The ancestor of all modern birds probably had iridescent feathers ScienceDaily (Kevin W)
The sports where women outperform men BBC (Dr. Kevin)
Has pop music got less melodic? I’ve immersed myself in 70 years of hits – this is what I’ve found Guardian (Kevin W)
This 112-Year-Old NYC Icon’s Secret to Living Forever Is Pretty Easy Vice
#COVID-19
Disappearing Seats, Defiant Eateries and the End of an Era: Outdoor Dining Deadline Arrives THE CITY. As in Covid “dining sheds” which often were partly or fully enclosed and so did nada to reduce Covid risk.
Climate/Environment
US to invest $2.2 billion to overhaul national power grid Reuters (Kevin W). First, the amount sounds like couch lint. Second, how much will wind up paying for what utilities would have done anyhow?
Cheaper, Faster, Cleaner: Scientists Have Developed the World’s First Anode-Free Sodium Battery SciTech Daily (Chuck L)
Rising rates of cancer in young people prompt hunt for environmental culprit Financial Times
EPA Takes Emergency Action To Stop Use of Dangerous Pesticide Washington Post
China?
South China Sea: Chinese military holds joint patrol around Scarborough Shoal South China Morning Post
Giorgia Meloni and Europe’s incoherence over China Asia Times (Kevin W)
US, China compete to study water on the moon: Why that matters for future missions Des Moines Register. Robin K: “China’s moon water breakthrough came as NASA shuttered VIPER program.”
The Koreas
Read North Korea’s Official Announcement as it Forward Deploys 1000 Manoeuvrable Solid Fuelled Precision Guided Missiles Military Watch
Thai Constitutional Court dissolves progressive Move Forward Party Aljazeera
Africa
How PMC Wagner Got SMOKED in Africa History Legends, YouTube
Bangladesh
Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus to head Bangladesh’s interim government Guardian. Hoo boy. See this takedown of microcredit.
Old Blighty
UK Travel Alerts Issued Worldwide Asia Today
Top prosecutor considers terrorism charges over riots, as more suspects face court BBC. The BBC made it extremely difficult to access this story.The site initially goes for me to my bookmark, bbc.co.uk, so I very briefly see the UK headlines. Then it quickly flips to bbc.com with a different landing page. On bbc.com, when I searched on “prosecutor terrorism riots,” this article did not come up. I had to load bbc.co.uk 6 times and click on the headline. Even then it usually flipped to the bbc.com landing page first, but I finally got to the article.
Anglo-Italian arms firm Leonardo embroiled in Indonesia corruption scandal Declassified
Gaza
Hamas chooses Yahya Sinwar as new leader following Haniyeh killing Middle East Eye. Recall Haniyeh was moderate…so the Hamas hardliners winding up in a stronger position looks to have been an intended outcome.
Israel’s Bomb Shelters Are Last Line of Defense as Iran Strike Looms Wall Street Journal
Hezbollah drones strike Israel; 12 killed in Israeli raids on West Bank Aljazeera
Hiroshima commemoration and the genocide in Gaza: discussion on Iran’s Press TV Gilbert Doctorow
Gaza As A New(?) Western Method To Wage War Moon of Alabama (Kevin W)
Syraqistan
The Yemen deal: Riyadh capitulates, Washington loses leverage The Cradle (Chuck L)
New Not-So-Cold War
What the Ukraine war has in common with Vietnam Responsible Statecraft
800,000 Ukrainians Have Gone ‘Underground’ To Dodge Draft – MP RT. We reported some months ago (largely hoisting one of the few in-depth discussion of current economic conditions in Ukraine) that the Ukraine government had put a tight cordon on its borders. Hence hiding as opposed to fleeing.
Zelenskyy extends mobilization, martial law by another 90 days in Ukraine Anadolu Agency
US warns Turkey of ‘consequences’ over military-linked exports to Russia Financial Times
🚨🇺🇦Uprisings against Zelensky in the ethnically Polish city of Kovel in Western Ukraine. Is this Poland's chance to annexe it's former territory?
The uprising in Kovel and the sabotage, partisan activities such as etting military recruitment cars on fire will seem like… pic.twitter.com/L96woKEPfi
— Aussie Cossack (@aussiecossack) August 4, 2024
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Israeli Study Shows Smartwatches Can Warn You Have COVID or a Migraine Is About to Happen Haaretz (ma). IMHO the real utility is the Mossad getting your data.
Imperial Collapse Watch
The U.S. Faces Multiple Crises: Who is Running the Government? Glenn Greenwald
Now Labour is the incumbent Single Transferable Party of government what chance is there for the Left? Richard Murphy. Colonel Smithers highlights big shout out to Aurelien.
Kamala
Kamala Harris introduces running mate Tim Walz at raucous Philadelphia rally Guardian
‘Republicans for Harris’ rallies members of GOP to campaign for Democratic ticket Iowa Capital Dispatch (Robin K)
IMHO important because it speaks to poor staff work:
Remember that time Kamala Harris discovered that electricity doesn’t have a smell and then held onto the plug as if she was pumping gas into the car?
Today feels like a good day to re-share one of the great moments in political history.pic.twitter.com/7DHykmdFfo
— Mark Harris (@itismarkharris) July 3, 2024
The Republican talking points v. Walz:
Welcome to the race, Tim Walz!
Let’s make sure America knows who you are.
You helped ignite the George Floyd riots, the worst the country had seen in decades. While Minneapolis burned, you stalled on deploying the National Guard for an entire day, blaming the city for not…
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 6, 2024
Tim Walz was arrested for driving 96 mph in a 55-mph zone, then blew a .128. That's really bad, but just as bad is that he's lied about it ever since. He's repeatedly claimed he wasn't even drunk, and has instead blamed it all on him being deaf. But the court transcripts tell a… pic.twitter.com/D1CL13mWMA
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 6, 2024
Li asks, “Did they vet this guy?”
𝐄𝐗𝐂 – 𝐕𝐏 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐓𝐢𝐦 𝐖𝐚𝐥𝐳 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐩’𝐬 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟗 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.
He spoke alongside the president of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with… pic.twitter.com/IRqlV1Qb7o
— Natalie Winters (@nataliegwinters) August 6, 2024
Democrats en déshabillé
“Squad” Rep. Cori Bush loses her Democratic primary Politico
Governor Newsom is effectively putting Oakland's law enforcement under state trusteeship, sending in CHP to do the job of a local force unable to do basic police work, and National Guard lawyers to make the prosecutions the county DA refuses to make. https://t.co/KWQBhmNV6e
— Leighton 明 Woodhouse (@lwoodhouse) August 6, 2024
Trump Assassination Post Mortem
BREAKING: @HawleyMO says @SecretService whistleblowers tell him that the lead agent on the Trump Butler job was NOT enforcing the normal security protocols that day and she wasn’t having ID’s checked that day. He describes it as a free-for-all and says as we speak, this lead… pic.twitter.com/g0bR55KPas
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) August 6, 2024
Our No Longer Free Press
The GARMs Race: The House Moves Forward With its Investigation of Blacklisting Company Jonathan Turley. NewGuard picked on some of the wrong people.
NEW: Axios is laying off 50 people across the company. CEO @JimVandeHei just sent out this note — which says the layoffs are because of “changes in the media business” pic.twitter.com/lLVemNFh0N
— Katie Robertson (@katie_robertson) August 6, 2024
Elon Musk’s X sues coalition of advertisers over boycott The Hill (Kevin W). Of course, freedom of speech exists only in a government context, as in officials or agencies not suppressing speech. But the antitrust angle here is clever. If it is well enough argued, he could get past summary judgement and get to root around in the advertisers’ communications. No only might he encounter plenty of salaciously ugly stuff, but there might be some evidence of collusion with governments.
