Pumpkin weighing 2,471 pounds wins California contest Associated Press
Human Geography Is Mission-Critical War on the Rocks
Counter-mapping Complicity The New Inquiry
Climate
Signs of Life Avian Flu. After Milton.
When Butterflies Fall by the Wayside The Guiness Pig Diaries
* * * Deep ocean marine heatwaves may be under-reported, study says Channel News Asia
Hidden comet tails of marine snow impede ocean-based carbon sequestration Science
* * * West Coast climate activists battle the false ‘solution’ of forest biomass Waging Nonviolence
Greening of Antarctica Is Another Sign of Significant Climate Shift on the Frozen Continent Inside Climate News
Water
Half the world’s food production at risk due to mounting water crisis BNE Intellinews
The Sahara Desert flooded for the first time in decades. Here’s what it looks like Accuweather
China?
China’s economic slowdown deepens BBC
China’s money supply recovers China Daily
Why did China’s police chief make a rare foray into economic policy? South China Morning Post
* * * Why China now wants to put some limits on its ‘no limits’ friendship with Russia The Conversation
The View From the Ground: China’s Evolving Strategy in South and Central Asia The Diplomat
* * * The moon, Mars, asteroids and Jupiter: China reveals ambitious space exploration plans Space.com
A US-China science pact has expired after 45 years. How is the world poorer for it? Channel News Asia
The Yamanote Line: Crown Jewel of Tokyo’s Transportation System Nippon.com
Vietnam death row tycoon jailed for life in separate trial Channel News Asia
Syraqistan
Bowen: Sinwar’s death is serious blow to Hamas, but not the end of the war BBC. Commentary:
Biden: "There is now the opportunity for a 'day after' in Gaza without Hamas in power, and for a political settlement that provides a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Yahya Sinwar was an insurmountable obstacle to achieving all of those goals. That obstacle no…
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) October 17, 2024
US hails Israeli announcement of killing Sinwar, calls for Gaza ‘day after’ Al Jazeera
Gaza war: Who will be the next Hamas leader after Yahya Sinwar’s killing? WION
How Israel’s military found and killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar PBS
Biden says US helped Israel track Hamas leader Sinwar Anadolu Agency
* * * As Israeli Tanks Take Aim at Irish Peacekeepers, Weapons Fly Illegally Over Irish Territory DropSite
* * * Israeli F-15s vs. Iranian MiG-29s: Which Cold War Era Fighters Would Prevail? Military Watch
The New Great Game
The results of Georgia’s “geopolitical” elections will affect the entire region. A view from Baku JAM News
European Disunion
Hollow Steel New Left Review
Dear Old Blighty
The backlash to Labour’s crony Carbon Capture and Storage plans just went up a gear Canary
The Notional Health Service Craig Murray
New Not-So-Cold War
Zelenskyy denies plans to restore nuclear weapons in Ukraine but Zelenskyy tells Trump that Ukraine will have either nuclear weapons or NATO membership Ukrainska Pravda
Western Assessments Highlight Looming Catastrophe For Ukraine’s War Effort Military Watch
The Supremes
Supreme Court Rules 6-3 To Open Evil Tomb Of Batibat The Onion
Dissenting Authority (PDF) Journal of Law & Humanities. From the Abstract: “White’s conception of authority as collaborative engagement explains how dissenting voices contribute authority to law. Law earns our allegiance by remaining open to contestation, and by inviting rather than repressing our critical judgment.”
Digital Watch
Andreessen Horowitz defense tech investor Katherine Boyle says ‘Ukraine changed everything’ Fortune
The Final Frontier
Euclid ‘dark universe’ telescope reveals 1st breathtaking images from massive ‘cosmic atlas’ map Space.com
NASA’s Europa Clipper JSTOR Daily
When Earth Had Rings Nautilus
Our Famously Free Press
The Israeli Spies Writing America’s News Mint Press
Realignment and Legitimacy
L.A. Catholic Church payouts for clergy abuse top $1.5 billion with new record settlement LA Times
‘We vote, you get the paycheck’: Cleveland resident wants results from public officials Signal Cleveland
In Texas’ Third-Largest County, the Far Right’s Vision for Local Governing Has Come to Life ProPublica
What the Story of Richard II and Henry IV Reveals About the Nature of Power Literary Hub
The controversial origins of war and peace: apes, foragers, and human evolution (PDF) Evolution and Human Behavior
Class Warfare
Why the American Labor Movement Matters Kim Kelly, Literary Hub
The Power of Sugar Beets: Long-time Labor Organizer on Politics in the Red River Valley Workday Magazine
* * * The Conspiracy Capitaliser, formalising the business of belief Neural
Why has recent inflation been so unnerving? Kevin Drum
The Old-School Spy Tactics Helping to Set Your Grocery Prices WSJ
The Secretive Dynasty That Controls the Boar’s Head Brand NYT
Antidote du jour (K Fink):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
LIVING THROUGH HUNGER
(melody borrowed from Angel From Montgomery by John Prine, as performed by Bonnie Raitt)
This cart that we’re pullin’
Belonged to my brother
Who knows what he suffered?
