Part 2: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-December 2024 Calculated Risk
Climate
World’s largest iceberg emerges from vortex, moving northward Anadolu Agency
The secret treasure trove still hidden in Africa’s forests Al Jazeera
Syndemics
CDC Wastewater Scan Shows H5 Detections In 11 States Avian Flu Diary
Bird flu causes deaths of cats and zoo animals as virus spreads in US FOX
China?
China’s manufacturing in next 20 years aims to be cheap, good and high-tech: Expert CGTN
China needs incentives to power a lean, grass-roots-official machine, economic leaders say South China Morning Post
China vows to crack down on illicit spycam recordings after rise in hotel room voyeurism cases Channel News Asia
India
Modi’s $6 Billion Submarine Plan Stalls Following Sea Tests Bloomberg
BJP’s attack on the American ‘deep state’ reflects growing global discourse Business Standard
The Koreas
Was South Korea’s coup an attempt to restart the Korean War? People’s Dispatch
K-pop, carols, free food at South Korea impeachment protests Channel News Asia
Syraqistan
HTS leader emphasizes need to evolve from ‘revolutionary mentality’ Anadolu Agency
‘Syria will not engage in conflict with Israel’: HTS chief breaks silence on Israeli assaults Press TV
Blinken confirms US contact with Syrian rebel group The Hill
* * * Syrian 25th Armoured Division Continues the Fight Against Jihadists Despite Government’s Fall: Can They Hold Out? Military Watch
IAEA says Iran agrees to more monitoring at key nuclear enrichment plant France24
Press TV, Iran: “Israeli aggression” [in Syria] Gilbert Doctorow
European Disunion
Georgia’s turmoil deepens as ex-footballer named president BBC
* * * Moldova enters state of emergency, Transnistria stockpiles firewood BNE Intellinews
Abolishing Democracy in Europe Craig Murray
Dear Old Blighty
Big Brother in the pub The Pub Curmudgeon
New Not-So-Cold War
The End Game in Ukraine Julian Barnes, NYT
The Price of Russian Victory Foreign Affairs
In The Escalation Debate, Results Matter The National Interest
Bureaucrat Main Character Syndrome is killing Ukraine — and America The Spectator
* * * Ukraine’s patchy fortifications help Russia advance FT
War Map Reveals Russian Advances As Ukraine’s Fortifications Destroyed Newsweek
Drones attack Chechen capital, likely targeting bases of riot police and special forces Ukrainska Pravda
* * * Ukraine to set up mechanism to supply food to Syria, Zelenskiy says Reuters
Ukrainian authorities postpone US minerals deal to let Trump seal it – NYT Ukrainska Pravda
The New Great Game
Central Asian Militaries and Asian Geopolitics The Diplomat
Digital Watch
OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment Mercury News. The deck: “Suchir Balaji, 26, claimed the company broke copyright law.”
American cops are using AI to draft police reports, and the ACLU isn’t happy The Register
Trump Transition
About 3 in 10 are highly confident in Trump on Cabinet, spending or military oversight: AP-NORC poll
Will the Hegseth nomination survive? The Daily Howler
Mullin applauds Hegseth‘s attempts to court Republicans behind closed doors: He’s ‘killing it’ The Hill
ABC agrees to give $15 million to Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle defamation lawsuit AP
Spook Country
Commentary: The ‘Five Eyes’ spy alliance should let Japan join Channel News Asia
The Supremes
Constitutional Federalism and the Nature of the Union (PDF) GW Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2024-64. From the Abstract: “The former British Colonies in North America became “Free and Independent States” following the Declaration of Independence—a status that entitled them to all of the rights and powers of every other sovereign state under the law of nations. Under that law, states could alienate their sovereign rights and powers in a binding legal instrument, but only if the instrument met certain requirements. As [Emmerich de] Vattel [(1760)] explained, and Hamilton echoed in The Federalist, all instruments used to alienate such rights and powers were subject to an important background rule designed to avoid misunderstandings and war: a legal instrument could alienate sovereign rights and powers only if it did so in clear and express terms or by unavoidable implication. Instruments that failed this test left sovereign rights and powers with the original holder.”
