‘Key lessons’ for conservation as India’s tiger population doubles in a decade BBC
Amazon river dolphins may send messages with aerial streams of urine Science (Jeff W)
Signs Of Life In A Desert Of Death Nomea (Micael T)
The Case Against Drinking Sam Kahn (Micael T)
#COVID-19/Pandemics
NEW: In response to orders by the Trump admin, the CDC has taken down the Household Pulse Survey, one of the biggest and most important sources of Long COVID data in the world.
The US government is literally erasing the existence of Long COVID. pic.twitter.com/X5QfBNJHsd
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) February 1, 2025
New bird flu strain H5N9 in California raises pandemic potential concerns Washington Post (Dr. Kevin)
Climate/Environment
New report urges IEA to turn away from energy transition focus Reuters
‘Like dropping a bomb’: why is clean energy leader Uruguay ramping up the search for oil? Guardian
Global Banks Make Little Headway in Addressing Climate Change Bloomberg
California bill would let insurers sue oil companies to avoid raising rates eenews
Flowers blooming in Moscow and Kiev too:
🌡️HISTORIC WINTER WARMTH IN EUROPE
Hundreds of records smashed in all Central-East
including capitals like Belgrade and Zagreb,
Slovak national monthly record of highest minimum,etc
Croatia broke records in nearly every stationMost important records 👇(magnify the screenshot) pic.twitter.com/GV5tXv56WJ
— Extreme Temperatures Around The World (@extremetemps) January 29, 2025
New documentary investigates IKEA’s destructive logging in Romania REDDMonitor. Micael T: “So IKEA cut high quality wood and turn it to disposable shit furniture. This is outrageous on so many levels.”
China?
US should ‘steal’ China’s best AI talent to keep pace, Senate hears South China Morning Post (guurst). The stupid, it burns.
Africa
France’s Military Withdrawal & Africa’s Realignment Paolo Aguilar
South of the Border
Coffee prices hit record high after Trump stand-off with Colombia Telegraph. Prices steady here because Thailand grows its own but export very little. And it’s really good. I buy Zoba, which has elephants on the bag, natch.
Myanmar
Myanmar disintegrating four years after a disastrous coup Asia Times
European Disunion
Germany recession fears return ahead of election Reuters
Deutsche Bank profits collapse as German economy reels Telegraph
Germany: Mass protests after far-right AfD helps CDU/CSU DW
Anti-migration bill fails German Bundestag after Merkel denounces CDU cooperation with AfD and the left break out in widespread protests eugyppius (Micael T)
The Bundestag debate on the influx restriction law shows why party democracy must go Anti-Spiegel via machine translation (Micael T)
French economy shrinks as political crisis eclipses Olympic boost France24
Greek defence minister demands France explain sale of missiles to Turkey Euronews
Old Blighty
Brexit has some benefits, No 10 says on anniversary BBC (Kevin W)
Israel v. The Resistance
‘We won’t let them sabotage this’: Hostage families fight to keep ceasefire alive +972
The refusal to allow the entry of mobile homes and caravans into Gaza is intensifying the already dire humanitarian crisis faced by thousands of displaced families who have lost their homes entirely. With temperatures continuing to drop and essential services severely lacking,… pic.twitter.com/xejrvAdi75
— Dr Fadel Naim (@fnaim65) January 31, 2025
Palestinian patients on way to Egypt as Rafah crossing opens after 9 months Aljazeera
Pay attention to the wording. Transfer NOT movement. Seems that EU will help implement the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. https://t.co/bExTo8B63V
— Sunny Singh (@ProfSunnySingh) January 31, 2025
this btw is not some rando poster. this is the columbia law prof who got pushed out for standing up for palestinians. also $400 frickin’ K? seems somebody shud investigate this sweetheart deal. Anybody know a good lawyer? https://t.co/NhgJuvpoJI
— chinahand (@chinahand) January 30, 2025
New Not-So-Cold War
Neverending War Julian Macfarlane (Micael T)
CIA/NYT Remove North Korean Troops From Ukraine’s Front Line Moon of Alabama (Kevin W)
Imperial Collapse Watch
Trump is now threatening the BRICS countries. What do you think? pic.twitter.com/buKuqoUEBb
— Berniegirl No More (@Hedgesgurl) January 31, 2025
Russia may drop caps on nuclear arms, if US pushes ahead with missile defense effort — MFA TASS (guurst)
Trump 2.0
Trump threatens to ignite era of trade wars with new tariffs Financial Times
Biggest US trading allies brace for a ‘game of chicken’ with Trump’s tariffs Guardian
Fun Fact: Trump’s tariffs were very limited in his first term, and they obliterated the farming industry. He then had to subsidize farmers with billions of dollars just to save them.
Good luck to everyone.
— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) January 31, 2025
Trump vows to ‘absolutely’ impose tariffs on EU RT
Trump DOJ demands list of thousands of FBI agents, others who worked on Jan. 6 and Trump investigations for possible firing CNN (Kevin W)
* * * Secretary Marco Rubio with Megyn Kelly of The Megyn Kelly Show State.gov (Alexander Mercouris)* * * Cruz to revive push to abolish government consumer protection agency The Hill. Have a look at the photo.In win for Trump, oil giant Shell walks away from major New Jersey offshore wind farm Associated Press (Kevin W)
No survivors expected after air ambulance crashes in Philadelphia Anadolu Agency
Immigration
Mexico builds tent camps for migrants amid looming mass deportations from US iNews
From Xcancel:
She deported 7,300 people in the first week and is playing dress up and doing constant conservative TV to get pats on the back.
Biden deported 15,000 on an average week. https://t.co/7xT9bxMQ64
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 31, 2025
Our No Longer Free Press
LA Times Flips Anti-RFK Jr. Op-Ed Into Pro-Kennedy Propaganda TechDirt (Paul R)
AI
Books Written Without AI Can Now Receive New ‘Human Authored’ Certification Gizmodo (Dr. Kevin)
North Korean hackers use Google’s Gemini AI for cybercrime and espionage. Fortune
Dylan Riley, Fire and Spark New Left Review. Anthony L:”The Infallible One – Lawrence Summers – is, it seems, never right.”
“Over 83 hrs, Deepseek server cluster was subjected to over 230 million DDoS malicious requests per second, with the total attack volume equivalent to the total internet traffic of Europe for three days”
I wonder who has the capability to carry out attack on such scale?🤔… https://t.co/piwiTjkDB0
— Carl Zha (@CarlZha) January 31, 2025
AI Will Degenerate In Much The Same Way Google Did Ian Welsh (Micael T)
China’s AI Sputnik moment is not what it seems Engelsberg Ideas
The Bezzle
Whales, Gunpowder, and Sputnik Doug Casey (Micael T)
Guillotine Watch
Why are the oligarchs so grossly aggressive? Here are four answers etc via machine translation (Micael T)
Class Warfare
A record number of car owners can’t afford their loans. That’s bad for everyone. Business Insider
‘Headed for technofascism’: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley Guardian (Kevin W)
Antidote du jour. Tracie H: “Chanel here is now about 4 1/2 months old. This was taken last week.”
And a bonus (Chuck L). This looks too pretty to be real but I will defer to readers. Update: the Twitter comments below the image were not there as of when I embedded this tweet.
Winter Night in Norway 🇸🇯 pic.twitter.com/WlYrF5rogW
— Magical places (@PlacesMagi15559) January 29, 2025
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
206 comments
Comments are closed.
‘Carl Zha
@CarlZha
“Over 83 hrs, Deepseek server cluster was subjected to over 230 million DDoS malicious requests per second, with the total attack volume equivalent to the total internet traffic of Europe for three days”
I wonder who has the capability to carry out attack on such scale?🤔’
What if the Chinese step in later and tell the US government that they sure have a nice OpenAI program. And it would be a shame if it suffered it’s own DDoS attacks.
Who says it’s state-sponsored? Maybe all that AI is going to do is attack other companies’ AI.
But what if they start talking to each other?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin_Project#Plot
Ha! Beat me to it. I haven’t seen that for eons, even then I thought the tech was sooo clunky. Now, well someone was recently pointing out that these modern iterations do not have logic capabilities. If they did, well, who would need those humans anyway? Which iirc was the problem in Colossus.
Then we’ll be left without mouths, although we’d have to scream…
Thank you, Harlan
Is Harlie One, or is he Legend?
