Hear a Chopin Waltz Unearthed After Nearly 200 Years New York Times (IM Doc). To hear it, you must go here.
Historians Got It Wrong: New DNA Evidence From Pompeii Challenges Long-Held Beliefs About Ancient Rome SciTech Daily (Chuck L)
‘Possibility of a catastrophic failure’: Inside the space station leak problem that has NASA worried CNN (Paul R)
#COVID-19
The effect of masks on cognitive performance PNAS (Paul R). From 2022. I wonder if chess is the best reference point, since the many (most? all?) chess players study and even try to intimidate their opponents. So masking could increase the cognitive load by leading contestants to try to compensate for this loss of information and influence.
Climate/Environment
Only 16% of global companies on track for 2050 net-zero goals: Accenture ESGDive
Geopolitics overshadow COP29 talks on climate cash, as Argentina walks away. EurActive
China?
Trump’s Trade War Will Be Different This Time. How China Will Respond. Barrons
US Accuses China of Vast Cyber-Espionage Against Telecoms Bloomberg
The Koreas
North Korea orders ‘mass production’ of attack drones, raising concerns over Russia alliance France24
North Korean troops in Ukraine ‘grave escalation’, Scholz tells Putin BBC (Kevin W)
Africa
S&P Sees Mozambique Unrest Pushing Nation Closer to Debt Default Bloomberg
Niger junta bans French aid group amid tensions with France Independent
Sudan death toll far higher than previously reported – study BBC
European Disunion
‘Terrifying’: Trump’s Cabinet picks trigger unease in Europe Politico
Farmers in Europe launch protests over Mercosur trade deal Reuters
German Pensioner’s House Raided for Calling Green Minister an “Imbecile” European Conservative (JB)
Austria says Russia’s Gazprom will cut off natural gas supply this weekend Associated Press (Kevin W)
Germany refuses Russian LNG shipments at terminals Safety4Sea
Say goodbye to cheap energy, says expert Brussels Times
Old Blighty
UK Economy Saw Sharper-Than-Forecast Slowdown Last Quarter Bloomberg
Rules imposed after financial crisis have ‘gone too far’, Reeves tells City bankers Guardian
Israel v. The Resistance
Former Biden Officials: He ‘Doesn’t Think Palestinians Deserve Life’ Useful Idiots, YouTube (Robin K)
— David Sheen (@davidsheen) November 13, 2024
"The Israeli occupation forces destroyed all the dialysis machines at al-Shifa Hospital on purpose – 60 machines catering to 350 patients, including children" pic.twitter.com/61ksM71KFf
— Nicola Perugini (@PeruginiNic) November 15, 2024
🚨Israel is systematically RAPING Palestinians, inc children & elderly, as a weapon of war:
2 journalists provide frightening testimonies about how IDF soldiers would randomly select a group of Gazan hostages, unleash dogs to "tear at their skin & flesh", RAPE them & film it🧵 pic.twitter.com/KaMV8qjCxv
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) November 15, 2024
Torture, rape, abuse: New Palestinian testimonies reveal horrors of Israel’s prisons New Arab (guurst)
🚨🚨Israel likely RAPED to death Gaza's top medical doctor, Adnan al-Bursh
The last moment he was seen alive he was "clearly assaulted with injuries around his body. He was NAKED IN THE LOWER PART… [Israeli] prison guards threw him in the middle of the yard & left him" to die! pic.twitter.com/BsEtn5w5VL
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) November 14, 2024
* * * Quand les dégoûtés ne sont plus là, il ne reste plus que les dégoûtants.#FreePalestine #StadedeFrance pic.twitter.com/qbKYFRy3cS
— Louis Boyard (@LouisBoyard) November 14, 2024
* * * Hizballah defenses keep Israeli military stuck on border, with Jon Elmer Electronic Initifada, YouTube
LIVE: WHO chief slams Israel’s killing of 12 paramedics in Lebanon strike Aljazeera
Hezbollah demystified Mondoweiss
* * * Short on troops, Israel turns to mercenaries The Cradle (Chuck L)
Annex, Baby, Annex: Why Israelis Will Soon Regret Their Joy Over Trump’s Triumph Haaretz (Robin K)
* * * Has Trump Derailed a Deep State Plot to Attack Iran? Larry Johnson
New Not-So-Cold War
Poland Deploys Advanced Korean K2 Tanks on Russian Border: Why Moscow Should Be Concerned Military Watch. Kaliningrad.
Killer Robots Are About to Fill Ukrainian Skies Wall Street Journal. Sorry but unable to archive this exclusive story. If readers succeed, please put in comments and we will hoist.
Kremlin increases pressure on Europe regarding war in Ukraine amid uncertainty in US – ISW Ukrainsa Pravda
Could Zelensky use nuclear bombs? Ukraine’s options explained The Times
Fourth Time The Pentagon Is Faking The Books For Ukraine Moon of Alabama
Syraqiatan
ISIS sabotage causes oil leak into Tigris River, threatening water supply Kurdistan24
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Systembolaget stops digital ID cards Sverigesradio via machine translation. Micael T: “Systembolaget = the Swedish governmental liquor store.”
Imperial Collapse Watch
Norwegian fisherman ‘catches’ submarine in its net RT
Attempt to block economic cooperation is nothing but ‘backpedaling’: China’s Xi Anadolu Agency
Trump 2.0
A crumbling system of trade rules awaits Trump’s wrecking ball Financial Times
Donald Trump’s policies risk making the US dollar a source of global instability Chatham House
* * * Diving Into Trump’s Nominations – Hope, or Neocon Nightmare? Simplicius
Democratic senators call for probe into Musk’s Russia calls Reuters
The Notable Timeline of Kennedy’s Remarks on “Ethnic Bioweapons” Sam Husseini
House Ethics Committee meeting canceled amid firestorm over Gaetz report The Hill
Pence urges Senate to reject RFK Jr. for HHS over abortion stance Politico
Donald Trump’s shake-up of EV rules would be ‘huge positive’ for Tesla Financial Times
* * * Trump wants to end ‘wokeness’ in education. He has vowed to use federal money as leverage Associated Press
Mr. Market is Schizophrenic
Jobless claims complete their reversion to pre-hurricane-disruptions trend Angry Bear
AI
Google AI chatbot responds with a threatening message: “Human … Please die.” CBS (Carla R)
Caveat Emptor
Tesla Has the Highest Fatal Accident Rate of All Auto Brands, Study Finds Road and Track. Paul R: “2x the industry average. Oops.”
Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with meter-long tool left inside engine The Register. So more fault tolerant that Boeing!
The Bezzle
Private-Credit Boom Has Echoes of Subprime, Warns Senior Central Banker Wall Street Journal
Antidote du jour (via);
A bonus:
— why you should have an animal (@shouldhaveanima) November 16, 2024
A second bonus:
— out of context dogs (@contextdogs) November 16, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
246 comments
Comments are closed.
‘Louis Boyard
@LouisBoyard
Quand les dégoûtés ne sont plus là, il ne reste plus que les dégoûtants.’
Had to put that through Yandex Translate as my French is too rusty. It said-
‘When the disgusted are no longer there, only the disgusting remain.’
Ouch!
A related French word is dégueulasse, conveying that disgust and related sentiments in various ways. The sound alone is evocative. Usage is nuanced.
The word dégueuler means “to puke” (the word gueule itself corresponding to the “maw”), so literally a dégueulasse individual is somebody who makes you puke or reminds you of vomit.
Tried looking up the roots of the word and ran into a brick wall. My usually reliable Petit Larousse (1929 & 1958 eds.) only had the root word, degueuler. Checked a couple other references, no luck. The Academie Francaise lists on their website, but shows no etymological history. Wiktionary’s earliest cite was 1960. So I’m guessing it’s use is fairly recent. I do remember hearing it when I was a student in Paris back in the early 90s (yes, in my regard; I’m so obviously an American they didn’t think that I could be fluent).
The word has a bit of the flavor of the slang I was hearing there, and the French do love to play with their words and language. I wonder to what extent engueuler might have shaped its formation.
Am also unclear on the history, but I’ve heard dégueulasse very often in France (not quite up there with putain de merde!, tho). It was explained as “something not even fit for the maw of an animal”. L’Académie Française does note that it dates to the “XIXe siècle”, so not new:
https://www.dictionnaire-academie.fr/article/A9D0946
It’s in my 1996 edition of Le Robert quotidien, along with dégueulatoire, which is dated to 1907. Also from 1996, Les gros mots (actually in the Que sais-je? series), dates dégueulasse to 1867, and dégueuler to the fifteenth century,
It does sound nasty, but I suppose kind of mild really when you could easily find yourself sitting at a French street cafe, and the couple at the next table are having a quiet, slightly sullen disagreement, exchanging barbs like Fas pas chier, or Tu me fais chier.
Adding: some deeper analysis of its usage in this thesis…
https://is.muni.cz/th/dg01x/magisterska_diplomova_prace.pdf
E.g., “Graphe 26: Utilisation et modernité du lexème dégueulasse“, p. 83
C’est vraiment dégueulasse…
Link historians got it wrong doesn t work
Just tried it now and it opens up for me. Try clicking on this link to see if it helps you-
https://scitechdaily.com/historians-got-it-wrong-new-dna-evidence-from-pompeii-challenges-long-held-beliefs-about-ancient-rome/
Quite a good article with the DNA analysis coming up with a lot of surprises.
I have doubts. It may be the way that the article presents the results rather than the underlying full study.
There is this: “For instance, one notable example is the discovery that an adult wearing a golden bracelet and holding a child, traditionally interpreted as a mother and child, were an unrelated adult male and child.”
Considering that many Italian men still wear bracelets, I’m not sure of the reliability of the original observation. Also, during the disaster of a volcanic eruption, a man with a bracelet picked up a child and was likely trying to evacuate. It may have been an act of mercy, interestingly enough.
As to the assertions about Eastern Mediterranean descent: Pompeii is in what was called Magna Grecia. For some five hundred years, Greeks had been immigrating to the region. Naples was originally Neapolis, a Greek foundation. There were dozens of Greek-founded towns in the region.
So the “discovery” is of the obvious, so far as I am concerned. Another “discovery” recently is of a cookshop that sold prepared food — very much like the modern Italian tavola calda. In Italy, continuity matters and is evident.