Our Famously Free Press
‘Do we exist?’ A robot news site shadows a Northwest town The Seattle Times
Haunted By Ghost Papers Local News Initiative
* * * Completing merger, ‘McClatchy Media’ forms with lifestyle brands and greater reach Miami Herald
Supply Chain
Fitch Ratings: Global Shipping Outlook Is Stable in 2025 Hellenic Shipping News
Healthcare
Ohio Supreme Court delivers win to CVS, Walgreens, Walmart in national opioid case Pharmacist Steve
The FDA Hasn’t Inspected This Drug Factory After 7 Recalls for the Same Flaw, 1 Potentially Deadly Propublica
The Final Frontier
Xmas Pre-Game Festivities
Stay sober and have a jolly holiday season with these expert tips AP
Annotations: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens JSTOR Daily
Imperial Collapse Watch
US Army and US Navy Successfully Test LRHW Hypersonic Missile Naval News. LRHW = Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon.
Class Warfare
* * * Amazon union authorizes strike at 2 New York warehouses The Hill. Amazon Teamsters.
Railroads and Unions Divide and Scramble Labor Notes
* * * How Walter Benjamin’s Iconic Antifascist Essay Escaped Europe Literary Hub
The Global Rules of Art: The Emergence and Divisions of a Cultural World Economy Nonsite.org
* * * The Big Shining Lie: We’re Better Off Now–No, We’re Poorer, Much Poorer Charles Smith, Of Two Minds
Antidote du jour (H. Zell):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
It is so important to have a source for untainted, uncorrupted information. With the advent, widespread use of AI it is becoming a logarithm tailored world, with my biases spoonfed back to me, isolating us in a blanket of our biases and weaknesses, devolving our shared realities, very unhealthy, dangerous even. Continued pandering to base, self-possessed self-interest leaves us vulnerable, prone to exploitation.
When “AI Agent Lawyers” come on line, and you wake up one day to discover you’ve received 10,000+ lawsuits in 100+ jurisdictions, how will you handle this?
Yesterday, Ilya Sutskever said at a conference that “superintelligent AI” will be unpredictable. What most people haven’t realized yet is that this assumption might have MAJOR legal consequences
Sure but let’s consider some of the links today – writing police reports is an exercise in confirmation bias. Commenter mark wrote yesterday about professors wanting students to learn how to synthesize conclusions from a pile of knowledge. I’ll say that as a software engineer, it’s made me willing to take on projects that used to be too much work, but also has made me lazy. Now instead of just implementing some trivial task, I generate the answer.
Mark also made the point that the trend is to rely more on machines and less on each other, and I believe he’s completely correct – instead of social networks, we have social media. Instead of friends, we have dating apps. Instead of librarians, we have Google. Instead of mental health professionals, we have people using ChatGPT as a therapist.
A phrase that I heard recently and have adopted is “Algorithm Ghetto.” It seems to capture part of what you saying.
AI is all the rage in medical education at the moment. One more shortcut to the magic fairy dust that makes everything easy. When I refuse to call it “artificial” (which is bad enough) and use “algorithmic” instead, I do get some push back. But as it is, medical students’ knowledge (for most, not all) remains stuck in their tablets, phones, and laptops. Which means that is where it stays. For the past 3-4 years, going back to pre-ChatGPT, I have had one student who could answer a question in a Group Tutorial (8 students) without first looking at a screen of some kind. My current doctor graduated from medical school 10 years ago. He doesn’t need his computer to function with his patients. For graduates from 2025, just watch. AI is an artifact in every negative connotation of that word and will remain so. I will retreat to my corner now.
I’d advise filing 10,000 motions to dismiss for improper service.
Rule 12(b):
Defenses:
+Improper service
+Failure to state a claim
+lack of personal jurisdiction
+improper venue
+lack of subject matter jurisdiction
Then follow up with a Rule 11(b) motion for sanctions against the human entity behind such monkey business.
Make my day!
Frankly, while implausible, this scenario is something that the ABA ought to be thinking about. Eliminating electronic filing and forcing good old-fashioned in-person court filings on paper would go a long way toward breaking it.
Service must be ‘reasonably calculated’ to give the defendant notice and opportunity to answer a complaint. So the scenario you raise would likely fail the test. However, such nuisance lawsuits could become a feature of corporate America, I can foresee.