Mr. Market Has a Sad
Tokyo stocks brace for further volatility after biggest single-day jump Nikkei
A tale of two bubbles Asia Times
Antitrust
The Biggest Loser in Google Search Ruling Could Be Mozilla and Firefox Fortune
Apple Thinks Bing is Pretty Bad The Verge. From the ruling in the Google anti-trust case.
Falling Down Boeing Airplanes….and More!
It Turns Out Boeing’s Derelict Starliner Is Unable to Fly Without a Crew on Board Futurism (BC)
NASA likely to significantly delay the launch of Crew 9 due to Starliner issues ars technica (BC)
The Bezzle
Intel: Our balance sheet is a smoking ruin, but we think our new chips work The Register
Class Warfare
U.S. households are piling on record credit card debt, says Fed report Yahoo! Finance (Kevin W)
Antidote du jour. Tracie H: “While visiting the San Diego Botanic Garden; peering from a pond strewn with many little yellow flower petals, was this little prince-to-be, waiting for his kiss.”
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Comments are closed.
PLASTIC CRAP
(melody borrowed from Nashville Cats by The Lovin’ Spoonful)
Plastic Crap — a trillion jugs and bottles
Plastic Crap — in paint and plumbing, too
Plastic Crap — in every newborn baby
Plastic Crap — in all the food you chew . . .
Well, there’s polystyrene and silicone n’ polyester pieces in plastic
There are polymers in your underpants and the ink on your phone bill
Yeah, there’s a hunnerd-n-ten large rivers on Earth all smothered in plastic
Mount Everest has plastic snow and it chokes all of our landfills
Yeah, they use fresh benzene hydrocarbons to make lubricants it’s easy to see why
Any fool can muddle through making new plastic goo when the goop never runs dry
And it needs to be said — every bit of that plastic hits the ocean or landfill
On Earth where’s the people to clean it? So I say, ‘Well, I will.’
(Clean up that)
Plastic Crap — a trillion jugs and bottles
Plastic Crap — in paint and plumbing, too
Plastic Crap — in every newborn baby
Plastic Crap — in all the food you chew . . .
Well, Earth Day happened anybody can see we’re quite at a standstill
It’s a fight we’re losing if we can’t unite and every step of it uphill
Plastic in our blood, in our brains, our bones, this is crazy fantastic
I dunno if you’ve heard, this is really absurd, but the stratosphere is chock full of plastic
Plastic Crap — a trillion jugs and bottles
Plastic Crap — in paint and plumbing, too
Plastic Crap — in every newborn baby
Plastic Crap — in all the food you chew . . .
Chuck it . . .
Yeah! Boycott those enormous red, blue, yellow, green, plastic jugs filled with laundry detergent and softener! Apparently they are not recycled but go direct from recycling bins to land (or sea) fill. Buy laundry powder! In cardboard boxes! Back to the 1940’s!
Top prosecutor considers terrorism charges over riots, as more suspects face court BBC.
Mercouris, Duran, expressed his opinion that at least in London, the media is exaggerating and hyping riots and in addition being totally inappropriate in linking them to terrorism. In his opinion, the point is that the ground work is being laid for the government to seize additional powers to crush legitimate dissent against government policy which has been for sometime reducing the standard of living of most citizens.
I find myself agreeing here as I remember the Brixton riots being much worse. But when I went to give a link, Google coughed up several years when there were riots in Brixton. I notice that this time that not only is Starmer talking tough, he keeps on talking about the internet as that will have to be heavily monitored and censored as well. Damn, but Starmer is starting to remind me of Chancellor Adam Sutler from “V is for Vendetta.”
He’s actually sounding like a modernized Joseph Goebbels.
Plus, remember this one? “War is the health of the State.”
With a remarkably thin/non-existent basis of electoral support coupled with a massive Commons majority, Starmer is preparing for major assaults to establish Labor’s right to exercise what Starmer, Reeves, Streeting, Cooper, Kendall, Lammy and Healey have in mind by cutting back on the public sector whilst increasing investment evermore deeply in failed economic, immigration, trade, military,and foreign policies.
Not unexpectedly, given Starmer’s spooky detachment from reality, there seems to be a real belief that repression is the necessary key to Labour’s maintenance of power during a period of internal and external collapse and the recent disturbances are but the starting point reflecting conspiratorial right wing political opposition rather than an explosion of sheer outrage at the murder of three innocent little girls supported by ordinary people who followed the lead offered by a minority of bad actors using social media.
Starmer and his colleagues failed at national and constituenct level to respond effectively and empathically to the people’s shock and disgust at this crime and left it to the social media warriors and the police to cope with the public’s reaction to the horror. With the country as tense as I have ever experienced it, would a Callaghan or a Wilson, a Heath, Thatcher or a Major have responded with so little concern for the likely public revulsion at this act and the unwillingness to give any details of the alleged perpertrator’s background which might have stopped so many from leaping to their own conclusions based on false assumptions?
This is not a government capable of healing a country so desperately injured over the past half-century. All it offers is a state of exception.
Starmer turned Labour hard-line Zionist. That means his party and the EDL have something in common: support from Israeli and Zionist interests.
Meanwhile Craig Murray reports how cops are actively trying to stop him and others from defending communities from Tommy’s thugs.
Exactly how the game is played. Tommy Robinson is also heavily Zionist supporting and has been treated extraordinarily well by UK courts in a way that allowed to him to exit Britain and remain free to cause more trouble and stir more Islamophobia. The UK establishment is very good at causing/making up problems abroad to be “fixed” by more Western intervention, why would it not be doing the same at home. Starmer is the perfect choice to impose a greater level of authoritarian rule as he continues with austerity for the many and the looting of the state for the rich, while redirecting more money to a useless military.
UK governments having been swayed by dissent since… never. They already have enough powers to not really care at all what people want.
Gilets jaunes protested against government policies and there was no doubt about it. These morons beat up people with different skin color or wrong passport, and try to burn buildings they know are hosting foreigners. I guess the point is to terrorize migrants enough to get rid of them, eh?
A lynching mob is not a protest, it’s a lynching mob, and it should be dealt with as such: round them up and lock them in. And throw the key away, because if you want to change policy, first thing you need is the the rule of law. Without it there’s no law, and without law there’s no policy.
See Novara media below for a decidedly different take.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YWZ8tLL_HQ
‘Charlie Kirk
@charliekirk11
Tim Walz was arrested for driving 96 mph in a 55-mph zone, then blew a .128. That’s really bad, but just as bad is that he’s lied about it ever since. He’s repeatedly claimed he wasn’t even drunk, and has instead blamed it all on him being deaf. But the court transcripts tell a different story.’
Being a drunk driver and speeding at nearly twice the amount of speed that you are supposed to be doing is pretty bad. But lying your face of repeatedly when he was tested and it actually went to court is unforgivable. But if we are going to be honest, George Bush also was caught drunk driving and spent the night in jail. Bonus points as he had his sister in the car at the time. But that story got deep-sixed by a friendly media so perhaps Walz was hoping for the same treatment.
So Walz is just another lying corrupt politician funded by oligarchs. Harris would not be allowed to pick anyone that isn’t, at least she didn’t pick the uber-Zionist alternative – perhaps that would have been a bridge too far to have the presidential candidate married to a Zionist and the vp candidate a full on Zionist. Twitter is already full of Zionists complaining her choice was anti-semitic!
With the genocide going on in Gaza right now, having a Veep that is ex-IDF was just a bridge too far. So they went with a guy that looks like an uncle.
That was a rather brief honeymoon. It shouldn’t come as a shock if Walz is just another …….career politician. BTW, if Johnny q public blows a 128 he’s gonna be walking to work for a stretch.
> Charlie Kirk
Really?
Just as with, say, Donna Brazile on any thing, I’d want to see the hard evidentiary base for the claim (which will be if it’s decent oppo, unlike the couch thing).
