they have to. Otherwise where is even the slimmest of rationales for the genocide? Then again, even Haaretz is still pushing the other lie of only 40,000 dead in Gaza when it is now well north of 200,000 and increasing every day – probably 10% of the population murdered already.
And Israel has imposed a starvation and dehydration process on the remaining 2 million already for weeks now, which will rapidly increase the toll from disease as the immune systems weaken to add to death from hunger and thirst.
ALL KINDS OF WARNINGS
(melody borrowed from One Too Many Mornings by Bob Dylan)
Well this really is alarming
It stays hot when it gets dark
There are no more birds a swarming
And the cars they all stay parked
It’s too late for words to matter
Or to say what’s on my mind
For we had all kinds of warnings
To leave fossil fuels behind
Do not follow in our footsteps
Do not join our parade
‘Twas simple greed led to our doom
And the price must now be paid
We cannot stop the rising heat
Can’t live down in a mine
We had every kind of warning
‘Bout the end of our own kind
Tipping points gone through the ceiling
As the science said they would
But the scientists’ soothsaying
Hasn’t changed one neighborhood
Now we stand here tongue-tied
As our planet goes offline
We had every kind of warning
But we all stuck to our grind
Maybe it was posted before but this is a nice thread on how the Canadian government is waging class war on its own people by abusing migrant workers to the point that the UN says it is a breeding ground for slavery
unfortunately it seems deeply unlikely that the liberals, conservatives, NDP or green party here will be willing to change anything
https://x.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1821883398861791484
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/canada-foreign-workers-un-report
And don’t forget, Canada under Trudeau is offering the poor the opportunity of medically assisted death. In February this year it was reported that 4.1% of Canadian deaths in 2022 were caused by Canada’s assisted death program. That’s a hella lot of people the Canadian govt is “assisting”. /
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/02/11/in-canada-the-right-to-die-with-dignity-has-become-part-of-life_6513300_4.html
And in the UK the govt has cut winter fuel assistance for pensioners.
Did they also cut winter fuel assistance to all those Ukrainian refugees that they have been showering with money and resources?
I’ve had two relatives with cancer end their lives with MAID. Both were suffering, neither was coerced. I am not sure what there is to criticize. It is a humane program. If the number of deaths by MAID seems high then perhaps the prevalence of cancer in society today is a sign that we are out of balance with nature. BTW, my father died of cancer in 1999 and it was not a death I would wish on anyone.
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications/health-system-services/annual-report-medical-assistance-dying-2022.html
“Craig Murray: We Are the Bad Guys’
It would be a whole lot easier to know if we had skulls on our caps-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY (2:50 mins)
I grew up as part of the Free West and I swallowed it hook, line and sinker. But now as part of this free world, I am expected to support Jihadists in the Middle east hyped up on Captagon, Nazis in eastern Europe that even replicate the torch parades of Nazi Germany in the 30s, homicidal religious zealots carrying out a genocide in the eastern Mediterranean, the silencing & imprisonment of people that do not agree with the current views of the government and those are just the things off the top of my head. The worse thing is that most of the people that I know either do not really know about these things or support our own government which back such things. Stop the world, I wanna get off.
I’ve been feeling like that for a while now. A year ago, or so, I stated something like: I feel betrayed by the entire system of thought I grew up with.
Me too. My public school education clearly stated we were the champions of good, and all the citizens of all other nations looked up to us.
My headmaster even SAID this OUT LOUD to us at my public school in a general studies class, after I’d presented on the history of Palestine.
He only taught a couple of general studies classes to 6th form (being Headmaster) but that was the one time I really got to understand what he thought us Brits should be doing. At the time we were 9th best school in UK.
He died a few years ago…..in a manner which to me suggested he thought he and we had failed as a country, given the “lack of oomph” that other former teachers have shown.
Thank you.
Not unrelated.
The wave of far right violence, including three attacks on immigrants in mid-Buckinghamshire last week, has spooked my parents, both 80 in November and here since May 1964, and made them wonder if they should return to Mauritius, only a week or so after we thought of selling up. I will go, too, if that happens, even though I was born in London and have lived most of life in Buckinghamshire.
Sorry to read that Colonel. I hope Mauritius holds what they need.
I’ve often ruminated over how alien and unfriendly this world must seem to the older generation. My uncle, 79, has retreated to his own world, my 84yo mom in law to depression, her 85yo husband pretty much refuses to acknowledge the greater world altogether.
Thank you.
Fortunately I’m half Italian and an admirer of Machiavelli and stopped being fooled by the absurd notion of American Exceptionalism and its corellaries. You just have to read the right writers particularly the “dead white men” to get a clue. Contemporary “thought” in the universities is 90% garbage today–much lower percentage a half-century ago.
Blue MAGA is a cult. Everyone I know is in it (all over 55, mostly white, PMC, “liberal” Dems). Deer in the headlights look if I even raise the mildest contrary idea, or point out the tiniest glaring contradiction. I don’t think anything will ever pierce that bubble–they will go down with the ship, not even knowing they are on the ship…..
… not evening knowing they aren’t liberal, they are neo-liberal.
Really depends on where you are. Your description of Blue MAGA just described half my Trump supporting neighbors. If I scaled up from their experiences, I’d have to think that large healthcare orgs are run by PMCs while being opposed by organized healthcare workers who are increasingly fed up.
Sadly, I don’t think my experience is an accurate summary either.
Forget the generational stuff: Democraphically Blue Maga is a perfect reflection of our society because its members were chosen on that basis. Their leadership may skew older but rank and file were selected and indoctrinated based on their willingness to buy in.
I agree it’s a cult but I disagree that it’s being driven by anything other than greed (and Zionism which attaches itself to all US poltiical movements). At some point they lose their self-awareness and go along simply to go along. The cult is less smug these days and are desperately clinging to Kamala who, unlike Emperor Selassie on his visit to Jamaica, does not object to having her feet kissed by adoring throngs.
You’re right, it is, but Murray’s post and RK’s comment aren’t really about that. We’re talking about Western Civilization, the Collective West, the Free World, the Golden Billion, or whatever you call it. It’s unnerving to learn that freedom, democracy, human rights, international law and the rest were our comforting bedtime stories to keep us on the side of a vicious, corrupt and ancient system of power. Murray correctly mentioned that the horrors Israel is committing are not as bad as stuff the USA has done in the last 25 years. What’s happening is not an aberration. That is us.
Remembering that Gaza/Gazans have legal rights – in theory – to the hundreds of millions, potentially billions of dollars worth of oil/gas reserves discovered in their offshore boundary waters. Now there’s talk of lithium deposits under the Gaza strip. The empire aims to take those resources and destroy any Gazan claim to ownership by, you know, eliminating Gazans./ imo.
https://iacenter.org/2023/11/15/behind-israels-end-game-for-gaza-theft-of-offshore-gas-reserves/
Whilst I love that scene (along with the Princess Di, “pseudo X Factor” and “I’m a people person” ones), I’m sticking with the Linden Tree one you now know about as my fave from those two ;)
Though their “pseudo between scenes” stuff is also priceless – “can humans fly” and “how do you unmake cheese” are tough acts to follow.
yeah…ive known we were the evil empire for a long time…thanks to natgeo and the deluxe britannica set i pored over as a child…as well as the later headshop bookshelves…and just observing the world, from up close, to far away.
the most remarkable thing is how the majority have been so willfully blind to it…and more usually, actively hostile to even considering the idea that we are not that shiny city on the hill.
for all the performative rancor between the two right wings, this is th most bipartisan thing there is.
and thanks again to our hosts fro introducing me to Craig Murray.
Thanks, AtH. You’re quite right. There’s nothing so unifying for America as Empire.
I grew up being taught the EU was better, having been founded to overcome the wounds of the world wars blah blah blah. I have definitely been disabused of those ideas in the last 10 years with a notable acceleration in Feb 2022 and October 2023.
Insightful comment Amfortas, “the most remarkable thing is how the majority have been so willfully blind to it…and more usually, actively hostile to even considering the idea that we are not that shiny city on the hill.
for all the performative rancor between the two right wings, this is th most bipartisan thing there is.”
I just finished this long essay which discusses just that same point of view amongst Israeli’s:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/13/israel-gaza-historian-omer-bartov
Growing up (until 30) in a socialist country and then moving to a “capitalist liberal democracy” polity I can say that everything we were told about capitalism were true and everything told about socialist countries were lies – more or less…
file under UK, Starmer.
In case you were under any illusions, Keir Starmer—the UK’s new PM—is a World Economic Forum puppet, just like the rest of them.
https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/1809913082472206515
Thanks for that, flora. Imagine my surprise. Just waiting for Starmer to tell the British people ‘Now you must all eat zee bugs!’
Good to see Herr Stamer is gown with the plan!
The only difference between High Chancellor Adam Sutler of “V for Vendetta” and Keir Starmer is that Keir Starmer is much more boring and forgettable.
At school, when I was a callow youth, we were required to read the work of English poets. Boring stuff. Couldn’t understand what it meant, or why we had to read it.
Now I’m starting to understand.