As to those darn Greeks, I am of Sicilian descent (that’s how I got my Italian citizenship). If I were ever to do a genetic test, they’d find that I’m — Greek. (Greeks that I meet regularly remind me of this.) Maybe with some drops of Latin, Punic, and Berber. None of this would be a surprise. Greek was the dominant language in Sicily from about 500 BC to AD AD (when those Arabized Berbers arrived).
I don’t see any “long-held beliefs” of importance being “challenged” in this article.
Oops. Greek was dominant from 500 BC to about 800 AD.
We spent a fortnight hunting down Greek temples in Sicily, including one with the original roof still intact.
My favorite were the ones destroyed in an earthquake around 400 AD with all the handiwork of joinery splayed out in the original rebar the Greeks used, in toppled columns.
We stayed at a hotel in Agrigento not far from a line of Greek temples nearby that are floodlit at night, very striking!
I’ve been to the Acropolis in Athens and they don’t let you get that close, whereas in similar aged and often in better condition temples in Sicily, walk all over them, go ahead.
I was excited to learn of a newly unearthed Roman numeral there for a sec! ;)
Indeed, my first thought was the the “long held beliefs” were the superficial understanding of the era by the editor of SciTech Daily.
Fun fact: Nablus, in West Bank, was also a Neapolis, underscoring the preeminence of Greek in the ancient Mediterranean world.
“If I were ever to do a genetic test, they’d find that I’m — Greek”
Or berber, as mentioned.. .or viking. My father’s side of the family is Sicilian, from a village named St. Elia about 20 miles east down the coast from Palermo. Grandma’s side has red hair (albeit darker red than my mom’s O’Brien/Burke heritage), and olive skin with freckles.
With both parents having red hair, what my sister and I got was pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Laughingsong: Sounds like this is the festival for you:
https://www.tp24.it/2024/04/27/cultura/red-head-sicily-il-festival-dei-capelli-rossi-sbarca-sull-etna/203214
I’m not sure about the Sicilian sun in July and its effects on true redheads (with green or blue eyes). Bring sunscreen. In compensation, there is Sicilian food. Ahh, the arancine.
My grandmother was born in Palermo and my grandfather in Campofelice di Roccella in the Madonie Mountains. So: Just east and just west of your ancestral village of Sant’Elia in Santa Flavia. Curiously, they got married in Misilmeri, which is adjacent to Santa Flavia / Sant’Elia.
Lots of chess is played online: you don’t even see your opponent. You only see the board position on the screen. I wonder if the effect is similar. I expect sometimes online players wear masks, for example for team matches. The entire team sits in a room full of computers playing against another team, which is in another city doing the same thing. It’s done that way so there can be tournament officials monitoring the players like in an in-person tournament.
I’m a pretty bad (recreational, not competitive) chess player myself. I often use chess puzzles (lichess.org/training) like some people use tetris or solitaire. I find my performance varies depending on sleep, coffee, and so on. I might try playing it with a mask on.
Thanks for that link. I’ve had the vague notion recently that trying to pick up chess again might help keep me mentally sharper. I had never heard of that website, looks like it could be enjoyable/challenging.
It lets you play other people online and there are tons of players there. I like the puzzles because I can juggle them with other stuff and I’m too slow to play at the speed that online players prefer, but most people like to play actual games.
Echoing Mikex, a new resource for me. My grandson (12) challenged me last weekend and soundly drubbed my keester. He likely will like this site, and I’ll get some good training.
Another thank you for that link to lichess.org/training, that’s good stuff.
Apropos of Larry Johnson’s ‘Has Trump Derailed a Deep State Plot to Attack Iran?’, this in the FT – –
Trump team aims to bankrupt Iran with new ‘maximum pressure’ plan
President-elect wants to force Tehran to drop its nuclear programme and stop funding regional proxies
https://archive.ph/U7dor
Now, if true and pace Johnson, maybe this is a US move meant to be the ‘stick’ part of the Trump team’s ‘carrot’ of renewed negotiations to Iran. Or, alternatively, they think they’re serious because sanctions etc. have been such a success with Russia and China.
Either way the US is well into its Norma Desmond Phase of imagined international hegemony.
A plot that has the USA taking up arms over the death of a “journalist”?
I had to roll my eyes on that.
Journalists get killed all over the world, and that may get some codemnation. Then it’s all soon forgotten.
Hang about. Is Trump wanting to get the Iranian nuclear deal back again? The one that Trump himself reneged upon? And what will he offer the Iranians in return? Sanctions relief? That was suppose to come with the original deal but the US made sure that it never happened. And of course the US could snap back any sanctions relief on a whim. But nobody trusts the US anymore. Their agreements mean nothing as they don’t keep them. Ask the Russians. But things have changed now that Iran is in BRICS and has support of countries like China and Russia. Does Trump think that he can order China not to buy any oil from Iran and wreck their economy to keep in his good books? The Chinese might instead send warships to escort those oil tankers instead. And that whole thing about not funding regional proxies sounds like an Israeli demand that was bolted on because they cannot defeat groups like Hezbollah. For Iran, these groups are their defence in depth and they will not abandon them to Israeli’s tender mercies.
“nobody trusts the US”
The paradigm Biden and much of DC operates under is a president riding a giant bald eagle wielding machine guns. For the nominal right, they have assumed Biden despite public records hasn’t been a lunatic but a bleeding heart.
One element of the nominal right foreign policy is the perception that Russia will rather align with the US over the Yellow Peril. This is the play. Even the leaked Trump peace proposal is an absolute nonstarter as its the cause of the war.
They just can’t conceive the world as it is being Americans.
I read about a fortnight ago that Trump was talking about splitting Russia from China as part of his intended policies so yeah, maybe that will be the play.
The notion that Trump is acting to stop a war with Iran is ludicrious. His chosen Secretary of Defense has crusader symbols tattooed all over his body. There are reports of a “warrior board” to lead a purge of generals, being read as the “woke” ones, but more likely the naysayers/numbers-runners/Ukraine backers. A parade of AIPAC darling neocons is being marched into the foreign policy departments. The writing is on the wall in 50 foot high letters.
UFC* 86
End-Times Evangs vs End-Times Zionists
They go into the Octagon. both live on upstairs with the big cheese for another 1,000 years if all goes as planned in some book written eons ago.
…let’s get ready to RuuuuuuuuMBLE
$6.66 PPV (HD)
* Unburdened Faith Competition
Mike Huckabee Ambassador to UN. I am wondering if he is going to take a C-130 with a herd of red calves over with him…
I’m sure that Huckabee is hand selecting them.
One tiny bit of cheer: the Israel Ambassador does pretty much nothing, so sending a loony makes Israel happy w/o having real impact.
War with Iran.
A bombing campaign won’t work, and the overhead in over coming distances is immense.
Ground war: the iron mountain raised for Gulf War I is a mole hill to what is needed to invade Iran. Needed conscription about Jan 2023.
At Chris Hodges Mac Gregor related his war games did not show a win over Iran. Those games likely ignored logistics impediments.
If we can’t beat Houthi….
Further, here’s Alaistair Crooke on the dynamics of the situation: https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/11/15/there-are-no-easy-wars-left-fight-but-not-mistake-longing-for-one/
“Either way the US is well into its Norma Desmond Phase of imagined international hegemony.”
“We are big. It’s the world that got small!”
“Alright Mr. De Mille, I’m ready for my fall-out.”
What matters re war with Iran is what Bibi wants. Remember: Who pays the piper calls the tune. Bibi wants to stay out of jail.
“Germany refuses Russian LNG shipments at terminals”
‘According to The Financial Times, Germany warned its state-operated gas import terminals to reject any Russian cargoes of liquefied natural gas, after it was notified of a planned shipment.’
This is Robert Habeck’s bright idea. That report says that that order came out of Germany’s economy ministry and right now Habeck is the Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. Go Greens. He is putting a spanner in what remains of Germany’s energy supplies as winter bears down but it is only virtue signalling. He may have stopped direct supplies of Russian LNG but it is still getting into Germany from other EU countries-
https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/germany-rejects-vessel-carrying-russian-arctic-lng-continues-indirect-imports-eu-neighbors
With the elections in only three months time Habeck may be trying to show how tough he is on Russia but will that fly with people unable to warm their apartments in a freezing cold German winter?
I wonder if it is a nice life being a Schwachkopf.
The good soldier Schwach leads a quiet, unassuming life on a tree-lined street with a tidy back garden?
Whatever it is, it’s bloody hilarious and probably a jolly good time to invade Germany.
Or a General Scheisskopf?
Friday the Russians ceased delivery of natural gas to Austria. The Austrians said they’d buy it from Germany and Italy! Madness. 98% of Austria’s natural gas came from Russia.
https://apnews.com/article/austria-russia-gazprom-gas-supplies-088b14662ba02220369492231c92b5bb
Oh is the Schwachkopf-thing contagious?
They can warm their apartments with outrage over fellow citizens getting busted for calling him an idiot online. Those laws are an excellent target for mass protests. Die Linke and BSW should organize thousands of people hanging Schwachkopf Professional signs out of their windows.
The article smelled of culture war, so I looked it up.
Here is dw.com:
Doubt BSW or Die Linke wants to associate with somebody who is arrested for posting Nazi symbols.
“Only 16% of global companies on track for 2050 net-zero goals: Accenture ESGDive”
I think we can safely say that this is Accenture talking its book, though its figures are probably correct, since they want to sell the laggers their dubious ESG consulting services.
I suggest bankruptcy, the easy path to net-zero.
Gooooooood Mooooooorning Fiatnam!
None of the young grunts in the platoon would ever go into battle with coins that were jingling & jangling in your BDU, which could give away your position in small-time non-interest bearing money.
Since they all went to lugging Bitcoin into conflict instead, really no possibility of an ambush in the bush when out in the financial jungle on a LRRP, with the bigger danger being that now that it’s up to $91k… we’re losing men left and right, as military pay can no way compete with invisibility-utilizing an ersatz cloaking device with a modem.
Hmmm….
The Modem Madame for the Bitcoin Bordello.
“Greetings investor. We’re here to cater to your every whinge. How would you like to be f—ed today?”
You’ll know things are serious when the War On Cash hits Vegas casinos and they only take Bitcoin and/or Bolivian sewer debentures over the tables.
How about voting shares in Patagonian Beefsteak Mines?
I can understand why the government would like card only gambling. Easy to track funds flows and extort, er, extract taxes.