The value add of both Brazile and Kirk is negligible, because both of them are gonna say what they have to say, constantly throwing up chaff and gobbets, and I do mean “throwing up.”
I really hope the Trump/Vance surrogates don’t keep this stupid, trivial line of attack up. There are plenty more substantive ways to take walz down and they should get on them.
I’d start with walz’s recent clever “quip”:
And if they want to talk about “lying,” I’d go with the candidate herself, who’s been pretending for four years that the non compos mentis “president” has actually been running the country.
I mean seriously, that DUI was 30 years ago. Stop wasting time and ammunition. It just makes them look dumb and unserious.
If the DUI led to sobriety, which it seems to have done, then I don’t see an issue. A.A. says: “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Agreed on substance. Not that the technical aspects of oppo aren’t fascinating, but as far as getting sucked in to the messaging… No.
Imo she picked the best on offer. And maybe veering away from Shapiro is dem thinking all in for israel is a vote loser, at least in the swings. Hope that thought spreads among those that cheered Netanyahu.
Glad to hear he learned from the arrest.
I guess this is a cultural thing. If you grow up in the country (not close to a major city) there’s less traffic and young people, myself included, want to know just how fast their car can really go. Plus alcohol.
Definitely a guy thing and frankly, if you grew up in the country and have never driven over 100mph, I don’t know you, have no clue what you’re about.
Urban media soils itself everytime they get their hands on a story like this. Speeding and DUIs are very common in rural areas. If they are disqualifying…srsly, you’re throwing out a very large number of citizens because very few DUIs get caught. So few it’s considered to be a matter of bad luck (if you were really drunk you would have gone into a ditch miles ago…).
If this is disqualifying, I’m living in the wrong country. Drug laws were used to disqualify huge numbers of potential leaders and since the war on drugs let up, the war on DUIs has escalated.
I do not want a POTUS who’s never been drunk or driven too fast. Not toxic masculinity, just a desire to be led by someone who has actually lived a real life.
It’s the lying about it that is the problem.
And I am sorry, but I have driven over 100 mph too. Doing that while drunk is dangerous. I don’t accept the minimization.
Try driving over 100 mph on a motorcycle. That will scare the politician out of you, the next day, when you realize what you’ve done.
As for fast bikes. This “Ghostrider” in England does seriously risky stuff on the motorway.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Qq_5SlFSw
(The video is not sped up. The person is running at 180 mph for most of the clip.)
I don’t see why they let cars park on the freeway like that…
We lost four out of 164 classmates to high speed drunk driving accidents before graduating but only one to the Vietnam War. Even then when adults lectured us about speeding we always asked, “then why do they make cars that go so fast?”
Government is the captive of industry. No consumers needed faster cars. Then, to go with the faster cars we got bigger trucks with headlights right at normal car driver’s eye level. Money was being made, no problem here! People forget they never wanted bigger vehicles until the headlight issue forced them to go big if only so they could drive at night (a much bigger issue in the country than the well lit cities).
Regulate businesses and products properly and then let’s see if we still have a problem.
Bonus tip: Pay your workers a living wage and let’s see what happens to crime rates.
P.S. Lying is a problem. The more I talk about Walz, the more stories I’m hearing. Still within my comfort zone because he represents a radical upgrade over Harris (who ain’t been elected yet). Biden-Harris administration is not out of the woods and we’re still just one or two ‘big ones’ away from a recordbreaking “October.” (October now a state of mind, politically, not limited to just the actual month thanks to early voting.)
I do not think Walz is a neocon, but I think he lets them do the heavy lifting for him. Still unsure how he would govern if he was ever in the position to lead but the harder I look the more I think the accomplishments he’s being credited with all belong to Flanagan.
Like W Bush in a lot of way!
Got selected for Command Sgt Major, but did not take the education required. Retired as Master Sergeant in time to never deploy for either Gulf War I or GWOT.
A deployment to some cold climate?
Timing or delay to calling up National Guard during Minneapolis riots.
He did teach school and coach football in Mankato, so far south that he probably doesn’t say “Oofduh”.
people whose family members have been killed by drunk drivers generally support strict enforcement.
a country-dwelling friend of mine lost her father when he was killed by a drunk driver when she was 8 years old. her mother was left to raise 7 children on her own. how seriously do we take the cost to her and those children, who grew up deeply scarred adults?
i do not understand how on any level the “really living” experience of driving drunk would make one more fit to perform at governing or anything else, except maybe A.A.
Americans driving into Canada with a DUI on their record within the past 10 years will be turned back, and not allowed entry.
fyi that is considered “Reckless” driving in Minnesota and add in legally drunk and he should have been headed for jail – did read earlier on yahoo that this incident was the last time he ever took a drink after being scolded by his wife –
It’s worth noting there was quite the scandal in Boston, where the cops weren’t bothering to calibrate the breath meters, and innocent people were losing their licenses. The Herald is so bad, you can’t even copy and paste the headline behind the “pay” screen, but here’s the URL:
https://www.bostonherald.com/2023/04/26/massachusetts-misconduct-faulty-breathalyzer-equipment-puts-27000-oui-convictions-at-risk/
This was an issue in Orange County FL as well, and I’m sure other places.
If anyone is interested in the source about allowing babies born to be killed – the below is a start. Doesnt give concrete examples, but its a pretty easy jump to see how repealing laws that required medical treatment of unsuccessfully aborted babies after birth would result in their deaths.
https://www.house.mn.gov/hrd/bs/93/hf0091.pdf
Georgie Bush also got to go permanently AWOL from the military when it became inconvenient to report for duty, speaking of the burying of an “unflattering story.” AWOL after getting snuck into the Texas Air National Huard to evade the Vietnam draft. Just a “controversy,” in the end: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_military_service_controversy But then Michelle-Ma-Belle gave him a nice warm hug and a piece of candy, and all was forgiven. Just a pure friendship, once the polish was applied: https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/24/politics/michelle-obama-george-w-bush-friendship/
> AWOL after getting snuck into the Texas Air National Huard to evade the Vietnam draft
He did indeed. Gary Trudeau offered a $10,000 reward for anybody who would come forward with proof that Bush the Younger actually showed up for duty. Nobody did.
Haven’t watched this one yet so take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, but I used to trust him more before he posted a video which amounts to Zionist propaganda (“Israel is preparing to invade Levanon”, last week). Took “Israeli” claims at face value, and largely made them seem like a vastly superior force to Hezbollah, which has been demonstated to be clearly false.
This is ad hominem. I’ve seen his Ukraine analyses and they have been very good.
I did not recommend the Lebanon video and should not be made responsible for that.
Dima at Military Summary, who is widely cited, regularly makes wild calls. Milbloggers get only partisan sourcing and so have to navigate a very polluted information space.
Israel is preparing to invade Lebanon. I listend to a fair bit of that vid. He shows a pro-Israel slant, which is pervasive across the media, by for instance not treating the pretext of the deaths of Druze children as bullshit. However, the segment repeatedly discussed how effective Hezbollah was and how Israel prepared to deal with that. The Israelis being overly optimistic about their capabilities explains why they are willing to take this bad risk.
I didn’t see anything here that qualify as ad hominem. Furnace specifically pointed to not credible analysis from that channel and said that it made them lose trust in the channel. I don’t see anything said that made you responsible for what gets published on that channel.
There’s a lot of links posted here that people regularly posts analysis and disagreements with. I’m definitely not assuming that you’re responsible in any way for any errors in the linked articles and I assume that for everyone else here who isn’t a concern troll. The links are a service to the community to expose us to views and opinions that we would not otherwise have gotten access to. We’re still supposed to read them critically and point out problems with them as they appear to us.
