Why is an Ecuador forest petitioning for the rights to a song? Al Jazeera
Invasive mussel found in North America for first time, posing immediate threat in California’s Delta LA Times
The US economic boom is a mirage FT
The future of finance Bank of International Settlements
Climate
What’s on the agenda at COP29? Straits Times
Why geography lessons are the key to climate awareness Guardian
Syndemics
Los Angeles County Health Dept. Statement on H5 Avian Flu Detected In Wastewater Avian Flu Diary
COVID is still a problem, and we need to do more to stop it Lexington Herald-Leader
China?
How China’s smaller private firms may be paying the price for huge local government debts South China Morning Post
China Claims Discovery of Seabed Spying Devices Maritime Executive
US government looking into Chinese enriched uranium imports, officials say S&P Global
Human Capital Accumulation in China and India in 20th Century Nitin Kumar Bharti and Li Yang (PDF). Commentary:
A new India-China fact (to me):
The Chinese state prioritized primary education over secondary/tertiary, while the Indian state did the opposite.
Chinese primary enrollment rate passed India in 1950, secondary 1975, and tertiary only in 2000! pic.twitter.com/EipI2XJpD8
— Paul Novosad (@paulnovosad) November 2, 2024
Myanmar
Myanmar junta chief to make first China visit since seizing power Channel News Asia
Mekong Dams Are Undermining the Region’s Climate, Economic Health The Diplomat
Joint Russia sea drills signal start of Indonesian foreign policy shift Channel News Asia
Syraqistan
4 people arrested from Netanyahu’s office in security leak case Anadolu Agency
Court: Documents Leaked Through Netanyahu’s Office Could Have Hindered Hamas Hostage Release Haaretz
Netanyahu Spy Scandal: Leak Sabotaged Hostage Deal in Order to Save His Skin Tikun Olam
Israel investigates leaks that appear to have bolstered Netanyahu as Gaza truce talks stalled AP
* * * Israel’s Devastating Defeat in Lebanon/Iran Exposed! (video) (interview) Chas Freeman, Dialogue Works
Pilot Cult: The White Supremacy Behind Israel’s Ill-Fated Iran Strategy Alon Mizrahi. On the recent failed strike.
* * * Illegal Israeli settlers attack industrial area in central West Bank, burn Palestinian vehicles Anadolu Agency
Still wrecked from past Israeli raids, hospitals in northern Gaza come under attack again AP
Egypt reports $6B loss from Houthi attacks on commercial shipping Hellenic Shipping News
* * * The ultranationalist TV channel fast becoming Israel’s most-watched news source Guardian
Intel reportedly scaling back R&D teams in Israel — several hundred talented staff will be laid off Tom’s Hardware
European Disunion
Germany’s top economic panel gripped by strife amid internal lawsuit FT
Dear Old Blighty
All about the Outcome London Review of Books. Labour Party.
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine needs 500,000 more troops amid slowing mobilization, senior lawmaker says Kyiv Independent
* * * Fires break out in 2 Kyiv’s districts due to wreckage from Russian drones Ukrainska Pravda
Report: Russian LNG Fleet Makes Stops in France for Repairs Maritime Executive
* * * Georgian Dream’s hold over rural areas won it the election BNE Intellinews
Moldova’s pro-Western president wins second term in runoff overshadowed by Russian meddling claims AP
Biden Administration
Competition at a Crossroads: A Comparative Guide to Recent White House Records on Antimonopoly Policy (PDF) American Economic Liberties Project
2024
Harris, Trump both see paths to victory as election nears The Hill
“Every Choice Is Loss”: Voters on Their Decision Amid Genocide in Gaza The Intercept
* * * Gambling on ‘vibes’ — why the betting markets are getting the election all wrong The HIll
Prediction Markets Give Trump a November Surprise John Authers, Bloomberg
* * * Monopoly Round-Up: The Stakes of the Election Matt Stoller, BIG
* * * Elite School Will Provide Counselors for Students Distressed by Election NYT
* * * Conservative Social Media Rallies Around Peanut the Euthanized Squirrel The Wrap
Investors should ignore the election noise FT
Realignment and Legitimacy
Are We on the Cusp of a New Political Order? NYT
No Exit Opportunities: Business Models and Political Thought in Silicon Valley American Affairs Journal
Digital Watch
Hunt for Bitcoin’s elusive creator Satoshi Nakamoto hits another dead-end BBC
Zeitgeist Watch
The time change:
Busy, cold night at Stonehenge as we move the stones backwards an hour… pic.twitter.com/V1f3Ws712r
— Papa Woof und Krampus und Bleaken (@woofknight) November 2, 2024
The Final Frontier
Imperial Collapse Watch
Bunker Down The Baffler
Class Warfare
New York Times tech staffers could walk off the job on Election Day in ongoing contract spat NY Post
Unconventional Labor Talks Begin Railway Age
What is politics for? Richard Murphy, Funding the Future
Chains of Credit: The Entrepreneurial Advantage of Slavery JSTOR Daily
Quincy Jones, Master of All Things Musical, Dies at 91 Hollywood Reporter
Antidote du jour (Vogelpark Walsrode):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here
BIBI’S LAMENT
(melody borrowed from Mother’s Lament as performed by Cream, 1967)
(With these recent Top Secret leaks from his office, Netanyahu now has to navigate the opposition of the IDF generals, and of Mossad, and of the public, and of the international moneyed interests behind Israeli politics, all of whom are dubious about him. As he gets Israel ever deeper into serious trouble, he may well find his command suddenly terminated. To paraphrase old King Henry (II), ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent Prime Minister?’
Now or later, all they have to do is arrest him.)
Are we rolling?
A one, a two, a three, a four
Mossad paid a visit to Bibi last night
Grown tired of his crimes and of cleaning his shite
Some quick force majeure and some tape ‘cross his chin
Bagged up like a Bedouin, flushed with chagrin
They took Bibi ’round to a small desert shack
For he’s been a proponent of sites that are black
He was questioned ’till dawn, and consistently lied,
So at sunrise they turned him in so he can be tried
Oh our Bibi’s in jail with his bedroll
They’ve captured his prints and his mug
With his ass in a sling he has been blubbering
And regrets the deep hole he has dug (he has dug)
Old Bibi has been trigger happy
We’re losing a half dozen wars
No more wine and hot tub with Beelzebub
Though they formed such a lovely, close rapport
{Thank you, do you wanna do it again?}
What a start to an “interesting” week!
Way to go Antifa!
A long-time favorite, now doubly so.
Quincy Jones………
As a child from the 1960s, he was Austin Powers long before we had Austin Powers….I think this is most likely how he will be remembered the most. The cultural touchstones of peak Pax Americana are quite unique.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EKspREtVZQ
Rest in peace Quincy. You will never be forgotten.
Ai No Corrida was the first encounter for these innocent ears.
It’s good that the innocent ears (and eyes) did not encounter the movie after which the song got its name. :)
Yeah, his very cool composing, bandleading and arranging skills were sort of lost in the shuffle after producing MJ.
The penumbra of MJ’s charisma, talent and fame was so intense that it put those other, even major, talents around him in shadow.