I wonder how well the troops will take to being transferred from Fiatnam to Cardbodia? Either way, it looks to be a laosy deal.
Semper finance, Mac
Bitcoin casino… anecdotally I texted with a nearby friend about the crypto trampoline “upward still” effect post election. It turns out the cratering yet very small wager in one brand of coin had bounced like a dead cat and his small wager was back to evening out, if not a slight increase.
Others mileage may indeed vary. Past performance is not a guarantee!
“If you think you have an ‘investing’ problem, contact the Federal Tapering Clinic (FTC) at 1-800-BIT-KOIN.”
– ‘NSO, Not Government Clients, Operates Its Spyware’ – Guardian
This story about an Israeli company controlling “the world’s most sophisticated hacking software” is interesting in itself. But what really caught my eye was the fundraising pitch by Kathrine Viner at the bottom of the story: “How the Guardian will stand up to four more years of Donald Trump.” It sounds like a declaration of war. Reading how “Trump is a direct threat to the freedom of the press” and “has referred to legitimate journalism as “fake news”” from the likes of Viner is pretty funny.
Did you hear that the Guardian quit X, ‘citing “disturbing content” on the social media platform, including racism and conspiracy theories.’
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/guardian-quits-x-social-media-platform-citing-racism-conspiracy-theories-2024-11-13/
Ironic in that the Guardian spreads conspiracy theories as its standard fare.
I’ve been struggling with trying to understand just what problem “some people” are having with X. I don’t have any social media accounts besides X, which I decided to get about six months ago, but my understanding is that they all work in similar ways. Basically, you decide to “like” or “follow” people you find interesting, and then you get to see what they, and perhaps other people whom your “friends” are following and forwarding, are writing. And, unless you pay something for a “premium” experience, you also get a lot of advertising.
So, my question is, why are people complaining about being exposed to “hateful”, etc., messages, if all they see are what their “friends” are writing? It’s a serious question, and perhaps people with more experience with social media can explain it.
The woman’s dreanged and probably the least intellectually capable of all the CIS’s assets.
“Airbus A380 flew for 300 hours with metre-long tool left inside engine”
Happens from time to time unfortunately. About four years ago somebody left a screwdriver tip in an engine. The result?
‘On 23 October 2020, the Jetstar Airways operated A320 was departing on a scheduled passenger flight from Brisbane to Cairns.
As power was being applied for take-off, the crew felt a vibration and heard a popping noise, which rapidly grew faster and louder. At the same time, the aircraft diverged to the right of the runway centreline despite the first officer applying full left rudder pedal.
The captain immediately selected reverse thrust and brought the aircraft to a stop.’
https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/news-items/2021/tool-control
And that screwdriver tip had been in that engine for over 100 flights.
I seem to remember an anecdote or two about an absent minded surgeon leaving some gleaming tool behind on the worksite. I don’t recall how many flights the patient managed before the eventual emergency landing back in the hospital.
Had a screw dropped in my knee during ACL surgery. Have an extra scar to show for it. I was semi-conscious at the time, so interesting experience.
I insist on being awake during procedures unless that is impossible (say if having an eye operation, eek!). They get you good and damned well numb. So the real issue is squeamishness and discomfort with pressure and noises (with an ACL they would not be cutting bone as with a knee replacement) and maybe even boredom. Having said that, most MDs want their patients to be not alert or completely out. Some hospitals won’t allow patients not to be anaesthetized.
Having had eye surgery a number of times, I can say you will be completely awake. It is of course very unpleasant — especially any laser treatment –, but the procedures have been really worked out and local anesthesia is very effective. For me, actually, the worst part was just that there is a blindingly bright lamp directly above and you can’t close your eye. You can see but not feel anything in the eye. And one strong motivator (beyond improved or preserved vision) is that for usual cataract surgery the intraocular lens can correct your vision such that reading glasses are almost no longer necessary, even if you have extreme nearsightedness (e.g., -9 diopters).
That’s accurate on the cataract surgery, I took the open window to correct the astigmatism and so now my vision is routinely at 20/20…whereas before without correction my right eye was pretty horrible….
Local anesthetic, you are just lying on the table and trusting your well trained opthalmologist to do it right. Been two years, I wasn’t happy to shell out some bucks but hindsight says it was well spent.
Possible path to correction.
Tool control, meant to prevent foreign object damage (FOD) inept, as with other missing best practices for direct touch the aircraft maintenance.
What condition monitoring does the OEM deliver that could miss a large object in the equipment.
Good thing Boeing does not engineer engines, which are big enough to be “integrated “ on the aircraft….
Leaving a tool on the airplane is not good.
But tool control requires a bit of time, and time is money, so…
Former VP Mike Pence urges Senate to reject RFK Jr as the nominee to lead HHS. Well I’m sure of one thing, Kennedy is facing legitimate pushback from a lot of angles.
Does Pence hold some sway, or really any sway to begin with? I’d love listening to Pence on a sports broadcast…as I fell asleep to those dulcet, soothing undertones of banality. Sorry to keep saying so but the man is just very dull.
Pence is the dullest most boring politician in America but AOC these days is just getting cringe. So she was on the Joy Read show and launched into an attack on Tulsi Gabbard and ended up saying-
‘And let’s be very clear. A Tulsi Gabbard nomination is a pro-war nomination globally. Point blank, period.’
Not Liz Cheney whom AOC would never, ever attack but Tulsi Gabbard of all people. I guess that after getting re-elected, that she wants to be the Democrat’s attack dog now. Elizabeth Warran also made wild accusation about Gabbard but she was the same person that accused Bernie Sanders of sexual impropriety.
Antoinette of Color may be judged right when cooler heads prevail.
Gabbard is more of the school of not doing stupid wars, only necessary ones. She was against direct US involvement with the war in Syria and exposed the lies of those gas attacks and the establishment has never forgiven her for that. I would guess that she is a believer in the Powell doctrine-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell_Doctrine#Summary
No stupid wars, only necessary ones, like the Iraq War.
Maybe but think about this. Of the names selected in the Trump Cabinet, how many of them can the Chinese, Russians and Iranians talk to on a professional level and how many of them will be regarded as clown school graduates. They would take a person like Gabbard seriously but a person like Marco Rubio as SecState? That is just another version of Blinken
Talk about what? You wrote in your other comment that Trump is about splitting Russia from China. Anything USA says will be an attempt to fool both of them, just like it always was. I would indeed prefer clown college graduates, like the Steve-O guy.
Gabbard detests Cheney/Bush and always uses Iraq as an example of Neo con failure. If only Trump were filling his cabinet exclusivelywith individuals of her caliber.
I have already read people wanting her to the big blue hope in 2028. How about an AOC/Cheney ticket – what’s not to like?
*chef’s kiss*
What’s the opposite of the *chef’s kiss”, ideally with the same sharp, pithy form?
I could probably use it as a comment on everything.
How about a chef’s kiss that comes, not from the mouth, but from the other end of the alimentary canal?
No soupçon for you!
Could we riff on Futurama with a Kef’s shiss?
Add Mike Pence as potential Secretary of State. It would be perfect – the first ticket ever to get NO electoral votes!
The deep bench advocates are digging pretty deep, I suggest…FWIW, several current governors have already been floated as potential running candidates. Who can’t wait until say mid year 2026, and hopes will spring anew ?!?
Which Cheney? I’d prefer an AOC/Sarah Palin ticket. Comedy is needed in times like these…”Sometimes Evil should be fought by a different kind of evil.”
We in the Palinstinian Movement have been patiently bidding our time waiting for the return of our doyen from her last frontier in 2008.
Looks like Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz has also been recruited to attack Gabbard calling her ‘likely a Russian asset’ and saying that ‘appointing Gabbard to the post would be “dangerous,” as it would make her “a direct line” from the US intelligence community “to our enemies.”…Tulsi Gabbard is someone who has met with war criminals, violated State Department guidance and secretly, clandestinely, went to Syria and met with [President Bashar] Assad. She’s considered to be, by most assessments, a Russian asset ‘
https://www.rt.com/news/607742-gabbard-trump-russian-asset/
Rep. Omar to pro-Israel activists at Capitol: ‘F**k you’
[3rd paragraph]
The activists wore shirts advocating for the release of hostages and knocked on the congresswomen’s doors, attempting to deliver pagers as symbolic “gifts.” In response, Rep. Omar reportedly hurled an expletive at them.
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s1rwg11nzyg#autoplay
In this context, aren’t the pagers being used as a death-threat?
I’m liking Ms. Omar– takes a brave person to deal with that crap.
Merely quoting Dick Cheney to Patrick Leahy.
She voiced what quite a few of us are thinking. I prefer Omar’s context, personally.
That could certainly be interpreted as a death threat. I’d file charges, if I were her. At least get a temporary restraining order.
These people need to fear legal consequences for their actions.
The comments to the article are full of racist slurs. Maybe these protesters should try hurling pagers at the Israeli ambassador, since its government has been blocking any good faith negotiation for the return of the hostages.
Those pagers were definitely a death threat but these protestors are absolutely self-entitled stirrers. The last bit of that article said-
‘We went to Congress to confront jihadists, and Ilhan Omar told us to ‘go f*** ourselves,’ while Rashida Tlaib, who advocates defunding the police, called the police on us. We are fed up. Jews worldwide must stand up to these antisemites.’
The eternal victims. Threatens Congresspeople in their offices in the Capital Building and are surprised at the results. I would have told them to take their pagers and to shove them – sideways.
The eternal victims, right? What is up with that? I’ve been listening to NPR since the election (their artillery officers in charge of the blame cannon battery are masters of the Wurlitzer, very entertaining). Their coverage of everything related to Israel is framed in the Jewish right to victimhood. Their coverage of the Amsterdam affair was, well, rather one sided. From listening one would think that those Israeli soccer fans were a bunch of families on holiday minding their own business. The words “hooligan”, “mob”, etc were reserved to describe those on the other side.
An aside, I find it curiously hypocritical of team red to carry on this way, as the right to hate is one of their main platform planks.
Best protest is to be offensive
Aren’t death threats to members of Congress a serious federal crime (serious question)? If so, Omar should insist that feds throw the proverbial book at them.
They sound like provocateurs, more than “activists.” Did anybody check their identities?
NASA is worried about Russian-controlled segment of the International Space Station leaking, while Russians don’t care. Even in space USA can’t just mind it’s own business, and leave Russians alone. I wonder if Musk will send Greta (sans her fishnet keffiyeh) up there, in order to stage some protest.