I do agree with furnace on History Legend. Once I saw him uncritically rely on Israeli sources that are easily discredited and outlandish on their face, I can no longer trust him on any of his sourcing and analysis methods, even if they can still have some value as a check for my more trusted source on a topic. If someone has shown themselves to rely on dishonest information sources on one topic that I know about, it’s hard to trust them on other topics where I’m less knowledgeable and less able to evaluate their accuracy.
Both of you are exhibiting textbook ad hominem arguments. You are BOTH attacking History Legends and refusing to address the accuracy (or not) of his current video. You need to deal with that. Bringing up ONE video from his body of work to try to discredit him IS ad hominem.
Second, you both are exhibiting a second cognitive bias, called halo effect, of requiring people to be all good or all bad. I brought up Dima, who is widly erratic but nevertheless respects. He generally illustrates the problem of milbloggers being hostage to partisan sources. And most milbloggers make lots of bad calls. It goes with the territory.
Discarding an information source based on ONE video, and not the one I highlighted, is classic halo effect. And BTW contrary to you, I found it useful to hear what the Israeli military logic was. So having listened to it just now, I also disagree with your views as to its utility.
Neither I nor furnace commented on the linked video, just our own feelings about the source and the reason why.
As furnace recanted, I’ll stick to just talking about my logic. My basis for doubt isn’t because he had bad personal characteristics or opinions that I disagree with, it is that whenever I see an analyst rely on what should be obviously bad information or bad analytical framework on a topic I do know, that greatly reduces my confidence for their analysis on a topic where I am less knowledgeable and have to rely on their capabilities to collect the right fact sets and make reasonable interpretation of those fact sets.
History Legends might be great on the SMO, but I listened through some really off base analysis on Africa and China (this was before October 7) before deciding that I can’t trust the rigor of his analysis generally, which included Ukraine. I don’t think he was all good before and I don’t think he’s all bad now, but my confidence of his analysis greatly declined based on his performance on those two topics.
While it’s possible and maybe even likely that he’s really good on this one topic and bad when he veers off, and I continue following people who are good/bad on completely unrelated topics (“good” on Covid and “bad” on Palestine) I think geopolitics/military analysis is a sufficiently tightly knitted area that opinionating wrongly/ignorantly on one topic should rightfully diminish my confidence on a related topic.
Thanks for agreeing on the matter! Fact is, I do think my comment was lacking in substance, so I agreed with Yves that it was in poor form. That being said, I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment: my problem is not so much that History Legends showed himself to be a Zionist, which as Yves said often comes with the milbloggers business, but that he did not seem to do his due diligence with regards to “Israeli” claims. Do I believe this invalidates his approach? No. But does that make me be a little more suspicious of any claims he makes? Yes. In fact, I saw his video being recommended by a very pro-palestine twitter account (Middle East Observer), which is why I watched it in the first place—personally, I’ve found that Dima and other commenters’ approach of measuring yards gained daily or weekly felt very insubstantial, so I stopped watching them; I get whatever updates I need from Simplicius the Thinkers, who are god awful in politics, but which I can quickly skim through the new developments on the battlefield.
On that note, we are sorely lacking in commenters who understand politics but who also understand military stuff. My Palestine approach has been from following people who are from the region or have been studying the matter for many years—Amal Saad, Elijah Magnier (sadly I can’t pay for his articles now, but he is unrivaled), and Resistance aligned twitter accounts, such as Ibn Riad, Hussein (EyesonSouth1), Aldanmarki, among others. That has been giving me better confidence on what is actually happening on the ground, as opposed to what mainstream media spins.
*Sigh*
This is still 100% ad hominem. None of this has ANYTHING to do with the link on the Wagner cock-up, which has been criticized by Russia-friendlies as such. You both are accumulating troll points by persisting in bad faith argumentation after having been warned.
Dima is not even remotely known for commentary about the Gaza conflict, so I don’t see how you can praise him for that.
HistoryLegends on Ukraine has been tracking Russia advances and describing the logic and success of various operation over longer time frames than Dima and does so very well.
I also notice neither of you engaged in any good faith manner with HistoryLegends discussion of the Wagner fail.
Yves, this is your website so I’m not going to go against your definition of ad hominem. Noted and will not be repeated.
I think he can be correct on most things but somewhat not with Israel analysis.
Victor Orban is the same. His speech in Tusnad, Romania was really great. However, Hungary was one of the few countries that intervened on behalf of Israel at ICJ, arguing that the occupation is not illegal.
I did find Alex’s analysis on Lebanon weak and biased especially given the inability of IOF to destroy the Hamas fighters in Gaza for 10 months.
You’re right. Thought it was a bad comment after I had posted it. My bad.
Gaza and Southern Lebanon should viewed in the context of assaulting Iwo Jima.
The extent of “dug in” positions!
Gaza is a demonstration.
I recall one Ukraine war video he did a few months ago that described an optimistic outlook for Ukraine frontline forces. My own impression was that he was trying out material from an undisclosed patron. He got reaction in the comments section, and returned to his usual form.
I note he did a long form interview with Daniel Davis last week.
Yves, wrt your BBC web site issues, did you try setting your VPN to UK?
I use a vpn but sometimes when I am physically in Britain and the Vpn is set to London, the BBC website blocks sports videos I try to watch allegedly because I am out of area. The site is capricious, to say the least, sometimes it continuously reloads until you simply give up.
You can’t watch the BBC iPlayer unless you have an account on the BBC and a television license. They seem to go through an awful lot of trouble to keep non-Brits away.
Yves issue wasn’t to do with iPlayer. Just fetching web pages. Her browser redirected once it figured out client location. Hence the flashes as one index page redirects to another but no actual denial of access to the target article page she wanted.
If there’s an embedded video hosted by BBC News (which there is) then as JohnA says above, the BBC is very capricious and a VPN won’t necessarily help. The video is rooted via iPlayer: sometimes the BBC won’t care about iPlayer credentials & where it thinks you are but I have seen myself (living in a UK house with a TV licence) it’ll sometimes demand a declaration (and had been known to require a postcode).
If the BBC have “reasons” to want to present things differently in UK than elsewhere then I have seen the iPlayer bit of the webpage get suspicious of the claimed location and the entire webpage will default to the global edition.
Sometimes repeated requests will give you .co.uk sometimes it definitely won’t.
I’ll add (although you may already know): Thailand blocks the BBC (and The Economist and others) from time to time, especially when there is a story about unmentionable subjects (Lèse-majesté and royals mostly).
Given the dissolution of MFP is a Lèse-majesté story perhaps that’s why?
I’d test it myself but the BBC is permanently blocked in Vietnam.
On the MFP story: LM has long been used as the main weapon to stifle dissent and smear people in Thailand. And how many parties, politicians and governments have been couped or lawfared-out since Thaksin? Can I call it Kafkaesque that even the LM law (Section 112) itself is constitutionally undebatable?
I think this is the correct (non-Fortune) link for the Google/Mozilla link:
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/06/0624251/the-biggest-loser-in-google-search-ruling-could-be-mozilla-and-firefox
For anyone who doubted Hamas’ resolve. They’re ready to struggle until liberation, whatever the cost.
As I believe Nasrallah said yesterday, the last 10 months also showed that the cost of not resisting your oppressors is higher than the extremely high cost of resistance.
I agree it’s their only choice, and further that this time the collective resistance may have a chance, but the cost is already so high that they need to be in a significantly improved situation at the end for it to have been worth the horrendous cost of maybe 250k gazans so far. And far more to come.
Here’s the working link for the Mozilla story in Fortune:
https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/mozilla-firefox-biggest-potential-loser-google-antitrust-search-ruling/
The dog days of summer are here, and with markets looking shaky, and AI looking quite fake, September looms for corporate America:
(Sing to the tune of “Camelot” from the musical. Note that MAD magazine did a parody of this back in the 50’s but an Internet search did not find any copies. If anyone has those please post!)