Skynet Alpha is attacking Skynet Beta. Won’t someone please think of AI rights? According to DOGE, only one of them will be eligible for that last H1B slot this year, so expect some fierce competition going forward.
Progress! In 2005 it only took 28,000 DDoS malicious requests over a few hours to get the server farm to stop hosting my old blog.
I do know that I could not access DeepSeek for a couple of days this week so I guess the USA wins.
USA! USA! USA!
most common colour for the northern lights is green. blues and purple also. yellow is very rare. I’d expect other colours in there too.
We’ve seen it very occasionally as far south as london and the home counties this year. Hard to see with the light pollution down here though.
I agree with your color naming. When in Iceland and I saw an aurora for the first time, what amazed me the most was the incredible and rapid movement of light folding and running along itself. Amazing.
The colors of aurora are determined solely by the constituents of the atmosphere- nitrogen and oxygen. The image is clearly fake as none of N, O, N2, O2, O3 give off this color of light when excited. It’s only green, blue-green, red, and magenta. That’s it. No other colors. The exact wavelengths of the emitted light are constant for each gas.
I saw some of the chemistry after a quick search, but it’s been too long for it to come easily to mind for me. Like I have sympathy / the right shape brain for it, but the knowledge and learning is too long ago.
that video fits in to my mind as “too good to be true. default to suspicious mode”
although I am always surprised between the difference between my own perception of a sunset or view, say, and what I see if I take a picture of it. initial perception so much more vivid than the recording.
Maybe somebody started shooting sulphur in the atmosphere… termination shock with nice colours…
Thank you, Yves.
I would like to draw attention to this article, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8qz22dqdzo, regarding Prince Andrew.
The MSM is not reporting another e-mail from that trove, which states that the new British ambassador to Washington, Petie (Epstein’s nickname) Mandelson, met Epstein in 2012, so well after his conviction. The spotlight is entirely on the prince, which tells you much about Britain’s new elite.
Emily Maitlis, who interviewed Andrew, and Mandelson go back decades. He helped her get into the media.
The Epstein diaries and address books list over 300 British nationals and residents, including some prominent media types. Only Andrew gets air time.
I’m not surprised, considering that we still haven’t been told who killed Sir Harry Oakes, and why.
I’m wondering how big the “Skeleton Closet” in the Palace is.
Thank you, Ambrit.
That’s true.
The alleged killer, Alfred de Marigny, is from a prominent Mauritian family.
Gooooooood Moooooooooorning Fiatnam!
The Dept of Homeland Security was with us on Border Collie Patrol trying to give us a few Pointers about bad dogs, bad dogs, whatcha gonna do when they lunge at you!
One of the keys she related is to wear earrings long enough so they can double as a bold fashion statement and/or garrote an unruly undocumented Chihuahua.
Maybe cravats from the 70s will make a return as they can be used to tie up a vicious Pomeranian.
A leg warmer from the 80’s could come in real handy against a Lhasa Apso with bad intent, just saying.
What would be best to ‘deflate’ an Ill Bred Poodle? (Pardon my “French.”) {Asking for a Weimaraner Republic economics minister.}
I don’t give a Shih Tzu how affectionate a cur may seem, Noem wasn’t built in a day, it took a number of hearings to confirm her.
Xmas songs in February, why not!
Loathe incarnate, loathe divine
Star of South Dakota gave the sign
Bow with shotgun on bended knee
In the gravel pit, last rites you see
Unto us a political career is stillborn lore
She shall become a lesson forevermore
Noem, Noem
Come and see what the dog has done
Noem, Noem
The story of amazing puppy loathe!
The blight of the world, taken from us
Noem
NRA clod and no Veep of the man
There was no chance before the election began
Borne to suffer, borne to not save
Gonna raise from her political grave
Cricket, the everlasting gore
She shall become a lesson forevermore
Noem, Noem
Come and see what the dog has done
Noem, Noem
The story of amazing puppy loathe!
The blight of the world, taken from us
Noem
Noem, Noem
Come and see what the dog has done
Noem, Noem
The story of amazing puppy loathe!
The blight of the world, taken from us
Noem, Noem
Xmas in February. At least you aren’t being dogmatic about it.
Fauci the Snowman
Was a very shifty cove,
With his smile so bright
He could do no right
A career just fit to loathe.
Oh, Fauci the Snowman
Lives in Bubble-land they say
He does not play nice,
Has a heart of ice,
Makes his critics go away.
There must have been some magic in
The cleavage site they found.
With his trademark grin,
He began to sing,
It’s the Jackpot that we’ve found.
Etc. etc.
And they called it puppy loathe
Oh I guess they’ll never know
How a dog named Cricket done me wrong, how it really feels
And why I loathe it so
And they called it puppy loathe
Just because I shot it in a gravel pit
Tell them all
Oh please tell them it isn’t fair
To take away my Veep dream
I cry each night
It’s tears for you, Donald
My tears are all in vain
I hope I hope and I pray
That maybe someday
I’ll be back (i’ll be back) in consideration (in consideration)
Once again
Someone help me
Help me please
Is the answer, is it up above?
How can I
Oh how can I ever tell them?
This is not a puppy love
(This is not a puppy love)
Someone help me
Help me please
Is the answer up above?
How can I
Oh how can I tell them?
This is not a puppy love
(This is not a puppy love)
Puppy Love, by Paul Anka
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyshr1hhv3E
Call it a doodle. They hate that.
Yes. That’s the crowd that only colours within the lines.
“A place for everything and everything in its place.”
“Trump says Canada, Mexico tariffs on Saturday may not include oil”
That’s generous of Trump. Well it looks like that he is going ahead with those tariffs with 25% against Canada and Mexico and 10% against China. If I were Canada or Mexico, I would announce a 25% export tax on oil going to the US so that the funds raised can help offset the damage that Trump will be doing to their economies. Of course it would mean higher gas prices but that would be on Trump
There is something else that I am wondering about and I feel that I may be going over my skis here. So take Mexico here as he is going to hit them with a 25% tariff. But in doing so unilaterally, would that not make the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement null and void? Nick Corbishley has mentioned in his posts how the US wants to use that agreement as a bludgeon against Mexico to force it to bend the knee. But if Trump has now essentially trashed it with this unilateral action, then it no longer exists and cannot be used against them. It may even have to be completely renegotiated if they want that agreement to continue. Maybe.
I was hearing some news that he is pausing the tariffs until March 1st, but it seems that was “fake news”, or was Trump getting unnerved because Mr. Market had a sad day?
I am lucky I am poor and I do not buy many things.
Doing little, with less? With the Trump Tariffs(tm) , that may become a trend, like it or not.
For some reason it just doesn’t jibe with what I believe to be the inner-Trump.
But, really, who can get into that head and glean anything ‘true’? It’s like trying to lasso a fart in a hot cast iron skillet. Riffin’ the weave…
that March 1 report was ftom Reuters citing ” three officials familiar eith the matter”
Real? Fake? Rumour-laundering? Astro-turfing by the anon. sources? we’ll never know.
So — Schrödinger’s tariffs?
Maybe there are a few people who are viewing Trump’s tariffs from a “learning experience” point of view.
For example, if Trump’s tariffs decrease consumption in the USA, that might add some small amount of time before drastic climate change effects hit and show the USA it can consume less.
But left, right, center in the USA always seem to always be in “preserve high consumption in the developed world” mode.
Perhaps TPTB are collectively worried about what may happen when the music stops.
Maybe gangs of roving ice cream fanatics raiding Pelosi’s freezer?
I think that there would be intense shock. It is one thing to have a shortage as they are only a passing thing and you expect them from time to time. But to find one day that certain things are not available at any price and that this is going to be the new norm for years if not forever? And that some of these things are essential such as spare parts. What happens when one day the Cornucopia has run dry?
As to the topic of supplies and potential outages…This isn’t exactly a broad example but instead highly specific to my single automotive experience from two weeks ago. Remote key needs a new battery , when I visit the nearby Honda dealership they are out and it has been on backorder with their supplier…and the parts guy could not predict when those might arrive. So my reliable vehicle, a 2008 Accord with nearly 230k miles can be driven but I cannot reliably lock and or unlock the vehicle. I like to term such issues as being a first world problem.
This is not in the boondocks, but in the Greenville Spartanburg area in South Carolina. This region has been on a boomlet of sorts, since I relocated here in 2016. Lots of growth and sponsored economic development.