A funny anecdote about Quincy Jones is that he said that the Beatles were the “worst musicians in the world” and that McCartney was “the worst bass player [he’d] ever heard”. I think he was just used to being among very, very talented studio musicians.
He then called McCartney to apologize and claimed he never said those things. Jones also accused Michael Jackson of stealing songs. Then said he knew who killed Kennedy. I guess his family had an intervention with him about his ‘wordvomit’. Yikes. As McCartney said of ‘he’s completely out of his tree’ Ya think?
https://bestlifeonline.com/the-beatles-quincy-jones/
Before suave was subverted by salacious
I adore Soul Bossa Nova and that was great to watch but that dance makes more sense with its original Sweet Charity score. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSSlWfOCgLw
A bit of Q trivia: Alan Greenspan was once in a jazz band with Jones.
All about that bass, ‘bone that is! Then again, there’s Killer Joe. Get requests for this all the time. Can’t beat that click on beat 4. Quincy, Cool Q
One alternative: the 6/8 Killer Joe.
“Pilot Cult: The White Supremacy Behind Israel’s Ill-Fated Iran Strategy”
Those Ashkenazi pilots consider themselves the best pilots in the world and probably those flying the “stealth” F-35s must consider themselves the best of the best of the best. So it must have come as a shock to them when getting ready to fly into Iran that the Iranian (Russian?) radar systems lit them up like a Christmas tree. It’s one thing to bomb defenseless civilian refugee camps but coming up against a foe that can not only see you coming but shoot you down must have hit them between wind and water.
So it must have come as a shock to them when getting ready to fly into Iran that the Iranian (Russian?) radar systems lit them up like a Christmas tree
I am actually sorta wondering why any country will buy the F35 now–you have all the costs and downside performance of a stealth aircraft without the benefits (at least against your presumed foes).
I mean, if the solution is inevitably going to be to buy ever more expensive missiles with longer standoff distances, then you might as well recoup some of those costs by buying less stealthy aircraft anyway
Here in Oz when we finally replaced the venerated F-111 fighter bombers, our Air Force went looking for a replacement that also had two engines so that it could have a long range due to the sheer size of our continent as well as carry a lot of ordnance. So naturally our politicians signed us up for the F-35 – a single engine plan with only ‘short legs’ and only a limited ability to carry ordnance.
Same here in Canada, just goes to show what the *real* priorities are.
You beat me to it. I have not decided if the Canadian Government gave in due to US pressure, the DOD was comprehensibly bribed, or both.
Maybe the next generation magic airplane won’t even be able to get off the ground. I hope. If shoveling fiat money out the door makes war impossible, maybe I’m for it.
If you free yourself from the idea that Western MIC is here to create weapons to wage war and instead accept it’s just all big corruption machine, you will get your answer. Also F35 is the only fifth gen Western fighter in production, which along with the fact that Western concept of air battle now crucially depends on stealth means there isn’t another option short of repudiating said Western concept and start rebuilding your army from scratch.
Israel, somehow, managed to get their own software installed, and also maintenance system independent of USAF or Lockheed-Martin. So theirs likely have a tad higher mission capable rate.
Interesting!
The problem with F-35 is not only the non performing “automated log system”, they ran out of money for maintenance analysis. My presumed root cause of on board testing not working.
Maybe the Israelis reverse engineered some of that, but that implies buying ground testers and programming them which was supposed to be done on aircraft. In any event the time to repair is manual, and long
I suspect what is happening is they get first dibs on parts and play “swaptronics”! That is changing stuff out until the “green” light comes on.
The main driver of down time in legacy systems is supply chain. Clocked maintenance time is begun only when all the parts are at the aircraft.
I would not be surprised if the Israelis have some “loaners”. For F-16 as well.
I am going to question this. Or, at least, ask for a source.
A while ago I did a fairly deep dive into the published US documents on the thing’s software and database architecture. Two big items stood out, aside from OS issues that would occasionally literally crash the onboard computer and brick the entire aircraft.
One was the maintenance database. Specifically, Lockheed, in its infinite wisdom, decided to a) have a single maintenance database for every F-35 aircraft in the world, housed on Lockheed’s servers, batch-updated once every 24 hours. This raised a whole bunch of questions, starting with the fact that the front end – the software actually used by technicians in the field – had to be segmented so that Australians would only see data on Australian F-35s, Americans American, Brits British, and so on. Additionally, there was a whole big thing on keeping each aircraft’s location around the world current (because evil Chinese hackers would never, ever break into Lockheed’s servers…among other security issues). In essence, the techs couldn’t even use the database otherwise, and, remember, batch updates once every 24 hours, which means if you had to move the aircraft around in a combat situation, things could get messed up real quick. Either the Inspector General or the GAO, forget which, really made a big stink about this bit.
Then, b), there was the mission software. Basically, every mission had to preprogrammed and loaded into the onboard computer so that the thing wouldn’t get discombobulated along the way. “Preprogrammed” in this case meant plotting out every last radar, SAM, whatever else site in the mission area, and the reports implied that this were not only a very labor-intensive process, but failing so to do would result in an operational mess once the aircraft were up in the air. How exactly they were a bit fuzzy on, or perhaps my recollection years after the fact is a bit on the fuzzy side. The main implication, however, is that the thing circa 2010s was not very capable if it had to fly into an area that did not correspond to the onboard mission profile, in turn adding considerable time and effort to every sortie and reducing the aircraft’s availability.
And you have to remember, all of this proprietary Lockheed-developed software sitting on top of a proprietary operating system. Now, maybe the Israelis, as part of their purchase contract, got the Lockheed guys to either develop some bells and whistles especially for them, or even got enough of the source code to do so themselves. I would guess, however, unless presented with sources to the contrary, that this did not touch the maintenance database architecture, and probably did not really pertain to the mission module, either. Conversely, I can see how the F-35s could fly into what they thought was a properly pre-mapped operational space, then the Iranians switched on a couple of un-mapped radars or SAM sites, and this caused the Israelis to abort – since American inspectors were commenting on the possibility of this very thing happening seven or eight years ago.
—–
A separate comment on the F-111s. The American decision to kill this aircraft many years ago was utterly stupid – the Su-34 being employed so successfully by the Russians in Ukraine is essentially the same aircraft class, just a later development and based on a proven fighter airframe rather than designed from the ground up. That the Aussies eventually followed suit is…unsurprising. But the broader point is, the Pentagon has a multi-decade history of killing, or trying to kill, mundane stuff it needs for the sake of paying for the newest shiny and less than workable toy (the B-21, cough-cough). Which makes perfect sense so long as we can find someone else to do the actual fighting for us…
For example, Jerusalem Post, trough Wikipedia using search.
Don’t know if it’s true, but at least the Israelis want us to believe they have their own stuff in the plane.
Also The War Zone about Israel dropping ALICE from their fighter.
Same source about non-US countries blocking the F-35 from sending sensitive information to Lockheed-Martin.
Wowsers. This is nuts. The degree of pre-programming makes the F-35 usable only in offensive operations, correct? Or at least limited in its defensive capabilities.
US has adapted a “mission planning” system as Safety First states.
The amount of information loaded into the mission system on the fighter makes automation essential.