Can a lot
It’s true! It’s true! The street has made it clear
Our profits must be maximized all year
A law was made a distant moon ago here
Our profit margins cannot be too hot
But when we start to burn through cash in dog years
We’ll can a lot
Confession is forbidden ’til December
Our stock options we’ll exit on the dot
By order, CFO says: cut expenses
We’ll can a lot
Can a lot! Can a lot!
You might be fired by AI
But when we can a lot, can a lot
There’s just no point to asking why
Operations may be running on a shoestring
Our IT systems run by grace of God
In short, we’re simply caught
We’re in a real tight spot
For happy life-altering my dear
So, hear! We’ll can a lot
Can a lot! Can a lot!
I know it gives a person pause
But when we can a lot, can a lot
We’ll not break age discrimination laws
The rumors never end on social media
By nine a.m. the all-hands must appear
In short we’re simply caught in
An economic drought
For happy life-altering my dear
So hear! We’ll can-a-LOT!
Lol! I’ll be canning tomatoes this week.
HaHa, mrsyk. I thought ChrisFromGa was writing a paean to the joys of preserving! It’s that time of year here in Chautauqua County, NY. We water-bathed 6 pints of peach jam yesterday, and the dehydrator was running last night to dry a batch of peach slices.
Rewriting the lyrics to reflect the joys of canning vegetables and fruits is an exercise left to the reader. I sense a lot of humor potential on the laugh-o-meter.
“Scam a lot” is another good candidate.
mmmm, peaches. Ours are close. We like to make peach salsa.
Anglo-Italian arms firm caught up in Indonesian scandal. The truly bumptious and corrupt details are in the center of the article, mentioning that President Joko Widodo didn’t want the helicopter, nor did the army chief, yet these clowns went ahead anyway.
But: Local color. Leonardo comes up regularly in Italy. Defense minister Guido Crosetto, who is also from the Undisclosed Region, has some rather too-interesting ties to Leonardo.
From his English-language Wiki entry:
Crosetto became minister of defense in October 2023. Hmmmm.
And, yes, Leonardo is named after that Leonardo, all-around genius and gay icon. Appropriating Leonardo is just part of the vulgarity of the times (see: Olympics, “Christian” / fatso Dionysos / kerfuffle / rissa).
Are you sure that they were not referencing “Fat Leonard” instead? It would be more fitting-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Leonard_scandal
Nice one Rev, digging that out of the memory hole. Check out Judge dismisses felony convictions of 5 retired U.S. Navy officers in “Fat Leonard” bribery case , May 21, 2024, CBS News, for “consequences”. (Spoiler alert) $100 fines.
Leonardo is quite the McKinsey gravy train, from my Italian colleagues’ friends….
‘Aussie Cossack
@aussiecossack
🚨🇺🇦Uprisings against Zelensky in the ethnically Polish city of Kovel in Western Ukraine. Is this Poland’s chance to annexe it’s former territory? The uprising in Kovel and the sabotage, partisan activities such as setting military recruitment cars on fire will seem like kindergarten. They will start to kill each other. The families of the victims, and the returning survivors who were once arrested and packed a recruitment van will come home to their regions with a vengeance.’
The recruiters were so sour at their vans being set on fire that a local commander gave an order to shoot arsonists on sight. In any case, they are not so much recruitment squads as press gangs-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing
That Aussie Cossack is quit the character. He spoke in favour of Russia so the authorities got on his case because that is not allowed. Last I heard he took refuge in Russia’s Sydney Consulate where he was eventually awarded Russian citizenship and continues supporting Russia through social media like here.
I love how at the bottom of the “tweet” is says: Translated from the Australian.
I think both the links under the Anti-Trust section might not be to the right article.
Aiee, fixed!
“800,000 Ukrainians Have Gone ‘Underground’ To Dodge Draft – MP”
Anecdata: I was chatting with a Ukrainian who lives in my condo building a couple of days ago. He said he was able to escape his hometown of Lugansk last year by getting a Russian passport, but has several male friends who are hiding at home in Kiev to avoid the press gangs.
Things may be changing as the press gangs get more desperate for cannon fodder but they were originally mainly in action in Russian speaking areas, plus areas with mainly Hungarian and Romanian ethnic populations. Kiev and Lvov residents were able to party on in relative safety from recruiters.
Not likely that he can ever go back the Ukraine either as he may be on a wanted list for not only leaving the Ukraine but obtaining Russian citizenship as well. It would not be wise for him to find out either.
I thought Russia has already taken physical possession of basically all of Lugansk. He would be a Russian returning to a Russian oblast.
Depends on if he regards himself as a Russian or a Ukrainian. Sort of like how in the US Civil war how some family members joined the South and others joined the Union. Each State had divided loyalties.
From what he said, he regards himself as free from all of it and has no intention of returning. He’s more upset that because it’s a Russian passport he’s limited in the other countries he can move to.
It’s ironic that if he tried to get a Ukrainian passport to solve that issue, that the only place he would be able to do so is in Kiev – which is just one short hop to the eastern front.
I have no sympathy for mind compradors desperate to get into the rotten “garden” but I hope he tries anyways… And gets gang pressed back to Ukraine by Lithuanian border guards.
Bing is pretty bad, or it was in my experiences using it. Not here to defend the 800 pound gorilla in the room, Google has plenty of lawyers earning their keep on the case!
Regarding Tropical Storm Debby, an acquaintance who lives in the wilds of the Savannah River Forest upriver from Savannah put out a 5-gallon bucket when the rain began Monday evening. By Tuesday morning it was nearly full – at least 12 inches of rain. Still raining this morning as the final(!) band whirls counterclockwise through the area. Along the coast Johnson Rock seawalls were breached in several places, with more beach erosion to follow.
Nothing to see here, move along. It’s just the weather (caused by a Gulf of Mexico at a comfortable bathwater temperature).
I’ve a long time friend from high school years late 80s to about 1992… relocated his family to Charleston early in 2024 ( accepting a senior pastor role at an established Lutheran church ). I look forward to hearing his reports today or tomorrow.
And while he just arrived there, it’s not his first rodeo as a native born Louisiana kid. These storms downgrade from hurricane status but that doesn’t do a fair representation, since all this flooding can be prolonged over several days.
I’m definitely not gonna link to it directly, but there is now video evidence out there of Israeli soldiers gang-raping a Palestinian prisoner. Easy enough to find on twix.
I’d link to an MSM story about it,but obviously there isn’t one.
Transmission lines. Most articles put the numbers in the 3+ trillion range.
I read stuff all the time about US gov agencies giving a few million dollars to so new solar companies to improve things. Meanwhile China is investing many billions.
What I can’t figure out is, the low numbers all they can come up with or is it just optics?
There was Jamaal Bowman, now Cori Bush. The AIPAC political ad linked to here is startling to me:
https://x.com/asadabukhalil/status/1821054365882339536
asad abukhalil أسعد أبو خليل @asadabukhalil
This is actually a good admission: that elections in the US can be bought on behalf of Israeli occupation and genocide.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GUWvQgMWMAAuiij?format=jpg&name=900×900
1:22 AM · Aug 7, 2024
The hits from our black-robed bandits (Citizens United) keep on coming.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/nyregion/aipac-bowman-latimer.html
June 20, 2024
AIPAC Unleashes a Record $14.5 Million Bid to Defeat a Critic of Israel
The deluge in outside spending, which also includes another $1 million from another pro-Israel group, threatens to sink Representative Jamaal Bowman.
By Nicholas Fandos
So AIPAC has been contracted by the Democrat party to get rid of the Squad for them, leaving them with clean hands. Doesn’t really matter as the Squad were more loyal to the Democrats than to their voters – and this is what their loyalty got them. Will AOC be next?
Will AOC be next? Probably not. She’s progressive in on name only. Readers here are not the only ones who know of this. I figure she’s fast tracked to leadership.