That’s exactly the sort of thing that I am talking about. Got an idea but don’t know if it would work for you. You say that you need a battery for your remote key, right? Have you thought about going online to other English-speaking countries like Canada, Australia, UK, New Zealand, etc. and see if they have the same shortage problem? It might turn out that they might have some in stock ready to ship. Might be worth a shot. But here is one from New Jersey saying it is in stock-
https://rometechcases.com/en-au/products/replacement-battery-for-key-fob-honda-accord-2008-2012
You could also use a Flipper Zero to clone your keyfob.
Can you explain how this work work?
I was unaware of the flipper zero, and it looks like a useful product but don’t most keyfobs use a rolling code generator that emits a new numeric code each use?
The code is used only once and the code rolls to a new value in a sequence known to the receiver and transmitter.
The web does mention that one might be able to modify the Flipper Zero source code to handle rolling codes.
Does not seem easy or straightforward to me.
Interesting product anyway.
I would think you could find this battery at a Walmart, or a watch shop, or even Amazon. I’m sure you can find YTube video’s on how to replace the battery and even program it. It is similar to a watch battery or one in my digital calipers.
If Rev Kev’s link above is correct, the battery is an extremely common CR 2032 lithium cell. I have many devices that use these, including the keyfob for my car (5 minute job to replace). You should be able to find good quality ones for around $2 ea. if you shop around.
Yes. I looked at his specific car and found batteries and instructions on how to program it if necessary. I came up with a different battery, but he should be able to verify which one it takes.
I have replaced mine in a similar manner.
I do appreciate and welcome the advice here….yeah in the past I would check the local retailers for the battery replacement …the functionality tends to perform or improve markedly better once the brief cold periods in winter months start shifting to spring. Adding….very likely my aforementioned Honda needing a new car battery as it’s been more than three years…
Deferred maintenance means eventually I’ll face facts and have to drop some dollars into it or sell it for parts…ha ha
I spent almost $8k in 2023 to keep my 2005 CR-V with a manual transmission running. I did look around and thought about a new car, but nothing was remotely appealing as touch screens, infotainment, and spyware aren’t things I appreciate.
It only has 175k miles on it and since I only drive maybe 7K/ year it should last another 4-5 years at least.
I dread buying a new or even “new to me” car.
ever lose a key to a Mini – son-in-law did and had to have the car towed to dealer and prove it was his car then pay $4-$500 for a key-fob – no workaround, only way – mentioned he should get a spare key and he just laughed and said no way would he pay that for another key –
That’s absurd, but to be expected from a BMW product. Has he checked with YT or a Mini enthusiast community for a workaround?
Info on the replacement battery. You can order online or go down to the local Walmart or pharmacy.
https://www.driveaccord.net/threads/what-battery-do-i-need-for-08-key-fob.554310/
I think we all seem agreed, massive US tariffs on more or less all or most or a large percentage of imports would be an economic disaster for the U.S., leading to higher consumer prices, massive job losses, destruction of US industries, collapse of US finance, inflation, global retaliation, and potential recession.
But do we think this, in the international scheme of things, while it means short or long term suffering overall, is probably in everyone’s best interests in terms of forcing a rejigging of the global economy away from the US? In other words, a form of souring the milk?
And a whole other tangent – wall to wall tariffs against even friendlies – someone in Trump’s bubble has to be advising him what the consequences of that might be, his bubble will include lots of business and economics types. Which makes me wonder if those consequences are precisely his intention.
And would this sledgehammer, in the end, be an excellent tool to balance the seemingly entrenched and unmovable trade deficit which nothing else seems to be able to correct?
Yes, possibly Climate change denier Trump does more to slow climate change than any of his predecessors.
Yesterday I was talking with a co-worker whose brother is a climate change denier.
The co-worker believes that climate change is real and manifesting itself.
But we both agree that nothing significant will be done in the USA about CC.
It is never the right time.
Donald Trump may unintentionally do something positive for the world by throttling USA consumption.
..
Don’t worry, non-US consumption will rise to make up for the missing USA consumption.
Also, only lower-class and lower-middle-class USA consumption will be throttled.
Upper class USA consumption will roll merrily along.
…and that is where the CO2 is emanating: big cars, private jets, and commercial air travel.
Will Trump blow up the US economy. I think it is unlikely, but possible. Trump is a transactional type of guy. And a short term thinker.
Most of all, populists have to do popular things.
Can’t rule it out because the guy is an airhead.
Yes.
What’s the motto for tech bros and more broadly Silicon Valley? Move fast and break stuff..looks like through week 2 of this 47th President or Trump 2.0, whichever is preferable, we’re gonna break a lot of eggs making these messy omelette out of whichever policy they are gonna pursue.
As I discussed this yesterday afternoon with a lifelong friend, from our lean days 25 years back in Chapel Thrill*, NC..I am still uncertain where I stand on these tariffs. Added I heard comments this week that all the national PhD in the Federal Reserve and in investment firms are apparently wrong and that “tariffs will not be inflationary”. CNBC was covering this topic at length yesterday.
What worked before may not work a second go around…if it even had worked the first time. I tend to concur that any additional tariffs will indeed prove inflationary. By the way I mean Chapel Hill in the above, aforementioned location. Tar Heels enter the enemy camp at Durham this evening, a mere 7 or so miles, a distance best traveled via the team bus.
I find it alarming when “economists” appear and say that tarrifs don’t cause inflation because only monetary policy can cause inflation. And people think religious belief is passe.
I’ll include a quick clarification to this point, the notion or the suggestion that these tariffs would not prove to be inflationary to American consumers comes from new Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick ( among some others ).
I don’t think Steve Leisman from CNBC is a full PhD, but he is likely right that tariffs now being enacted will be inflationary.
Presumably tariffs on imported products would be no more inflationary than comparable proportionate declines in the national currency exchange rate with the currencies of the targeted nations.
So, no problem.
Oh, … wait.
It’s even more ridiculous.
The monetary experiments conducted in the early Reagan and Thatcher eras demonstrated that money supply growth (using all the available measures) correlated with NO macroeconomic aggregates, including on a lagged basis. That includes inflation.
Oh, and monetary velocity was almost certainly more stable then than now due to smaller role of money market funds and no shadow banking system.
This strikes me as stupid. If one wanted to have tariffs, wouldn’t one want to increase them slowly so as to allow one’s own economy to adapt and benefit, and replace those commodities? Russia replaced a lot of imports that suddenly stopped, but they had a lot of inflation too.
Russia is near an autarky as exists, too.
The US is not. Well, I’ve left; it should mostly remain a movie about the end of an empire from where I am.
NAFTA has had a horrible effect on the societies of US, Canada and Mexico. It has made large corporations and large agribusiness much richer but it has destroyed the social fabric of small towns in all three countries and destroyed millions of small businesses and small farmers in all three countries.
NAFTA has also had devastating environmental effects, including forcing Mexico to accept genetically modified corn and putting most of Mexico’s artisanal family farms out of business.
I applaud the tariffs on Mexico and Canada. They are a repudiation of NAFTA. Tremendous pressure is doubtless being put on Trump to end the tariffs as we speak. As much as I despise Trump, this is a noble move and he should be applauded for his courage and morality in this case.
NAFTA was replaced by USMCA five years ago.
Is not working that way. US left JPCOA but was demanding ( as well as the Europeans) that Iran sticks with it at the same time…
If the CanadaFedGov could force Alberta to go along with shutting to zero the flow of oil from Canada into America, perhaps the resulting shortages of gas leading to higher prices would most-of-all affect the regions of the country which voted most heavily for TrumpenMusk. It seems unfair that people who voted against TrumpenMusk should suffer as much as people who voted for it.
I know this is obvious to everyone here, but it is worth repeating so we can repeat it to our friends.
Immigration is not the problem. The problem is economic. All thee countries are having a hard time dealing with immigrants because the money is being horded by the oligarchs. When there is this huge separation of wealth ordinary people suffer, and the oligarchs direct their anger (now with the help of social media algorithms and AI) as far away from the real problem as they can. It is the same with DEI (from both parties) .
This was no different under Biden than it is with Trump. Maybe it was a bit softer, but now Trump knows there is no opposition to this wealth capture the MAGA movement is unleashed.
I have had dreams of protecting my dead brother the last two nights, I never saw him in the dreams, but it was just me having to help him of a feeling of concern about him in some way. I do not know why I am traveling there, still working on the message. But he was poor and disabled from a teenage suicide attempt.