“Blinken confirms US contact with Syrian rebel group”
I don’t understand this headline. Why are they pretending that they are just now contacting them when they have been a client state of their for years now? Without US protection, they would have been annihilated years ago.
Who is the client? Tony’s forces or the foreign comprised rebel group?
Why the US of course. Hillary Clinton admitted in an interview years ago that they had created al-Qaeda and even after 9/11, they are still supporting al-Qaeda and their kindred groups as they are so useful to them-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnLvzV9xAHA (1:23 mins)
Ask yourself this. When was the last time that al-Qaeda attacked the US. And then ask when was the last time that al-Qaeda attacked Israel. I rest my case.
The US supports the most fanatical religious group in the ME which also happens to be the regions largest and most powerful terrorist organization, guilty of egregious crimes against humanity and violations of international law, and the US has been doing it for decades; It’s known as Israel.
Thus, it’s hardly a surprise that support for lesser terrorist groups—HTS, al-Qaeda, etc—that are willing to do our bidding is neocon sop.
OpenAI, copyright law and killing.
1) there is documentary about The Pirate Bay shown on svtplay.se Very good. They did everything to stop TPB. Why don’t they dp everything to stop OpenAI?
2) the US capitalist class is unhinged and need a bit more of Luigi Mangione treatment to learn a little bit of respect for the law and workers. How many whistleblowers have conveniently been found dead (killed) so far this year? Or is there an US endemic addition to the syndemics: whistleblowerius dropdeadiensis?
>”Why don’t they do everything to stop OpenAI?”
OpenAI Is Working With Anduril to Supply the US Military With AI
Because there’s a lot of investor money in it. It’s very interesting to see who’s lining up against OAI going for-profit. In addition, the music industry has gone after Suno and Udio but not to the extent of shutting it down. TPB and Napster were on the wrong side of copyright law. AI can claim to generate new material in a similar way to humans (we hear a song and get inspired to write our own similar yet distinct songs). The OAI whistleblower outlined his own thoughts on his website, I linked in yesterday’s comments.
Who is lining up against oai going for profit, and why is it interesting?
Was your reply a trivial task that you used ai to generate?
But they didn’t stop The Pirate Bay. It still exists on mirror sites although they did run it out of Sweden.
All the complaining about AI theft leaves out the reality that the personal computer revolution was a power to the people movement even as the revolutionaries eventually turned into the thing they were assaulting. Some of those pioneers in their garages started out by devising ways to cadge free long distance calls in an era where the ATT monopoly made these unreasonably expensive.
And as Cory Doctorow has pointed out computers are very good at making copies which infuriated Hollywood and the media companies until they eventually realized that millions around the world taking advantage of the copying provided free promotion for them and their drive to conquer international markets. Before that the studios would spend as many millions on advertising and TV commercials as they did making the movie. Plus large chunks of many movies now are created inside computers, and these special effects heavy films also help to expand into regions with different languages (while arguably killing off the artistic film revolution that seemed to be gathering steam in the 1970s).
Silicon Valley has always been about getting the free lunch but with AI they may be pursuing a product that nobody really wants. There’s Deep State Big Brother wanting it of course–unless we disrupt it with computers.
…scene from Gone With The Win
Frankly Scarlet my dear, I don’t give a damn about human interaction in the movies, they cost money when they perform.
“Protests continue in Tbilisi as winemakers, doctors, IT specialists, and others march on the 16th day”
‘Psychologists, musicians, IT specialists, PR professionals, marketers, lawyers, and many others joined the protests in separate marches.’
Is that who the main protestors are in Georgia? The Professional Managerial Class? Really? So does that imply that the blue collars are the supporters behind the government which is why they voted for them. If Georgia fully went into the EU, how many of those protestors would stay in Georgia and how many would shoot through to find their fortunes in the big smoke of the EU. Of course even if they left, they would still insist on having their say in Georgian affairs. Look at the Moldovan diaspora for confirmation here. Time is about up for the Georgian Maidan as that French spook-adjacent Prime Minister is out in only a coupla days more. I’m sure that Macron would find her a cozy position in a think tank in Paris when this happens. The EU will still try to topple the Georgian government but their best chance is rapidly slipping by.