In effect, the way I understand it, the mission plan runs the aircraft because the mission demands dozens or more critically timed planned “jinks” to avoid detection and or intercept, get to the target where the weapon is programmed to be released. Too much for one or two humans!
Getting all the data insists on a huge data mining over a large amount of data/sources.
Aside from the IT challenges I think there are challenges with pedigree of data, and the reliability of all inputs and control systems.
The system is highly sensitive, which connects to extremely sensitive intelligence sources.
The hardware becomes very sensitive and the use of it by Ukraine on F-16, or Israel on its several systems is an unprecedented release, to foreign nationals!
A defensive mission likely uses a “mission planning” system to get to point of surveillance/patrol, but the intercept is likely run by data links (rudimentary data link run intercepts were capable with the evolved SAGE system of the 1960″) from E-3 AWACS or ground controllers, etc. which does what the offensive “mission planning” system does.
The “mission planning” system is programmed to the mission weapon. Why Putin says firing JASSM is direct US action.
This and Safety First’s comments are VERY helpful.
So why do these planes have pilots?
Kinda related, there’s a story from the 1970’s about a Soviet pilot testing the brand new Mig-31 on an interception mission somewhere in the northern Soviet Union hunting down 4 target drone-missiles. It was the first networked fighter with very powerful radar, so after the take off the ground control (which much better tactical awareness and capability to change the mission parameters on the fly) actually took the control of the plane.
So, the pilot falls a sleep during the full speed dash over the white nothing and wakes up half an hour later to find out the also the navigator has fallen asleep. Annoyed he ask the navigator who doing the patrolling, if they both sleep, and the navigator points out that the radar is on an automatic search mode, so the fighter is doing everything along the vector provided from the ground control.
As soon as the first target blibs on the radar, the plane automatically arms the correct weapon and all the pilot has to do is pull the trigger. Within a minute they kill all the drones, and the pilot is absolutely disgusted by the easiness of it all.
Kinda emphases that in Soviet/Russian thinking a plane is just a weapons platform with a human in the firing loop.
Heh… Former USAF here. Because pilots do the buying.
(same answer to “Why does the Navy keep buying multi billion $$$ floating targets? Just count how many Admirals were pilots.)
That’s what I’ve been wondering!
I strongly suspect Global Hawk and Reaper have these mission planning systems.
Scuttlebutt (beers with pilots) I heard nearly 40 years ago, auto pilot, and automated inertial navigation systems could take a cargo aircraft “gate to gate”. That was before GPS, and microcomputers.
The rest of the scuttlebutt was “pilots run USAF and Navy won’t happen”.
The state of mission planning running missions is bc pilots can’t handle missions, but we still have pilots.
They don’t think the autopilots can handle running the emergency checklists (sarc)
Gen Brown CSAF (CJCS?) is an F-16 pilot.
We don’t know the details, but public information suggests the F-35 is not a radical departure from other modern combat aircraft.
There isn’t a ton of automated flying beyond what we’d all recognize as a conventional autopilot guiding the plane through the set of preplanned waypoints.
The pilot still has to do most of the dynamic stuff: respond to threats, launch the weapons, find any targets that aren’t static and pre-programmed, manage aircraft faults, communicate with the rest of the flight(s), etc.
We’re still very far away from decision-making AI that handles anything other than discreet, clearly-defined tasks. There are breathless reports about aircraft AI in the testing stages, but I’d take those with an awful lot of salt at this point.
Even flying the aircraft remotely is problematic. Countries like Russia have invested heavily in EW that interferes with the various communication channels that allow aircraft to share data between themselves and with their combat controllers.
Most of the fancy F-35 software seems to do with sensor fusion, sharing radar and threat data between aircraft, and recording that information for processing back at base after the mission.
““Preprogrammed” in this case meant plotting out every last radar, SAM, whatever else site in the mission area, and the reports implied that this were not only a very labor-intensive process, but failing so to do would result in an operational mess once the aircraft were up in the air.”
How did this ever pass any military speck smell test?!?!? Who in their right mind always assumes they know everything going into any combat space? It’s like built in planning for failure.
This is what mission planning has always been; it’s really just a question of volume of intel. You will always have Rumsfeld’s “known unknowns and unknown unknowns”.
> can see how the F-35s could fly into what they thought was a properly pre-mapped operational space, then the Iranians switched on a couple of un-mapped radars or SAM sites, and this caused the Israelis to abort – since American inspectors were commenting on the possibility of this very thing happening seven or eight years ago.
That is an extremely suggestive idea. (Are we saying that the F-35 has a 24-hour OODA loop? At least kinda? That seems a little laggy.
Days and weeks of planning is not surprising, particularly if you have the luxury of choosing your timing to avoid aircraft losses. One of the reasons it took so long for Israel’s retaliation strike to prepare I imagine.
F-35’s aren’t delayed by cloud services per se, they are just supposed to update the servers after missions with shared data. Each nation has its own servers alongside the central US repository. Described here and in the linked GAO report.
Israel is on the cutting edge (what with constantly bombing its neighbors) and gets special treatment, support, and the ability to overlay its own software. Not the first time Israel has served as a testbed for the Pentagon and its contractors.
America will buy them! Fear Not!
Fighter pilots grow up to be 3-star generals allocating defense spending and advising civilian politicians.
Tim Cook, if I recall correctly, has his background in unsexy logistics—this is quite uncommon in the executive world.
I have known a number of USAF fighter pilots and a quite a few other pilots of lesser breed, transports and refuelers.
Being a frat boy myself I found fighter pilots the best to have a few beers with. One tale: I used to stop at the O’ Club as a single, young Lt. One evening our table included a couple of ground pounders like me, and a mix of fighter and cargo pilots, all young kids by my current standard.
One of the fighter pilots observed “you cargo guys fly by committee!”.
A last observation: one pilot F-4 pilot I knew was absolutely sure he could successfully take on the new F-16’s in his F-4!
These guys strap themselves on to a big jet engine with smallish wings and go out and take on the world! Their view is they are the best!
The F-35 is so clumsy, slow and heavy I am not sure it is a fighter plane. I am pretty sure the other guys can “see” it! If they get within a 100 km their heat seeker missiles will find that huge blowtorch needed to haul all that stealth.
The biggest irony is that 2024 air combat tactics are pretty much the literal opposite of the public imagination from “Top Gun” and WW2 footage.
In any WW3 w/China, two swarms of fighter planes will each fire a salvo of missiles 150 km apart—then immediately corkscrew, diving down and away to avoid the other side’s salvo.
The first dead fighter pilots of WW3 will never even have seen the airplane of their opponents.
If their warning system works they will know they are smoked.
Seems the other side missiles are a bit longer range….
How recent did one fighter jet down another fighter jet? There has long been chatter about F-XXs vs MIGS and SUs, yet I haven’t heard of any actual engagements of such aircraft. It seems that fighter jets are far more likely to be downed by air-to-ground missiles than by air-to-air missiles. Jet jockeys are like the gunslingers of the Old West, except that they very rarely engage in actual duels. I served in the US Navy in the late 1970s to early 1980s and met many Naval aviators. None of them, regardless of how many years in the Navy, had any air combat experience against actual foes. A number of them graduated from Top Gun, but their high level of skill was never put to the real test. Perhaps that was all for the best.