We pray for his soul
The olives are ripening
But soldiers brought fire
Our orchards were torn down
And they told us to go
It’s just too painful
We worked through the summer
Orchards much older
Than anyone knows
War’s such a dumb thing
Hell we have gone through
There can be no forgiving—
And every Jew needs to know
We’re trapped in this Hell world
A world that’s been destroyed
A world full of combat—
We hide where we can
Just scraps for each mealtime
Hunger isn’t dignified
There’s no fuel for cooking
So we eat what we can
My hunger’s shameful
My stomach so fluttery
Death has an odor
It’s like nothin’ you’d know
We live by cunning
By garbage we’ve gone through
And by taking what’s given
If a UN truck shows
We’re filthy and itching
Our lives they mean nothing
Our souls have been toughened
By living this way
Just to breathe is a burden
We have lost all our moorings
Slowly losing our reason
Every road leads one way
It’s just too painful
We worked through the summer
Orchards much older
Than anyone knows
War’s such a dumb thing
Hell we have gone through
There can be no forgiving—
And every Jew needs to know
There can be no forgiving—
And every Jew has to know
With regard to almost liquid cats… I think Maru demonstrates that cats are not always aware of their own size
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XID_W4neJo
Financially, Maru is probably more liquid than I.
Is today wacky font Thursday?
I noticed the change in font as well
I wondered if I was the only one seeing the ‘new’ comment font. Weird!
It’s not new. The elements that normally appear to the right side of the page are now appearing at the bottom through an alignment problem. Maybe an unclosed tag? The font change is just a side effect of this. In any case think of it as a challenge. To read the comments and take part in them while ignoring the font used. :)
We have 2 threads on the font but I’ll post here … it kinda reminds me of the font on old dot matrix printers. Anyone remember those? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgxrLMmyGhw
I see your dot matrix printer, and I raise you a daisy wheel printer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIDZYxevW6Q&t=70s
mrsyk: It is Courier, which is based on the font used in typewriters (I assume you remember typewriters). As a writer of various things, I still use Courier in manuscripts. For a play, for instance, there’s a rule used in estimating that a manuscript page in Courier 12 point is roughly one minute of stage time. Handy.
So today we are more writerly. Pass the cognac and the pack of Gauloise Bleu.
I think that somehow the “fixed column” switch got turned on. I like it!
Yes, kids…in the before-times, I used a keyboard that had no screen to type things—it was very loud and you hoped that you didn’t make a mistake—otherwise you had to smear white paint onto your paper
Would you believe that the inventor of white out – Bette Nesmith Graham – was also the mother of Michael Nesmith? One of the 1960s group The Monkees?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkees
That was odd to me. Just odd. Have these people ever met any animals or been outside? Birds fly through brush. Rabbits and deer race through brush. Hamsters learn the dimensions of a run-around ball very quickly. (Humans, not so much but they could be overthinking it.) And there is the famed Walker created by Survival Research Labs at the dawn of time. (80s, if the internet is to trusted.)
Have the people who did this study never seen a cow with big horns walk through a doorway? Known anyone with freakin goats? Getting from place to place on the earth requires knowing your own dimensions. The might include understanding how you differ from others, beyond knowing where you can hide from them, but it might not.
Bull elk with magnificent headgear can run through thick timber as though it was tilted prairie…
“Israeli F-15s vs. Iranian MiG-29s: Which Cold War Era Fighters Would Prevail?”
The question that they should be asking is if the Russian fighters now in Iran will take part in defending Iran and if they are armed with those extra long-range anti-air missiles as well which they have successfully used in the Ukraine. And I won’t get into the radars and the S-400s that they have also sent. Israel will be flying at full range like the Luftwaffe did in the Battle of Britain so they will not be able to hang around long. Russia has now shown that they will not let Israel and the US destroy Iran but will help defend it.