Charles Hugh Smith: No, We’re Poorer, Much Poorer
Smith goes through one factor after another that has deteriorated, everything from a substantial lunch to Honda cars (which is unfortunate, because, like Smith, I had an older Honda Civic that just would not stop running — once I was working from home, I donated it to a charity because I put so few miles on it).
This is the dis-ease of the United States. In the UK, where the feudal hierarchy is still in place, the poverty of the citizenry is taken for granted.
When I was in Chicago in September for a visit to the clan, and to present some new work, I went to a middle-class cafe, La Colombe (a small chain that originated in Philly) on Foster and Clark. Four years ago, a croissant and a caffè espresso were about $4.50. Not cheap, but manageable for a tasty breakfast. I used to go there often.
In September 2024, 9.18 USD. Yep, over nine bucks. Here in the Chocolate City, a caffè and cornetto (croissant) is 3,50 euro.
I went to a Jewel food store that I frequented when I lived in Chicago. There were no tomatoes grown in the U S of A, only tomatoes from Canada and Mexico. The U S of A can’t harvest a tomato in September, which is still high-tomato-season?
That’s when I knew that Harris would lose. And if you use Smith’s article as a measure, those anecdotes are a sign of how much poorer I am in the U S of A than here in the Undisclosed Region.
I appreciate how he presented quite a few specific requirements for modern daily life in America circa 2024 into 2025. Housing, insurance, means of transportation…it likely would be impractical today but in 1990 my first vehicle purchase was a second hand Dodge ( Mitsubishi ) Colt two door hatchback, already sporting over 80,000 miles by the one driver. 4 speed manual, vinyl bucket seats and the lack of any A/C was supplemented by a 2 x 70mph window cooling unit ( hey the heat worked in the cold though ! ). Not bad transportation for less than $1,500!
Fast forward 30+ years and I’d have to research for a comparable stripped down vehicle option…an entry level Honda Civic resembles the Accord from 20 years ago! Sensors in the front windshield, sensors for the rear facing camera…Its insanity to consider what we Americans pay to acquire and use “manufactured durable goods” for the home or office, and the low levels of expected useful time in service..great work at all the offshoring by our best minds ! ( sarc )
Give another twenty years and I bet that the trend will be that people will rent cars and not buy them. The idea of home ownership is being rapidly wrecked for most people and turning them into renters instead so how long will it be before the financial interests get the idea that Americans don’t really need to own their own cars and for them renting would be so “convenient.”
This bit was illuminating to my economics-challenged mind:
“There is only one true measure of prosperity: the purchasing power of an hour’s labor / wage. It doesn’t matter what the wage or price numbers are, what matters is: how much can you buy with an hour’s wage?”
I used to “work pizza” and I read somewhere that the pizza business is a good economic indicator because it’s ubiquitous. My local greasy slice joint has recently increased their price for a medium plain pie from around 22$ to 25$. This place uses crappy ingredients, for example what I used to call “toenail mozzarella” because it comes pre-ground and looks like a bag of big toe toenail trimmings. That’s a quarter of a hundred dollars for a thin disk of flour, salt, sugar, yeast, water, sauce, and (parsimoniously applied) cheese. The fancier joints around town are hitting 33$ before tip and delivery fees.
Edit: my partner just pointed out that the steep price increase of my local pie was probably due to the newly-instituted credit card fee. But the price has still gone up a bit. I just don’t want to mislead all the pizza-price analysts here at NC. :)
This was an excellent article, thank you for boosting it.
I have a theory why people don’t recognize this, it’s a kind of longitudinal bias. The typical 40 year old don’t realize they have a lower standard of living than the typical 40 year old of twenty years ago, because they have a better standard of living than they did themselves five years ago. That, and TVs, computers, and clothing are much cheaper.
Corruption and Russia’s Illicit Gold Trade RAND
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It will be the 50th anniversary soon of Americans being able to own the barbarous in any fashion their little hearts desire, and yet many still think that there is some illegality going on, and what exactly is illicit about Russia using a fungible mineral deposit as a means of finance?
During the Cold War, Soviet metal traders in Switzerland were perhaps the most accomplished, as everybody knew they were net sellers in order to get hard currency for the USSR, but they were really tricky-buying when they ought to have been going the other way, keeping the marketplace in a quandary, this isn’t their first rodeo.