T. S. Eliot’s ”The Hollow Men, for example:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
It’s worth reading the whole work. The complete poem is at https://allpoetry.com/The-Hollow-Men. The website offers this:
Analysis (ai): “The Hollow Men” reflects the despair, apathy, and spiritual emptiness of a post-World War I society. Eliot uses imagery of decay and lifelessness to portray the hollow existence of these individuals, who lack purpose, emotion, and connection.
And here we are again…
Looking at the Wikipedia entry for Keir Starmer, I see a few things that strike me as a bit odd and I would be grateful if anyone could fill in the gaps.
(1) ‘After being called to the bar, Starmer … served as a human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board …’
That sounds harmless enough — but then in the next paragraph we find
‘Starmer was influenced by his Northern Ireland policing work …’
‘Policing work’? Is advising the Board policing work, or was there more to it than that? Was he on the ground in Ulster? Maybe advising the Board on the human rights implications of … whatever the RUC/PSNI got up to?
(2) ‘For his meritorious “services to law and criminal justice,” Starmer was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) …. As a mark of respect for veterans, he can wear the Bath neck decoration on occasions such as Remembrance Sunday and the breast star at formal dinners when welcoming overseas dignatories. [emphasis added]’
Does this imply that he himself is a veteran? There is no mention anywhere in this article about his having done military service. But, if not, what does the bolded phrase mean? Are there some KCBs who do not / cannot show respect for veterans? Why would that be? Why can he do it but others can’t?
Maybe there’s nothing to any of this. Maybe it’s just typically poor Wikipedia writing / editing. But it piqued my curiosity.
Very, very spooky indeed.
Is it a message from Germany that the name of the man against whom an arrest warrant has been issued for the destruction of Nord Stream is Volodymyr Z?
I think they meant to type vladamir p, but the past few years of autocorrect learning intervened randomly.
If Galicia of all regions is boiling, then the Iberian peninsula is in real trouble.
I still remember fondly the high summer road trip from Bilbao to Galicia in late 1990s with a friend. It was so strange to listen on the hire-car radio music that sounded like Irish jigs and countryside that was so green it could’ve been numerous places in the British Isles.
Then, true to form, the heavens opened when we visited Santiago de Compostela and it was the final bit of the puzzle to make everything feel like home ;)
“Germany’s federal prosecutor general is seeking a man identified as Volodymyr Z. for privacy reasons. He is a 44-year-old Ukrainian diving professional who was last seen in Poland and has since disappeared”
That suspect’s name rings a bell…
My first guess at name was Mitch Buchannon. Those German scriptwriters have zero creativity.
Given the almost cartoonish nature of all this, my money is on the wanted suspect being one Race Bannon. Now, imagine my surprise to learn that the word ‘bannon’ in Erse means “white.” So, a tough guy hero named “White, Race.” As I’m prone to say, Hmmmm…….
couldnt ven get past the first question in the cynicism thing:
“Cynicism is a theory that, in general, humanity is selfish, greedy and dishonest. Theories power our behaviour, what we do and what we don’t do. So cynics use their theory about people to guide their behaviour in the social world. It changes what they see, it changes how they interpret other people and it changes what they do, such as not trusting others.”
feels like a sorta talking his book definition, no? or am i being overly cynical?
i am a monstrous cynic, in the tradition of Diogenes.
and i arrived at that place with open eyes, and after….and continually…attempting to falsify that stance.
these attempts at falsification are wholly sincere…because i’d really rather not be a monstrous cynic…its uncomfortable,lol…but honesty keeps leading me back.
i’ll finish the interviw, now…lol…perhaps he does better further in….
Not word about healthy skepticism and the difference between a skeptic and a cynic. That is a tell, imo. Is the gaslight flickering? / ;)
No my dear. The gaslight is not flickering. Perhaps you’d like to lie down until this spell passes off? Oh, and by the way, I really am Charles Boyer. Have a nice nap.”
I find that cynicism is just as bad as optimism. Cynicism subscribes to the Littlefinger school of thought (‘Sometimes when I try to understand a person’s motives, I play a little game. I assume the worst. What’s the worst reason they could possibly have for saying what they say and doing what they do?’) while optimism leads to the modern demand that everybody on the job must be enthusiastic and showing their smiles all the time, no matter how much that dental work costs. It would be best to try to be in between the two and try to be a realist. Will it make you happy? No. But being a realist means that you are not so often caught up in the highs and the lows of others.
Being a skeptic isn’t the same as being a cynic.
I’ve gone beyond being a cynic and have explicitly classed myself as a nihilist.
It’s like reaching the acceptance stage of the grieving process – don’t GAF. Of course it’s fine by me as I have no dependents but I still have occasional thoughts about the kids of my siblings *sigh*
and have explicitly classed myself as a nihilist. Thanks for a much needed chuckle despite the sobriety. Is nihilism beyond cynicism? I’m going to have to chew on that one for a bit.
I regard it as a step further but I can understand how others might regard it as “not” or “not even on the same dimension”.
But I overthink stuff ;)
Your overthinking is much appreciated. Cheers.
Was talking with my buddy from Tucson who is 6 years older than me, about our mutual IBGYBG thankfulness that will remedy our similar dead-end position-not having any progeny of our own to obsess over whatever becomes of us.
I have 2 nieces & 3 nephews and a grand niece that will inherit our mistakes-the future of the family lineage, and best of luck to them, sorry we screwed the pooch.
By the way, they say chicken tastes like rattlesnake, and I can’t wait for the 19th insect to be named to the pantheon of edibles.
I understand this sentiment but also think that anyone like you on this site who expresses it is “taking a bullet for a wider bunch of idiots”. Generally speaking, I don’t think people like you or me on here with no dependents or whatever contributed to the problem. It’s a bunch of our peers who did. Of course you’re entitled to think I’m being a dick to escape blame. It’s certainly a LOT of our generation(s) that caused the problems. But increasingly I find myself unafraid to say “NO. I NEVER voted for that party/manifesto etc. I won’t accept the blame. Which is not to say I’m a saint – far from it – for instance I got taken in by Blair in 1997 and I can’t dodge that monumental mistake. I just won’t accept criticism that I didn’t see generally what was coming.”
How’s it a mistake?
There wasn’t a lot of choice, now and then
You’re kind to imply I had no choice. However, I guess I have always set myself a high bar and I should have done more to “give Labour a small majority so that Blair would have enacted electoral reform”.
Yeah, easy to say, but harder to have done. A lot of people in my generation should have done better. Generation X are the butt of the joke because we are NOT the butt of the jokes. But “lying low” is just as bad. We should have stood up.
We drove to Visalia for food and sundries in a F-150 that weighs in at a few tons, and never worried for a second whether we would be stranded or that our horsepower would get tired and need to rest before rejoining our sojourn already in progress.
If we really wanted to, we could have bought enough food to last a year, in the 45 minutes drive each way it took us to get there and back.
None of us are explicit in terms of this deal going down… but we are all very much accomplices, and I’m guilty as charged as the next person reliant upon the diminishing jackpot of oil we squandered en route to poisoning our atmosphere.
Thanks. These days I wonder how representative of Gen X I am? We tend not to be mentioned much on the web. I know I and my peers kept our heads down and tried to move up.
Many of us have realised that “social mobility” means you’re just as likely to move down as up and if the safety net has been removed……you are screwed.
So I get angry because my peers are NOT angry. Why do you not come here to NC? Why is it easier to ghost me? At least Boomers and Gen Y/Millennials fight. Stepping back and abandoning friends ain’t right.
I occasionally X-dress (henna tats and grunge clothing) as i’m a late Boomer trapped in another generations body of ideas that bear little resemblance to the life I have known. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are in theory cohorts of my generation, and yet I have nothing in common with them.
I was angry-but i’m over it now, make mirth-not war.
Good to hear! I unfortunately tend to get annoyed by what I “don’t contribute” these days compared to what I think “I did contribute via a top textbook” and how my “high variance” in outcomes doesn’t seem to have worked out compared to my peers who “took the safe path of e.g. General Practice” and now live in the top percentile of the UK income distribution.
But that’s on me. I could’ve played safe and not tried to help everyone ;)
Out of curiosity, do nihilists ever present potential solutions to world problems or is that against the code of conduct?
I recall Nietzsche was about overcoming nihilism, nihilism was presented as the very problem and his proposal was amor fati. Meanwhile, Camus’ solution, also presenting nihilism as problematic, was an embrace of the absurd.
i cut my teeth on Nietszche, and only wandered into Camus a decade or so ago…but i find them sort of complimentary…at least in this regard.
Amor Fati is one of the hardest things to achieve as a human being, in my opinion…so one retreats, from time to time, into marveling at the absurdity(especially in times like this(rolls eyes).
Sisyphus yelling obscenities at the fleamen.
Same! I picked up ‘Will to Power’ in grade 9 and didn’t quite understand what I was dealing with until I discovered philosophy many years later. All this talk of nihilism is making me nostalgic. Somehow or other I don’t have any Nietzsche in my library at the moment, will need to hit up Abe soon.
i recommend starting with zarathustra…i like th translation thats more king jamesy…and then the gay science…and thats really all you need.
unless yer an obsessive about it, like me,lol.
will to power is post-crazy, and mostly his evil, protonazi sister…and is why theres so much confusion about the guy.
i dig the earlier stuff a lot as well.
geneolgy of morals is gobsmacking cool, as is antichrist…if you know yer scripture.
the collections of aphorisms in between all that…human, all to human, etc…are cool for weirdos, i suppose.