If you want to help people understand about the effect of oligarchy, dive into your state’s household tax revenue spreadsheets. From them you can derive a “comfort level” chart which shows the relationship between the percentage of the gross state household income at each income level and the percentage of households at that level. You can generate discussions on which ratio indicates the floor of livable income. In my state, the ratios ranged from 0.027:1 to 34.2:1.
There is no problem with immigration. It is a made up issue for the Republicans to crow about on Fox. We need workers. If you look over the years you can track unemployment with immigration. If they really wanted to stop immigration it is easy. Just start arresting anyone who employs an undocumented immigrant. The jobs would dry up and that would take care of the vast majority of immigration.
Also, these people are not criminals. Entering or staying in the US without documentation is a civil offense, not a criminal offense. The newly minted press lady in the WH lied right off the bat when she called them criminals.
The newly minted press lady in the WH lied right off the bat, just like all the previous ones. The plebs still fight each other about the flavor of lies that fit their tastebuds best.
>Why are the oligarchs so grossly aggressive? Here are four answers etc via machine translation (Micael T)
The power of the oligarchs is based on the passivity of the masses, and we who are powerless are fed with statements that only become more aggressive.
Very little to do with “aggressiveness.” It has to do with evil. The assumption in the title is that it’s an imbalance of a natural array of human instincts. Humans like animals can become aggressive if pushed to it. So you could say it’s part of the Natural Order. This is about right and wrong good and evil, the moral order is a subset of the natural order. If by “grossly aggressive” the author means evil then it makes sense
Yesterday I saw a clip of Tucker Carlson interviewing Piers Morgan. Some of PM’s comments where so outside the pale of common morals that I think, at least metaphorically, David Icke is correct and there are reptilians among us. When asked about the bombing of children PM tried to normalize it as an unavoidable consequence of war, when TC further narrowed it to the “deliberate” targeting of children, PM was not willing to call it evil. His employer should fire him. It’s not the Chinese student who organizes a protest for Palestine and then expelled, but people like PM thta should be expelled from the body politic. What we need is a good societal emetic.
I think the reason that phrases like the sons/children of darkness vs the sons/children of light has been emotive enough to be written of since at least the dead sea scrolls were penned, is that everyone looking can see some people are just wired bad. Be it from nature or nurture… some from an early age are just a-holes.
Go figure, a billion dollars,,, and you are still an A-hole….and that is all you will ever be.
Even if the real phrases may have had more of a political meaning in those days,..
I riff on this over at Ian’s blog in “Capitalism as Mental Illness.” Yves picked it up about a year ago on here. See: https://www.ianwelsh.net/capitalism-as-mental-illness/
We valorize the 7 deadly sins and call it marketing. Is it so difficult to imagine some existing along the DSM Axis II spectrum would notice … and idealize their behavior as such? We call them MBA’s and CEO’s.
Still looking for a non-paywalled link to the article.
Thanks for highlighting that one – missed it the first time around.
Mr. Bad Example does seem to be running pretty much everything these days.
Re; “Why are the oligarchs so grossly aggressive?…..”
They never forget…
They never forgive…..
Anybody who has has ever encountered a person (even briefly), who never forgives or forgets…. gets chills when recounting.
This is the underlying plot of every horror film… every nightmare……
“Greek defence minister demands France explain sale of missiles to Turkey”
And to think that it was only five years ago that Turkish and French ships were having military confrontations in the Med-
https://www.france24.com/en/20200702-turkey-demands-apology-from-france-over-naval-incident-claim
I would guess that France desperately wants to get back into Syria but can only do so with the nod from Turkiye and selling those missiles helps that cause. Tough luck for Greece though.
Regarding auroras – even the “real” photos are not real – in person, auroras usually look like unremarkable long gray clouds. The colors only appear on cameras with long exposures or timelapses. For colors to be visible to the naked eye, solar activity must be unusually high, sky clear, and latitude around 65°. Even then, the colors are very faint
«For colors to be visible to the naked eye, solar activity must be unusually high, sky clear,»
This much is true, but I remember a scant half dozen dazzling displays between 44 and 38° N.
Worth waking up for at 2am — but also NO city lights.
I saw quite colorful auroras while driving from south of Kamloops, British Columbia north to Valemount, BC. Another time green and red and white in Edmonton, Alberta and another time mostly bright white with some green about 2 hours north of Edmonton. That’s from around 50 degrees north to 54 degrees north.
This is just wrong. I have witnessed several astonishing displays, multicolored, bright, full of dramatic movement, here in coastal Maine. Not common, but they do happen.
I saw the same last year in Maine – shimmering sheets of green and pink. I did see a lot of photos taken afterwards and some had colors that were a lot brighter than what I’d seen with my own eyes. Definitely some enhancement going on.
I remember sitting on the beach one summer in York, Maine in the late 60’s or early 70’s (not sure what year it was). We watched the dazzling show of brilliant colors in constant motion all night. Unforgettable.
50 yr ago on Montreal island (45 deg lat) looking over downtown lights, colors clearly evident, maybe same solar storm you saw from Maine.
Go to Norway. This is a good time of year. Shimmering curtains of green and blue.
This is nonsense. I grew up in the NWT, there were plenty of dazzling auroras. Not faint grey clouds at all.
It is VERY helpful to be dark-adapted for 30-60 minutes before viewing at the aurora.
It’s pretty clear that you have never seen aurora outside of the city, or without having let your eyes asapt to seeing in the dark which takes about 20 to 30 minutes for most people. Your description is exactly what they look like in those situations.
I strongly recommend seeing aurora in the dark because it’s literally awesome.
Just last fall, we had multiple nights of dazzling multicolored displays over Ottawa, ON.
You should be able to find thousands of pictures in short order.
Re: CIA/NYT Remove North Korean Troops From Ukraine’s Front Line
Moon of Alabama wraps up a tidy history of the North Korean ‘invasion’ of Ukraine, but according to my outside information, b was naive to buy the RAND ‘plan’ to engender distrust among Russia, China, and North Korea.
IMHO, the RAND ‘plan’ was designed to exacerbate distrust between South and North Korea, and gaslight Congress while allowing Yoon Seok-yeol to declare martial law, and start funneling US military aid through South Korea to Ukraine in anticipation of Trump’s victory, expecting that Trump would never cut back aid to Yoon.
The ‘RAND plan’ would have worked, had Blinken’s entire knowledge of South Korea not been based on interception of South Korean transmissions from Rakuten Viki.
It’s almost entirely tree crops here in Godzone, Cali’s red state bastion which reliably votes in Republicans, you’d probably need to be Jesus to win the D-vote here, and none of those ‘Hey-Zeus’ types picking crops and pruning your trees please.
In 2016 and 2020 along Hwy 99 it was a Trump lovefest, hundreds of campaign signs on display, but then he screwed the farmers by putting tariffs on Chinese goods and they retaliated on almonds in particular-this despite a fondness for almond cookies in the Middle Kingdom!
The price went from $4 a pound to a buck fifty a pound, that’s a 60% off sale.
In the runup to the 2024 election there were but a handful of Trump signs on Hwy 99-the main artery, they got religion, and hard.
In the last few days, Trump ordered the release of their water from the Terminus Dam here and the Success Dam on the Tule River, all of which typically goes to the Friant-Kern Canal and then to orchardists who need it in the summer when its a hundred and hell-not now when many of the food trees are dormant.
As far as I know, nobody in Big Nuts was made whole for their losses thanks to Trump’s tariffs~
Gotta ask. So what was the justification for releasing all that water in the middle of winter when rainfall to replenish those dams is not assured between now and summer?
Inanity predicated on ego and late-stage syphilis? Synergies of Ozempic and Ketamine?
Who are we mere nobody’s to judge the Great Reignmaker-in tight with everybody who’s a somebody in the cloud, man.
He can turn whine into water~
Jesus, eh? It makes me think that the Republicans are the Pharisees and the Democrats are the money changers. Which makes me think that if Jesus shows up he’s going to try to chase them all out of the temple. The problem there is that the Pharisee/Moneychanger alliance is even more parasitically profitable than the Baptist/Bootlegger alliance. SO I suspect poor Jesus will be “gunned down cold by the CIA” as the band The The once put it.
I have noted that the Terminus Dam has released approximately 1.5′ of Lake Kaweah water in the last 2 days. I’m unclear on where one can access guidelines for release, as the TLBWRB doesn’t address it on their site. I can confirm that a Winter release is rare unless the lake exceeds 700′ and might compromise the dam. I wonder if you are aware of a resource for tracking down Army Corp directives on this? Inquiring minds…
For the most part Federal employees @ the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have been quiet as church mice, and I can’t blame them for not speaking out, what’s the upside for them?