I think they mean the su-27, mig-29 is more of a counter to the f-16.
Which Cold War Era Fighters Would Prevail?
Tom Cruise in a stolen Iranian F-14 will prevail.
Maybe they can ask Tom Cruise to bomb Iran as wasn’t that the plot for “Top Gun 2”?
I haven’t watched it, but I know that Tom Cruise prevailing in an F-14 is the top of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igaXsfQlYy8
Plenty of history of this sort of thing going on over Vietnam from 1965 to 1975…..
The attrition in that war was significant.
Would you believe that during the Vietnam war that-
‘In total, the United States military lost in Vietnam almost 10,000 aircraft, helicopters and UAVs (3,744 planes, 5,607 helicopters and about 1,000 UAVs.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_of_the_Vietnam_War
This is big…
Rail services reform bill passes Congress, ending decades of privatization
Go Claudia! Railroads run for the public good and not foreigner “investors” that are PSR crazed US class 1s (which are really asset strippers). Obviously the US class 1s with ownership stakes will try lawfare to prevent this. Fortunately Mexico is reforming its judicial system to root out corruption. Viva Mexico!
Gasp! But that’s undemocratic that! Won’t somebody please think of the private profiteers? For ages Mexico was mocked as being run like a shambolic operation and there was even that term of a “Mexican Fire Brigade”. Now? The way that Mexico is going, it will probably be better run than either the US or Canada in a few years time. Yeah, I know. Not exactly a high bar that.
Nailed it! Thanks so much for your fine comments. Always read anything you leave here! This country has gone to hell, when you have an old geezer running things that is NOT fit to run a campaign but making decisions that could get us blown to
Smithereens, while a completely incompetent person, not elected to run for anything is running to take his place.
God speed to you and yours, our goose looks cooked.
We’re not supposed to assign work to our host or contributors, but not being fluent in Spanish, perhaps this is fodder for Nick Corbishley’s investigations?
The Israeli Spies Writing America’s News — Mint Press
You mean we have Israeli fifth columnists in our midsts. Columnists, get it? Nevermind.
You mean, someone has put drugs in the heroin.
using American Typewriter font now?
I’m feeling rather sentimental. Where’s the whiteout.
Whiteout is discontinued, and replaced with rainbow-colored-out. Instead of hiding mistakes, you are supposed to be proud of them.
Funny story here. About 150 years ago offices started to use typewriters and were using them to send communications to other companies instead of handwritten messages. One guy who did not get the memo was outraged upon receiving one and told the offending company that he refused to be written to in a circus broadside.
“circus broadside”, I was thinking “ransom note”.
Explanation of the difference between font and typeface: https://www.creativebloq.com/features/font-vs-typeface
re: Supreme Court Rules 6-3 To Open Evil Tomb Of Batibat The Onion
Will Geraldo be there at the opening to give us a breathless report?
Isn’t that right next to the Dry Powder Repository in the basement of the Senate Building?
Wait, there’s more!
Mexico Moves to Amend Constitution to Favor State Power Firm oil price
Slash and burn pruning of Salinas Gotari’s neoliberalism. Go Claudia! Viva Mexico!
Go Mexico! Whatever is catching down there, I hope it’s contagious. Interesting that this bill had some opposition while the train reform passed unanimously.
Poor Uncle Sam! So close to Mexico, so far from God.
It is so appropriate that we have Barak Ravid providing commentary on Sinwar’s desth, followed by the Mint Press News article “The Israeli Spies Writing America’s News”. Well played.
Tsibbi’s latest, public excerpt:
Media Falls Below Congress in Trust Survey
Gallup’s annual confidence survey shows 69% of Americans will not relieve themselves on a journalist in flames
https://www.racket.news/p/impossible-dream-realized-media-falls
An alternative headline for that piece is: “Public Rejects Trickle Down Theory.”
“Yes Citizen Consumer, it is raining.”
I believe you omitted tax-mule
Yes Citizen Consumer Tax Mule, it IS raining..
Thanks for link. Apparently journalists these days deal with their low status by only hanging out with other journalists and telling each other how great they are. If the masses disagree it must be Trump’s fault. He’s the all purpose whipping boy.