As far as Nietzsche is concerned, Zarathustra is certainly not the book I would start with. I would first read a good introduction to him that places him in the philosophical tradition and context of his time.
As a first read, I would recommend “Die fröhliche Wissenschaft” (The Gay Science), a work between his enlightenment and his pseudo-religious phase, and in my view his best.
btw nobody has to fall back on the Willen zur Macht any longer, because there has long been a scholarly edition of the late writings, the Colli-Montinari edition.
Being a cynic is never having to say you’re sorry. Sort of. (Gawd, the headlines are so dismal I can’t even muster up a good line)
How exactly does one not develop an acute case of cynicism in our current timeline? The reality of our surroundings is perpetually stroking my priors.
And I’m angry. Seriously Friggin Angry. And SFA as it is, is contagious as fa and I’m more than a bit worried about what happens when it takes hold for real.
> How exactly does one not develop an acute case of cynicism in our current timeline?
For me it’s meeting people who are decent and that I like. There’s actually a lot of them about. Most of them have some bad ideas but that’s allowed.
The problem is that our hierarchies of power weed out the decent people for the top jobs.
Good point. For me it’s meeting people who are decent and that I like.. Me too but the experience always puts me in a brood. Too many elephants in the room. Conversations are superficial.
One of the more difficult things for me these days is being a good dad to our two adult sons, there being two distinct paths on many life decisions a young man faces. Path one is things are normal, you’ve got a lifetime to work with, let’s plan. Two is, and I strongly believe this, you’ve got years, like maybe two or three, before the hunger games begin in earnest, how the hell does one say this to someone they love?
For me reading the sutras of Buddhist thought and trying to practice the precepts. No clinging, no aversion also helps. Wishing all being to find the tools of true happiness. We live in a cruel transition period and that’s being optimistic, sorry to say. About 30 years ago I was full of hope for the world. Now not so much so I have to work pretty diligently to be hopeful for humanity’s future. I believe in recantation and know that I as well as everyone else in a body has had many lifetimes. Some are newly arrived (and that’s still millions of years ago) and some are old souls. Also might add, get fresh air, go for walks, get the sun on your person and find the strength to live another day. Know that shedding this mortal coil is going to put you in a better place than this sand box of Samsara.
Philosophical cynicism and the modern usage of the word are not the same thing.
Today it tends to mean assuming the worst in everything, which isn’t the best way to go about life.
The philosophical definition is different. It treats the typical aspirations of society – more material goods, more prestige, etc – as vanity, and obstacles to a truly virtuous life. That belief is what prompted Diogenes to travel lightly through life and to tell the most powerful person in the known world at the time to essentially go [family blog] himself.
The latter sounds like a very good way to live one’s life to me.
And consider that people could be cynical about the systems people serve and still hold out hope for some of humanity.
my unexpected dose of still-extant humanity came with Tam’s cancer…and all that time i spent in and around the hospitals…and all those people i talked to on my wanderings for a smoke or for lunch.
helped a somali woman with her flat tire…and she’s gonna pray for my wife…and then eat at an iraqi cafe, and the whole family is gonna pray for my wife…and i rport all this back to Tam, laid up and full of tubes and wires, and say..”hey, thats five times a day!…”
and she’s like, “i’ll take it”.
the issue, now, is i am not out and about enough…nor in such places that are perhaps more conducive to such sentiments…as i was, then….feed store, beer and cig store….and here on the farm with my insane and hateful mother…with the only view into the wider world being the news…mainstream and various alts.
i remember a study, long ago…regarding people who watched too much Law and Order having a skewed vision of the world outside.
this feels like a similar situation….but i cant afford to go anywhere….so all i have is avoiding the intertubes at times, as well as avoiding mom.
I wish my Long COVID allowed me to socialise more because I sense what you have put into words regarding preserving one’s humanity. I spent 20 years in a career desperately trying to improve population quality of life. I was damn good at doing stuff in an abstract sense. Plus I “kept in touch” via physical contact and the free-text comments in surveys like my end-of-life preferences one (which made me cry).
Now I feel I also have to avoid the web if I’m not to “get even more nihilist”. But what do you do when the web is what tells you what to do to avoid the “worst nasties” but simultaneously exposes you to the worst accounts of humanity which make you think “sod you all”?
My new Labour MP thinks its about sexuality etc (he has a husband). No, I’ve never had homosexual abuse here. I HAVE had 4 guys threaten to beat the shit out of me for daring to wear a mask in the local high street. Whatcha doing about that, or your leader Starmer? *crickets chirping*
And after all, you can’t get very far into even th original “Law & Order” before you hit a skewed vision. Before you even hear the first clonk-clonk! . . . the famous narration tells you: “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.”
But that’s wrong — in so many ways.
The police don’t investigate all crimes — and not everything the police investigate is a crime.
The district attorneys don’t prosecute all offenders, and not all of those who are prosecuted are offenders.
Some district attorneys are elected, but that’s certainly not true for all who prosecute. And few police (or other law-enforcement officers) are elected.
But perhaps the biggest truth that introduction skips over is the fact that there are many more than two groups of people involved in the criminal-justice system. Defendants are people, too. So are their attorneys. So are judges — and court staffmembers, and experts, and reporters, and innocent bystanders. And victims, and families of victims.
In fact, almost every entity ever involved in a court case is a person. Except for the odd case where assets wind up sued or charged in their own “names”. (And corporations. . . .)
Agreed. As a little schoolchildren I learned of cynicism as a response to history- a type of person or a specific person, repeated failures of models for a better mousetrap, etc. Not just being smug about being smarter than everyone and knowing they’re all bad guys.
Perhaps it’s a cynical attitude that’s make me wonder exactly what “drugs they were legally allowed” and treatments were being served up at the Olympics. Available to the average person? Suitable for the duration of the illness?
My own cynicism doesn’t assume purely selfish motivations of people, rather that institutional and cultural guiderails tend to keep our more humane impulses constrained. It’s functionally similar, but I think the distinction is important, because I am not a misanthrope: I love people, I just don’t often like or trust them.
Nobody takes performance enhancing drugs while backpacking other than M & M’s (not the candy kind) because it isn’t about sticking the finish, nobody is keeping track of how long it takes you on your sojourn, nor are there competitors, only others out enjoying themselves too.
I noticed some years ago that most everything I like to do, nobody keeps score.
Chomsky used to point out that very little is actually known about human nature; that, under conditions wherein competition is encouraged, humans are competitive; under those wherein cooperation is encouraged, we cooperate. Whoda thunk?
I tend towards the tendancey of the Humanist Marxists here, I suppose. This view doesn’t seem to be able to compete with others, though, so maybe I’ll just take a hike.
Thanks as always, Wuk.
Thank you VC for articulating essentially my own view, and yes, Marxist Humanism does reflect that as well, imho. Or, How unlike your Marx are your Marxists, with apologies to Mahatma Gandhi.
So I vote for the guy who has no problems curtailing the reproductive freedoms of lower class women, or the gal who will probably sack Khan and curtail my freedom of speech against what the blob says I can safely talk about. And neither will support the working class. I hate this timeline.
Stoller says the Republicans are on board with significant portions of the antitrust agenda. As for Khan, Stoller says she would not serve as a commissioner of the minority party at the FTC. So there are plenty of reasons to be unhappy with the prospects of a Trump presidency, but antitrust isn’t a good one. Again, it was the FTC under Trump that filed the antitrust suit v. Google.
The freedoms you are leaving…….
The neo liberals had all needed to create law to define reproductive freedom and assure it……
But without the meme that they will take freedom they can’t keep the empire going along taking basic human rights.
Home and abroad.
There are no liberals. Just deciders of what you reality you can have.
This link not working (takes you to an RT piece):
The Fajr massacre: Every 70 kg bag of human remains is considered a martyr Mondoweiss
Fixing…thanks!
Vanity Fair. The case that Abraham Lincoln had men as lovers and the case that one shouldn’t go poking in other people’s letters.
The article is worth a read, but it suffers from clear problems of presentism, including the presentist acceptation of the word “queerness.” So far as I am concerned, the term is about as warm and fuzzy and well-defined as “uppity Negro.”
There is the ritual genuflection to “fluidity,” whatever fluidity means. (Brown fingernail polish? Green ties on Thursdays? Wristwatches?)
At a certain basic civilizational level, that is, at a level to keep society functioning, one doesn’t have to know the tittle-tattle of everyone else’s lives. Here in the Undisclosed Region, one of the “ten commandments” is Fate ij tò afé = Mind your own business. (That includes you, Tartuffe.)
The remarkable thing about Abraham Lincoln is that he arose from nothing, from grinding poverty, to the presidency. I am reminded of Epaminondas, the general from Thebes who defeated the Spartans and freed their slaves, which destroyed the Spartan state. Epaminondas had men as lovers, and he never married. He was rather coy about not marrying, claiming that he had given Thebes great victories instead.