Perhaps what the article by RAND says that it didn’t mean to imply, is how important old yeller is to BRICS, in the scheme of things.
“Ukraine to set up mechanism to supply food to Syria, Zelenskiy says”
Can Zelensky be any more transparent? I can see it now. The Ukraine sends ships with grain to Syria because Zelensky is such a great humanitarian. And while there, those empty ships are loaded up with weaponry and ammo from the surviving Syrian army stocks for delivery back to the Ukraine to keep the war going. And if the Russian Navy demands the right of inspection like when the US Navy did during the Cuban missile crisis, Zelensky will squeal like a stuck pig about “piracy” at sea and complain to the US, the EU and NATO – as they are the only ones still listening to him anymore.
Because who doesn’t love a little Friedman with their coffee?
The First New Foreign Policy Challenge for Trump Just Became Clear
Thomas L. Friedman
Dec. 13, 2024
I have a simple rule of thumb when assessing the potential instability of Middle Eastern countries. They come in just two varieties: countries that implode and countries that explode.
Yep, some countries just inexplicably implode and explode, naturally.
https://archive.ph/U4Lcx
World’s largest iceberg, The surface area of A23a was measured to be about 4,000 square kilometers (1,544 square miles) and 400 meters (1,212 feet) in thickness.
Manhattan = 22.82 sm
Rhode Island = 1,033.6 sm
Puerto Rico = 3,423.3 sm
What’s the bet that some idiot social influencer will helicopter themselves and a bunch of friends to have a party on that iceberg to be streamed across the world. You just know that somebody is thinking about it. Gotta get those likes and subscribes.
How about the profit whores looking at all that water. Maybe AI knows how to tow an iceberg.
Hey it’s the Weyland Yutani Corporation at your service! Building better worlds has to start somewhere and all the easier problems have been covered…
Profits over people…okay not all people since some are actually needed to run the business thing and perform administration duties.
What would we do without little old Rhode Island as a measure?
Right? I wonder if Rhode Island complex is a thing.
Been an interesting time so far in our winter of missed content in Cali south of Interstate 80, the northern climes getting downright pounded by precipitation, while everything south is suffering from a lack of somewhat, the situation in the SoCalist movement especially dire to the point where unplanned new years bonfires are possible as everything is bone dry.
There’s an iceberg for sale. You’ll have to pick it up, no delivery.
We tried to do a deal, but the Cryptocurrency boys have made it collateral for their new offering: Icecoin
GlacierBits…
This really contrasts with the air defenses simply being turned off. I think it’s clear the senior generals were simply paid off. Paid to stand down. What other explanation could there be for turning off the air defenses.
I think Syria is going to become Iraq 2. The disbanded army becoming fodder for anti occupation militias. Maybe the idea is that HTS can enforce peace on the ground with foreign mercs while Israel provides air support. But isn’t this also the Iraq model? The Turkish army could be steamrolled in, but the Israelis won’t tolerate that.
Perhaps pure chaos is the order of the day, to depopulate Syria further to make it ready for eventual Israeli settlement.But the Turks want to send their refugees back.
Yes, I just finished that article, curious about the ten day stand down,
The Syrian capital Damascus was overrun by jihadist insurgent groups sponsored by the Turkish state and by a number of Turkey’s strategic partners including Qatar and Israel, after Syrian Army units for over ten days received consistent orders to stand down and withdraw. This allowed lightly armed insurgents to advance with very little opposition.
Re sober holidays – try Guinness Zero in a proper Guinness glass. Sam Adams Just the Haze is also very good.
https://www.guinness.com/en/beers/guinness-zero
https://www.samueladams.com/our-beers/non-alcoholic/just-the-haze
Happy Christmahannukwaanzakahfestivus!
Best…H
I’m a big fan of Athletic alcohol-free beer. The “Hazy” IPA is full bodied with a nice finish. Much better than the other alcohol-free options I’ve tried.
A man died after he was mauled by his own three dogs in a Mira Mesa park on Friday, according to San Diego police.
The incident was reported by a witness who saw a group of dogs attacking a man at Mesa Viking Park on Westonhill Drive near Capricorn Way around noon, Officer Joe Perales said.