You might have heard about a little conflict going on in Eastern Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-37_(missile)#Operational_history
For hundreds of years, there’s been over-estimation of military might of various countries.
Now more than ever, taking advantage of another country is about taking advantage of or stirring up divisions within the targeted area. Hitting after a disaster such as disease or act of nature has also been a go to plan.
Interesting but I wonder how much predictive power we can expect from psych profiling of this kind.
The author told us to google “the new jew”. That brought up a TV show for me. Is it that interesting?
The new Jew is a real thing apparently and here is a more information
The fact that there’s a TV show that shows up higher in the Google results is honestly to be expected of anything that might actually inform you and, Well, the TV show is apparently a documentary….
Sorry, her is the link from Oxford Academic
About the new jew https://academic.oup.com/book/12090/chapter-abstract/161456828
This links to an abstract of chapter 11 of a book:
“Abstract
Those active in the Zionist movement to colonize and develop the Land of Israel were determined to develop a new and modern Jewish culture that would serve as a corrective to the image of the Diaspora Jew as weak, pale, timid and afraid. The new Zionist Jew would be strong, confident and effective, and the very act of developing the Land of Israel would in turn develop the Jewish psyche and person. As one slogan put it, “we have come to build [the Land] and be built up by [building] it.” This very assertiveness contributed to the tension with the local Arab population, which resented the arrival of confident newcomers who wished to radically change the environment of Palestine. Thus began a conflict that would break out periodically and increasingly into violence directed against the Jewish newcomers. The Jews were determined to demonstrate that they were not typical “Diaspora Jews” who could be pushed around, so they escalated the tensions through their aggressive response. Thus a movement that did not consider itself violent or militant became increasingly so as the years progressed.”
I think I get it. The hypertrophic anti-Woody Allen thing.
From Are We on the Cusp of a New Political Order?
” But it is interesting, I think, that the policy issues on which there once seemed so little room for compromise are now so much more open. From free trade to antitrust, from health care to outsourcing, from China to unions, there is suddenly a lot more overlap in at least the language of the two parties.”
Hmmm, maybe because, you know, they are two parties by name only?
Sort of like a Punch and Judy show where they are fighting each other but if you looked behind the small stage, it is just one guy with a hand in each puppet.
My first reaction to reading the title of the article is that if it were true the NYT would be the last place to report/analyze it.
From the article”
I think the concern about the moral fiber of the American people is not new in the Republican Party.
The only “fiber” I see in both parties is synthetic, designed to deceive morality by justifying genocide, death of innocents, plunder of the strong over the weak…same “fiber” that was there in WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam, Libya, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and most evident, in Gaza, to mention but a few places. This new “Political Order” is nothing but warmed up casuistry of the ruling class as expressed in both political parties. American “Conservative” and “Liberal” factions are opposite sides of a debased currency.
The Rovian role switching in that sentence is note worthy. Shouldn’t it read I think the concern about the moral fiber of the Republican Party is not new in the American people.? Lordy.
Alternative link to The US economic boom is a mirage FT https://archive.ph/g6aWg
Thanks, but I also discovered that the FT story might be a retread of
«Bloomberg Opinion colleague Justin Fox helpfully explained on Wednesday, headline GDP growth is an annual rate — meaning GDP grew by roughly a fourth of the reported amount in the third quarter, or closer to 7.4%. That’s still the largest one-quarter growth since the BEA data series begins in 1947, but it also follows the largest decline on record: a plunge of more than 10% in the first half of this year. So even after an encouraging third quarter, GDP is still down 3.6% since the pandemic began, marking one of the most severe postwar contractions.»
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/record-economic-boom-mirage-124415493.html
If the facts and opinions expressed in this article were made as a response to one of Wolf Richter’s “drunken sailor” posts, he would delete it.
One comment in the FT comment section so far. Actually, says it all:
“The USA: a third world country with a Gucci belt.”
The only news in that article is that it was published where it was.
Bret Weinstein’s DarkHorse podcast. utube, ~2 hrs. Talking about PCR tests,etc.
Shots in the Dark: Kevin McKernan on DarkHorse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORW2uPR24w
Appreciate this flora. Have lost track of him lately. (YT Algo has no problem making up for my laziness).
I have also recently rediscovered Bret Weinstein, mostly because his participation in the Rescue the Republic action with other people I’m very interested in, such as Colonel Douglas MacGregor, Matt Tiabbi, Walter Kirn, and that lost soul Russell Brand.
Just to be clear, those are not Stonehenge stones, but those at Avebury.
Still a big job, all right.
On the other side of Wiltshire from Stonehenge, so it’s a different timezone.
To be pedantic, the Avebury stoned are much larger. Even bigger job.
Pretty amazing to have that giant rock in a single-axle trailer. The tow vehicle is taking that weight amazingly well. Unless maybe, the rig is just parked in front of the rock so it appears to be loaded in the trailer.
Good old FT busting out the old stalking horse, those nasty bond vigilantes. Oh no! Isn’t that horse dead already? Can they please stop beating it?
>Linus Torvalds kicked the Russians out of Linux, now they’re creating a sovereign Linux community in Russia — Ministry of Digital Development steps in Tom’s Hardware
In brief, the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel stated that the dismissals were simply made in line with the policy of sanctions on the Russian aggressors in the Ukraine war…The Russian Ministry of Digital Development… I just had to pause over that last phrase to let it sink in.
If only there was a “Ministry of Analogue Development” where people were treated as sacred, singular, and precious instead of cheap cannon fodder.
Question is why Torvalds waited two and a half years to do this. Was he waiting for those Russian coders to complete a few projects first? He is acting like a jerk about the whole thing when he could have just issued a bland statement and gave well wishes to those Russian coders.
I think Torvalds does most things related to kernel like a jerk.
But given that there’s already Astra Linux, the only operating system accepted by and for the Russian government, it was obvious from the very moment Linus shut off his mouth that there would be a split project for the kernel, too.
I haven’t followed this story too closely, but my guess is it’s largely kayfabe, with Linus just playing to the more abrasive side of his character. I’m pretty sure he of all people knows the dynamics of an open-source project; you can only control it to the extent you use a very light, fair, and transparent touch. The instant you tick off more than a handful of experienced contributors, the very first thing they will do is fork the code.
If anyone is the butt of a joke here, it’s whatever goofball thought “Let’s enforce sanctions on contributors to a global, public project! That will show them!”
On the antix forum I found that this is supposedly conclusive info on the matter:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Compliance-Requirements
haven’t read the comments yet.
“Ukraine needs 500,000 more troops amid slowing mobilization, senior lawmaker says”
What that lawmaker is really talking about is dropping the draft age down to 18 years of age so that they can be fed into this war. Official Washington has been really pushing for this and Zelelnsky might be waiting until the US elections are over before bringing it in on the basis of the survival of the government, errr, country. It might be part of a larger pattern of some neocons saying that if the war could only be kept going for one more year, just one, then the sanctions will finally collapse the Russian economy and then the Ukraine will win. They just have to keep on feeding money and weapons into the Ukraine to keep it going until the collapse happens. Trust them.
Nah, he just needs to keep feeding the innocent to the Moloch, until he finds a way to get NATO directly involved. There are rumors that “Syrsky” is already sending air-defense troops and medics to the fight as infantry.