As I recall Boswell (the biggest farmer in the state) owns a big chunk of the Terminus water. This will certainly affect the cotton crop in a low water year. Boswell was well connected in govt. and very involved in California water issues. I believe most of the lake Success water is owned by ditch companies that supply east side valley farms and does not end up in the canal. Will this turn the valley blue? Up here in hill billy country no one has removed their F**k Biden signs. Maybe the farmers will remove the potato part of dictator from their fuhrer adulation.
The Case against Drinking. Sam Kahn.
Not proven.
I didn’t exactly come from a family of teetotalers, and I am not one myself. There’s a half-bottle of Vermentino from Sardinia in the fridge awaiting dinnertime. But the culture that Kahn describes and that he, in good U.S. fashion, then extrapolates a whole world from, is unfamiliar terrain to me:
“But I did notice how much my daily patterns—even if I really hadn’t been a heavy drinker—were built around alcohol. The reward for a good day’s work was a drink, the consolation for a bad mood was a drink, a meeting with a friend meant drinking, and the end of the week, or any holiday or life milestone, was supposed to be celebrated by drinking.”
He claims that he isn’t an alcoholic, but this sounds like alcoholism to me. Much like people who have to celebrate every moment in life with a doughnut and drink Coca-Cola at breakfast — who then wonder about the source of their type-II diabetes.
Instead, some advice from the Greeks (yeah, I know, dead white men and ladies, and what would they know?):
Euboulus, fragment, Semele or Dionysos
In the Greek play Semele or Dionysus, written around 375 BC, the god of wine himself delivers this speech:
I mix three drinks for the temperate:
One for health, which they empty first,
The second for love and pleasure,
The third for sleep.
When these cups are emptied, the wise go home.
The fourth drink is ours no longer, but belongs to arrogance,
The fifth to uproar,
The sixth to drunken revelry,
The seventh to black eyes,
The eighth to lawsuits,
The ninth to anger,
And the tenth to madness and the hurling of furniture.
PS: One of the main differences between Italian culture and U.S. culture is that in Italy public drunkenness is frowned on. All the more so here in the hard-working Undisclosed Region. There are still alcoholics, yet one doesn’t have the U.S. culture of “it’s okay to be a screaming drunk in a bar.” Maybe some socially constructed disapproval on tap in America.
It’s not just an American thing. Public drunkenness is common in many parts of Europe too. When I still lived in Europe I used to wonder about this difference between north and south and theorize about it. Was it to do with sunshine in winter? Protestantism?
Here here! Ethanol is the homemade medication that the drug companies don’t want you to know about. It is the most effective and broad ion channel blocker, and it reaches the brain, a feat they have yet failed to mimic. Like any folk medicine, you should know if it is for you or not.
Just like medication your doctor will prescribe, they can be abused or used incorrectly. Gabapentin is a good example, you know they call the “Budwieser’s” on the street for a reason.
Binge drinking is the problem in the USA. My grandfather, 1st generation Italian, lived to a very aware age of 98 and drank vodka everyday. When I stayed on Sardinia for a month in my 30’s, the sight of children, 13 and 14, having a small glass of wine with their food was a delight. So I follow my grandfather’s lead and have three shots a day; always separated by hours, and never drunk.
Ethanol really is an amazing drug that reliably brings relief, but is rather toxic otherwise. I started a bit more tight schedule than you and it always went sideways sooner than later. My body was giving me “hints’ as the guy writes. Eventually I got the hint.
I guess it is not for everybody.
Most of the article didn’t line up with my lived experience. But like the author, I grew up and now live in my own bubble. I grew up among serious church goers and while drinking wasn’t prohibited, it was definitely frowned upon. Neither of my parents drank regularly and alcohol wasn’t a part of celebrations. There was and is (per my college student) some pressure in college to drink, but a simple “no thanks” is accepted. Offering to be the designated driver helps.
So the author’s use of “everybody” does seem an overreach.
The author really sounds like an untreated alcoholic to me, and I’m certainly an alcoholic. Haven’t had a drink in 48 years, but I’m still an alcoholic. Human beings have been drinking ethanol for thousands of years, and if it was really harmful (in moderation) almost everybody would have stopped by now. I don’t really understand “normies,” but most people simply don’t enjoy being drunk, and they don’t really like the flavor of most alcoholic beverages.
Why does an AI want is to believe that Norway is on fire?
Not Norway but Norwegian heads – when they found out that Germany and other countries want to hook back up to Russia’s gas using the sole surviving NS2 gas pipeline.
Technofascism–
I learned a lot about our oligarchs from this one. Andreeson, Ellison and a guy named Gilder, whom I don’t recall from the time. I would offer a partial corrective to the article’s placing this fervent hope in the entrepreneur on the Right and in Slilicon Valley exclusively. My encounter with my college alumni organization’s “Climate and Environment” committee shocked me by its mostly young members’ faith in an entrepreneurial solution to the climate catastrophe. “But business and the profit motive are the source of the problem!”, I cried to no avail.
We’re about to see the Galt’s Gulch boys make real asses of themselves and their “philosophy.” Nemesis comin’ for Hubris.
Atlas Shrugged was a warning-not a how to manual…
Francisco d’Anconia
Rand was a a knot of contradictions, decrying those who take by force but then bemoaning the need to ask for permission rather than just taking what one wants in the very next paragraph. And in her own life she did famously benefit from social security and other government programs despite decrying government welfare.
One of my favorites about her was from some wag who described objectivism as the squishy white bread on the buffet of ideas. Sorry, she really just rubs me the wrong way.
I’ve yet to read her. Them two paragraphs seem to be on point regardless of who wrote it.
Warning sign. Warning sign.
I hear it but I
Pay no mind
David Byrne
Her work is dreck, I can disagree with her conclusions while acknowledging her observations.
Fair enough, I was focusing on the content and the thread. I should have made clear that Byrne quote was for the audience at large.
Rand did have a self-consistent ideological justification for accepting social security payments. In her view the government stole from her through taxes and was now giving back a small part of its plunder. Although the welfare system was intrinsically unjust, it would only pointlessly compound the evil done if she did not accept this partial compensation. Or so her argument went, if I recall correctly.
For what it is worth, she and her entire outlook also rub me the wrong way (she inherited many of the worst features of the Russian revolutionary intellectual tradition, reinterpreted them in light of her hyperindividualist inclinations and exported them to American soil), but she did think those things through.
I’ll grant her the self-consistency, I suppose, coming from a hyperindividualist – there is a logic to it. One might also describe it as an after the fact justification due to the previous iteration of her philosophy not resulting in her being as rich as she felt she should have been. One would think accepting welfare would be beneath a Deity.
Only other figure who rankles my backside as much as she does is Socrates, who also had an affinity for those he perceived as better than the rest of us.
I did read one of her works. It ran on and on and on. Really boring. It would be interesting to run her works through an AI and ask it to summarize it in a page or so.
Several years ago in researching Alan Greenspan I also learned a bit about Ayn Rand (he was one of her earliest acolytes, still in college). I believe she initially refused to apply for social security benefits, but was persuaded to do so by members of her cult. She may also have been influenced by Alfred Hayek, who Charles Koch would not provide a trust fund for, and went back to retire in Austria where he got better benefits.
HBO’s Silicon Valley made a lot of fun of SV but eventually ran out of steam. Mike Judge had worked there and the show portrays the culture as a battle between idealistic (but still success hungry) small timers and comically corrupt oligarchs.
Perhaps some are overstating the menace of this ever shifting subculture. It could be they have no plan other than the desire to become very rich and stay that way. Now that Trump is in charge they are tacking in his direction.
Chanel! Ma belle….
These are words that go together well…
Chanel 4 1/2, not be confused with Chanel No. 5 (not be confused with Elensky No. 5).
Tracie H has a good looking kitty. I know that those are predator eyes but they look so cute and beguiling.
If you need a musical day brightener, this amazingly talented, “genre fluid” bluegrass band channeling their inner Aretha Franklin is just the ticket:
Twisted Pine – Chanel Perfume
She is a beauty, and I bet she is a real cuddle bug. If not now, soon.
“Russia may drop caps on nuclear arms, if US pushes ahead with missile defense effort — MFA”
Maybe Russia should announce a new doctrine in that they will target the source. So they could say that for every nuke that the US sets up in Europe to target Russia with, Russia will deploy five hypersonic missiles specifically targeting the US itself – starting with Washington DC and then the HQ for every arms manufacturer in the US. Share the joy so to say.