Thanks for the story about the workers at American Crystal Sugar (The Power of Sugar Beets). I grew up in Moorhead, Minnesota, and there was an American Crystal plant a couple miles to the north of our house. At this time of year there was always a distinctive odor originating from the plant as they processed the harvested sugar beets.
Why China now wants to put some limits on its ‘no limits’ friendship with Russia was thin gruel.
It is mostly based on unsourced rumblings in social society (analysis based on rumors), and the one named and photo-ed professor argues that China should back away from Russia because Russia will lose Ukraine. SMO! Why cite someone who was so obviously wrong? A propaganda tell?
Along with the author asserting there is a stalemate in Ukraine (!!), I wonder if Congress brought this to us as the new billions of anti-China propaganda flood our Infowars. Or is the author burnishing credentials to get a bite of the federal largess?
“Along with the author asserting there is a stalemate in Ukraine…”
I was wondering about that too. The author was mainly referencing an academic/analysts from about 6 months ago when the small invasion into Russia’s Kursk region took place and everyone was wondering what it meant.
While there is reason to think about motives for such views, outside of the perception of the state of the Russia/Ukraine conflict, none of these discussions should be surprising considering China’s history of non-military intervention.
And China produces a huge number of exports that need to be absorbed in the present and they need trading partners with the wealth and infrastructure – in the present – to absorb them.
It’s going to be an interesting BRICS conference.
What’s the bet that the Ukraine/NATO will try something to disrupt that BRICS conference. Something spectacular, or stupid – or both.
I’ve wondered. However, keeping participants focused on war more so than development is a significant disruption. Even if it’s not a show stopper.
Just to clarify: “China’s history of non-military intervention” – meaning China’s history of avoiding military intervention.
“Zhao Long, deputy director of the Shanghai Institute of International Relations, says there is an important difference in how they view the world:
Russia wants to destroy the current international system to build a new one. China wants to transform the current system by taking a more prominent place in it.”
This seems at odds with reality in the sense that the current system arose from neoliberal economics. Neoliberal economics doesn’t take to being transformed. It does the transforming. It may be rebranded, but not transformed.
From the “Witches article, this paragraph caught my eye;
‘Inversion’, where witches do things in a way opposite to what is proper or normal, is another idea found just about everywhere. European witches were supposed to plant crosses upside down, perform rituals backwards, dance counterclockwise (the inauspicious direction), and do things with the left hand that should be done with the right – just as latter-day satanists have been described as doing. Outside the West, witches are conceived as equally inverted beings. The Nagé people of the Indonesian island of Flores, among whom I conducted fieldwork between 1984 and 2018, describe witches as dancing in the ‘wrong’ direction during their nocturnal cannibalistic feasts. Nagé witches also sleep with their heads pointing the wrong way (towards the sea rather than inland). Similarly, Navaho and Western Apache witches cast harmful spells by reciting ‘good prayers’ backwards; some witches in India are credited with inverted feet; in East Africa witches walk about upside down; Burmese witches sleep on their bellies rather than their backs; ancient Roman writers described witches as capable of reversing the course of rivers – and the list goes on.
Remember this children next time you think of behaving outside of a “proper or normal” manner.
No wonder left-handed kids were punished decades ago and had their hands slapped with a ruler to make them use their right hand when writing. It was for their own good of course. /sarc
My dad was born left-handed, raised to be right handed. We are a superstitious lot despite our wokeness.
“A US-China science pact has expired after 45 years. How is the world poorer for it?”
For many years the US and other countries have tried to cut the Chinese out on research collaborations of any sort and in fact there is a law forbidding the Chinese from going to the International Space Station. I suppose the idea was that if they stop the Chinese from “copying everything” that Chinese science would wither on the vine and western technology would be always superior. You see this too with Trump and Biden passing laws to cripple Chinese technological development by denying them any access to modern western technology.
I’m going to put this idea into the box marked ‘What Could Possibly Go Wrong.’
I keep thinking of all the decades it took to develop and propagandize the type of consumer (especially the American consumer) that helped to provide China with the funds for their current projects.
Re Richard II and Henry IV
“What I didn’t foresee was that, during the years I’ve spent in Richard and Henry’s company, the conflict between them would come to feel so topical.”
Not very foresightful then? While stories about the nature of power may seem fascinating to the powerless and those who serve princes (i.e. Shakespeare) it’s really a tale without many plot twists. Lord Acton summed it up with two words. And while the background and personality and above all intelligence of the power wielders may produce socially beneficial results, it is at base a drive like its handmaiden sex. Shakespeare the poet did his job in prettifying the subject (“a little bit of Harry in the night”) but history suggests that Henry V was a much more bloodthirsty character than in the play.