I may have mentioned this before, but followers of Bandera are kind of a death cult, where the only meaningful thing to do with one’s life is to sacrifice it for the glory of Ukraine.
Slight correction: “followers of Bandera are kind of a death cult, where the only meaningful thing to do with one’s life is to sacrifice other people’s lives for the glory of Ukraine”–because the Banderites are mostly the ones in the back line that shoot any Ukrainian troops trying to surrender or retreat without being ordered to. And they’ve been known to refuse orders to go reinforce a position that might involve too prolonged heavy fighting. Swell guys to have on one’s team.
I like to think that those banderites were the ones who went on the incursion into the Kursk region. It makes sense in that they, knowing that they were losing, but didn’t want to die retreating from the Russians in their own territory, decided that they’d rather die in an incursion into Russia.
So it’s my sincere hope that a great deal of those banderites are currently
being killed.
I couldn’t be more disturbed by the idea that they’re going to be lowering the draft to 18 years old!
The banderites are mostly avoiding actual combat. They’re staying behind the lines to shoot anyone who tries to retreat. They showed their true colors in Avdeevka, when they refused orders to advance.
There has been a 25% decline in population and a dramatic increase in the age dependency ratio in Ukraine since 2000:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1xK15
January 30, 2020
Total population of Ukraine and Georgia, 2000-2023
(Indexed to 2000)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1yvvt
January 30, 2018
Age dependency ratio for Ukraine and Georgia, * 2000-2023
* Older dependents to working age population
Re “New York Times tech staffers could walk off the job…“:
And, in fact, this morning the Times themselves reports that they have:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/business/media/new-york-times-strike.html
I read the NYT regularly, but maybe a break from some of its witless election coverage might be a good thing..
>>>>Conservative Social Media Rallies Around Peanut the Euthanized Squirrel
It’s about due process. I remember when “The Left” was adamant about due process too. ….and no wars, and the power of corporate actors, and free speech ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._Johnson )
(obviously, the DC Right aren’t angels on those topics…but seemingly the anti-Establishment “edgelords” are on the Right now, when they used to be on the Left.)
The election year framing of the headline is irritating. Now I’m locked in to being pro or anti squirrel.
Ruse & Squirrel, darlink.
Lol, did you just recommend the rose’ with the squirrel? That’s gonna be 2025’s foodie fad.
I have them in my rotteserie league next season.
Boris Badenov will let people know that he is definitely anti squirrel.
I guess he’ll need to curry some favors for the next job when Ukraine no longer exists. (Ok, that may not be funny…
)
Squirrel curry…an interesting idea.
And let’s not get started on red squirrel versus grey squirrel if we were in the UK!
We have black squirrels as well…
Your comment will age well. Thanks for that.
As we drove away Saturday, we could hear echoing through Indiana valleys the chant of true believers, but it wasn’t politics, it was
AIR-CRETE! AIR-CRETE! AIR-CRETE! AIR-CRETE!
It was a good day.
“China Claims Discovery of Seabed Spying Devices”
It’s all fun and games until cheap knock-off copies of those surveillance devices are discovered off the Hampton Roads.
Read Hunt for Red October… Tom Clancy Fall 1984.
Or Blind Man’s Bluff, Sontag & Drew, 1998 for a non-fiction account.
No balloons, tho? Cuz those things are super bad, would require going to defcon 2.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1853283830196789362
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
I find this news particularly painful and shocking given my own personal history: leading Swiss university ETH is starting to openly discriminate against Chinese students due to geopolitics
https://scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3284843/swiss-universitys-not-so-neutral-policy-restrict-applications-chinese-students
I studied at university in Switzerland and met my wife Junjun there: she was in the early 2000s among the very first Chinese students to ever come study there (she was in the first 10). We then together co-founded a company in Switzerland – HouseTrip – for which we won most of the entrepreneurship awards Switzerland has to offer, including “Best Swiss Startup” 2 years running.
Needless to say, had this discriminatory policy been in place back then for our university, my life would have been completely different – very much for the worse – and Switzerland would have been deprived of what was at the time its most successful entrepreneurial venture. Junjun’s story is not Switzerland’s only example of a student from China who built a successful venture: there’s also Tao Tao, who co-founded GetYourGuide, another big Swiss success, right after studying at ETH, the very university now implementing this shameful discrimination policy. And plenty others.
Such policies are foolish not only because they deprive Switzerland of great talents but also for the world they participate in creating: one where we have the wider West closing itself off from the world out of fear and ideology, and making a desperate attempt to prevent the Global South from catching up technologically. And one where science is increasingly politicized and divided among bloc lines.
It also completely obliterates the image of “neutral” Switzerland, making it a country which sees the world as divided in camps and which has resolutely chosen to stand with the West.
Ultimately it’s crystal clear to me that this will be remembered as a dark chapter in Swiss history, a complete negation of its centuries-old DNA to become yet another generic Western country doing the empire’s bidding. Which is sadly symptomatic of the current Orwellian era we’re in, where the West in general is apparently trying to do its very best to act in opposition to all the values and principles it used to claim it stood for…
10:51 PM · Nov 3, 2024
This is not the Switzerland that I knew. You could say that many of them were a bit provincial but in practice it meant that they had no interest in joining EU or NATO. And lots of important decision making was at the level of the Cantons with popular referendums making the will of the people know. But now all that is being thrown out the window and the federal government is making high-handed decisions and wants Switzerland in NATO while Ursula wants them in the EU. They are already on Russia’s enemies list. To read that they are now going after Chinese students seems to me to be a spectacular own goal and the country and the culture will be poorer for it.
If this is where Switzerland’s head is these days, they are doing the Chinese a favor.
Yep.
(although in my area which is not science admittedly but culture Swiss have always been “odd”.)
But expect this behaviour to spread all over Europe.
Regarding Kamala:
Boobytrap spelled backwards is Party Boob, for those of you keeping score.
Paging Sean Combs, please pick up the white courtesy phone….,,
I bet you can type boobs on your pocket calculator too. :)
“Is the bird flu coming?”
“No, it’s already here.”
“Is the risk low?”
“My sweet summer child. That’s what they have to say.”
Here we go again.
It seems irresponsible not to speculate, given the difficult-to-understand level of US support for genocide, that black mail is not playing a part in motivations of the powerful. See this article written by Sam Husseini, a Jordanian-Palestinian writer and political activist. He is the communications director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a D.C.-based nonprofit group that promotes progressive experts as alternative sources for mainstream media reporters. He formerly worked at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and at the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
https://open.substack.com/pub/husseini/p/israel-blackmail-and-the-presidents
Thank you for the juicy link.
The lede, Report: Samuel Pisar, Blinken’s stepfather, was Jeffrey Epstein’s legal advisor as well as Robert Maxwell’s.
Oh.
No, I think the answer for the US support for Genocide is actually, that Israel does own the US, as Bibi has said for decades. Tropes aside, I have been shocked how many US high officials and business leaders are Zionists.
What other nation can actually (and openly) chose a candidate for US federal office and use them to defeat an incumbent House member, for example? That would be nobody.
And within the American Jewish community, it is apparently much more difficult to be anti-Zionist than I ever imagined.