Richard Wolff: The End of the US Empire and the Denial of the US, and the Rise of China and BRICS
video/transcript
https://scheerpost.com/2024/11/15/richard-wolff-the-end-of-the-us-empire-and-the-denial-of-the-us-and-the-rise-of-china-and-brics/
I lean to the view (better expressed by other commenters here than I could) that the ruling class is transnational and doesn’t really care about the fate of particular nations or their people. That ruling class will support any arrangements that maximize their wealth, whether it’s ‘U.S. empire”, “China”, and/or “BRICS”. Those arrangements are unlikely to be good for the vast majority of us non-wealthy, wherever we live.
I’m sure they sorta see themselves that way, but in reality they still are all westerners and all their power is compl,etely dependent on the continued power and dominance of western states and above all the US.
Without US state power they are nothing.
The idea that oligarchs just can jump ship like that is illusiory.
Only if they manage to totally subdue the chinese state, which they never will without using overwhelming amounts of western state power (and almost certainly not really then either).
There are many ways to take over small, weak, poor nations, but with big, powerful and already wealthy ones?
The pseudo globalist western oligarchs, what would they even have to offer to the chinese elites that the chinese won’t get anyway eventually and probably soon or already have?
I think they actually fully expected that it would happen, that a rising billionaire plutocrat class indistinguishable from themselves would arise and there would be the grwat, happy coming together of the parasites.
And they are going crazy with rage and panic because it didn’t happen, for rwasons that are utterly incomprehensible to them.
Wolff howls coherently. Thanks for the link.
2 points highlighted from Wolff:
1)
“(…)Russia never was an economic competitor. It isn’t now either. The GDP of the United States right now is about $25 trillion the GDP of Russia about now is three, maybe $4 trillion.(…)”
How would a discussion with him look like if asked about the inadequacy of GDP to assess the true power of RU industry (as has been suggested in the comments here over the months I believe)? I thought we are beyond the “US is ten times stronger than RU industry”-kind of talk. But I am not the expert.
2)
“(…)we have 10 to 12 million undocumented immigrants. (…) We are a population of 330 million Americans. (…) Those immigrants are not the explanation for the economic difficulties of this rich country of 330 million people. (…) if Mr. Trump now deports five or 10 of these 10 to 12 million immigrants (…) there will be consequences. (…) The construction industry in this country is a major employer. If it doesn’t have undocumented employees, it’ll have to pay Americans (…) It worsens our inflation.(…)”
I agree with him having Germany in mind. People in discussions either agree with me, or stop talking to me when I say Germany would have the same issues (and more) without a single immigrant. There however is no reasonable economic approach to this. And neither has any German party a long-term answer.
Germany used to love immigrants, back in the day when they were called gastarbeiters. That’s why Turkish song at Eurovision Contest have traditionally been getting lots of votes from Gemany.
That was before Merkel let in over a million emigrants which were totally unvetted and unidentified with no plans to deal with them. You had tiny villages being assigned hundreds and even thousands of these migrants and being told to deal with them by themselves. It was nuts.
“The Democrats Deserved to Lose 1,000 Times Over”
by Kshama Sawant (via Counterpunch)
https://scheerpost.com/2024/11/16/the-democrats-deserved-to-lose-1000-times-over/
Kshama Sawant is the only true socialist and has accomplished a lot in Seattle.
Unlike those German Panzers in Kursk.
Have Kiev troops posted pix of DPRK soldiers or equipment?
Tabloid headlines, shared by Scholz….
curiously, President Putin’s response, was we have a treaty and its within our rights, not a denial. I heard suggested (sorry, cant recall which podcast) they are getting some live practice on the Kursk remnants.
Trump wants to end ‘wokeness’ in education. He has vowed to use federal money as leverage Associated Press
The news ain’t new and Trump is hooked by the 2025 Mandate thing – the fact that he knows nothing about it says to me that – he is play acting president, has no interest except to his image and branding and has delegated all authority to his minions up his bung hole.
So from the 2025 Mandate for leadership
“EDUCATION
Lindsey M. Burke
MISSION
Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.”
“Safeguarding civil rights.Enforcement of civil rights should be based on
a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical
race theory.”
“Although student loans and grants should ultimately be restored to the private
sector (or, at the very least, the federal government should revisit its role as a guarantor,
rather than direct lender)”
Also – can’t find it now’ but in the mandate is a section about expanding the Trump branding initiative.
————–
So Trump is ego based and in the hands of the Heritage foundation to run things – So if Trump is to do something positive he needs to be shown how it benefits his ego and rep – of course it’s the job of his ass-dwellers to present his excrement as gold and sweet smell.
As a former public school marm, I want to remind people that states are the ones who are the primary funders of schools. The feds give very little money to states for schools. I don’t know the percentages as they vary widely, but the danger of losing fed money for a school district is limited. I feel that a major cutback or downsizing of the Dept. of Education would not be a bad idea.
A saying among teachers, custodians, cafeteria workers and support staff is “screw up, move up”. School admin at the local, state and fed level are an impediment to teachers students’ lives.
Merely out of curiosity I went looking at the main site for Dept of Education…as sometimes pointed out by our noted content suppliers I can see a lot of rice bowls that ( a cynical view, mind you ) could stand to be broken. I’ve a niece that is an elementary school teacher, still young but has 7 or so years in by now. I get the sense she dislikes the crap teachers just must or need to put up with, in broad terms.
Is this Federal organization ripe to get picked apart in light any real, concerted efforts to run an “efficient” Federal government?
https://www.ed.gov/about/ed-organization/leadership-directory/bios-senior-officials
You can drown just as completely in 6 inches of water as 6 feet. It’s not as if public schools are so flush that they can afford the loss of funding.
“Short on troops, Israel turns to mercenaries”
I wouldn’t want to be one of those mercenaries. Lots went to the Ukraine from places like South America but when they were sent to the front, found that the Ukrainians were sending them on suicide missions and the like and beat them up if they resisted. They were simply expendable assets. But those mercs in Israel? The Israelis will do the same to them as they are the wrong religion and not part of the master race. And when the war is over those naturalized mercs will find that they will have the same status as Arab-Israelis with the locals asking them ‘Why are you still here?’ And also, when this article says that the Israelis are going ‘to recruit asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria’ I think that what they are actually talking about are Jihadist fighters. And why not? They were such good buddies during the war in Syria.
Touring Ukraine as a merc can suck, no doubt, but these guys (and gals) contracting for Israel are getting paid and seem to be enjoying their genociding:
Meet foreign mercenaries hired by Israel to slaughter people in Gaza and Lebanon
Reports indicate that foreign recruits typically receive compensation comparable to that of regular IOF soldiers. However, some mercenaries are reportedly earning much higher wages, with weekly payments reaching approximately $4,300.
Most of these foreign mercenaries were recruited by the Israeli regime specifically to fight its dirty genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, enticed by promises of substantial monetary benefits and Israeli citizenship.
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/11/07/736797/Israel-turns-to-mercenaries-to-fuel-its-war-machine
Especially in that business, dual-citizenship could come in handy… although I’m not so sure about an Israeli one.
Jobs like these are the far more likely reason for mercenaries being employed. The IDFs casualties have been light to date as there has been very little actual soldier-on-soldier fighting in Gaza, or Lebanon, relative to the scale of destruction on the civilian populations. Moreover the IDF has a force of 400,000, rivaling Turkey in manpower. They are nowhere near the need for mercenaries (or even US troops).
No, the “mercs” are the usual bashi-bazouks, who primary role is to terrorist and slaughter civilian populations, while keeping the ‘elite’ army units hands “clean”. Every angry headcase with a grudge and the ability to hold a rifle, from Europe, the Middle East or the US, is a prime candidate for minimal training and front line duty against unarmed civilians. And if they get shot they don’t count towards the army’s casualty statistics. Perhaps Hegseth will start offering crusader tattoos with every new signup.
Modern day Kaminski Brigade?
For that money, will IOF require scalps as proof of kill, or video recordings will just suffice?
“‘Terrifying’: Trump’s Cabinet picks trigger unease in Europe” – Politico
MSNBC hacks, anonymous intelligence officials, CIA Democrats in Congress, and “European diplomats” all agree: the “well-qualified” Marco Rubio is just fine, but “Russian asset” Tulsi Gabbard is “terrifying.” That tells me everything I need to know – actually, everything I already knew.
I wonder whose nomination “progressives” like AOC will oppose more vigorously: Gabbard’s, or Mike “Third Temple” Hukabee’s? So far it’s been no contest.
They do hate Gabbard. And virtually all of her scary acts have consisted of dissenting from the policy of omnidirectional bellicosity, and worse yet giving reasons. On all things Russia related, the centrist Dem approach is basically McCarthyism in the absence of Communists.
She’s no peacenik by any stretch of the imagination, and her preferred war only strikes me as marginally better than the existing ones, but she does favor narrowing the field of official enemies a bit. She also seems to have a better grasp on our limited means than most Donkies or Elephants.
One suspects that of she were perceived as any kind of security threat she would neither have been promoted to light colonel nor deployed for sensitive work in the horn of Africa.
It’s not about Kaliningrad (which have been surrounded by NATO forces and cut off from the Russian mainland for a while), but brand new wunderwaffe tanks, not to be confused with previous best-in-the-world tanks that should have scared the Rooskies but didn’t.
Not a drone cage in sight on those “s—c—a–r—y–y–yy” tanks.
It read like crimped from a marketing brief. Not a word about weight, suitably on taiga, acceleration, and the radar will just home in the drones. Meanwhile, a design never used in combat or even the tank competitions that NATO canceled several years ago (but Russia and allies continue).
According to Wikipedia, Poland has 46 such tanks so far. Not quite as impressive as the tank brigade with which the Polish defeated the Wehrmacht in 1939.
1939 Poland was more into tankettes. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TKS
Are North Korean troops stationed in Russia, or in Ukraine? .
First off, this whole story gets more interesting now that we learn of North Korea accelerating mass production of attack drones, so maybe it makes sense for them to go where they’re being deployed and developed in this current moment.
Secondly, what a crap article by BBC. The word North Korea only appears twice in the entire article, once in the headline and once in the first paragraph, wherein they describe it as North Koreans fighting “against Ukrainians”, not fighting “in Ukraine”. Misinformation classic.