Those of us from Chicago also may find the news ho-hum. Lincoln is very much a physical presence, even still. The famous statue on Ridge Avenue near Clark, the Young Lincoln, is also known as Abe the Babe. And yes, as noted in the article, he has great thighs.
All in all, though, it appears that Lincoln’s erotic life now mainly serves academic promotions and ambitions. According to “Dr.” Balceski: ‘I also might’ve been among the first group of people who finally had a rich body of literature they could pick up on their library shelf or in a database that actually makes this argument about Lincoln’s sexuality in a way legitimized by our fields,” he says.’
Instead, “Doctor,” I will align with the timeless and peerless Sappho:
The Anactoria poem, its opening
Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers,
others call a fleet the most beautiful of
sights the dark earth offers, but I say it’s what-
ever you love best.
Lincoln can have as many love affairs as he likes. It’s grand. He was a looker in his younger days. Yet I will always be most grateful for his Second Inaugural Address and its grim insight into U.S. history.
This kind of speculation on Lincoln’s sexuality is not new. Just boring. Who cares? I don’t.
Indeed!
As a former academic who happens to be a gay man (though maybe queer is a better term? I dunno) I am inclined to say “Don’t you have better things to do?”
You could be investigating how concepts like MMT and land value taxation could be made into 60 second YouTube shorts so we don’t have to wait for several thousand AWFUL economists/decisionmakers in positions of power to die off.
We could make it an NC Party platform Planck.
Max Max?
Bigwig bingo cards?
…is that what all the cool kids are calling a guillotine blade now?
Didn’t think so but now that you’ve suggested it, it does sound good :)
Agreed. I thought this bit was wrong, but somewhat promising –
“For young adults today, strict sexual categories are going back out of style. “These concepts, ideas, behaviors, and categories did not exist in Lincoln’s time…. People were very fluid in the past. Lincoln was very fluid, certainly,” he says. “I feel like Gen Z might just take the baton back from the old days and continue the way humans always were.” ”
I don’t know if Gen Z will take the baton back since the author is incorrect here and Gen Z seems to have any number of gender categories that want to shoehorn people into. But the author is correct that people in the past didn’t make such a big deal out of who was kanoodling with whom, and it would be nice to get back to that.
The article did touch on Gore Vidal, and I would be great to hear his take on this topic. From what I’ve read of him, he considered everybody to be a bisexual, whether practicing or not. I suspect he would agree with you and DJG, and recommend that people spend far less time talking about what they like doing with their private parts and spend more time talking about politics and trying to solve the serious problems that effect everyone.
Gore Vidal said “there are no such thing as homosexual people, only homosexual acts”
Wonderful quote! Alas, the ultimate heresy to identarians.
Five Good Emperors, the ancient Roman imperial succession of Nerva (reigned 96–98 ce), Trajan (98–117), Hadrian (117–138), Antoninus Pius (138–161), and Marcus Aurelius (161–180), who presided over the most majestic days of the Roman Empire. It was not a bloodline….
It may be that this is 21st century ways of mores and customs which is trying to use them to look at 19th century people who people will be surprised to learn had their own mores and customs. So for example having inter-generational friendships was much more common back then. But nowadays, having a solid friendship between somebody in their 20s and their 60s for example is frowned upon and people are expected to have friendships with people in their own age cohort. And in reading of those times, you often had men having deep friendships with each other and expressing their emotions with each other. Can you imagine how that would play these days? Half would shout ‘That’s gay!’ while the other would think that they make a great couple. And neither half would realize how men have been educated to restrict their emotional bonds with other men as a matter of course. So I would be very wary about making conclusions about making assumptions about people from the 19th century or earlier. After all, when people back then described a guy as being a gay fellow, it does not mean what we think that it means.
Abe was one of the most astute presidents on economics america ever had. he understood a modern monetary system, long before it was ever understood by MMTers.
he knew that a modern advanced economy meant labor was superior to capital. he knew free trade was a farce that masked feudalism, oligarchy and slavery.
free trade is the backbone of neo-liberalism, Abe stuck a shiv in the back of the free traders.
that’s why he had to go.
He also had a vision of an economy where people would only briefly work for wages to survive before getting land and means to be self-sufficient and in turn hiring young wage laborers, rinse and repeat. He imagined the entire economy running like this. So I wouldn’t exaggerate his economic insight or foresight.
What is humourous about this is the implied idea that a fully “straight” Lincoln might have not freed the slaves. Boy. Next someone will publish a scholarly paper claiming that Lincoln freed the slaves because he was a secret partaker of the joys and sorrows of BDSM.
Publish a paper laying out a road to the emancipation of the Working Class and I’ll take you seriously.
They are shovelling human remains into 70kg bundles in Gaza. This is fine in Germany. I feel sick.
Yeah. There’s an image in a tweet embedded in the Craig Murray piece. Be forewarned. You can’t un-see it.
Even my black heart wants to have a good cry.
It would appear that while the amounts of food, water and medical supplies have been grotesquely restricted in Gaza by the israelis, the supply of plastic “waste” disposal bags has remained beyond generous and adequate.
Thank god for small favors.
I’m so angry I’m tearing ffs.
Just don’t get so angry that you block the 405 freeway in West LA.
There are some things that are just a bridge too far.
Lol! “Excuse me, could you point me towards the nearest free speech zone?”
Don’t forget now, ammo is speech.
US ill-prepared for a nuclear showdown with China – Asia Times
Insanity. Stupidity.
No one could ever be prepared for a nuclear showdown.
People not even trying to think.
The story shows signs of being written by someone who didn’t really understand the issues discussed in the report, and just picked up bits at random and confused them with each other. And the headline was written by an intern who hadn’t read the story. Apart from that …
The real issue here is that it’s helpful to think of countries as behaving to each other much as criminal gangs do, seeking “respect” and the advantages that go with it, as well as strategic alliances and dominance over smaller groups. Just like the size of your gang, how well you are armed and how many politicians you control, nuclear weapons are a component part of international “respect,” although it’s more polite to say “status” and “influence.” In this, there’s a fairly clear hierarchy, starting with the US and Russia, who have traditionally been the two largest gangs (Russia took a hit for a while but it’s back now.) There’s China with its medium sized arsenal, then Britain and France, and then the declared and undeclared non-NPT states. For the US and Russia, the situation is clear, and their arsenals, including technical details and modernisation, are part of their international status and influence. For the British and French, it’s about the ability to hit back, and national survival, and the other nuclear powers have their own complex political dynamics. But China is an anomaly, because its arsenal is closer in size to that of France/UK, whereas it’s an economic giant and increasingly influential in international affairs. So the Chinese have a programme in hand to increase their nuclear forces in size, and, by the rules of the game, enhance their international status as peers of Russia and the US.
The US problem, then, is that like so much of their military structure, the ICBM force is aging and is going to be difficult and expensive to replace. Because a gang where the members can’t actually fight well loses “respect” from others, the US is concerned, logically I think, that the political force that the Chinese can bring to bear in crises will soon equal or exceed theirs.
Agree with what you say here. I would only add that going by that link in today’s Links – “China’s Rising Diplomatic Power” – that China is coming to the table with a full tool kit while the US has reduced itself to only using a hammer and wondering why it does not work anymore.
It’s beyond that, the hammer’s now made of cheap alloy from the low cost producer in…China, it just falls apart when you hit something with it.
In addition to spreadsheetism the Morning in America for MBAs produced, is the lump-of-laborism embedded as a factor in all those spreadsheets.
We’re seeing now that spreadsheetism applied to public goods like education and public health fails to produce either, and after a bit of that, well, you can’t really do anything.
They can do all of that and so what? It’s a nuclear showdown. They won’t be prepared.
Prepared, in my mind, also includes being prepared for the aftermath of such an event.
Good point.
Minuteman is well over 50 years old. They are solid fuel! I do not know what the aging of the propellant does to the “impulse” of the burn.
Suppose it is like gun powder ofr 155 mm shells. Some of that still remains from WW II, and soldiers firing them have no ide how “long” the round/shell goes!
Given reliability decline in current US systems, the idea of MAD may be gone!
I just reread a fictional account of a very limited nuclear exchange between North Korea and US. By Jeffrey Lewis.
Horrifying!
In the aftermath of the Communist bloc party, one of the few things that was salable in the west to the public was oodles and oodles of decades old small arms ammo at almost give-away prices in the early 1990’s…
You wonder if the same fate will befall us, and old stocks of ammo will be one of the few things of value that comes out of the wreckage?
Might be an idea to stash away a few Canadian dollars as well-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBCIJ3QluHY (51 secs)
Was a funny time…
The Pomona gun show* held at the LA County Fairgrounds was where I used to go in search of aged round metal discs, and a glimpse at the loonie gun culture (not to be confused with C$’s) that hardly existed circa 1995.
The other item was uniforms, and you didn’t need to fit the credentials to be a general in the USSR, you merely needed to have the uniform fit. Might set you back $150 to look like Boris, darlink.