U.S. Jewish Institutions Are Purging Their Staffs of Anti-Zionists
https://inthesetimes.com/article/anti-zionist-israel-gaza-jewish-institutions?link_id=1&can_id=6f951740220f70dba87ee3cb1e9b15f4&source=email-why-us-labor-has-a-special-responsibility-to-stop-israels-attacks-2&email_referrer=email_2478474&email_subject=us-jewish-institutions-are-purging-their-staffs-of-cease-fire-activists
Deeply troubling times……
I’m thinking Shimmer here, (both a floor wax and a delicious dessert topping). There should be no question to the reality of Epstein’s honey trap, only how far it extends. No matter how willing the “blackmailed” are initially, the longer term results are the same, particularly when circumstances become uncomfortable, like Gaza, and maybe the once willing are now faced with a career politician’s Hobson’s choice of sorts.
There does indeed seem to be an eschatological element to the US’s support for zionism, but I don’t think anyone here is buying the “deeply religious beliefs” professed by much of the political class.
Mrsyk agree regarding the “deeply religious beliefs”. Harken back to the Doctrine of Discovery for more “deeply religious beliefs” dovetailing nicely with genocide.
Note that some assert that Israel is the USA’s Middle East proxy.
Didn’t Biden claim Israel is a land based USA aircraft carrier?
But if Israel is doing what the USA policy makers want, why is it so involved in USA politics?
Israel’s value as a proxy should guarantee automatic support and they wouldn’t need to directly get involved in influencing USA politics, media, clampdown on student protesters and the firing of USA university presidents.
Maybe those who suggest that aircraft carriers are “floating targets” see the same is true of land based ones.
If anyone can provide evidence of Israel giving the US financial, military, or diplomatic aid, rather than being the recipient of such from us, I would love to see it. Of course, I’m excluding bribes to US Congressional candidates from the financial category and a whole raft of things from the military category, including training death squads in the Americas, teaching techniques for torturing prisoners to our soldiers, and showing US police forces how to spy on and suppress political demonstrations. There just doesn’t seem to be much of anything reciprocal in our relationship with this supposed “ally” and proxy. We don’t even really use them as that metaphorical aircraft carrier–most of our military bases in West Asia are in Arab countries.
I think the fallacy with this whole line of thinking is to keep thinking of huge, distributed populations like the USA as singular ‘main characters’. There are many centers of power, pulling in different directions. Some of them have been in charge for a very long time, to a greater or lesser extent, but still needing to engage in knife fights to maintain their power. In this framing, the value Israel / AIPAC provides is more important internally as external enforcers for the ruling clique than anything outside the country’s borders.
Well, that sounds like a great opportunity for blackmail.
https://open.substack.com/pub/husseini/p/israel-blackmail-and-the-presidents
Thank you for saying this: “If anyone can provide evidence of Israel giving the US financial, military, or diplomatic aid, rather than being the recipient of such from us, I would love to see it.:
I have been completely baffled by the argument that Israel is our attack dog. Occupying the West Bank furthers what US national interest? Same for attacking Lebanon in 1982. How did the Six-Day war further US national security?
I agree with your logic, but consider how it fits in with the same reactive and unnecessary attacks on afghanistan, iraq, Panama, Libya et al. It prevented two front wars in 67 and 73. Now it prevents the embarrassment of yet another military defeat.
How did the Six-Day war and attacking the USS Liberty further US national security?
As I pointed out, neither the six day war nor any of the other wars and invasions following WWll furthered US national security. Obviously attacking the uss Liberty did nothing for national security, clearly the Johnson administration considered it expendable.
Respectfully, one might ask what are Biden/Harris sanctions policies, blowing up Nordstream 2 and the proxy war in Ukraine doing to further US national security. The answer, nothing. The Empire makes certain the donor classes get paid. Vassal nations pay tribute, all feed off the global South. There are no statesmen running the show. There never were. A terrorist settler state, like it’s proxy in Palestine grew by genocide and became an empire.
should have pointed out my comment was serious sarcasm – agree with you Felix –
Excelente question
No, the US owns Israel (allowing a little leash here and there). The reason for the genocide is that the Arabs are getting a bit above themselves and thinking they have rights, and so the US einsatzgruppen have been unleashed to show them what will happen if they go any further.
It doesn’t seem to have worked so far, so the natural response is to kill even more Arabs in more places.
“Standing on a beach with a gun in my hand, staring at the sea, staring at the sand . . .”
Richard Murphy’s “What is Politics for?” reminds me of Ian Welsh’s frequent reminder that politicians are not your friends. They are competing to be the person who can rope in the most people to be exploited for the benefit of their donors. (as best I can recall what Welsh has written)
Bunker Down:
One last war story for today.
When I was getting through AFROTC in early 70’s there was a large need for launch officers in Minuteman, I was eligible but the same color deficiency that cut me from flight school eliminated me from launch program.
I knew a number of former launch officers over the years……
Those guys had to be certified sane! Hat tip to Yossarian Catch 23!
Correction. Those dead men were workers, not airmen.
Seven years of having random wild animals and neighbors complaining. Time to form a non-profit and recieve donations. No time to meet a single requirement for running a rescue/rehab.(Although his paperwork for the non-profit probably claims he fulfills certain requirements.)
Meanwhile, social media is full of responsible rehabbers who keep up to date with their training and local laws.
That said, what kind of animal control can get bit by a squirrel?
This is a situation where everybody sucks. Except the animals.
FWIW – My take on the squirrel fiasco – I put this out today for friends and family – My father was a public health official – I am so glad he is not alive for this – it is not just embarrassing – it is humiliating. They broke almost every rule of investigation – and YET AGAIN – science and the accumulated wisdom of the ages mean absolutely nothing to our current public health workers.
There has been an alarming recent trend with public health officials just making stuff up out of thin air. My father is rolling in his grave.
This squirrel thing may seem trivial – but if left unchallenged, the public health behavior that caused it will just continue to get worse – COVID should have taught us some lessons here but I guess the bodies of hundreds of elderly nursing home patients in New York City have failed to teach us a thing.
This squirrel was removed from the guy’s house in NEW YORK STATE – because some crazy loon woman from TEXAS was sending complaints to the NEW YORK HEALTH DEPT almost daily for a year. RABIES RABIES RABIES – FILTH FILTH FILTH – Yet another “Karen” – It is a classic Cluster B psych disorder – and there is a lot of it going around. The first rule of any kind of forced public health intervention is that there must be actual harm being done to the complainant. PLEASE ANYONE – I AM ALL EARS – HOW WAS THIS WOMAN 1500 MILES AWAY BEING HARMED BY A SQUIRREL AND RACCOON BEING KEPT CLEANLY IN SOMEONE’S PRIVATE HOME? The action was taken by the health officials on account of “rabies” – and yet when I go to my latest Infectious Disease textbook online – confirmed by the CDC website – this is what it says – “Rabies is almost exclusively found in the wild in bats and other small predator animals such as raccoons, foxes, skunks, and weasels. These animals and the pet cats and dogs infected by them account for almost the entirety of rabies exposure in humans in North America. OTHER COMMON ANIMALS THAT BITE HUMANS SUCH AS SQUIRRELS, MICE, RATS, FERRETS, REPTILES AND BIRDS ALMOST NEVER HAVE RABIES and therefore it is important to keep the wounds clean but rabies treatment and vaccination are not generally indicated.” Emphasis mine. I distinctly remember this exact topic of which animals have rabies being a BOARD EXAM question on my last Board of Internal Medicine Exam. And FYI, I have saved the above documents on my computer at home – because just like so many things in COVID, I expect in the next few days that all of the above will be altered. That is yet another nasty habit that we have fallen into.