The remaining 36 paragraphs of the article are about Russia and Ukraine and Germany, but the “hook” of North Korea has already slipped out of the “mouth” of the BBC Bass!!!
But again to my original question, are the North Koreans fighting in Ukraine or in Russia?
Well, it’s now 33 days after Budanov, the head of Defense Intelligence of Ukraine made the claim. So far we have no proof whatsoever that there are any North Korean troops within 6,000 km from Ukraine. We must assume that the Ghost of Kiev has managed to hold them back for now.
If one is a liberal one has to be, among other things, a Budanov believer. It goes with the narrative script, the class, noblesse oblige, or something.
North Koreans are currently fighting their newly discovered Internet p0rn arddiction. :)
Sometimes I just don’t know. But I think I should be forgiven for thinking that the commentariat here at naked capitalism has become rather unserious
Commentariat here at naked capitalism is at least as serious as non naked U.S. Department of Defense.
The Pentagon late Tuesday said it was unable to confirm reports that North Korean troops are taking advantage of their more expansive internet access in Russia to consume copious amounts of online pornography.
U.S. Department of Defense spokesperson Maj. Charlie Dietz said he couldn’t verify “any North Korean internet habits or virtual ‘extracurriculars’” taking place in Russia, …
https://www.politico.eu/article/pentagon-north-korean-troops-pornography-vladimir-putin-russia-war-in-ukraine/
I can only repeat Mark Sleboda, Moon of Alabama, Andrei Martyanov and I assume Brian Berletic too (I haven´t checked him explicitely yet) and in general analyze “evidence” the way you yourself did in the above way – to say that North Koreans fighting in Ukraine or deployed as fighting units is Western propaganda.
The RUs don´t need them and RU and NK haven´t had any joint maneuvers in decades. Nor are their systems compatible.
It probably was cooked up by SK and their US affiliates and spread by UKR GRU knowing how anti-Asian racism in Europe and the US works.
e.g. Sleboda:
Nov 01, 2024 (I haven´t checked since)
20:00-23:00
https://marksleboda.substack.com/p/western-regime-change-attept-in-georgia
An article by the European Council on Foreign Relations quoted by serious German sources has zero evidence.
German-foreign-policy-blog.com:
From Driver to Driven
Think tanks warn that the North Korean soldiers sent to Russia are the first East Asian troops to be deployed in Europe. Previously, only European military personnel had intervened on foreign continents.
https://archive.is/9dAmS
Here the ECFR:
“Pyongyang’s power play: How the EU should respond to North Korean troops in Russia”
https://ecfr.eu/article/pyongyangs-power-play-how-the-eu-should-respond-to-north-korean-troops-in-russia/
initial sentences there:
“(…)Seven thousand kilometres from home, around 10,000 North Korean soldiers are lined up along Russia’s border with Ukraine, preparing to fight on the frontlines of its war. Some units entering Russia’s Kursk region and already coming under Ukrainian fire.(…)”
Among the sources there supplied are the Pentagon and the KIEV INDEPENDENT (which is quoting itself):
North Korean Presence Underscores Russia’s Struggle, Pentagon Press Secretary Says
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3949781/north-korean-presence-underscores-russias-struggle-pentagon-press-secretary-says/
As usual anything DoD provides to the public is useless.
As is the newspaper:
https://kyivindependent.com/first-north-korean-troops-under-fire/
https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-war-latest-russia-confirms-north-koreas-involvement-in-war-to-west-kyiv-says/
Zelensky giving an interview to SOUTH KOREAN TV of all teams as a source? Sublime…
If you start digging for serious info on this you will end up on the other side of the globe without a shred of evidence.
RE: “US Accuses China of Vast Cyber-Espionage Against Telecoms”
Perhaps China is offering a sample and thereby a warning of the kinds of attack they might launch against the u.s. in the event the u.s. succeeds in efforts to engage in a conflict with China.
Next month Russia is conducting a real time exercise by cutting all their Internet connections off from the outside world to see what they have to change in case undersea and land cables and overhead means should disappear.
This will take a few attempts to get right and maybe they will restart the regular civil defence exercises of running for the old Soviet fallout shelters just to make things clear. You need to be ready for anything nowadays.
Isn’t Vast Cyber-Espionage Against Telecoms the franchise of a small New Jersey size country in the Middle East? It’s hard to keep up with who is spying on the US.
I doubt a Chinese attack on u.s. Telecoms would focus on spying. There are more damaging targets. As I recall, much of the Internet uses Telecom networks, including the banking networks — if someone knows better Please correct me. Consider how much u.s. commerce and day-to-day operations depend on phone, Internet, and banking services.
I wonder how much overlap there is between those 15,000,000 “Lost” votes and the15,000,000 Americans who were kicked off of medicaid?
The wolf, I think, needs a speech bubble. I think he’s arguing with his neighbor. Dunno who the neighbor is. Another wolf who does too much late night signing, perhaps?
The dog enjoying the ball launcher is fun but I quite enjoy throwing balls for dogs myself. Playing fetch is something to enjoy doing together with dogs. I’ve no desire to automate it.
My husband said the exact same thing when I showed him the video!
If I owned a retriever I might want one to break up the human ball throwing sessions so this human could take a break (they just have so much energy). But yeah doing it yourself is preferable.
Taibbi’s latest, public excerpt:
How America’s Accurate Election Polls Were Covered Up
The Real Clear Politics National Average was removed by Wikipedia before the election and the New York Times denounced its failure to skew data. A solution to the “mystery” of crappy polling?
https://www.racket.news/p/how-americas-accurate-election-polls
On one hand, Taibbi is being a bit unfair towards pollsters. Polling data is pretty flawed nowadays. Everyone knows it. Some sort of weighing based on “quality” is, if done “peoperly,” a good idea.
The devil is in what “quality” and “properly” mean. The problem is that we don’t know what the truth is, so decisions inevitably depend on “educated guesses.” Often, these guesses mean nothing more than your biases or, worse, collective biases (everyone thinks X. A thinks Y, so we downplay Y).
One should note that RCP methodology has its issues: it divides polls into “worthy” and “unworthy” polls (because they don’t aggregate “all” polls, if inly because there are too ma y of them, and assume that all “worthy” polls are equal in quality– which they know is not true–they have a pollster report card, too.
I think this is another example of why stupid data is worse than no data. There’s so much data out there now of dubious quality. Since you know the data quality sucks, you ha e to mame adjustments, but a “hard” criterion for how to adjust is lacking. Consequence: you start making stuff up, wilfully or, worse, “unknowingly”
Taibbi covered these points in the full article.
My tl;dr of Taibbi’s article: The big authoritative polling aggregator sites like NYT and WaPo and others tossed out polls with long, excellent track records that showed T leading, they only aggregated the polls showing KH leading. That led to Dems being fooled about the real state of the race. It reminds me of Hills not campaigning in Michigan in ’16 because some algorithm said Michigan was hers, even though Michigan Dems were begging her to come campaign there, and warned Hills that Michigan was “slipping away.”
From Taibbi’s longer article:
“Many polls that have traditionally been more accurate struggled in 2016, 2020 and 2024,” says Nate Silver. “They were better — indeed, pretty good — in the two midterms (2018, 2022). But they can’t seem to capture enough Trump supporters, probably because they’re less likely to respond to surveys.”
and
Because it appeared on the scene years before Mark Blumenthal’s Pollster.com (2006) and Silver’s original FiveThirtyEight (2008), the Real Clear average has a long tradition of use by reporters; MediaShift in 2008 called RCP the “ultimate political aggregator.” But the Times in 2020 wrote a piece skewering it for a “hard right turn,” saying it “seemed skewed by polls that have been ‘a bit kinder to Trump.’” This year’s Times piece was even more harsh. As evidence that its “incentive is not necessarily to get things right,” as one of the paper’s sources put it, the Times cited RCP’s “No Tossups” map, which “currently shows [Donald] Trump winning every swing state,” as if this were inherently absurd.
—–
“Diving Into Trump’s Nominations – Hope, or Neocon Nightmare?” Simplicius didn’t dive very deep, he forgot China and the Middle East: “…specifically from the perspective of the Ukraine situation…”
Simplicius is, to put it mildly, not strong on understanding the political circus of the United States.
Here’s a conspiracy theory for everyone. Not saying it’s true, but for the sake of argument… Suppose the picks getting all of the hysterical attention – Gaetz, Gabbard, and Kennedy – were a diversionary tactic. Liberals, “progressives,” and the media go nuts over these nominations, the old school Republicans in the Senate provide their wise counsel, and, regretfully, Trump gives in. Meanwhile, all the radical Zionist genocide cheerleaders sail through under the radar. We all know this is what the majority of Republicans in Congress would prefer anyway, while the natsec Democrats are much more worried about anything the Terrible Trio might do than any dead Palestinians (or Lebanese, or Iranians, etc.).
Just a hypothetical, but worth considering. Even if Trump is sincere in his appointments, this could very well be the result anyway.
Does this guy count?
https://www.bitchute.com/video/hGbQIpYk7oLi
You mean the guy with the Jerusalem Cross tattooed across his chest? Yeah, he counts.
https://radaronline.com/p/donald-trump-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth-tattoos-decoded-pentagon-slams-nomination/
In fairness, it’s been a while since we’ve had a Crusade, so maybe it’s time. Mike Huckabee is ready.
For Vatican, fun never stops, and neither do crusades. It’s just that they have been focusing more on those pesky Orthodox Christian heretics. That chest artwork looks really appropriate for Georgian colour revolution that is currently in progress. He should go there pronto, shirless, with a bag of cookies..
Alexander Mercouris (2 days ago) and The Duran (yesterday) have been giving their opinion of the logic of Trump’s appointments. Very brief spoiler: foreign policy innocuous to MIC while still allowing Trump ultimate control and chance to “drain the swamp”.
What if it is a reverse play? Trump lets the genocidal crazies walk up the scaffold letter and their blurred vision of reality means that they do something really stupid and offensive, their heads already in the noose and then the trapdoor swings open… Fast, effective governance.
7% of dairy workers (8)infected with H5N1 in a CDC study of 115 dairy workers in Michigan and Colorado.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7344a3.htm
Discussion starting at minute 3:35 on Clinical Update with Dr.Daniel Griffin, from This Week in Virology.
So far, the bovine derived infections appear not to be particularly virulent. However the more infections, the more opportunities for mutation. And as it is adapted to infect numerous mammal species this significantly increases mutational opportunities.