* banished from the LA County Fairgrounds in the aftermath of the Columbine shootings, one of the few actual measures meted out in regards to guns in the past quarter century, ha ha.
Islam
I just reread a fictional account of a very limited nuclear exchange between North Korea and US. By Jeffrey Lewis
This is available as a free audiobook to Audible members
I thought that the Chinese are working on their nuclear arsenal in order to remove from the Americans’ heads the idea that with a first hit, China will lack second strike capabilities. Because that is the type of game the Americans like to play…
“US ill-prepared for a nuclear showdown with China”
Insanity. Stupidity.
No one could ever be prepared for a nuclear showdown.
[ Simple as that.
Thank you ]
Nord Stream arrest warrant, details of the probe by Die Zeit (free access as of now, in German, amenable to browser translation):
https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2024-07/nordstream-anschlag-ermittlungen-festnahme/komplettansicht
So is Zelenski forbidden from coming to Germany now? Or, is he actually Volodimyr E now?
“Advice from DEFCON: Turn off Bluetooth and WiFi”
Personally I thought this his best advice was his last one – using a Faraday bag. Sure, turning on Airplane Mode, disabling Location Services controls GPS & other location tracking methods, turning off WiFi and turning off Bluetooth sound great but there is a flaw. You have to depend on that fact that when you do so, that this actually happens. And as Silicon Valley corporations have proven multiple times, when they give you a Privacy Option it too often turns out to be a Placebo Option which does absolutely nothing. So yeah, go with a mechanical means and drop that device into a Faraday bag which actually works. Can’t do so because you absolutely must take images and videos? Then take a damn compact camera and upload them to your devices when you get home.
Using a second device with no internet access whatsoever to take a picture/video of something recorded on your primary device (then suitably stripped of remaining identifiers in Linux) is a way of making something ready to be uploaded in an internet cafe if no Faraday cage. You can also add “noise” so an AI is less likely to identify it.
Allegedly.
I wonder if a lot more of my fellow Brits will be doing stuff like this from now on? Hmmmm…..
The UK police have already announced that they have a team of their people scouring the net for images and videos that people have uploaded to see if they cannot identify the misdeeds of others. It may be a Darwinian process where people will learn to take counter measures like you suggested in your comment while those slow to learn go to court and prison.
Re counter-measures: deleted the Sainsburys app from phone which had allowed me+mum to do weekly shop using self-scan. I got very suspicious at how often we got “randomly” picked for manual total rescan or partial rescan at the “self-scan checkouts”.
I know our credit scores. I know our shopping patterns since I’m the primary carer. I know the variance in our shopping patterns. This did not stack up. So, I used my 20 year career in survey design to try something out – putting my health at risk – I tried not using the mask. No rescans. So I concluded that wearing a mask to try to keep you alive gets you an extra 20 mins shopping.
Sod that. When I help mum shop we do it the old fashioned way every time. Stick your self-scan where the sun don’t shine. Plus I remember when I first encountered self-service checkout – this gives an example but is NOT the original article which in typical google fashion I can no longer find, but which was based in Cremorne Sydney. It turned out to have the highest rate of fraud in all of Australia (people putting through posh fruit as cheap apples etc) in whole country despite being richest postcode.
Since Cremorne in Sydney is a very wealthy suburb (median house price of over 4 million bucks), I would not be surprised to see so much fraud going on. Here is another anecdote about the wealthy. They knocked down these office buildings on Sydney Harbour back in the late 90s but immediately cluttered that site up again with an apartment complex that because of its looks has been nicknamed “The Toaster.” You have to be a millionaire to afford an apartment here. So this night time security guard relates how late at night these wealthy people were going down to the ground floor to plug their mobiles into the electrical outlets meant for the cleaner’s appliances so that they could charge them up for free. Petty but that is how they think.
I’m sad that that doesn’t surprise me in the least. I saw blatant fraud across the lower North Shore routinely for 6 years. Plus, of course, the local MP (the “mad monk” and former PM) tried the sexuality etc card long before UK did and tried to get the two “nude OK” beaches banned by dogwhistling that “gay antics went on”.
It went wrong when it came out that the worst offences occurred on the “more straight beach” – it is DIRECTLY observable from a teenage sports court above and a male-female couple routinely invited people to join them at 4pm ish on many days. The “gayish beach” at least had the guys go do stuff somewhere discreet and unobservable and most actually went to a home to do it.
Mosman was a hotbed of debauchery and I was not the slightest bit surprised when the mad monk lost his seat. FFS I could see MF sex across the road from my friggin balcony when I lived there. Sheesh. Hypocrisy all round.
…
I do not like scrounging for pennies being as it is taxing on my brains, emotions, and time; being poor is expensive both in time and money, which is why, when I have enough to buy better quality and not have to worry about the rent, I am a less exhausted, happier camper. These people are fools. Or are they just plain stupid?
“Then take a damn compact camera and upload them to your devices when you get home.”
Why is it so hard for people to do?
I have the same questions about why people don’t go change their search engine settings or seem to think it’s impossible to go to a company’s site and download an app instead of using an “app store.”
I used to ask that question. Now I just realise that 99% of people are stupid or lazy or too overburdened by “stuff in life” that they just can’t think of doing that :(
Whilst I am always tempted to conclude they’re too stupid, I try to think back to when times were hard for me when I had to whistle-blow and when a person can be overburdened and make mistakes.
re: Social Security and Medicare “reform”, the thought occurs that current projections of future expeditures by these programs are likely to be seriously inaccurate due to the unknown severity of accumulating Long COVID effects on morbidity, and uncertainties about what the ongoing pandemic might do to, to put it euphemistically, the structure of the age distribution of the retiree population.
Why overcoming your cynicism could be key to a healthier, happier life and Lady Tyrell. My take on it is that people who say money can’t buy happiness clearly don’t have money. Lady Tyrell before meeting her unfortunate end, was as close to the top of the social hierarchy as she was going to get, so presumably she had led a very comfortable life, and it’s hard to be a true cynic when you are having the very best of the realm with every meal (the Reach was the most fertile region in Westeros and the wine from the Arbor well known throughout the realm).
I’d like to think of myself as a cynic, but then again I get to travel at least one month out of every year, and whenever I visit places like Japan, it’s usually enough to make me forget about all the brutalities in the outside world …. almost.
Money doesn’t buy happiness but it sure can make it so that you’re far less vulnerable to the inevitable downturns in life, if you have a bit of knowledge as to how to use it.
That wise philosopher Chris Rock once said-
‘Wealth isn’t about having lots of money; it’s about having lots of options.’
And he is right. The more money that you have, the more options that you can choose from.
I suppose that also places things in a broader perspective: there are times when you have to choose between having more money and more options; and there are stuff other than money (health, family, friends, and so forth) that give you more options….
You don’t need to be Albert Brooks to realize that good comedians are the best philosophers….
I’ve always get a chuckle on the view of money by the David Lee Roth, the lead singer of the band Van Halen.
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/david_lee_roth_137387
And I recognize that with large money many times you are swapping one set of problems for another…
Hehe yeah!
Plus it is ironic that my professional career actually demonstrated the effect of money upon quality of life (NOT happiness which IMNSHO cannot be quantified via those stupid surveys). Quite believably, you get a big boost to quality of life if your income/wealth gets up to a reasonable level to allow you to do other things. Then the effect is subject to rapid diminishing returns.
I’m pretty sure that interaction terms between “yet more money” and “non monetary stuff in the real social domain” could add to the “money effect” but I never got the resources to go that far in my research. If I’m lucky, someone will take my research further.
For yours truly, time spent in mother nature’s realm allows me to overcome my inbred cynicism (those of Czech ancestry tend to paint it black-its our natural fallback position) tendencies if only for a brief respite, in that I don’t have to interpret everything and parse what is false or true because everything is as it appears, or in the case of clever camouflage-as it disappears.
Money means nothing as there isn’t anything to spend it on in the back of beyond and the wilderness doesn’t take American Express.
And then I come back to this jig saw puzzle of a world, perfectly encapsulated in this Richard Feynman quote:
Sitting here in brno(32•c) the Czech fallback seems to be enjoy life, by far the most well balanced country in Europe just now.
Lady Tyrell was an autocrat and someone I would not applaud for one instant. (full disclosure, I have never watched that series, or any series for many years, and I’m pretty cynical)
Money might buy happiness, but only when one senses having enough (and no need for more) to enjoy that happiness. (I have very little money but am quite happy walking in nature, the cynicism takes over when observing humanities mischief).
I veer back and forth from scepticism to cynicism. Retiring from work helped ease my cynicism. Not being exposed to the PMC and moronic managers bent on making everything worse on a daily basis keeps me more in the sceptic lane these days. I see little to be optimistic about and truly don’t understand how anyone can be optimistic about life and the world these days. I am certainly grateful for the ease and comfort I have in my life, I just wish more of the world have what I have.
The U.S. Is Accelerating Towards Disaster – Daniel Larison
“By rushing more ships and planes to the region to bail out Netanyahu, the U.S. is accelerating towards disaster. Biden’s inflexible, ideological support for Israel may get a lot of American soldiers and sailors killed and injured in the coming months.”