Why the Board Exam question? It is very important for front line physicians to know which animal bites need to be treated for rabies – the therapy is often 50K$ or more. SQUIRRELS ARE NOT ON THE LIST. He also had a raccoon – and they are on the list – however, he kept it indoors – so how is that animal going to become infected? I heard the screamer was also upset about filth – I have looked at these videos – that young man appears to be living with these animals in a house much more pristine than my own. It does not appear to anyone with experience here that these officials did one iota of actual investigation.
And just FYI – during the time of the Founding Fathers – squirrels were almost universally kept as pets indoors – much more so than cats. Franklin had several as did Washington.
What a joke we have become. Before the past 10 years or so, the screaming loon making these complaints would have been sent a cease and desist note – PLEASE NOTE, IF YOU CONTINUE WITH THIS BEHAVIOR, WE WILL TURN YOU INTO THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES FOR A PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION. I saw it done countless times over the years. Now we cow-tow to them.
I am sick and tired of our health apparatus feeling obligated to respond to those who shriek the loudest among us. This is not science. This is in fact very damaging to the entire professions of public health and medicine. It is also damaging to society to respond in such a manner to those around us obviously suffering from a personality disorder. It will not end well. These public health officials should be sued personally and corporately. This is absolutely an overreach and indeed a dereliction of their duty to be scientists.
Thank you. I read the twtr-X post (but cannot find again, sorry) the man wrote after his animals were taken away explaining that both were rescue animals he’d saved. In the squirrel’s case he rescued it as a pup when it’s mother was killed by being hit by a car. The squirrel pup was found at her side. The man tried to release the squirrel into the wild when it was grown up but it kept coming back. The same apparently with the racoon. He was begging the authorities not to kill the animals.
Now the state finishes the animals off. To save the animals. oh man.
“It is a classic Cluster B psych disorder”
I feel like that’s something I should have known about but didn’t. Here’s a bit more generally about Cluster B disorders.
Doc, I didn’t follow this story until a few comments today, including yours. Sad, avoidable story. However you mention: “And FYI, I have saved the above documents on my computer at home – because just like so many things in COVID, I expect in the next few days that all of the above will be altered.” Yep, with ya on that one. I’ve recorded/copy/pasted quite a bit since, well about the time Bernie got taken out. We may loose the ability to research without surveillance and obfuscation – quite soon. I keep reference books handy such as Taber’s Med. Dictionary, Almanacs, Encyclopedias because we just can’t trust “official” narratives anymore.
Thanks. I’m not that fond of squirrels but if they are a rabies hazard I need to move. Bureaucrats are sometimes prey to petty power trips and that’s not just a “rightwing” fantasy.
Where can you possibly move that is safe from squirrels?
Nine years ago there was a brief explosion in the chipmunk population here in the mitten. I heard an interview on one of the college stations where the guest, a population biologist, said that the chipmunks even tried to swim the Straits of Mackinac to colonize the upper peninsula. They failed and there was a grim tide of failed migrant rodents on the shores of Lake Michigan.
I would also add I think what we’re seeing here is a rise in authoritarianism.
Remember the Moral Majority in the 90’s, the ones which wanted heavy metal banned? And the masses laughed, mocked the silly censor-wannabes, this is America where there is free speech and such, so they slithered away having achieved almost nothing. Frank Zappa and Dee Schneider gave amazing speeches which reaffirmed for everyone what they believe. It feels like this time there’s a larger and more prevalent contingent in the US that agrees with authoritariansm, with the security state, with disrupting freedoms and liberties, government intervention, censorship, etc. And the state apparatus is only too happy to oblige. There has been some kind of mindset shift.
> there’s a larger and more prevalent contingent in the US that agrees with authoritariansm, with the security state, with disrupting freedoms and liberties, government intervention, censorship, etc. And the state apparatus is only too happy to oblige.
And having this contingent be Democrats certainly wasn’t on my Bingo card.
The reality is that organizations supposedly tasked with protecting the environment and looking after wildlife do the opposite. Fish & Game often kills wild animals – bears, bobcats, and coyotes are often targeted. NY state apparently doesn’t have many of these so they kill squirrels and raccoons instead. We all know effective the EPA is in protecting the environment. Most fish & game persons wear badges and carry guns. They like being cowboys.
US government looking into Chinese enriched uranium imports.
Will there be tariffs?
A short piece by Sleuthnews on election predictions.
“Election Prediction (For Fun)”
https://www.sleuth.news/p/election-prediction-for-fun
“I think that the Democrats will revert to the mean to a larger extent than the GOP. We are further removed from the Dobbs decision, Joe Biden is unpopular, and I don’t think there is much excitement for Kamala Harris. To the extent it’s become a referendum on Trump, he has enjoyed a post-Presidency improvement in his approval rating.
And what about the polls? We’ve never seen the national polls show a race this close before. Have they made improvements? Are Trump supporters less shy and more apt to respond to pollsters in 2024?
I think they are still undercutting his support, perhaps by 3-4 points.
Blue states are getting redder, and red states are getting more blue. “
Just for fun, we can imagine what last minute shenanigans will be posted to try and move people today.
I can see images of Jill Stein attending parties at Epstein’s Island, with witnesses coming forward to say they saw her and Donald snorting coke off the belly of underage Russian models.
If early results aren’t a blow out for one side or the other I think we’re going to see things get nasty very quickly.
If the PTB wanted to stymie (somewhat) post election violence based on not believing the results then perhaps exit polls should be brought back? But no, and boy oh boy that “no” speaks volumes.
>>>If early results aren’t a blow out for one side or the other I think we’re going to see things get nasty very quickly.
If, you say? I think it is already to late. People have been driven insane and whatever the election results, the reactions will be very nasty.
Imo indies voted against trump in 2020 bc of his boorishness/bad manners etc and Biden association with fairly popular Obama. But now imo the economy sucks for the bottom half and indies are comparing better times under trump than the last 4 years.
I agree with most of the map in the link except MN, plus NV too close to call, granted NV too small to matter. Beyond that it looks like the pop vote could go either way, hard to believe if that is true that dems could win EC.
1 day to go!
…not being US I sometimes need a second to figure out the abbrevations of states: so MN is obviously Minnesota but then NV? What is NV? And what popped into my mind was North Vietnam!!!!
HAHAHAHA!!!!!😂
AG yes North Vietnam now the 51st state !
Nevada :)
Deadly Fungal Outbreaks Are on the Rise Since Covid
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-03/deadly-fungal-outbreaks-are-on-the-rise-globally-since-covid?srnd=homepage-americas
Not to worry though, they assure us it is lockdowns what did it….
“Due to the way Covid curbs disrupted human interaction and altered our exposure to the various pathogens in the environment, people’s immune systems may not be able to marshal as robust a response against invading pathogens as before.”