They will have to wait another two years if they want AOC, she won her primary on the same night Bowman lost. In fact she hasn’t faced that kind of full court financial and advertising onslaught since her first primary as an incumbent. Which this was for Bowman. he was relatively new and in a newly designed district here in NY so he was weaker than any longer term incumbent. I’m not sure if Bush was equally weak, or just had other issues. IOW, it is very possible that AIPAC go after the lowest hanging fruit. They still work as an example and as easier targets make it look neigh on impossible for an elected official to stave them off.
Either way I wonder if the Karen I met on public transportation several years who reacted to a conversation that did not include her is having second thoughts today. She became loud and indignant at my assertion that if any foreign nation was exerting undue influence on American elections it wasn’t Russia but Israel. As she never answered me, I never knew for certain that she knew what AIPAC was. I think a few more people now understand what is going on, but I really think that most won’t get that 1.) Israel is NOT America and does not have its best interests at heart and 2.) legally they and any citizen with joint passports should be enjoined from public campaigning because of that, because it is so brazen on their part. AIPAC has long been tops of my list as a red light on candidates, their support being a big NO. I wasn’t a fan of Bowman, but if I had lived in his district I would have been sorely tempted to vote for him just because they were targeting him.
The Squad were absolutely useless as anything other than a bit of left branding to let liberals pretend it’s something other than a far right corporatist white power party. AIPAC is doing the American people a favor by stripping the sheepskin away from the wolf.
Well put.
>AIPAC is doing the American people a favor by stripping the sheepskin away from the wolf.
Cori Bush sat in Netanyahu’s House next to Rashida Tlaib with her own placard calling for a ceasefire. I wouldn’t call that useless.
Nice performance but did it prevent a single bomb shipment or UNSC veto? Did it even prevent any police brutality against anti-genocide protestors? Did she and the Squad ever withhold their approval for anything that the congressional leadership wanted to push through when it mattered ( as opposed to rotation of performative dissent based on topic, always in a manner to ensure that the DNC leadership got whatever it wanted).
As I recall, ultimately all Democrats voted for moar-bombs in the held-up spending bill for war funding back when Biden was still nominally in charge of the White House earlier this year or late last year.
And as with several close votes these past years, voting no by some or all of The Squad might actually have made a difference. So, yeah. It’s all performative.
The first such stand never taken was for Pelosi being speaker!
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2024152?Title=Israel
This is one, I would have to look through the entire list, which I would do before I made any broad claims. Bowman and Bush voted nay, they’re gone.
This is another one:
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2024142?Title=Israel
I’m out of time tonight.
Just because Cori Bush lost the primary, doesn’t mean she cannot run in the general. What does she have to lose, besides another election? Her future in the Democratic Party is over, but by running, who knows? Maybe she can split the votes, and be successful. Unlikely
that the republican would win, but her winning in November would be a great way for Bush to put her thumb in the Dem. party’s eye. Even running in November would cause dem heads to turn, a fearsome image. If TPTB throw up obstacles to her appearance on the ballot, then she can campaign and run as a write-in. You never know until you don’t. Even using AIPAC’s intrusion into her race as an issue (money for Jewish citizens taking away money for you and your kids) might turn some votes around.
It would heighten exactly the right contradictions, especially if all the primary losers did likewise (and in states with “sore loser” laws, run anyhow on a write-in basis).
I agree. The point is to effectively resist the status quo in every possible way. I would add, that candidates like Cori Bush, leave the Democratic Party in a very public way; jettisoning the Party and all its empty promises would result in a cleaner candidate, a person not tied to contradictions and hypocrisies, and not owned by wealthy donors. A lot of hard, hard work.
Apparently Missouri’s sore loser law does not allow her to run as a write-in. Democracy in action.
Looks like it’s this language from subsection (4) of section 115.453 of Missouri state statute:
https://revisor.mo.gov/main/OneSection.aspx?section=115.453&bid=35783&hl=
“. . . No candidate who files for nomination to an office and is not nominated at a primary election may file a declaration of intent to be a write-in candidate for the same office at the general election. . . .”
Missouri has a “sore loser” law.
Take heart, the snake will go limp once its occupation head is chopped off. Lots of snake killers are converging.
aipac has been at this for awhile, and has boasted of its 100% “success” rate. They don’t even try to hide it anymore.
Before Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman there were Cynthia McKinney and Nina Turner. (Notice any similarity among those four?)
I suspect this is how harris got comfortable passing over the heavily baggage encumbered shapiro for walz, the newly crowned american folk hero who is every bit as rabidly pro-israel as shapiro without the overtness.
It’s in the house where the cash is doled out, for “foreign policy” as well as individual campaigns. And its in the house that the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech is shredded through “legislation” making any utterance critical of isreal a “crime.”
Picking off dissenting voices, one by one, in the relatively under-the-radar way of targeting local congressional races in minority districts that most are not paying that much attention to is as effective as it is insidious.
I don’t offhand know the complexion of the person who defeated McKinney, but those who AIPAC hired to defeat Turner, Bowman and Bush were all Black. In a deft strategic move, AIPAC has made sure that it has veto power, if not complete control, of the Congressional Black Caucus. The defenestration of Bowman and Bush solidifies that.
The late journalist Glen Ford coined the apt term the Black Misleadership Class to describe post’1970’s Black political power, corresponding to Adolph reed’s comment that the only thing unchanged about Black politics since the ‘70’s is the way we think about it.
As for AOC, she’s useless, and thus is likely to be around for a while.
George Latimer who defeated Jamal Bowman is an elderly white man. Also Rep. Bowman didn’t help himself by setting off a fire alarm in Congress. It’s the behavior of a thirteen year old not a grown man.
re: Musk’s X sues coalition of advertisers over boycott.
Rumble joins Musk’s X suit against the advertisers boycott
https://s3.amazonaws.com/b2icontent.irpass.cc/2730/rl136649.pdf
“US, China compete to study water on the moon: Why that matters for future missions”
Hard to understand why the US cancelled that program. The thing about space travel is that it is all about weight. Transported water to the Moon would be a major stressors on the program because water is heavy to transport. But if there is water on the Moon, a lot of your problems go away and you can – if your are actually smart and not a capitalist – keep on recycling that water endlessly with occasional top-ups from Lunar sources. Two thousand years ago when the Romans decided to build a town, the very first thing they thought about was water supplies as that would tell them not only if that town was viable but how large it could grow. Same here for the Moon. No water, no Lunar base.
President Obama and Congress stopped all work on space exploration of NASA with China in April 2011:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-05-11/Glasses-in-Moon-s-soil-preserve-water-from-multiple-sources-study-1tw713SsZe8/p.html
May 11, 2024
Glasses in Moon’s soil preserve water from multiple sources: study
A team of Chinese scientists has discovered that glassy materials within the lunar soil samples, which were brought back by the country’s Chang’e-5 lunar exploration mission, contain hydroxyl and molecular water generated from a variety of sources.
The study * published on Saturday in the journal Science Advances revealed that the glass in the lunar soil created by meteorites or micrometeorites impacts is the primary carrier of molecular water in lunar soil…
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-07-23/Chinese-scientists-discover-water-molecules-in-Chang-e-5-lunar-sample-1vtpRX9mqvm/p.html
July 23, 2024
Chinese scientists discover water molecules in Chang’e-5 lunar sample
Chinese scientists have discovered a new type of mineral in a lunar sample brought back by the country’s Chang’e-5 lunar mission, which contains water in its molecular structure.
Evidence has suggested the presence of water or water ice on the moon’s surface, primarily in the form of hydroxyl groups. Now, scientists from the Institute of Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found a hydrated mineral with up to six molecules of crystalline water.