But if one insists on analogies then surely our Richard II is sitting on the US throne at the moment and the inarticulate Biden is not a very poetic character at all. Power is a banal thing, red in tooth and claw, but we enjoy stories to help to deal with the reality. The main thing is to always know that the stories are just that.
Zelenskyy tells Trump that Ukraine will have either nuclear weapons or NATO membership- Ukrainska Pravda
“Among all these great powers, all the nuclear nations, which one has suffered? Was it all of them? No, only Ukraine.”
Z just used “great power” and “Ukraine” in the same sentence.
Whole thing is amazing. Would be easier to belive from a character invented by Peter Sellers.
Greening of Antarctica Is Another Sign of Significant Climate Shift on the Frozen Continent – Inside Climate News
Just spitballin’, but what if that article would’ve been more appropriately placed under the “WATER” heading?
petal posted this yesterday in Water Cooler, and Henry Moon Pie commented.
From our conservative friends:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-blob-blames-its-victims/
This article is worth thinking about when we have to listen to blabbering, particularly from white liberals, about how no one heeds their words and submits to their tender mercies (like ACA / Obamacare). There are plenty of people willing to have a “conversation.” But one must be willing to do so.
A good article but it mostly talks about Elliot Abrams and we jaded would contend that even the worst of the libs aren’t as bad as him. Wasn’t he supposed to be indicted at some point long ago?
The real strategy of the blob is to stay off the radar screen as much as possible. They hate the web because it might shine a little “misinformation” sunlight into their dark corners.
Wowsers. “Human Geography Is Mission-Critical.”
If you’d like to read a piece of pure propaganda, with many blobbish assumptions of superiority, by someone also touting his own brand, this is the article for you.
I happen to have worked with some human geographers. They tried to remain objective, much as anthropologists do.
Key morally deformed paragraph (winner of an A. Eichmann award?):
Believe me, brethren and sistren, warmongering isn’t what the discipline of human geography is about.
Unless somebody can find a way to make it profitable like these people are trying to do. Good god, man. They are using AI. AI I tell you. It won’t help. Right now the opinion of the US in the Middle east is lower than whale s*** because of giving the Israelis the bombs to murder Palestinians. No ‘human geography’ is going to be able to turn that around any time soon. And can that ‘human geography’ tell them why the US can’t train up forces to stand and fight in the countries that they are in? Would they have predicted the sudden collapse of Afghanistan? These people are just hustlers trying to make a quick buck on the next big thing which they think in this case is ‘human geography’. It won’t work but they will get a lot of money out of this idea first.
Re the West coast complaints about the biomass industry–I look out my window and suggest said companies look East instead. Take our biomass–please!!
Something like 20 or so bio-mass plants in Cali have closed down in the past decade, so those few hundred million pine trees in the Sierra Nevada that the bark beetles have killed since then will have to decompose on their own terms, until a wildfire puts them out of their misery.
I think that the technical name for that process is ‘fire-loading.’
Regarding China and Russia and the limits. This paragraph makes me think this is just BS
“The relationship still heavily favours Beijing. Russia accounts for only 4% of China’s trade, while China accounts for nearly 22% of Russia’s trade.
Many Chinese experts are now warning against an over-dependence on Russia”,
– 4% overdependence? What would 16,5% share of all US import coming from China be then?
instead calling for more cooperation with neighbouring countries. This echoes a recent concern Russia has been using its natural resources as a bargaining chip to extract greater benefits from China
– The Chinese are of course well-known for not using any haggling tactics but taking any offer at prima vista.
Heartwarming article on how poor Kroger diligently visits other stores to keep prices down. I especially loved the old chestnut about how “Large grocery companies, which typically operate with razor-thin margins..”. I don’t think so. Long ago that was true. But no longer.
Think about it. Where did all the money for gobbling up lots of smaller chains come from? The stock buybacks? The dividends? The merger lawyers? Fighting labor? Adding store after store after store? It came from charging all of us more than the cost of delivering the goods and more than a ‘razor-thin margin’.
Grocers used to charge enough for operating expenses and a modest profit, and it was all kept in check by price wars. Now they charge enough to get large enough to become too big to fail. And the price checks on competitors are just to see how much greedflation they can get away with.