Foresure.
WOW
thanks Bloomberg
in case you hit a paywall – https://archive.ph/P192z
Bunker Down – The Baffler
Navy submarine dwellers are the only group that I can think of that would be trained in some way for bunker living, where other circumstances determine when you can leave.
I find articles like this from Slate to be both wrong and self serving. After everything that’s happened, people think advertising, good or bad, right or wrong, is going to determine these elections? And it’s not a conflict of interest for an organization that receives revenue from hosting ads, running curated content, and putting out the party line to say so? Ok.
I believe this line of thinking is to maintain people’s grip on things they can control. Was Trump’s McDonald’s stunt an ad? Was Trump’s appearance on Joe Rogan an ad? Do you think more people or less people interacted with that content than a 30 second ad on their biggest screen in the house? If podcasts and stunts become the way things are done then there is no reason to spend money on ads. Hence, ads must be important. My job and business rely on them being so…
I have yet to see a study or any evidence showing ads do what these people claim they do to move voting behavior. That’s one of the reasons why Russia Gate was such a hoax. Maybe this election will ne different. But with someone who is as well defined in the eyes of the electorate as Trump, and someone who Team Blue has tried with all their might to label as “Generic CIA Democrat”, I don’t think the ad spending or content matters.
Interesting.
Kinda like spending money on weapons. We’ve accumulated enough weapons to blow this pop stand 100 times over, but we keep spending.
No one wants to be blamed or pointed out as getting “outspent” in an election. It’s a bad look. Do these ads, billboards work? Like you, I highly doubt it. A colossal waste of money, but no politician will tell so. No rich donor will admit it either. They can point back to their donations and then expect certain “favors” (tax cuts), provided they donated to the winner.
The future of finance – Bank of International Settlements
“Financial innovation is important because finance is important – it is the bloodstream of the real economy.”
Now we know what kind of cancer that hyper-financialization is on the real economy: leukemia.
Re: “Gambling on Vibes” from The Hill.
In short, the article is saying the betting markets are wildly inefficient, and there’s no one savvy enough to take advantage of it.
Absurd. Put up or shut up. If the author wanted to convince me, show me how much you bet on your contrary position. Otherwise, it’s all Monday morning quarterbacking.
Always ask yourself a question – exactly who is spreading misinformation……
Were it not for Twitter’s Community Notes, this lie would have never come to light.
And what was she thinking – making shit up like this?
Again – we need to be very careful with the term misinformation and who is spewing it…….
https://x.com/AOC/status/1853246284599050378
thx not surprising AOC has the moral code of a rabid dog.
what is this item re: AOC about? I don´t yet get it – what did she do this time???
Posted a photo of a huge festival with thousands of attendees and claimed it was a big Anti Trump rally in Puerto Rico.
While it is likely to get misled by people on the internet and spread bad information unintentionally, AOC is beginning to have form on this. Her eagerness to dump on Trump and support the blue wave either causes her to mislead with no concern for accuracy or to leap to do it without checking. Either way it is not a good look for someone who rails about misinformation and is advocating for further infringements on our first amendment rights.
oh and said event had nothing to do with the election?
(if so, I seriously doubt the real purpose of the gathering was of any significance to AOC. I mean Kirn is absolutely right, and so are others – Dems do not care about certain ethics re: Trump at all. This is something genuine non-DNC leftists seem to not understand. The real ruthlessness of the Party since 2016.)
Well, some of us have been the targets of that absence of Ruth on the part of the Ds. Ask Jill Stein if she understands this. . . .
How many electoral votes does Puerto Rico have? Asking for a friend.
More on trouble at Intel:
Concerns grow in Washington over Intel
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/01/2024/concerns-grow-in-washington-over-intel
US Policymakers Are Reportedly Open To Potential Intel “Merger Deal”, As They Explore Options To Pull Team Blue Out Of The Danger
https://wccftech.com/us-policymakers-open-to-potential-intel-merger-deal-explore-options-to-pull-team-blue-out-of-danger/
And the obvious comparisons to another American manufacturer:
Is this the deal to end Boeing’s crippling 7-week strike?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/01/business/boeing-strike-deal-new-vote/index.html
What this Boeing strike is really all about
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/14/business/boeing-workers-strike/index.html
Both of these companies are suffering similar problems despite the fact that the technologies behind the products are very different. But the way the companies are directed and lead by the CEO and board are very similar, even almost identical in the use of stock buybacks and other financial maneuvering to maintain profitability rather than actually doing the hard work of building an excellent workforce, performing excellent R&D, and then manufacturing best in class products.
American DC elites have started to notice that not having companies that do what Intel and Boeing do might be a bit of an issue. Give them some credit even if they are at least twenty years late to noticing that this is a problem. But Biden made his policy on this blindingly clear when he told Wall St nothing will fundamentally change – American CEOs and Wall St can keep running their companies into the ground and [family blogging] their workers to maximize profits. In fact, he even got the CHIPS Act passed so that those same CEOs can suck off the government teat after they have just about completely wrecked their companies.
It’s not as if any side of the uniparty will make the corrections required to fix these problems, but here’s hoping that DC elites aren’t stupid enough to force AMD to merge with Intel. It most likely won’t fix Intel, but could wreck AMD after AMD did the hard work to become a proficient company making good products.
Useful Idiots Podcast:
“The Final Election Scramble
Corporate media pulls out all the stops on the final day before the election”
76 min.
https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/the-final-election-scramble
Game Plan: After Ukraine —
Edward Lucas is alive and kicking! Lucas was for many years senior editor of The Economist and did much to drag that once-venerable publication down into its reduced role as a mouthpiece for USA policies. Lucas is wildly, insanely, foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Russia. I assume he checks under his pillow at bedtime to ensure there are no FSB spies lurking underneath. I read his book “The New Cold War” while on summer vacation in 2008 and spent way too much time getting agitated instead of relaxing.
The very idea that Russia plans to wage war on the silly Baltic Trio is completely looney tunes, but Lucas seems to believe in it. And influential people take him seriously? May the good Lord bless us and protect us.
rest assured: Not only Lucas!
Greetings from Berlin! ;-P
America This Week with
Matt Tiabbi and Walter Kirn,
pre-election edition
@ 8 pm ET
“Election Day is upon us, and with it comes the end of an era. But don’t worry. If you’re a fan of heightened anxiety and ceaseless hysteria, the next few weeks and months should still have plenty to offer, no matter who wins.”
https://open.substack.com/pub/taibbi/p/atw-livestream-tonight-at-8-pm-et7-c8d
Where can you possibly move that is safe from squirrels?
Nine years ago there was a brief explosion in the chipmunk population here in the mitten. I heard an interview on one of the college stations where the guest, a population biologist, said that the chipmunks even tried to swim the Straits of Mackinac to colonize the upper peninsula. They failed and there was a grim tide of failed migrant rodents on the shores of Lake Michigan.
The foregoing was supposed to be a reply to Carolinian, whose humor or irony I may well have missed.
I love squirrels and lecture them regularly on their poor life choices in crossing roads at the worst possible times.
Yet I hate deer for exactly those same poor life choices. Squirrels have never totalled my car. I’m guessing therein lies a difference.