One thought about tariffs that occurred to me when listening to Trump extol them as a way of addressing the debt and deficit. Aren’t tariffs potentially a way to sneak in a VAT tax even if it’s limited to goods coming from abroad? The importer pays the tax to the government and passes it on to the consumer. That’s not much different from a sales tax where the retailer pays it while passing it on directly to the consumer.
It’s true that this partially applied tax will privilege domestically reduce goods, but it takes time to develop and build up domestic supply. In the meantime, we’re getting a big tax increase which we’ll be paying on essentials while the big boys get to keep their tax cuts.
I’m going to suggest that hoping some flag-waving BS isn’t going to distract people from the coming price increases for long.
Cruz. Have a look at the photo
Oh. That gesture seems to be making the rounds.
Who knew that the Bellamy salute was going to come back roaring from the dead? Wasn’t on my bingo card for 2025.
From the linguistic genius of PG Wodehouse, Sir Roderick Spode.
…The right, nay, the duty of every free-born Englishman to grow his own potatoes.
I too had a flashback to “Jeeves and Wooster”.
The first thing that came to my mind when I saw Ted Cruz’s gesture, is that he has some rotator cuff issues limiting his range of motion. I know I do, and it definitely makes certain motions quite painful if I am not careful. Big caveat: I’m no Ted Cruz fan.
Ted’s all hat and no Canada.
Dr. Strangelove syndrome?
If at first posting I do not succeed, I shall try a second time…that gesture, well from here it appears a simple wave to a crowd gathered for a conference or maybe the RNC convention last summer…IDK people see an evil in every word and action from this or that politician…Instead here is a thought just walk out and provide the audience a simple golf clap.
I’ve seen Teddy interview on CNBC frequently enough, so it’s not difficult at all to suss out where he stands on most issues. I gotta say I think these Republican efforts yet again to defund the CFPB still far short for me. Given what we saw and experienced in the months leading up to September 2008 and after into 2009… memories seem far too short. Each week there was another large bank or large investment firm topping the very bad headlines from just a week prior. I don’t care at repeating that experience ever again.
“IDK people see an evil in every word and action from this or that politician”
Mountains out of molehills…I’m trying to focus on policies (trying is the operative word).
Also, we need to understand that photos, videos, and voice recording can ALL be created by AI with current tech. You need to trust nothing you see, read, or hear in today’s world. The future is now. You can only trust those you know well in the full spectrum of face-to-face encounters. Drop the trust of anything else.
rotator cuff issues , true, I can personally attest to that.
While I’m here, thank you so much for your contributions in the thread about ME. That was a good tutorial.
This is all simply silly. Cruz and most pols all make that gesture of greeting an audience. Trying to demonize the dude for something this trivial is… well, you know. Anyway, just FYI, AI can create a Cruz with his voice saying and doing anything so always keep that in mind.
Silly for sure. It’s the style, why I linked to Bertie Wooster above, and someone else tagged Strangelove.
“Global leaders call for tenfold increase in pre-arranged crisis finance to combat escalating climate change impacts.” **** Thats a great idea! Perhaps we could find public funding for pre-arranged crisis finance from infrastructure and healthcare budgets, because preparing for climate change impacts will reduce Healthcare spending and maybe public infrastructure damage! And absolutely fix the problem the poor only get 1.4% of current climate impact debt. We could make sure everyone gets pre-arranged climate impact finance by copying the student loan model, and the ACA with it’s early “URL’s” (speaking in lingo our ‘Global leaders’ understand) which allows “consumers” to “shop” for “coverage” in the “market” from 1 providers!
Most people simply do not care about climate change enough to influence their oligarchs (sorry folks, the symbol of democracy is Joe Biden, i.e., demeted). The science of climate change is not respected by most people, even those who have a science education–there are flaws which those of us who have studied complexity understand–complex systems are very hard to predict–the best you can hope for is to pull some probability matrix which may or may not be valid.
Personally, I’ve followed the issue since the 80’s and believe warming is mainly or at least significantly produced by human industry and population. I always felt that even if the science is way off that de-growth would be a net positive for humanity but then I’m an unreconstructed hippy and our vision was dramatically different from the world we see today.
“The science of climate change is not respected by most people, even those who have a science education”
It would be nice to see some links to the data.
AI will degenerate just like Google search
Seems about right. AI relies on human inputs for creative works. Humans stop being creative, because AI.
AI rots.
“AI will degenerate just like Google search”- Maybe it already has…I joined FakeBook after closing my account about 10 yrs ago. Yet when I used my email, AI said it was already taken. When I googled how to contact a human at AI run FB to intervene, the consensus was good luck don’t waste your time. So used my second yahoo email which is identical to my Gmail but for the @. I re-joined for 1 reason only – to post a rental for housing in Market Place for University of Tennessee students. My first add was “declined”. My second remained in eternal “pending”. I emailed the indicated support team, noticing many of them haven’t been active on FB for months. Got a reply from a nameless (person or human? Not sure) entity which said they mostly let AI “do its thing.” I decided to post the rental through the usual property rental sites run by humans, and Craigslist, but I refer responses I get from Craigslist to the humans at the rental company because they will do background checks for me. I think the “fake” was linked to FB, because maybe it has or is beginning to become a collective of AI’s posting to each other? I don’t know.
Yikes, that is quite a story of crapification.
And fits the theme of “AI turns customer service into an even more bleak hellscape.”
There seem to be two basic use-cases for Big Tech AI:
1. Hellscape-ify customer service
2. AI as a service (AIaaS?) AI sits behind a paywalled curtain, like the Wizard of Oz. You don’t get to see how it works, own it, or exercise any dominion over it. You merely trust our Tech Lords to provide “muh AI.” They, of course, charge you a pretty penny in rent for the privilege.
We don’t know what’s going on behind the curtain, but it is probably something akin to sausage making. Billions of bots scraping copyrighted material and intellectual property theft. Maybe outsourced manual work to the lowest-cost offshore locale; think thousands of low-wage grunts in the Philippines transcribing law journal articles into some UI so that AI can be “trained” on the latest legal developments.
May it all rot!
Oh…forgot yo mention the best of the worst…while this was going on (my add being in eternal pending approval), FB AI sent me several invitations to hold an Open House and invite FB members of a church a few blocks down the street. Fine print of the invite indicated it was AI generated. AI told me the news Open House would also be sent to all 28.7k members of the Market Place subgroup. Suspecting an invite based on an un-approved add wouldn’t happen, I tested it by accepting. Sure enough, the invite did not go out. This confirmed that FB AI can’t tell the difference btwn approved vs unapproved adds. But never mind all is well in the AI-verse.
not going to disagree with the tendency to crapification.
but … don’t give up on hosting, right to repair, control, actually owning something.
it is still possible to build a stack of hardware that you own, and code you have the source to, and run deepseek yourself. it fits on a laptop (ok a very high spec laptop)
Goes against the grain of “everything as a service” and the financialization of everything software, but it is still possible to own it. Which means you do stand a chance at peering behind the curtain.
Now that DeepSeek has been open sourced and the code released into the wild, there is nothing to stop a competitor from setting up their own AI service, undercutting the Tech Lords.
And of course, as you say, build your own AI farm. We have to hope that the Tech Bastards aren’t able to stop it somehow, maybe by impugning the source code as “risky Chinese spyware” or something.
They cannot really stop it since it’s out there, but remember Microsoft’s “FUD” campaign against Linux? Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
That thar Chinese AI you’re running is gonna kill my mama!
important to separate out the products or services built on top from the technology that underpins it.
understanding of the technology will progress along just fine and will get more capable. as it has done for decades.