It’s not going to be a disaster for the people making the decisions. They won’t be held accountable and will throw up more fake elections. They won’t be the ones dying.
And that’s what happens to soldiers. They get killed and injured and it’s more likely to happen when there are abject and unaccountable people in charge.
They just keep doing the same disaster over and over again.
from Sheerpost.
Patrick Lawrence: Israel Runs the U.S. No, the U.S. Runs Israel. No, Wait …
https://scheerpost.com/2024/08/10/patrick-lawrence-israel-runs-the-u-s-no-the-u-s-runs-israel-no-wait/
Just think: The person with the title of “Commander In Chief” has been a brain damaged puppet for the last four years and people are moving on to the next faux election like no one needs to answer for that.
There is a “constitutional” remedy for that. It’s just that the lady boss who accepted the responsibility for that remedy doesn’t want it anymore.
She’s too busy doin’ other shit.
There’s a credible story line that says that AIPAC is at least partially, possibly mostly lobbying for the MIC.
(It’s good to remember that Eisenhower originally called it the MICC, the Military/Industrial/Congressional/Complex)
Keeping us guessing about who’s in charge is a feature, not a bug.
In the ‘real’ world the guy who delivers the bag full of cash is usually not the guy who expects the favors.
Not from US, but related story from MIC (I read a version of the story from an aviation blog called “AirVectors,” on the post about Mirage III fighters. Not sure if the blog still exists or if the story is still up.)
After the 1967 Middle East War, France forbade the transfer of the Mirage 5 fighters, which were modified Mirage III’s to Israeli requirements, after which Israelis just built their own versions of the Mirage delta fighters. The suspicion was that Israel’s friends at Dassault just let the blueprints etc to be taken by Israeli agents. I could ‘t figure out how Dassault benefitted by having Israel build copies of their fighters, though.
I can’t read the full article so perhaps it was mentioned, but worth pointing out those ships, planes and servicemen are at much if not more risk at being attacked by Israel as by our “enemies” there. Remember the USS Liberty.
It has been a couple of interesting days watching the aerial assault on a nothing burger of a wildfire in a wildly inaccessible place on high in the forest for the trees.
It’s the closet thing to an attack on a fixed position in WW2 one is likely to see, with a broad range of aircraft including 4 engine Hercules jobs and Chinook double-bladed helos and everything in-between.
The object of their desire to squelch is but 28 acres worth presently, with the thinking being nobody wants it to be the next Castle or KNP Fire, burning 100k acres instead.
The water for the Chinook helos comes from one of the finest fishing lakes around these parts-Evelyn Lake, in Mineral King.
High Sierra lake trout in the summer typically have a big head and a body that looks as if it has been systematically starved, as an ice rink forms in the winter-locking them out of nourishment largely during the long months of frigidity @ 9k to 10k. You almost feel sorry for them-the look being not dissimilar to a starved human child with bulging eyes and a withered body.
Evelyn Lake is different from most high altitude Sierra lakes which typically have an inlet stream and an outlet stream, as it only has an outlet stream, the lake being spring-fed, and as a result it doesn’t freeze over in the winter thanks to continual circulation.
Last time I was there with my longtime backpacking partner who is a catch and release fly fisherman, he went off to do his thing, while I settled for reading a good book back in camp, and when he returned a few hours later, I inquired as to the results?
’50 casts, 43 rainbows & 6 browns, all 10-12 inches long’
I had to chide him of course on the solo missed opportunity, and he laughed, claiming it was tantamount to a carnival game on the midway where you win the kewpie doll every time you play, not that fun-but it makes you appreciate lesser lakes more, he added.
I’d imagine a number of said trout were roasted on the fire in the past few days, which will make it more difficult post-rapture, in future fishing forays.
The cost to fight the conflagration must surely be in the millions now, and only after a fire has started do the purse strings come undone, not before.
If Sequoia NP wanted $2 or $3 million to clear out the forest of much duff on the ground in preventing future wildfires from doing their worst, Congress would laugh at them (the new budget for NPS is 6% less than last year, coming on the previous year’s 6% cut, on top of the 6% cut a few years prior) but for some reason once a wildfire starts, the money always becomes available, a bit queer that.
https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/incident-information/caknp-coffeepot-fire
But where are your million dollar mcmansions? Priorities. Real estate must be defended.
And sorry about the trout. Here in SC we are in monsoon after a previous month long period with almost no rain.
There is exactly 1 million dollar mcmansion around these parts that i’m aware of, a 6,500 sq foot beauty built in 1938-39 on the east fork of the Kaweah River and it comes with a Sequoia grove across a bridge over said river from the residence.
An amazing place, I was there last week hanging out with a friend who is one of the caretakers. Very little has been changed or altered in the past 85 years. It still has the same hydroelectric system utilizing a Pelton wheel, and the shingles on the roof, each cut from a fallen Sequoia, are still on the job.
The look of the place was certainly was inspired by the Ahwahnee hotel in Yosemite.
Memes Pose a Threat to the US Financial System: RAND Report – Hacker Noon
“Memetic engineering involves the strategic creation or manipulation of ideas, concepts, or beliefs to influence a targeted audience, often relying on psychological triggers or cognitive biases.”
“It is a more targeted attack than a deepfake attack and can be tailored to specific individuals or groups based on their position within social and economic networks.”
These so-called “memetic engineered attacks” can either hit financial institutions quickly to cause a rapid frenzy over a specific set of stocks, or slowly to degrade confidence in the market or financial institutions over time…”
RAND wants people to believe the only thing wrong with “markets” is people pointing out what’s wrong with them and not the exploitation, short-term thinking, enshittification, hyper-financialization, and exaltation of con men.
RAND is worried about “The Confidence Fairy.”
I guess Russian financial system is built different, because the whole NAFO army fighting it with memes didn’t do much. Or maybe, they are not properly implementing RAND report on fighting Russia with memetic engineered attacks.
I like how they came up with the BS name “memetic engineering”. This is to give gravitas (and some BS job title for people that do stuff on social media) to what has essentially been called psyops, advertising, marketing, or promotion in the past.
Memetic engineering is like mimetic polyalloy, but less cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa4Jq7gJvZ0
The Harris campaign certainly took that to heart. I think it was Walter Kirn that mentioned something along this line (on their latest Monday podcast) about how professional sports gambling orgs win: by creating false memes that are consistent with many people’s prejudices–oh team X is going to win…it’s inevitable, etc in relation to the Harris meme-campaign. But the thing about these is that the gambling professionals make money at the end by betting on the other, counter-meme, side….
Re: PFAS. Poisoned by our own air force. I know it’s far from the first time, and certainly won’t be the last:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/12/air-force-epa-water-pfas-tucson
Re: PFAS and other “forever” chemicals. They are STILL used to coat dental floss. To keep it simple, I regard only unwaxed floss as safe to use:
https://www.consumerreports.org/toxic-chemicals-substances/dental-floss-without-pfas-and-other-harmful-chemicals-a9722832754/
Crikey! Another thing to worry about. (Thanks!) I always use unwaxed, except the last two times when there was none (what to do, I’ve finished one, now maybe I need to toss the other one).
I hate CVS with a passion, but one of the few places I’ve been able to find unwaxed floss consistently is CVS.com.
RE: 🐝 ‘I Will Fix Things If You Vote Me Into Office,’ Says Woman Currently In Office Babylon Bee
Way too close to reality to even be considered sarcasm.
Forget border czar or whatever, kamala harris was “elected” by the american people with ONE and only ONE job–to replace the president in the event of his incapacity. “Ready on Day 1.”
And she is refusing to do it. Simple as that.
There are about a billion reasons why, if she actually was possessed of presidential mettle, she would have done the duty she was sworn to do and replaced biden. Considering the circumstances–zelensky attacking Russia as an american proxy and american war ships steaming to the Middle East to “support” israel–leaving the country leaderless to “campaign” for the job that she won’t do right now should be considered beyond dereliction of duty, and should immediately disqualify her for the position she claims to want.
I guarantee that, had Donald Trump been in the same position as she, biden would have been gone months if not years ago.
So the next time you are subjected to her mindless giggling or her cosplay of lady-bossing or her “ready on day 1” walz schtick, consider what she COULD and SHOULD be doing RIGHT NOW, and ask yourself why she’s not doing it.
What a complete fucking joke this whole thing is.
re: The nation’s best hackers found vulnerabilities in voting machines — but no time to fix them
Well then, hand marked paper ballots hand-counted in public. Fixed. / ;)
https://www.electiondefense.org/paper-ballots
Depends on whether one thinks the vulnerabilities are a feature or a bug.
I’ve been reading about such vulnerabilities for at least a decade or more. In the ‘BT’ years (before Trump), most of the research reported was by those who were on the “left.” In the years ‘AT’, that ceased; no one wanted to give the “election deniers” any ammunition. Since this is Politico, we’re sure to get passages like this:
“… In 2016, Russian hackers both targeted the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and compromised voter registration databases in multiple U.S. states. It’s affecting this election cycle already, as POLITICO first reported Saturday that the presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump was hacked, a breach the campaign attributed to Iran.”