According to a study * published recently in the journal Nature Astronomy, water molecules weigh as much as about 41 percent of the total mass…
Lunar base won’t work anyway unless there’s very cheap to/from transportation or artificial gravity. Humans aren’t designed for long term exposure to low gravity, as evidenced by the organ issues for space station astronauts. Sure, low gravity will be better than none, but permanent colonization is off the cards.
US cancelled that program becase Musk promised jacuzzi on Mars before the end of this decade.
edit:
This was supposed to be a reply to The Rev Kev post, but my dyslexia thought otherwise.
Re: Gilbert Doctorow on Hiroshima
Note that the Mayor of Nagasaki did NOT invite Israel to attend its commemoration, and the event will be thus boycotted by the U.S., U.K., France, Italy, Australia.
https://x.com/suzuki46genki/status/1821158239750558123
Mayor Suzuki had to be punished, it seems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/08/opinion/nagasaki-the-forgotten-city.html
August 7, 2015
Nagasaki, the Forgotten City
By SUSAN SOUTHARD
ON Aug. 9, 1945, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, situated on a long, narrow bay on Japan’s southernmost main island, Kyushu.
From the beginning, this attack was different than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima three days earlier, yet the experiences of the two cities have been fused in memory, to the point that we use the term “the bomb” to refer to both events. The result has been to consign Nagasaki to the edge of oblivion…
Japan Times: ‘Top envoys to Japan set to skip Nagasaki A-bomb ceremony after Israel not invited’
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/08/07/japan/politics/us-envoy-cancels-nagasaki/
Asahi Shimbun: ‘Six major powers and EU send [signed] letter to Nagasaki city: “High-ranking officials will have difficulty participating if Israel is excluded”,
https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASS872GLVS87UHBI01GM.html?ref=tw_asahi
There is little use in Israeli nukes taking out buried Katushkas!
The mostly likely use of Israeli nukes would be counter value targets, aka soft targets like cities in Iran. Too much like the two extant examples of A bombs in the real world.
Israeli Nagasaki machines.
Has pop music got less melodic? I’ve immersed myself in 70 years of hits – this is what I’ve found – Guardian
Here is a much more entertaining demonstration and explanation of what’s going on with melody in some of the modern pop. Less than 10 minutes and possibly mind-blowing to the non-musicians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR32h5jhPtU&ab_channel=ANDREWHUANG/
Why pop music is obsessed with this one note
To add: one quibble with Huang in this video. He talked about melody and said there were only 7 notes to work with to begin…
He didn’t even get to the rhythmic element of melody. The space between the notes is essential to melodic variety. And alot of the examples he used showed that other part of modern pop melody that can grow tiresome: that rapid fire delivery that doesn’t allow for breath nor does it allow the music to breathe.
Wow, thanks so much for this. And here I thought for years my hate was just centered on auto tune, and those horrible cookie cutter drum beats. No wonder I still listen to the ‘punk rock’ thingy from 76 to present….and all the discordant post punk stuff.
“those horrible cookie cutter drum beats”
Trapped in the trap…
Or 4 on the floor…
And not much in between. Right?
Pop music industry is dying and they just keep bringing in consultants to revive its corpse.
Each time I read an article like this, I feel like I’m reading a review of the latest, coolest 1920 model buggy whips. And then I remember my dad talking about all the horses he had to care for and then one day it was all tractors and all the horses were gone (draft horses eat 15 lbs of hay a day).
Not yet but by the 2030s for sure almost all the major music labels will be gone, or doing other kinds of business. One of the hottest African labels right now is Nyege Nyege Tapes out of Kampala, Uganda. This is not music you’re hearing on local radio but its influencing music around the world much more than Taylor Swift ever could.
Apologies. YouTube seems to have moved into hyperaggressive ad serving mode and each time I clicked this link I had to watch at least two obnoxious commercials before any of the videos would start.
YouTube is about to start losing audience share like crazy. Once you break free of commercial TV it’s very hard to go back (it’s literally kept me from watching the Olympics).
On the plus side, YouTube sees money to be made from African music.
I’m still able to avoid them using firefox and ad blockers. Knock on wood.
And settings are to clear history, cache, cookies, etc upon closing firefox.
If it looks like an ad is still trying to pre-roll, I close out, re-open, and bring the link back up.
B at Moon of Alabama is back with a vengeance
“The Palestinians will continue to be tortured and killed. And all their families – in fact – every Palestinian in Gaza shall be killed:
Musa ‘Aasi, a 58-year-old painter-decorator and father of four, said he heard guards beat 38-year-old Tha’er Abu ‘Asab to death in a neighbouring cell at Ketziot in November. One guard told 50-year-old Firas Hassan, from Bethlehem: “We are livestreaming this for Ben-Gvir”.
Israel is following the neo-colonial model of counter-terror and B quotes Tarik Cyril Amar to explain the details.
The Gaza Method
The West’s evolving blueprint for controlling a poly-crisis world by mass-murdering and subjugating the poor, the rebellious, and those deemed “superfluous.”
Coming soon to a location near you
That’s what they want to do. Pity that they were born a century too late and their enemies now have effective anti-tank mortars, drones, and hypersonic missiles. They might somehow manage to kill every man, woman, and child in the Gaza killing zone, but 85 percent of Palestinians live outside of Gaza.
The Asia Times piece on Meloni ends in drivel, which is perhaps unsurprising given its authors. Next!
https://asiatimes.com/author/bill-emmott/
August 6, 2024
Giorgia Meloni and Europe’s incoherence over China
Focus on the big task: building support within the EU for a huge increase in defense spending
By Bill Emmott
[ Prime Minister Meloni must prepare Europe for war with … China … I understand. ]
With Meloni visiting China, italy was also preparing its only carrier ship for exercises in south china sea with the rest of the gang…
“With Meloni visiting China, Italy was also preparing its only carrier ship for exercises in South China Sea with the rest of the gang…”
Thank you, I did not understand why China cooled so quickly to Meloni. Now I understand. G7 European leaders repeatedly behave like diplomatic fools. Italy has failed to grow in per capita income for 23 years, but Meloni is incapable of understanding what healthy relations with China could mean. Possibly she will look to invading Ethiopia next, since the precedent is there.
Moon:
But when those above run out of bombs what then? The world may conclude that they are the true “useless eaters.”
If the goal is elite preservation then Gaza is “worse than a crime, a mistake.”
I said from the beginning: across much of the world it’s nothing but authoritarians clinging to power and people were expecting these authoritarians (North, South, East, or West) to stop other authoritarians.
https://indi.ca/gaza-is-colonialism-101/
I wonder who at the BBC thought to pop in a photo of Diana Nyad with her claim about a Cuba-Florida swim. Perhaps making a point that a woman can lie as long and loudly as Lance Armstrong?
Thanks for reminding me about that. There should be a restraining order against Nyad — she shouldn’t be allowed in the same solar system as the great Penny Dean.
“NASA likely to significantly delay the launch of Crew 9 due to Starliner issues”
Hadn’t realized that Boeing had borked things so bad. They can’t get rid of that Starliner craft but what is worse, it is now essentially blocking one of the two docking ports on that station. If anything happens to the second docking port, what then? I was always wary about having commercial companies having use of the ISS because of the corners that might be cut but I should have thought that Boeing would have know better. Now the Crew 9 mission may be jeopardized as they may have to boot two crew to allow room for those two stranded astronauts to get a lift home. Who is going to pay for that? And what are they going to do with that Starliner? Have an astronaut do an EVA to get inside and get it loose before returning to the ISS? In orbit the thing would be a menace. What a mess.
I was always wary about having commercial companies having use of the ISS
I have the same feeling about tech companies buying nuclear power stations
Bit of good news here in that the Russian parts of the ISS have their own docking ports for visiting spacecraft.
re: Gov Newsom is effectively putting Oakland law enforcement under state trusteeship.