Meanwhile, an avian derived H5N1 infection in Canada has hospitalized a youngster in critical condition. In California, my home state, as well as in Montana and Utah there are H5N1 outbreaks in large poultry operations, one them in Fresno, CA with 2 million layer hens.
Articles discussed:
–Bird flu flew into British Columbia Canada (Global News Canada)
–H5N1 in British Columbia (CIDRAP)
–Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza flies commercial and domestic (USDA)
Its primarily Hispanic (read Mexican-American) workers @ the CAFO dairies in the Central Valley, and they were hit hardest the first year or so of Covid working in frozen food factories and fruit sorting.
A friend works at the hospital in the Big Smoke and I remember at the time she telling me that on the 48 ventilators there, all the names were Martinez, Gonzales, Lopez, etc.
A British Columbia teen who contracted Canada’s first known human case of H5 bird flu has deteriorated swiftly in recent days and is now in critical condition, health officials reported Tuesday.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/11/teen-in-critical-condition-with-canadas-first-human-case-of-h5-bird-flu/
Our GM is super alarmed about this and he was right about Omicron spreading very quickly (he made no predictions re severity). Via e-mail:
The case started with conjunctivitis (as i think so far many or most human cases with different clades), but then spread ant turned very severe. This spells different kind of transmission compared with human flu or Covid. If it somehow gets the ability to transmit airborne entering via respiratory tract we are doomed.
The disease has recently been found in Hawaii, not far from where I live:
https://health.hawaii.gov/news/newsroom/avian-influenza-confirmed-in-backyard-flock-of-birds/
thank you for the piece about Chopin – after reading the autobiography of George Sand i became a fan of his work – also found Louis Moreau Gottschalk works a real joy to listen to – i heard this work by Gottschalk which sounded Chopin-ish made me dig further and eventually buy a couple of CD’s of his work –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6io0eOPGTDo
although his nocturnes are my favorites here’s my favorite Chopin piece –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDT_gtC5faQ
hope y’all enjoy – a break from the usual discourse in the commentary
Gottschalk is a badly underrated composer. His music is a delight.
agree that Gottschalk is underrated which may be because of the overt racism at the time of his life – he was much more popular outside of the USA – when my daughter was a student at the National Ballet School of Canada i introduced their choreographer to his music and she used one of his pieces for a ballet performance – nice to know others appreciate his music – there are quite few field songs that he incorporated in his works – his work is played often on a local station here in Detroit – WRCJ –
If we’re taking time to talk Chopin, here’s my favorite of his — with a fascinating explication offered, too: Ballade No. 3 in A-Flat Major, Lecture by Grzegorz (Greg) Niemczuk.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W8s8BjHxzhE
And another musical link, which I found while looking up the Genocide-Joe-on-Palestinians video . . . I’d like to nominate this guy and this number for an honorary page in the next edition of the NC Songbook:
“Love Me, I’m a Liberal” (for the 2024 Election) by Ben Grosscup
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SgOHJaCPkLg
great updating of the Phil Ochs original –
thank you – interesting to listen to Mr Niemczuk explain and a lovely piece – will find #’s 1 & 2 to listen too also –
“Trump wants to end ‘wokeness’ in education. He has vowed to use federal money as leverage”
Tough to do if you abolish the Dept. of Education. Though I suppose you could do one, then the other- but then localities would just wait you out ’til the carrot’s gone.
(And if he means outside K-12, good luck / so what.)
“So what” is spot on. I mentioned earlier that only a small percentage of a school district’s budget is from the feds. It’s really not consequential.
The biggest influence on the textbook publishers is the requirements demanded by the various state systems, particularly the big ones.
On the plus side, maybe they’ll accidentally eliminate the federal leverage that gave us the “no child left behind” high stakes testing nonsense.
Some of my most boring lectures have done wonders to end wokeness, at least in my classrooms.
Re: Out of Context Dogs
Doggie baseball is something I would pay to see.
That is probably the only type of baseball I would watch period. Curling is more interesting and I have heard it described as watching paint dry on ice.
scraped of X;Will it happen?
⁃Elon has no choice
⁃As long as budget is in deficit, Mars is at risk
⁃Republicans may lose sole power in midterms in Nov 2026.
⁃So has to be completed by roughly early 2026
⁃It’s a one year sprint from Inauguration Day
– Going to be an expansive use of the executive’s powers
– almost like the President is a monarch for 4 years
first take on DOGE budget on X 8tePIe
The effect of masks on cognitive performance “I wonder if chess is the best reference point, since the many (most? all?) chess players study and even try to intimidate their opponents. So masking could increase the cognitive load by leading contestants to try to compensate for this loss of information and influence.”
I play over-the-board (in-person, or OTB) tournament chess (at a low level). My experience therefore is with players at a lower level, I think most chess players do study (I certainly do), but I wouldn’t say most try to intimidate their opponents, although this is be likely true at elite levels. I’d mention that one way of intimidating is staring at your opponent which of course masks would allow. I don’t understand why masking would result in a loss of information from studying though. Because of oxygenation?
The study’s author says he used the best chess engine to evaluate move quality. I think one player could have a larger share of optimal moves but still lose the game. This is because chess is a bit like boxing and you may fight flawlessly the whole match and then let your guard down for one move and get KO’ed. Still it does seem relevant that masked players make worse moves on average.
It’s interesting that the study shows a larger negative impact in the earliest stage of the game. This isn’t always true but the first 10 moves are the ones that are most likely to be memorized and even “blitzed out.” After this, players usually slow down because the positions they face require more calculation as opposed to memory, because they haven’t seen them before or it’s simply not possible to memorize that far out. Not all players spend a huge amount of time studying openings, this time increases as players get better, with the elites, as I understand it, spending a massive amount of time on it. But I still think most players put a fair amount of time into learning the opening.
I’d think that seeing masks on opponents might be intimidating or triggering for some, and could be distracting.
Anyway, the last tourney I played in a week ago had about 100 players. I only saw one other person besides myself with a mask on. I do find them annoying to wear but want to protect my health when I’m usually sitting near to 5 people (my opponent and the players to either side) for hours at a time. I sometimes feel I’m not getting enough oxygen but this is psychological, I think.
Lastly, in the long run, if the unmasked get covid more often that means on average they’d be getting long covid which could affect their playing ability.
If masks reduce playing ability for whatever reason, then Korean, Chinese and Japanese players would be at a noticeable disadvantage since in these cultures mask acceptance is high even without regard to covid.
I too am a great fan of George Sand’s wonderful autobiography (novels too). She was also a devotee of wild flowers and of folk music, which she collected. Anyway, getting back to Chopin, my personal favorite work of his is the piano concerto # 2 especially the ravishing slow movement:
https://youtu.be/D2ue7nn4zhc?si=SICZf_54uct6oxIe
nice piece – i really like Chopin – for me his work is more lyrical and somewhat melancholic – when talking to a friend in Brazil he told me that his father(passed) was acquainted with Alexander Brailowsky when he would come to Rio to perform – Brailowsky’s repertoire was his interpretations of Chopin’s compositions – we exchanged favorite pieces and he sent me an interesting book “Chopin’s Letters” which is a collection of Chopin’s letters to various people and a very interesting list, and revealing in a manner not found in biographies, autobiographies and other books about the composer – i sent him George Sand’s autobiography – George Sand is very cool imho –
Anyone following the interesting claims and debate about the state of the economy on Wolfstreet? Wolf presents data to support a clear position that the US economy is doing fantastic and that the main problem we’re dealing with is people hate the price increases in everything even if they have the money to pay for them.
I know Wolf takes a macro perspective of things but he is looking at data that most have decided is reliable. The data he presents is seriously at odds with my experiences the past several years. It has become very expensive to own and operate a vehicle. It has become very expensive to own and operate a home. It is has become nearly impossible to pay for medical procedures or a child’s college education. Food prices are outrageous. The quality of what you purchase at these inflated prices is diminished. It is very hard to save money to have on hand due to all the costs for everything increasing.
Is that all just sampling bias on my part? Is the data Wolf relies on skewed?
Any thoughts from the wise among the commentariat?
Wolf is probably doing very well for himself and he’s human, so he has a bias.
He has used the term “our drunken sailors” to describe consumers, and I can’t argue with that description.
Wolfstreet is a fine blog, but macroeconomics can’t capture the essence of what is really going on. America has become a challenging place if you don’t have at least a six-figure income.
I don’t have much to add that would qualify as wisdom.
I agree. But to give an example, one point Wolf makes that I don’t have data to describe differently, is that people complaining about living paycheck to paycheck aren’t an accurate measure of the economy at large. His claim is that those studies and numbers are biased and not using good data to describe what is actually happening. And yet, am I supposed to ignore the multiple people I know who have had to take loans against their homes, their 401(k)’s, or HELOCs, to make things work? Am I supposed to ignore the multiple retired households I know who are burning through savings at unsustainable rates but have no options because of the inflated prices they have to deal with?
Normally I trust the numbers. But in this case the numbers are so different from my experiences it is giving me pause. Maybe looking at measures of skew in the data would be helpful. I feel like the difference between the median and the average is concealing a lot here. But, perhaps not?
And isn’t there a school of thought were having to resort to using the home as an ATM isn’t a good thing?
I’ve noticed there’s a certain kind of follower of things financial enamored with bitchin’ graphs, all data driven and as long as the numbers are Jake, well alrighty then, but if similar to everything we know in regards to the Big Lie, an exercise in futility and squiggly lines in rectangular boxes.
It has become very expensive to own and operate a vehicle.
On this very specific point, Wolf has actually been arguing that the true inflation in car prices (which he computes based on the prices of a couple of long-running car models) may be quite at odds with and even significantly higher than the vehicle CPI. His other graphs for the price of used cars, based on third party statistical series, show a massive ramp up of prices with a bit of downward movement — but overall it is clear that cars in the USA are substantially more expensive than 5 years ago.
So his outlook varies according to the sector, I think.
Went into get my Tacoma serviced at the dealership, and the lot was a lot less than it could have been in terms of inventory, certainly compared to the chock full of everything Nissan lot next door.
I’d say it was almost half full, including used cars.
The Toyota dealer had a new $90k MSRP Sequoia, ye gads!