And this:
“If you don’t think this kind of place is running 24/7 in China, Russia, you’re kidding yourselves,” Hursti said, gesturing around the room of voting equipment.”
That’s the danger, you see. Russia, China, Iran. What I want to know is where the hell is North Korea? We’d better make sure *our* “cybersecurity” experts control the machines. But since we don’t have time to fix things before the coming election, I guess we’ll know who to blame if Trump wins.
To me the big question about this election is how overtly the spooks will involve themselves.
They were overt in 2016 and more so in 2020 with the “Letter from 51 Intelligence Officials”.
The surveillance of Tulsi Gabbard by the TSA might be an indication, so too the raid on Ritter’s house.
The lack of SS protection of RFK Jr and the SS fiasco at Butler look like “Leaving the door open”, something the security agencies have experience with.
According to my PMC friends, those people who shut down the freeway “should all be clubbed like Rodney King was.” Yes, one guy actually said that.
I’m not sure if these people read anything outside their self made bubble, or they are just stupid. It’s like they have no clue what is going on over there. Or maybe they do and don’t care. They think Israel is just defending themselves and are squeaky clean in all this. They vehemently reject genocide, or the current administrations hand in all this.
Amazing
>I’m not sure if these people read anything outside their self made bubble, or they are just stupid. It’s like they have no clue what is going on over there
I would suggest it’s both…
Most likely.
They even go as far as saying the Palestinian protesters are doing this for Trump because this hurts Harris. I guess it’s tough enough to be stupid and live in an echo chamber, but dealing with stage 10 TDS, and defending the Biden/Harris administration as one who can do no wrong is a tough job for sure.
I’m puzzled as to the goals of these protesters. I don’t understand how making lots of people miserable and endangering the lives of some makes others sympathetic to their cause. When they blocked the Bay Bridge they caused several medical problems, missed surgeries, infants without food and such.
Besides, the people whose lives they put at risk have no power to help them. If they want to affect Israel’s ability to wage war then go after their funding. Go talk to Speaker of the House Johnson and have him pass a bill cutting funding to Israel. The House controls funding, not people stuck in traffic.
But maybe they don’t care about Palestinians. Maybe they have some other agenda I haven’t sussed out yet.
>>>But maybe they don’t care about Palestinians. Maybe they have some other agenda I haven’t sussed out yet.
It has been suggested that protests like these are meant to discredit what the protesters are protesting against. The various three letter agencies have a lot of reach into and therefore easy manipulation of all these movements. This is a reason for how all the movements after the Civil Rights Movement have all been failures.
Re: The Big Heat
During our time in hell recently over a fortnight, when it was 112 here @ 1,000 feet, it was 98 degrees @ 7,800 feet in Mineral King Valley, a niggardly decrease of 2 degrees per 1,000 feet of altitude gained, compared to the usually reliable near 3.5 degrees difference.
We don’t have glaciers to speak of here, so it only affects flora & fauna up top making a living in that everything on this good orb is used to tolerances. It allows us to grow food in a certain time of the year reliably when temperatures and weather conditions are just right, and its similar for denizens in the higher heights-which in no way or how know what 98 degrees must feel like, as it was a by-product of our heat dome, and the one in Europe causing such prolonged high temps in mountains with glaciers.
Its pretty obvious that we’re gonna bake, and going higher doesn’t seem to be the solution, while going lower in unchanged and easier.
Who knew that a circa 1961 fallout shelter in case the reds pushed the button down, would make for a most excellent heat fallout shelter?
Look at the bright side. If Biden has his way you may get to use that fallout shelter for its intended purpose after all. Be the only person in your town with a fallout shelter. And after WW3 breaks out, end up being the only person in your town.
I feel safer than most, for who would willingly waste a perfectly good nuke on Fresno?
Because it is Fresno?
By the way, what happened to Fresno Dan (if I don’t have his name right, I apologize) and his wife and his bunny slippers? Haven’t heard from him in months.
I hope he’s all right, but I remember his health problems…
Re store tracking–since I hang out at Walmart from time to time i can report that their once wide open store wifi was recently switched to a system where you have to establish an account that is confirmed via phone text–identity harvesting 101. And even without this it’s likely that the other store wifi systems with a terms of service check page are tracking the sites you visit while online. Therefore it’s a good thing that no national governments are threatening to monitor online activity and make pre-crime arrests. Oh wait.
Of course all that free wifi is useful and a great convenience so we have to decide how much of our privacy is worth defending. But bluetooth at least should certainly be kept off unless you are using a bluetooth accessory.
Ozempic: I have a friend (Portland, Oregon area) who is dying of stomach cancer/final stage. He’s 72 and was always quite heavy and unsurprisingly developed type 2 diabetes and was put on Ozempic. Anyway, one of his Oncologists suggested that Ozempic may have contributed to the cancer.
I guess/perhaps they’re seeing an increase in stomach cancer with the increase usage of Ozempic type drugs. Sure hope not.
Drives me nuts that we haven’t been screaming from the rooftops for the past 30+ years that you DON’T WANT DIABETES!!!!!! So So So depressing how many obese people there are today. Stay Healthy! Peace!
I enthusiastically second the endorsement of Scott Alexander’s ozempic post. It is a challenging read though and definitely not for everybody.
Over a year ago he did a related one which also was really great.
Semaglutidonomics
Scott’s average post is way too tedious to mess with but his all time top ten is as good as anybody’s.
Sheep in sweaters: they’ve been groomed to perfection and are being kept clean and tidy for the competition.
Re: Protesters with IfNotNow have blocked off the 405 freeway in West LA….
For those not familiar with the area, it’s near the UCLA campus and would disrupt the travel of some of the wealthier citizens.
Not just wealthy–it is one of the busiest freeways in the area, transited by all manner of people. (NB: I commute via 405, although only twice a week.)
“The Paris Olympics is the first Games that let COVID run free, and it impacted how the event played out”
On health grounds alone, I think that the Paris Olympics will be seen as a fiasco. If professional athletes develop Long Covid from these games wrecking their careers, will they seek to sue the OIC and the Parisian officials? The attitude seems to have been to treat Covid just like the flu. So we see now how that worked out. There was also an element of gaslighting going on. When some athletes were vomiting their guts out after swimming in the Seine, people were saying that this happened all the time with triathlon athletes – until triathlon athletes themselves said that they had never seen this happen before. I wonder if they will try the same strategy in LA in 2028.
Irish swimmer Daniel Wiffen, who was scheduled to be the flag bearer for the closing ceremonies, missed the ceremony because he was at the hospital. He had medals in indoor swimming, but had competed in the 10k open water swim in the Seine the day before the ceremony for the first time. A German swimmer in the women’s 10K on the same day posted that she was vomiting and had diarrhea, but did not go to the hospital.
While Wiffen didn’t blame the Seine, Leonie Beck did. Others competing blew off the idea, but considering how they didn’t take Covid seriously that was to be expected.
This was long after the triathlon proved to be so contentious so the disregard for athletes health obviously was just SOP.
And in other news, an apparently common virus (parvovirus B19V, dubbed “slapped cheek” virus) has been wreaking havoc in Europe and is now headed to the USA.
The interesting aspects:
1) It is transmitted via “respiratory droplets” — whatever that means. In any case, yet another illness caught by breathing.
2) It has been causing between 3.5 and 6.6 times higher rates of infection than in the years before.
3) Apparently, “it’s unclear what is driving the B19V outbreak”.
Parvovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, monkeypox — why the sudden flare-up of respiratory illnesses at unprecedented levels of infection in the past few years? Might there be some common cause? ‘Tis a mystery!
i stumbled across these guys last night. very interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/@neutralitystudies
if they have already been covered here, my apologies.
I found him in the last month too but haven’t yet linked to any of his talks in Links (because way too many YouTubers and videos slower to digest than text, so I am pretty stringent) but yes, I liked the IIRC two I heard so far.
Modern warfare is incredibly deadly. Do not start a war. Because proportionality is at the core of military necessity, if you start a war, the value assigned to non-combatants plummets. During the Iraq War, the Pentagon dialed-in the non-combatant value at “29”. More than 29 civilians killed during an operation to kill or capture one HVT is not acceptable. [Israel’s wartime NCV is lower, meaning fewer civilian casualties are acceptable, with a couple of carve-outs for several leaders.] Let’s say you did not start a war. In peace time, counter-terror operations have NCVs set at “1”. Safer for everybody, no?
Look at Yemen, suffered the largest outbreak of cholera ever recorded because investment earmarked for water and sewer infrastructure is being launched at merchant sailors. Children suffer malnutrition because of disease flowing in the streets, no matter how much aid is sent. In the Houthi’s war against the West, the Houthi set the effective NCV at “50,000”, or so. Responsibility for mass death is conveniently placed squarely on the will of the deity.
There is no fundamental difference between a successful “military operation” and an “atrocity”, only whether a participant considers himself the victor, or not, post facto. “Special Military Operation” might be the biggest whopper of them all. Not even Hamas could be that callous and boring — someone can be a luckier person than somebody else, not having to look down a barrel everyday, but don’t kid yourself, there are no “better” people out there.