So, defund the police hasn’t worked out then? / ;) utube, ~4+ minutes.
‘Led down the wrong path’: George Floyd documentary to shed light on BLM movement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avzbi8O_RbM
The docu referenced is The Fall of Minneapolis.
I think here in CA it’s been less about defunding enforcement and more about defanging prosecutors. Definitely true in LA, I think the bay area has had the same issue. Orange County (borders LA to the South) has been loudly proclaiming for years now that OC does and will prosecute.
Both Oakland and San Francisco have increased their police budgets $30 to $50 million since Covid. This is easily researched. I’m not sure why you keep saying the opposite. While violent crime is dropping. (petty crime up of course….mass homelessness, and addiction, like every city in the country…and so….).
The Berkeley Scanner site is part of the big money Recall of our Alameda Co. DA. Pamela Price has been fighting the huge big money group pushing for her recall. The Oakland police and all the other city cops are deeply racist in their arrests; she is progressive and black and trying to root out the corruption of the system. I don’t know if the DA office has the same funding as the Police Dept. and county sheriffs, but I doubt it.
The Berkeley Scanner is very obviously twisting the story as if she is delaying prosecution of a big stolen car ring. I expect she has been stretched far due to her Recall fight. I even got a phone call from her personally as she scrapes the bottom of the barrel to fund her ballot defense. All the progressive groups in the East Bay support her, so my suspicion of bias by this news piece show which side they are on.
If only the police change the use of their money from cameras to look for people with outstanding tickets and warrants, to look inside for their racist corruption will the EB police depts improve. Rant over.
The Berkeley Scanner is the creation of Emile Raguso after she worked for 10 years at Berkeleyside as their local crime reporter. She was/is often the first source of relable info on breaking stories in the Berkeley area.
https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/118640
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🇺🇦 Ukrain is trying to make sure the West won’t stop caring about them by holding a Pride parade in Kharkov
Hopefully there won’t be a line of vans waiting for them at the end of their parade.
Yellow, Blue, and Pink vans!
Will Z be playing the piano? / ;)
“Rapsody in Z-minor?”
Hands free, no doubt.
Gooooood Moooooorning Fiatnam!
We were out on a long range patrol at the Makin’ Delta, where leverages of 100 to 1 weren’t unheard of in the hot steamy fetid financial jungle that I was going to call home for my tour of booty. The VC (virtual capitalists) were well known for setting up Ponzi stick traps in the bottom of 3 foot internet holes, covered up with palmed frauds, and if you fell into one of these traps, it was economic curtains for you, pretty much.
I like a F.I.R.E.fight as much as the next guy, and what happened next was beyond our comprehension. The VC had placed set and forget bonds all over our perimeter, and these are designed to maim-not kill your finances, and one of our men-Jones, stepped right on one, and the carnage was beyond belief, he begged me to sell off his remaining position, but there was nothing I could do… he was a goner.
…I wrote a dear john letter to his broker
Re: Women having “the edge” at 195 mile plus ultramarathons. Although notably Courtney Douwalter has beaten men in the top races, that is not the norm. I suspect this “edge” is calculated on average times rather than top times (not accounting for Did Not Finishes where women are over represented), which of course, has its own selection bias challenges with the smaller women field. See recent top race results here:
Moab 240: https://ultrasignup.com/m_results_event.aspx?did=100582
Cocodona: https://ultrasignup.com/m_results_event.aspx?did=104364
Dr John Campbell of YouTube Fame has not posted anything anywhere for 2 weeks. The only thing I could find is this article saying that he was sentenced to two weeks of community service for an attack by his dog… https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/24458108.carlisle-youtube-academic-given-100-hours-unpaid-work-dog-attack/
Thanks for this info.
This is a belated response to Amforta’s yesterday, belated because I do not have internet service at home due to the cost.
I’m surviving on $1,300 and small change per Month in the California wine country.
I feel you, brother.
And I share a lot of health issues with the older posters here, I’ll be getting a series of injections at the L4-L5 sites which will hopefully alleviate the pain of walking, although I will still have to deal with Plantar Fasciitis in the left foot, a sciatic nerve on the right which has been inflamed for more than 3 decades and arthritis in both hips.
It hurts like a bastard and it is wonderful to be alive…
These are interesting times and I intend to enjoy the show while I can.
So I scrolled through yesterday’s Water Cooler this a.m. to see what I missed, and the RFKJ/Roseanne Barr tweet caught my eye.
It looks like Barr had been invited to RFKJ’s house for dinner. The table is spread with about a dozen “disposable” plastic containers of food, and “disposable” foil pans. It looks like the serving spoons are plastic, and the “dinner plates” are the “disposable” foam kind.
jeezus h. christ. This guy is an environmental lawyer??
This takeout/delivery shit really pisses me off.
Is Alexander Haig still around?
It seems as though the “New FDR” could use a little help despite his decades of experience.
I thought Sullivan is in charge nowadays? (I’m guessing you’re referring to Haig claiming “to be in charge” after Reagan was shot?)
Wasn’t the Chinese leader an exchange student who spent his time in a Nebraska school living on a farm? Hm, Tim Walz grew up in Nebraska. He speaks fluent mandarin. Is there a connection?
Iowa. I believe he was a low ranking agriculrural bureaucrat on an official trip to learn American practices rather than an exchange srudent at the time, I think.
“Remember that time Kamala Harris discovered that electricity doesn’t have a smell”
If you grill someone on the hot seat [electric chair], you’ll usually get much very bad smell, but there are exceptions – Then the experienced prison wardens whisper an old wisdom: If it doesn’t smell, he was raped¹ well.
¹See above https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/08/links-8-7-2024.html#comment-4084011
I couldn’t comment on above Ben Panga: “Israeli soldiers gang-raping a Palestinian prisoner” and there wasn’t a warning about my comment being moderated !?
“grill” is not a meant as a joke, but as extreme example for jokes about male prison rape. In many countries it isn’t a problem at all, but a source of jokes and laughter (many but not all Hollywood films etc)
Don’t take it pesonally. The moderators, bless their hearts, get gazillions of robot-generated spam hits. We’ve all had posts get lost. Yves is pretty up-front about what behavior she will tolerate. If she’s shadow-banning you, she’ll say it to your face.
Once Kamala finds out that electricity has a taste, she will be licking live wires.
Russian complacency is showing up again on the Kursk district border, they are a much longer way from being ready for prime time than I thought. At this rate Gerasimov is not going to survive long enough to get his Marshal’s baton.
Performed a search for “fbi Ritter” and the returns seem to be sites that are either NY local news stations or small right-wing blogs. Not a CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, or NY Times to be found. I would think they’d be all over this–sticking it to a Washington consensus critic. Or it could be that my search capability is lacking.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fbi+ritter&t=fpas&df=w&ia=web
Looks like Vox had this short hit piece where they stopped just a tad short of calling Ritter a traitor. Of course they made mention of his dalliance with a minor online (fed agent instead).
https://www.voxnews.al/english/kosovabota/fbi-ja-bastis-shtepine-e-ish-marinsit-amerikan-qe-u-shnderrua-ne-kuku-i71732
‘Ritter said the investigators were there to execute a search warrant “related to concerns apparently the U.S. government has about violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.” That federal law requires individuals and entities that represent foreign interests in the United States to register with the Department of Justice and disclose their activities.’
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/authorities-raid-home-scott-ritter-19626034.php
So are they saying that he is working for Russia now? The FBI took a coupla dozen boxes of material away as “evidence.” And to think that the previous day he was having burgers with RFK jr-
https://x.com/Bencjacobs/status/1821236848766877947
Lawfare in all its myriad gorgeous colours!
I wonder if Ritter was ready for this and had “sample” boxes of “evidence” packed up and ready to go when the coppers kicked the door in.
That Washington Post article is definitely a full court hit piece.