“AI products” built on top will end up with the same tradeoffs as any other SaaS platform and monetization efforts. i.e. there’ll be some product manager chasing the latest OKR. and we’re perfectly capable of crap$ifying an experience without AI.
the old adage of if you are not paying then you are the product. its the same attention economy forces at play.
google already uses all sorts of AI techniques (in the broadest sense – machine learning) not just the AI summary at the top of the results.
plus ca change
The case against drinking…. I think most reasonable people moderate their drinking as they get older and have more responsibilities such as children to manage. And of course the dreaded two day hangovers arrive at some point after one’s 30th birthday making one more cautious about staying up till sunrise drinking from the punch bowl. This new assault on alcohol based on its carcinogenic properties reeks of bad faith. If the authorities really cared about the health of humans they would do something about industrial farming and the use of pesticides and herbicides and they would ban plastics so that we weren’t ingesting micro plastic particles every day of the week. It is also wearisome to hear from yet another former drinker that everyone else should give up too. It seems very cliche. Now that I’m older I drink less, but that just seems part of life. I can’t drink like James Bond until I’m 50, and Mr Bond himself would have been retired from the 00 program at forty so he would have had reason too to dial things back a bit. Maybe just a vodka martini shaken by Mrs Bond ( né Moneypenny) on returning home to the flat followed by a game of backgammon and an early bedtime. I suppose a certain type of person needs to feel that during their lifetime the future arrived and mankind finally shed his primitive past and stopped drinking, and hunting, and dancing under the moon. I do wish they would leave the rest of us alone to our primitive pursuits. The old Roundhead and Cavalier divide…
America is a weirdly abstemious country. I find it hard to see where the alcoholics are hiding!
Whenever I was there on extended business trips, only decadent Europeans drank at lunchtime and even in the evenings, the kind of drinking (and more) that fuelled my generation’s twenties and early thirties was considered to belong in National Lampoon’s Animal House rather than an ordinary young professional’s social life. Plus everybody has to drive in the USA….
The British and the Irish are not the heaviest binge drinkers in Europe – the Russians drink to get gravely drunk whereas the Scandinavians drink to keep some Viking grave away – let alone the steadiest drinkers (the Czechs and the French have that accolade, of daily consumption) but my generation seems to have rolled its own concept – from one part Latin joie de vivre, one part Teutonic commitment, one part Nordic fatalism and one part Celtic abandon – of going out and of going out out, with all the excess that implies. This is anathema to the rest of Europe.
Europeans just don’t see why Thursday nights in the City require everybody to sink bottle of wine, a raft of pints, some spirit chasers and likely some recreational polypharmacy. They also don’t approve of public drunkenness, singing, being maudlin, dancing on tables etc. You’re not supposed to get messy, bella figura and all.
But that’s because they’re no craic…! :-)
As it happens, we’ve all survived that phase. Ironically, some people are struggling with drinking through the pressures of parenthood or work, not socialising. These days I barely drinking, children don’t give your head peace to have a hangover (but the other day I was off the leash and had ~22 units (a bottle of Gewürztraminer and four pints of strong cider) across a late lunch and an early evening function and that’s still socially acceptable).
You must get out more. Wall Street does not tend to alcoholics on the investment banking side, but even so, I have a friend who is a reformed alcoholic (father was also an alcoholic), two roommates at different times who were serious abusers and arguable alcoholics, the parents of my brother’s first wife, now his second wife who pretends she is a drunk only on vacations, and a friend who married a Stage 4 alcoholic, among others.
That sounds a lot of fun. Like my next HBO series.
I tried! Nobody want to drink. :-)
That’s quite a list. I hope none of their behaviour had any adverse impact on you. I can only think of one friend of concern and another who’s been dried out by his wife. You’ve half a generation on me so maybe 80’s NYC was more in love with the bottle.
But I wonder if the incidence of alcohol abuse is really higher in the US PMC or if rather the bar for it being considered abuse is higher in Europe (my hunch is the latter).
I am sure the boozers are there – the US is the home of Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, Raymond Carver, Hunter Thompson et alia and Fortune favours drunks, fools and the USA – but the point I failed to state is that unabashed enjoyment of alcohol, especially in excess, seems absent, at least among the PMC since 2000. No two bottle lunches. The USA also appears to be the home of a great seriousness about sobriety, along with therapy and “doing work on yourself”.
Alcoholics yes, alcofrolics no.
The Italians enjoy alcohol in moderation, the Russians in propitiation, the Scandis in oblivion and the British and Irish in excess. But most of these drinking cultures do not end up in alcoholism – people calm down for one reason or another, even the Russian deaths of despair are now lower than many other places – and it’s rare to meet anybody in the European PMC who questions their drinking in the way Americans do. Therapy culture and prohibition seem to have left a lasting divide with European bibulousness.
Behaviour that you describe as an abuse – which may be very accurate – would be unlikely to attract that description among European PMC. There might be a euphemism (good-time guy, thirsty, hard living) but it would be quite shocking to hear it labelled abuse in public. You’d have to reach the non-functioning, public blackouts / humiliation stage for that to happen and then only in private. It’s just accepted that it’s an adult pleasure and that sadly it can tip into an adult vice.
The only recovering alcoholic I know is a lovely US colleague.
There were plenty of non-recovering ones among my parents friends, though. :-( I don’t understand how any of the UK worked in the 1960’s and 1970’s, with the three Martini lunch and then they all drive off and did an afternoon’s lawyering or doctoring!
A very dear friend self-medicated with alcohol and died of acute alcohol poisoning eleven years ago. It was possibly an accident.
When I was in the early stages of recovery, I was told that of people legally eligible to drink, one third just do not. Of the remaining two thirds, only one in thirteen is in danger of becoming addicted. Frankly, the numbers seem suspect to me, but I’ve always accepted them. There are a lot more alcoholics than most people think, but a lot fewer than people whose lives have been overturned by an alcoholic believe.
A vodka martini? RUFKM!?
“Amazon river dolphins may send messages with aerial streams of urine Science (Jeff W)”
I had no idea that Davosman(tm) was an amazonian river dolphin?
It turns out pissing contest is not endemic to hominids.
Is it too much to hope that the recent political turmoil in Germany would give the BSW an opening to pick up more support? I feel that Sahra Wagenknecht is the only real hope for Germany, and then the rest of Europe, to find its way back to some degree of sanity.
If you listen to her recent interviews, she’s part of the firewall against the AfD. The only way anything will change in Germany is if she works with the AfD on topics where they agree. This is just handing power to the globalists, who have arrogated the term “the center” for themselves, and who call the non-globalists “radical extremists”.
BSW and AfD would need to work together to leave NATO and reopen NS2 and get a grip on immigration. That would be enough work for a few years. No need to fight over other stuff.
I agree that BSW is the only hope for European peace and social democracy. Unfortunately, I also agree with JustTheFacts’ observation that (unlikely) secession from the anti-AfD firewall is the only way BSW’s ambitions can be (partially) realized in the foreseeable future. I fear a disappointing deadlocked government like France’s is on the way.
I wonder whether or when this will become another grift; that is, the powers that be charging a fee to a writer to receive human-authored certification.
Not an “assignment” but perhaps this economics blog could offer some background on how the executive has come to have such power over tariffs and therefore the economics of other countries as well as our own. The long Wiki article on the subject offers up this
“Tariffs up to the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, were set by Congress after many months of testimony and negotiations. In 1934, the U.S. Congress, in a rare delegation of authority, passed the Reciprocal Tariff Act of 1934, which authorized the executive branch to negotiate bilateral tariff reduction agreements with other countries. The prevailing view then was that trade liberalization may help stimulate economic growth. However, no one country was willing to liberalize unilaterally.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tariffs_in_the_United_States
Are we still functioning under that 1934 law?
Of course I do know enough history to know that tariffs have been a major issue throughout US history from Jefferson’s Embargo through the Civil War (the South hated them) to the Great Depression. But with Trump advocating a return to the McKinley administration should there be more discussion about this?
The Brookings institute has one description of how this evolved.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-does-the-executive-branch-have-so-much-power-over-tariffs/
What’s to discuss? ” the strong do what they will, the weak do what they must “.
Thanks. From your link.
So it’s Congress subverting the original system as they have with War Powers.
There was actually one really interesting thing about the McKinley years that we might see again. But JD is no TR.
Perhaps one of the first things to do is to go somewhere besides W’pedia for information. So many comments and observations about “crapification”, and W’pedia is right there.
“Why are the oligarchs so grossly aggressive? Here are four answers etc via machine translation (Micael T)”
Anyone have a nonpaywalled link? I tried it on https://archive.ph and all they have is the screenshot so far.
We’re but a dozen days in, and the feel is that of a Bizarro World FDR 100 days, Trump’s busy getting rid of all that ails him, moving fast and breaking people.
I managed to pretty much ignore him the last couple years in his previous term, much harder now.
One of the first CCC camps in the country was opened @ Potwisha in Sequoia NP 2 months after FDR’s inauguration, with any kind of lack of luck, all of the National Parks will be shuttered if there are no seasonal hires in a few months from now.