You’re referring to the series of recent articles that started with this:
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/11/13/household-debt-delinquencies-collections-foreclosures-and-bankruptcies-our-drunken-sailors-and-their-debts-in-q3-2024//
“…We’re going to discuss the details of housing debt, credit card debt, and auto debt in separate articles over the next few days. So stay tuned….”
Yes, I’ve browsed the articles.
Basically, people with assets can afford the inflation seems to be what he’s saying.
Lots of discussions about a median here and a median there.
Not much insight into why people have reservations and anxiety about being able to keep up with the rising cost of living. It’s not only that they “don’t like higher prices.” There is anxiety about sustaining any level of security with all of the rentierism and rising costs. The type of gig jobs with no benefits that are growing won’t be covering “drunken sailor spending.”
It will be interesting to see what the Christmas season shopping looks like at year end. The middle class does a lot of complaining but they rarely stop shopping, so they must have money available.
Richter is in finance.
In finance the money you make is capital gains, barely taxed, fees which grow with the value of the assets traded, or dividends or other cash spun from appreciating assets.
His perception is accurate within his world, he has no incentive to see differently. The layers and layers of financial complexity that mediate government statistics make them opaque, often to the point of uselessness unless you put long periods of study into how the technical construction of the data drifts over time.
somewhere in there, but not acknowledged outright, are confounding factors, one is that one who falls below a certain threshold is homeless and is no longer counted,and many of those are still working another is the uninsured precariat
https://tenor.com/view/dog-fire-this-is-fine-fine-meme-gif-967717950980329875
Companies continue to make money, and there’s no sign of people taking an insane amount of leverage to pay for things. If the data is wrong, then companies are making SH** up and they are liable for prosecution, do you really believe they are doing that?
Sometimes, the numbers are what they are.
True!
But sometimes research today shows that FHA and other organizations (FannieMae) do not consider 401k loans in a buyer’s DTI ratio. Those self directed loans appear to not be included in other metrics too. If I’m wrong in that, someone please let me know.
Checking back through links, it appears this report from PYMNTS.com is a common source of information for people claiming those in the US are living paycheck to paycheck. That report, and others like it, suggest that people can pay what they’re being asked to pay but the slack is getting taken out of the system. They’re living paycheck to paycheck paying their bills.
And… the BEA data also appears to not consider any skewing from wealthy consumers. The latest revisions have also decreased the earlier rosy perspective.
So Wolf might be right. People might just be moaning over record setting price increases. But I think there’s enough else going on that would be missed at the global scale to explain what I’m seeing locally. The rich who own assets are doing very well. Those who don’t own assets, aren’t.
If I am not mistaken, you can take a 401K loan up to $50000, which is not a lot especially compared to the heydays of the home equity loan during the 2001 to 2008 housing bubble.
I think people have trouble accepting that it only takes 2/3rds of the population to spend in order to have a decent economy in the States. If you tell Wolf that there’s some serious income disparity going on in the country, I don’t think he’s going to deny that, but so what? The rest are spending enough to keep the economy growing for now.
How about the growth in Netflix subscribers and online advertising? Are we meant to believe that the rich are disproportionately watching a ton of online content? We are talking about real cash changing hands here. If the economy is really doing poorly and only rich people are spending, ad buyers wouldn’t be buying ads the way they are. In fact, according to this, luxury spending is actually going through a downturn. So who’s spending? It can only be the muppets!!!
Wolf relies primarily upon aggregated macroeconomic data, most of which hide all manner of misery in the lower quartiles of the income and wealth distributions.
According to this, luxury spending is going through a downturn, and yet the economy is continuing to grow. So if both upper and lower quartiles are not spending, then either companies are fudging data, which is a crime, or the data is reflective of the actual spending of the middle class!!!
I’ve noticed that Wolfstreet has a habit of inundating the reader with lots of graphs!
Losing sleep wondering who will lead the Democrats into the }dark{ years ahead? David Axelrod has the answer: it’s back to the future with Rahm Emanuel. From Due Dissidence:
https://youtu.be/Rz5sEePU5OQ?si=-EUJp-73OlPJnXfP
He’s earnest, Rahm.
I would almost say that you need only change one vowel an end up with an earnest Rohm.
Then we can go all Back to the Future, while in Time Square now, people do the polka.
Around a pyre of burning books?
The Democrats at least seem to be beginning to deal with the dark years ahead.
What about the GOP? Trump is not their brand. Let’s not forget that if it weren’t for Donald Trump, the GOP would literally have nothing to offer working-class voters other than moar war, more trickle-down nonsense, and divisive cultural wedge issues.
Do a thought experiment. Pretend that Trump announced in 2023 that he’s not running, early enough in the process for the primaries to be wide open.
Who would have stepped up?
Thune?
Lindsay Graham?
Mike Johnson?
Ted Cruz?
[Insert Bush family member here]
Please stop kidding yourselves, GOP. You’re only in a position of power in spite of yourselves. Kamala would have beaten anyone in that pathetic lineup above, and your entire Senate with the exception maybe of Rand Paul and Mike Lee actively hates him.
To the point where I suspect that Joe Biden likes Donald Trump more than the majority of GOP Senators.
Trump can only last 4 more years. Then it is time for some darkness for the GOP.
I’ve been hearing prophecies of the coming Republican dark age for a couple of decades. Maybe someday it will be true.
None of the 2028 possibilities that seem likely to me are even on your list.
There’s Vance himself.
There’s Hawley.
Depending on how the coming years go, there might be Gabbard.
And since the Republican structure is friendlier to insurgencies than the Democratic one is, there’s a fair chance for someone who’s on nobodies’ radar yet.
Don’t forget Joe Manchin.
Imo it depends a lot on the economy, if it’s good Vance likely next, if not the 60% gonna sweep the reps out. And this depends on no wars and big domestic spending.
Well that is dark, especially as I believe that both Rahm and his police department should have faced multiple criminal charges for illegal detention, even so far as kidnapping. Human Square was detestable enough, but frankly the more you find out the bigger cesspool Chicago appears regarding civil and human rights.
Rahm Emanuel is precisely the sort of reason I find the Democratic Party to have become so unreasonable since the Obama-Hillary Clinton years. This to me is a scary political figure.
I am not name-calling Rahm Emanuel, but simply being descriptive. After all, this is now an American ambassador to Japan who has found it necessary to attack China from the beginning, even to the extent of recommending a NATO to control China. A NATO; including a Japan that began the last World War by invading China in 1931. An invasion resulting in the deaths of some 20 million Chinese.
i lived in Chicago during part of Rahm’s leadership – simply stated he’s a POS –
With Trump incoming I would be surprised if Rahm Emanuel isn’t thanked for his service, booted out of his Tokyo address, and sent home to the US by April 2025.
The problem is, the way Trump’s new appointments are shaking out, there’s at least a 50% chance that Emanuel’s replacement as the next ambassador to Japan will be even more of a China hawk.
As is customary for his ilk, he failed upwards:
The Sdden But Well-deserved Fall Of Rahm Emanuel ~ The New Yorker, December 31, 2015
‘Antidote du jour’ actually quite terrifying in light of Israeli rape dog article.
re: North Korean troops in Ukraine ‘grave escalation’, Scholz tells Putin
1) One should be cautious with anything that comes from the chancellory.
Their readouts which are intended for the press, i.e. BBC too, are often very selective and misleading. So even if BBC reports a claim unchanged it wouldn´t be surprising if the RU readout of the very same conversation deviates in important details.
So what are the RU media/Kremlin saying about that conversation between P and S?
2) Even if Scholz did make that comment (NKs in the war), it is entirely unclear with what in mind he expressed that and what he truly believes. Unfortunately as this war is concerned we cannot tell at all what the government is told by intelligence services, German, US, UKR et. al., what the government believes of this and what they choose to present publicly.
So he could address the NK bullshit in the conversation simply to provoke and insult the Russians and yet know that it´s a fabrication.
I can confirm from first hand experience that German government reporters genuinely believe that Putin is planning to conquer Europe and only for NATO´s excellent performance has been kept at bay.
But after 2,5 years of misfires Scholz´s own office and files and ranks will sense at least if info is fishy.
Which here it is.
However reported heavily by our alten. media too.
As I have repeated elsewhere German incompetence in all this by all parties is embarassing. Just think of the NS2-Andromeda nonsense. Even NACHDENKSEITEN took it into consideration.
Same with NKs now.
p.s. This BBC report in its framing has only one proper place – trash can, add some petroleum and light it up.
Just one example:
“There is speculation that Scholz is planning to also talk to the Chinese president Xi Jinping, a lukewarm supporter of Russia, about the war in Ukraine at the G20 next week in Rio de Janeiro.”
And this kind of British propaganda is going on and on.
As Andrei Martyanov correctly commented, it was a call initiated by Washington. So they could have just as well used a Scholz puppet of “Spitting Image” provenance for that conversation with Putin.
Re German Pensioner’s House Raided for Calling Green Minister an “imbecile”
In filing the criminal complaint that led to the dawn raid on the pensioner’s family’s home and the confiscation of the pensioner’s PC and phone, all for the posting of a meme on social media, Vice Chancellor and Green Party politician Robert Habeck removed any doubt that he is indeed, an imbecile.
Re: the Schwachkopf Professional :
Nothing like STASI there. Nope.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/16/opinion/democrats-interest-groups-majority.html
Fetterman former chief of staff and deputy chief of staff for Reid.
Lol what? No, Democrats thought brown people would come to them. Minorities owe Democrats their votes. Talk about revising history.
It’s a scene that’s become routine with big blazes in the West. A plane dips low over a smoldering ridgetop and unleashes a ribbon of fire retardant, coating the hillside a bright pink. Onlookers cheer the display of firefighting prowess.
The U.S. Forest Service and other agencies each year drop tens of millions of gallons of fire retardant, mostly an ammonium phosphate-based slurry called Phos-Chek, around wildfires to coat vegetation and slow the spread of flames.
But a new study by researchers at USC has found that a popular variety is laden with toxic metals, and estimates retardant use has released 850,000 pounds of these chemicals into the environment since 2009. The results suggest the ecological consequences of retardant use merit further study, and that finding a cleaner product is probably worthwhile, said Daniel McCurry, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at USC and one of the study’s authors.
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-11-16/popular-fire-retardant-has-high-levels-of-heavy-metals-usc-study-finds
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They dropped a shit-ton of Phos Chek in the recent Coffee Pot Fire here in Sequoia NP and environs…
Gooooooood Mooooooorning Fiatnam!