Fox 5 reported good Samaritans tried to intervene by hitting the dogs with shovels and possibly a golf club, which was found at the scene along with torn clothing and a shoe. An officer used a Taser to break up the attack, and the dogs ran off.
The man was taken to a hospital where he died. No other injuries were reported.
San Diego Humane Society officers arrived at the scene and located two of the dogs who were still loose, organization spokesperson Nina Thompson said. A third dog contained in a car was also impounded.
All three dogs are now in the Humane Society’s custody for mandatory bite quarantine, Thompson said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So much for being that man’s best friends…
The attackers were XL Bullies, a larger version of a Pit Bull, and about 30 Americans die a year from dog attacks, with PB’s accounting for 2/3rds of the fatalities.
I’m curious about the number of dog owners attacked by their own dogs.
IMO, It ain’t the dog, it’s the owner.
Well, there’s Police Agent Bretschneider, a secret policeman who repeatedly tries to catch Švejk and others out on their anti-monarchist views. He is eventually eaten by his own dogs, after buying a succession of animals from Švejk in an attempt to incriminate him.
>K-pop, carols, free food at South Korea impeachment protests Channel News Asia
An impeachment-themed Christmas carol by singer Baek Ja – a slightly tweaked version of the well-known Feliz Navidad – also went viral last week.
“Christmas is merry when Yoon Suk Yeol resigns,” the song’s lyrics go.
I ventured out to several non-food grocery stores looking for a Nativity scene to set up for the Christmas season yesterday but all found was row after row of Santas, reindeers, red candy canes, sleds, plastic holly, snowmen, wreaths, mistletoe, red ribbons, red santa hats, and odd characters that I haven’t a clue on allusion…not one manger, one magi, shepherd boy or sheep to be found. Feliz Navidad song by a Korean K-pop star should not be surprising, but it is disheartening nevertheless.
I can’t think of one religion that is more (mis)appropriated for secular purposes than Christianity. Why not have a Christian Christmas and a secular one on separate dates. That would make more sense to me. If you don’t want to keep Christ in Christmas, then get your own holidays says I. And, K-pop should stick to their bubble gum chewing ways.
Should you dig deeper into why Emperor Constantine decided Christmas should be 25th of December, you may find out most Euro-Levantine non-Christian religions had a festive period of some kind at the darkest time of the year after the harvest/slaughter, when the storage was the fullest.
In late Rome 25th December was the day to celebrate the official deity, Sol Invictus, Sun God. Like most pagan celebrations, it was around very Jesus-like themes of death and rebirth as it is the time on Northern Hemisphere when nature goes to hibernation. A 12th century Syrian bishop wrote that early Christians chose that day precisely because it was already a huge celebration everywhere.
Although it’s very contested, based on the shepherds in Luke, the only seasonal reference in Bible regarding Jesus’ birth places it most likely in springtime.
ps. Santa Claus is, of course, St. Nicholas of Myra, who according to legend was defrocked as bishop because he slapped the heretic Areios during the Council of Nicaea.
“Was South Korea’s coup an attempt to restart the Korean War?”
‘Opposition lawmakers are alleging the full scope of President Yoon’s coup involved a months-long plot to trigger a “limited war” with North Korea’
This is crazy if true. How do you have a “limited war” with a nuclear armed nation? What about all that artillery aimed at Seoul ready to level it. Was the US planning to take part in this attack on some bs justification? Unusually for the Biden White House, they have been very silent on the subject of South Korea the past few days – too quiet. Was Biden planning to set the Korean peninsular afire so that it would be one more problem that he could leave for Trump to deal with when he takes office? I would not be surprised as Biden is running around setting as many fires as he can before he leaves office. If he threw a coupla Molotov cocktails into the White House foyer on his way out the door, I would not be surprised.
“Big Brother in the pub”
‘The government have announced that they are going to trial a scheme to allow people to use a form of digital ID held on smartphones for age verification in pubs.’
You just know that it will happen that you will have old age pensioners refused service because they could not verify their age. That sort of bloodymindedness will be built into the roll out of this idea-
‘What’s that? You don’t even know what a smartphone is much less own one, grandpa? Tough luck and get with the program then or no pint for you.’