“Special Military Operation” might be the biggest whopper of them all.
You should have a look at the bloody colonial wars of independence (which regularly exhibited genocidal levels of violence by colonial powers): the “Malayan Emergency” (in Malaysia, of course), the “Aden Emergency” (Yemen), the “Kenya Emergency” (aka Mau-Mau rebellion), the “Pacification Operation” (in Algeria), the “Police Actions” (in Indonesia), etc.
Plenty of euphemisms to avoid calling a war by its name.
Especially since the Special Military Operation does have a very specific military and political meaning (or definition) in Russian usage. But one would need to know one’s topic in order to understand that. Just following MSM is not enough, a book or two is required.
Now, in the same geographical area as SMO there was an Anti-Terrorist Operation running 2014-2022, which was an euphemism for a civil war.
To be frank, that SMO term is casuistry pure and simple. What is happening in Ukraine is a war. At least there is “military” in the expression — contrarily to other euphemisms.
In fact, calling a war “anti-terrorist operation”, or “police action”, or “pacification operation” or whatever betrays the intent to eschew laws and conventions applicable because of the formal status of war: prisoners no longer subject to pesky Geneva conventions — but rather to the national criminal code and special-purpose decrees of the government; no inspections by the Red Cross; being able to rely upon chemical means (e.g. incapacitating gases) prohibited under the laws of war but authorized for police operations; etc.
> that SMO term is casuistry pure and simple
More than casuistry; I think there were domestic political considerations in that within RF law, the SMO could not employ conscript troops beyond the borders of RF. Only soldiers with longer-term service contracts could be employed.
I don’t know for sure, but it seems plausible that this distinction may have made the intervention more politically palatable to the people of RF, and conceivably that was part of the reason for designating the intervention a SMO rather than something more robust that would have permitted the deployment of conscript troops into Ukraine.
If also limited the operational options. I think VVP genuinely was trying in 2022 to compel a negotiated settlement that would prevent future Ukrainian accession to NATO. Given that RF was and is strong enough to compel that outcome, and that outcome is non-negotiable for RF, it would have been better for the Istanbul negotiations to have led to an early end to the conflict.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel uses casualty figures for other wars as justification for the Gaza genocide, perhaps they’ll even cite anything less than 6 million as less than genocide.
And likewise every war will point to other wars as precedent.
As expected at the Paris Ozempics, Americans did well at weight lifting, with a lass from Oshkosh dropping a stone in the fortnight and a farmer from the Midwest famished, but not hungry after garnering the gold in the Poundthion event.
Quite an interesting juxtaposition between Craig Murray’s piece on facing the reality of the true evil nature of our governments, and the RAND report fearing that if people learn the reality then the financial system will be impacted.
Of course these are connected. The dollar platform is the bedrock upon which the western governments are built. The true functions of these institutions is preserving the privileges of the wealthy. Through history the best strategy for doing this was to ensure hoi polloi have a tolerable life. Evidently they’ve decided this is too expensive, or insufficiently profitable. But regardless of reason the writing is on the wall. The financial system must be disrupted for change to occur. Unfortunate that it has come to this, but it is a chosen fate. Ironically enough, the governments are doing it to themselves.
Why VCs love obnoxious founders – Business Insider
If somebody has cut a lot of corners illegally, they want to surround themselves and uplift others that do the same thing. It’s all about staying out of jail.
They can keep all the other justifications.
It’s been near two years since my friend David remarked “Ya know Tom, living in the Evil Empire sucks”.
That’s not because the Empire is brutal and violent, All Empires are.
It’s because the leaders of the West, exemplified by the USA, are historically incompetent , corrupt and depraved.
Their stupidity and greed are very likely to end all Human life, perhaps in the next few days.
These people make the Habsburgs look like freaking geniuses and the average pimp look like a moral exemplar.
Enjoy the beauty today brings you, for today is all we have.
A funny thing that keeps coming back to me is that Rome’s vassals were deathly afraid of harming Saul of Tarsus because he was a Roman citizen. That’s an empire well-run: your underlings are afraid to harm your subjects, even when the subjects are subversives, because the empire looks askance upon vassals daring to mistreat imperial citizens and is happy to put them in their place (I can bring up the Don Pacifico Affair as the other example, I suppose).
The thing that’s especially striking about US Empire is that it not only does not care if the alleged vassals infringe upon the rights of American citizens, it actively seeks assistance from vassals to sidestep the rights and restrictions in US Constitution and laws. If the vassals don’t respect the dignity of the empire’s own citizens, that’s an empire that commands no respect and is damned to a short life. If the rulers of the empire actively enlist the vassals to attack their own domestic foes in manners forbidden under domestic laws, they don’t know the first thing about empiring. So we are ruled by imperialists who don’t know anything about empiring (and don’t even realize that they are running an empire.)
Imagine a mafia don that enlists hitmen from another gang to eliminate potential threats within their own gang…. Can you imagine a real mob that can survive doing that? The only thing that’s worse than an evil empire is an evil empire that commands no respect from the vassals.
“Study finds 94% of business spreadsheets have critical errors”
And here’s to the dialogue, that started the study:
“Pops, what do you do at work?”
“I sit in front of a computer all day long and rape excel spreadsheets”
Re Gaza and IT
NC readers are well versed re Amazon cloud services and its link with the CIA.
Well, let’s add to that illustrious resume, shall we. A few random thoughts occurred while perusing the article linked below. a. Not surprised that VCs are lining up to fund companies looking to cash in on that sweet MIC cash given AWS’s recent product placement in the service of genocide. b. IDF making use of AWS servers makes me wonder how USA police, and for that matter other nations PDs who have employed Israel police trainers, will apply lessons-learned-in-war vis-a-vis the cloud-based services mentioned in the link on non-mideast civilian centers.
Following are some quotes…
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/amazon-israeli-military/
Col. Racheli Dembinsky confirmed publicly for the first time that the Israeli army is using cloud storage and artificial intelligence services provided by civilian tech giants in its ongoing onslaught on the Gaza Strip…the onset of the Israeli army’s ground invasion of Gaza in late October 2023, she continued, the internal military systems quickly became overloaded…cloud services offered by major tech firms allowed the army to purchase unlimited storage and processing servers at the click of a button…
…a new investigation by +972 and Local Call can reveal that the Israeli army has in fact stored some intelligence information collected via the mass surveillance of Gaza’s population on servers managed by Amazon’s AWS. The investigation can also reveal that certain cloud providers supplied a wealth of AI capabilities and services to Israeli army units since the start of the Gaza war. According to multiple sources, the exponential capacity of the AWS public cloud system allows the army to have “endless storage” for holding intelligence on almost “everyone” in Gaza.
One thing I wonder is, especially if the servers are located in US jurisdiction, whether US govt entity has authority over them. Can, say, Congress suebpoena their contents, at least in theory, without botheting to go through the Israelis?
Hats off to those who pulled off this 1st-class trolling: https://x.com/ByDonkeys/status/1823481596185616717
I don’t think that they could have counted on Truss wearing such a perfect shade of green!
“The South Caucasus in Washington’s Playbook” —
There is a fundamental problem with all this talk about creating a transportation corridor from Central Asia via the south Caucasus to bypass Russia: all of these routes must at some point traverse the Caspian Sea, which is de facto a Russian-Iranian lake.
You cannot pick your relatives (except for your spouse), and you cannot pick your geography (though you can conquer new lands). I simply don’t see that any of these let’s-bypass-evil-Russia schemes pencil out in the real world.
The clever schemers in DC and Brussels need to brush up on their geography. I.e., learn to read maps.
The ultimate point of ignorance exhibited by those schemers in DC, Brussels, the City of London and Wall St. is the fact that you can walk from Paris to Beijing, but you can’t walk to either point from the USA.
One would think that eventually that would become important to know.
Blinken and Sullivan walking from France
Clear to Beijing across all that expanse
Did their World Island tour
Make these fools more mature?
Did they learn anything? Not a chance!
Netenyahu’s smartest move here is to agree to a ceasefire before Iran’s counterattack, then declare the counterattack as voiding the ceasefire and restarting the ethnic cleansing all over again. I suspect this will be argued regardless if an agreement is made or not.
> Japan PM Fumio Kishida quits LDP leadership race as low ratings, scandals take toll
LDP has always had funding scandals. Kishida was seen as too interested in posing on the international stage and giving out too much money to Ukraine when pensioners (core LDP base) were suffering from cost of living pressures. And siding with West against Russia meant high energy prices and losing any chance of getting back the Kuril Is which lost Kishida the hard Right. A foreign focus also distracted Kishida from the Noto earthquake which became a recovery debacle.
Kishida had a lower approval rating than Suga..
Ozempic:”Great piece for many reasons”
what are some of those reasons?I thought it as hyped and unlikely to be correct
Preventing heart disease:” a great regulatory path at FDA for approval just for LDL cholesterol lowering and inclisiran is on the market and the phase three outcomes data has not yet been reported because there is a wide appreciation that LDL cholesterol lowering is a pretty good surrogate for cardiovascular disease risk lowering. ”
On the market without phase 3 outcomes?
I am sure nothing could go wrong….