It turns out that Agent Bright Pink does not discriminate. It will make fire retarded, and everything else in the vincinity. Maybe we should have stuck to napalm, fighting fire with fire.
bet you ain’t holding your breath for a change or admission of consequences –
Suddenly this is becoming an issue???? It’s not rocket science to know that fire retardants of any kind will contain toxic materials. Introducing thousands of tons of these toxins to fight fires has always been a bad idea, but government agencies pretend to remain ignorant. Protecting property (structures) is all they care about. Poisoning the land? Oh well, it couldn’t be helped they say.
“The greatest intellectual discovery of this generation is that the real cause of problems is solutions.” Eric Sevareid (1968)
re: Tesla Has the Highest Fatal Accident Rate of All Auto Brands, Study Finds Road and Track.
The article points out that there’s nothing inherently unsafe about the Tesla itself, the reasons for the fatality rates are external to the car.
If you watch Wham Bam Teslacam, as I do, you can probably discern one possible reason. A constant theme is people hating on Teslas to the point of creating unsafe driving (and parking) conditions.
I wonder where that hate comes from….
Not an answer, but a fellow who owns a cyber truck asked: “why are people flipping me the middle finger?”
I have no answer!
One of my PMC friends was bragging how when he sees a Tesla truck he makes sure the driver sees him laughing and pointing at him. He thinks this is cute. He’ll think it’s cute when he drives into the car in front of him.
People…
What should people do to ugly butt-jewelry?
The Cybertruck Is Much Improved by Adding Googly Eyes
Or maybe the reasons are internal to the cars, the drivers.
or the extra weight they carry compared to comparable models of other cars – up 900lbs i’ve read – that’s extra momentum when heading into an accident –
My view is that Teslas are too powerful and many Tesla drivers simply can’t handle the power safely. Most people are over-confident in their driving ability.
…and the car explodes into flames when confronted with sudden impacts. A modern version of the old Ford Maverick. (Not the current small truck.)
https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/where-is-the-george-soros-of-the-right-viral-video-shows-elon-musk-raising-his-hand-to-answer-the-question-453846-2024-11-15
‘Where is George Soros of the right?’ Viral video shows Elon Musk raising his hand to answer the question
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/elon-musk-dubs-himself-george-soros-middle
Elon Musk dubs himself the ”George Soros’ of the middle’
Re: the “antidote de jour” of the wolf (?). I suspect this is a mid to high content Czechoslovakian wolf dog and not a true wolf. I can’t say for sure. It’s just a gut feeling, based on being the caretaker of a wolf dog. The image may appear to be a “wolf” showing aggression, but I highly doubt that. The lips aren’t curled above the teeth, and his/her snout isn’t wrinkled. I suspect this is an image of a wolf dog yawning, or some other less agressive signal. I’ve only experienced one wolf dog (low content: 25%), but, based on my experiences with him, I can say that wolf dogs, and wolves in general, rarely express agression. He’s been with us for five years now, and I can count on one hand the number of times he’s expressed agression. When it happens, you know it. It’s the type of agression that says, “I’m going to tear your limbs off”…and he means it. As someone who is with a wolf dog, I get so tired of images that portray wolves as being agressive. Wolves are agressive ONLY when there is no other choice…or when they need to eat to survive.
My wife and I took our wolf dog to a julmarknad (Christmas market) today. He was the “star of the show”, so to speak. We were there for three hours, and 2 1/2 of those hours were people coming up to our wolf dog and petting him and asking questions about him. He largely ignored, or avoided, the other mid to large sized dogs. He seemed to only feel “safe” greeting dogs that were small or tea-cup sized. Is that really an “agressive animal”?
My Windows 11 Microsoft-chosen lock screen right now – WTF (literally a monument to slave labour):
https://i.imgur.com/UvMbP3K.jpeg
Speaking of Windows 11, I got a notice from MSFT the other day they will stop support on Windows 10 sometime in 2025. I can’t remember when.
I have a laptop with Windows 11 that I don’t use much, and when I do it’s just for simple tasks like streaming to my TV in my workshop. I don’t like Windows 11, and I’m not looking forward to changing on my souped up laptop I use all them time.
Maybe I’m freaked out for no good reason, but I’ve come to despise many upgrades no matter what it is. Hard to teach old dogs new tricks I guess.
Newer OSes make it easier to spy on you. I’m not sure if I made it clear before but I’m not banned from Twitter, all I have to do is pass their challenge test to get back on. Which my legacy browser cannot do.
This is Microsoft Office all over again. Computers should easily last well over a decade but the manufacturers figure out OS “improvements” that brick older models. I keep hearing that Silicon Valley is talking about dumbing down and de-apping tech but I’m not sure how they get their investors to give up the lucrative forced upgrade gravy supertrain (super gravy train?).
Yep, they’re pushing us into it.
Not that I even want to upgrade — and I agree there are good reasons to loathe it —, but Win 10 also helpfully informed me that my PC hardware isn’t good enough to run Win 11.
So how many tens of millions of PCs will soon be consigned to landfill, just so that the Wintel cartel can sell a bunch of unneeded new shiny?
Or maybe it’s time to just wipe the disc, install Linux, bite the bullet on the learning curve, and leave Microsoft behind.
You don’t have to wipe the disc, you can partition a new Linux OS and choose at boot time which one to use. It’s pretty easy these days, not much of a learning curve. I put my wife on this one, and it looks and acts just like Windoze:
Zorin OS
Killer Robots Are About to Fill Ukrainian Skies (via MSN amazingly)
Skip the Rupert Murdoch owned WSJ and its paywall: https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-ai-drones-9337f405
Here’s the story without the WSJ B.S. blockers: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/killer-robots-are-about-to-fill-ukrainian-skies/ar-AA1ub9zW https://www.tovima.com/wsj/killer-robots-are-about-to-fill-ukrainian-skies/
You can bypass the paywalls and adblockers found in abundance in the NC links, by simply copying and pasting the headline into another browser.
WSJ and Bloomberg stories are often NOT syndicated. You are relying on syndication.
Trump’s Trade War Will Be Different This Time. How China Will Respond. (via archive.ph)
Seems there’s an online meetup of COVID conscious people tonight and recurring weekly from today.
https://sites.google.com/view/pandemiccollab
Interesting — page says Zoom ended, but trying to join, says Host has joined. So I’m stuck in the waiting room maybe? I dunno. Worth watching though, even if I missed it tonight.
Wow, it is a real thing. It’s been going on for two years. They have a welcome crew in the main room and some breakout rooms.
Like ~ 50ish people.
I dropped by the grocery this morning and Schwarz all beef franks were $10.49 Lb…
I’m sure glad inflation is over and the economy is humming along.
Public health is dead. What we see today is the ethereal visage of decaying institutional memory. We’ll be mourning it’s loss for decades to come. It joins health care as a social institution, not one of profit, but of compassion, which predates it’s passing by several decades.
There’s your dark times, hacks at NY Times.
And Sanders tweeted yesterday that he looks forward to working with Trump, the most dangerous president in history according to one Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont. I guess he finally found social Democracy again? What a worthless hack.
I just saw a subreddit about how ” Elon Musk Is Pissing Off Everyone on Trump’s Team “.
Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1gshr12/elon_musk_is_pissing_off_everyone_on_trumps_team/
In the comments thread was a very neat little suggestion on how to use Musk’s attention-hoggery to goad Trump into firing Musk.
” want to get rid of him? get #realpresidentmusk trending
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Unironically I could see this working. If enough people said it, and there were enough “news” reports claiming that Musk is the magic bullet of Trumps presidency, make posts on truth social thanking Musk for all he’s “accomplished for us” etc etc. Have a couple tall crying guys approach Trump saying how Musk is the best ever, and ask him “how does it feel to be vice president to a genius like Musk?” He would be gone in a week.”
This is the kind of lateral diffuse mass-power which we who have no electoral or political power might have and might use. This almost sounds like something that John Robb would think up over at Global Guerillas. If millions of invisible little internet users could make Musk seem so much more popular than Trump that Trump feels overshadowed, Trump might indeed fire Musk.
Not sure about the track record of eleventy dimensional chess…
re: China vs. German labour union?
A tiny but I feel important item on what might become future issues.
An interview about union-specific conflicts within Germa-Chinese battery manufacturer in Thuringia, CATL.
There are also other articles in Germany (albeit very scarce in number) that comment on the opposite, namely Chinese being rather open to labour union specific demands. Naturally it would be insane to assume every single Chinese entrepreneur acts the same way simply because they are “Chinese”. Which of course is precisely what´s happening and will be happening.
JUNGE WELT interview
Companies against trade unionists
“It affects Louisa, but it affects everyone”
A works council candidate was fired at the battery manufacturer CATL. A conversation with Louisa von Freytag Löringhoff and Petra Jentzsch
Interview: Susanne Knütter
https://archive.is/gUXKU
p.s. I might be rebuffed but I never believed in the adequacy of specifically Chinese “culture” being different. And as such allowing state and corporate force/violence because single humans were regarded less valuabe or were seen less entitled to civil rights unlike in Europe. I am bringing this up because this will most likely become a major talking point when German labour unions will align with German industry to oppose the Chinese hords. Just like major union IG Metall failed in the UKR war discussions spectacularly. One of those catastrophies hardly spoken about but in fact of historic significance. When did German labour unions not oppose war the last time…
Here is a video of and by a pedestrian refusing to make way for a robot on his side of the sidewalk. A human standing up against rampaging robotism. Funny but contains foul language. Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/maybemaybemaybe/comments/1gsxn1w/maybe_maybe_maybe/
Assuming the coming administration won´t do anything outlandish in any area, this setback for Dems proved healthy since now matters are on the public agenda for real that otherwise would have been buried under collective rejoicing about a Trump defeat and successful rescuing mission of USA.
Of course I don´t expect that to hold up forever. But that would have been too easy.
re: car industry
For German territory/speakers:
state TV 3Sat has a documentary on the demise of 2 former car cities Detroit and Bochum for another 4 weeks as video stream:
“We are all Detroit – Bochum, a city in transition”
A look at two distant cities, Bochum and Detroit, which are facing gigantic challenges following the departure of the automotive industry.
https://www.3sat.de/film/dokumentarfilmzeit/we-are-all-detroit—bochum-eine-stadt-im-wandel-100.html
The parts filmed in German city of Bochum are not subtitled however.