Here in the South almost all of our state parks were built by the CCC.
My nearby state park is an exception and was a WW2 training base. Bunkers are still to be found if you know where to look.
The Case Against Drinking Sam Kahn (Micael T)
~~~~~~~~~~~~
We’ve had a couple of Teetotalitarian Presidents as of late, and maybe it isn’t quite the best case against drinking if you know what I mean and I think you do.
“…Wednesday alongside Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso and Alan Armstrong, CEO of pipeline firm Williams and current president of the National Petroleum Council.”
Hey, this Armstrong guy seems pretty nice! I LIKE a boss who hangs out with low-level employees from time to time!
U.S. Senate=second fiddle (or young people’s orch. 3rd chair) now. jfc
“‘Key lessons’ for conservation as India’s tiger population doubles in a decade”
Just last week a woman in Kerala was mauled and partially eaten – she was apparently picking coffee cherries in a bordering area to the Wayanad forest, where tigers, elephants and other species are protected. Below is a link. The tigress who attacked was found this week having died from a gash wound on her neck. The tiger experts are saying that she had strayed into another group’s territory and was likely killed by another female. Like the BBC article says, snake bites are by far the largest cause of death from wild animals in India, and when you talk to people in villages, they fear them much more than the large animals – and take precautions. A girl showed me a video on her phone of her brother in law removing a king cobra from a pond behind their house and bagging it to take to the local wildlife management people. Terrifying. You do not want to run into one of those.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/tiger-mauls-tribal-woman-to-death-at-mananthavady-in-keralas-wayanad/article69135463.ece
RE: LA Times Flips Anti-RFK Jr. Op-Ed Into Pro-Kennedy Propaganda
Not in favor of editors altering material so much that it changes the author’s meaning an intent, especially when done for political purposes as does seem to be the case here. But the author goes heavy on the histrionics trying to defend himself to the point it’s difficult to take him seriously –
“…RFK Jr…is effectively a mass murderer in waiting.”
Meanwhile, we continue to give the war criminals a pass on the Gaza genocide – a mass murder we don’t have to wait for as it has been ongoing for well over a year, initially facilitated by a Democrat administration and cheered on by both parties. So maybe this author ought to look elsewhere when trying to suss out who the mass murderers are, and not focus on the guy who’d like to improve the healthcare system, even though some of his ideas might not be the best.
I’d imagine the doctor who bought the LA Times and SD Union-Tribune rues the day he spent half a billion on 20th century legacy media, but it does give him chances to flip-flop and fly his freak flag.
To say that he’d like to improve the quality of the health system is a bit of a stretch, as he doesn’t seem interested in making it available to all. I’ll grant him an interest in reducing the influence of Big Pharma and Big Ag — and good luck with that. Unfortunately, when it comes to opposing mass murder in Gaza, RFK Jr. never utters a mumbling word.
This is true: “when it comes to opposing mass murder in Gaza, RFK Jr. never utters a mumbling word.”
But take note, Trump didn’t hire him to work in West Asia, he’s been hired to work on health care – his wheel house.
One wouldn’t want a car mechanic to do heart surgery. RFK Jr. is being placed in the right position. God’s speed as they say.
I’m confused by something. If the Biden admin was deporting over twice as many immigrants as the Trump admin is, then why the reported hysteria in the undocumented community? Shouldn’t they be relieved because there is now half as much pressure on them?
Or, were Biden deportations mostly from those caught at the border and Trump is ramping up immigration raids in the interior, causing actual more pressure on the undocumented than they previously had?
Chris Murphy is wrong. The Biden Administration averaged about 7,200 deportations weekly.
The nutty report on the COVID pandemic response commissioned by the RWNJ Alberta provincial government was released this week and has some international connections.
It’s so crazy that even notorious anti-masker John Conly asked to have his name taken off it.
Alberta is a neoliberal hellhole.
From Rare bird flu strain found in California raises potential of wider spread
Does anyone see the f**king problem here?
(bold mine)
Definitely some extreme urgency here, no?
Check out the nursing reddit for the current spike in Flu A in the US, Canada and Europe, since the CDC has been blacked out. Though the medicalproffesionals reddit is indicating that it is mostly H3
The accelerationists who voted for Trump are getting what they asked for.
So are the rest of us, unfortunately.
Dismantling and looting the empire under the guise of maga.
re: Deep Seek
2 tests with DeepSeek vs. Chat GPT on Ukraine:
Interesting:
CONSORTIUMNEWS testing 3 systems GROK, CHAT GPT, DEEPSEEK:
What DeepSeek Says About Nuland’s Role in Ukraine War
By Cathy Vogan
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/02/01/what-deepseek-says-about-nulands-role-in-ukraine-war/
Shorter one made by German BERLINER ZEITUNG:
We asked ChatGPT and DeepSeek: How will the Ukraine war end?
The Chinese DeepSeek is causing a stir. ChatGPT is under pressure. How do the two AI systems answer questions about Ukraine? Here are the two different answers.
https://archive.is/bQSPa
2 x Moon of Alabama
1) re: North Korea (that should close this fakery once and for all)
“CIA/NYT Remove North Korean Troops From Ukraine’s Front Line”
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/01/cianyt-remove-north-korean-soldiers-from-ukraines-front-line.html#more
+
2) SoS Rubio vs. unipolar moment
Rubio: “It’s not normal for the world to have a unipolar power.”
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/02/rubio-its-not-normal-for-the-world-to-have-a-unipolar-power.html#more
Is it possible that Oreshnik has eventually entered their rather mundane mental orbit?
https://x.com/Kanthan2030/status/1885743401926357271
S.L. Kanthan @Kanthan2030
Before DeepSeek was released, OpenAI used to not only hide its reasoning, but also threatened to ban those users who tried to figure out the chain of reasoning.
Now, there’s an option to view the reasoning behind ChatGPT’s answers!
Competition makes AI great.
12:33 PM · Feb 1, 2025
That limited Chinese AI applications have been making the chain of reasoning used in research clear, I had taken as a necessary given. DeepSeek as a broad AI application shows chain of reasoning used, and that is as highly valuable as with Pangu the weather forecasting system from Huawei:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06185-3
July 5, 2023
Accurate medium-range global weather forecasting with 3D neural networks
Any thoughts on the o3 mini release?
Yves I saw today that Larry Johnson is now listing each day’s NC articles on his website– https://sonar21.com/potpourri-friday-tulsi-gabbard-aerial-collision-ukraine-and-genocide-in-palestine/
So awesome!
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-01-31/Chinese-scientists-thin-film-radar-chip-set-to-transform-6G-and-more-1ACcYB1oX5K/p.html
January 31, 2025
Chinese scientists develop thin-film radar chip, set to transform 6G and autonomous vehicles
Chinese researchers from Nankai University and City University of Hong Kong have achieved a groundbreaking advancement in millimeter-wave radar technology with the development of a thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) photonic millimeter-wave radar chip. This innovation has the potential to transform a wide range of cutting-edge applications, including 6G communication, autonomous driving and precision sensing.
The team’s findings, * published in Nature Photonics on Monday, explained the integration of advanced photonic technologies with millimeter-wave radar systems enables unprecedented high-resolution imaging and detection capabilities, essential for applications demanding rapid and precise sensing.
What makes this chip special?
The new chip is built on a 4-inch thin-film lithium niobate platform, a material known for its exceptional ability to manipulate light and electrical signals. This platform is compatible with CMOS processes, the same technology used to manufacture most modern electronics, making it easier to produce at scale. The chip achieves centimeter-level resolution in distance and velocity detection and excels in two-dimensional imaging, using a technique called inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR), which allows it to create detailed images of objects, even in challenging environments.
“This chip represents a significant leap forward in radar technology. It not only overcomes the limitations of traditional electronic radar systems but also sets a new standard for compact, high-performance photonic radar systems,” said Zhu Sha, professor and also a key member of the research team from Nankai University…
* https://www.nature.com/articles/s41566-024-01608-7
Curious on the reason for the share. It’s not something I am familiar with at all.
Take this as an invitation not a challenge. .why did you share the link? What does it mean? Is it the centimeter level resolution? Something else?
Increased imaging capabilities and precision with microscopic examination or telescopic space exploration makes AI classification and interpretation increasingly necessary and helpful in asking new questions. Being able to methodically ask new questions is critical in science.
What for instance is the point of building a lobster-eye telescope or alternately a transmission electron microscope?
file under immigration. Jimmy Dore, utube, ~20+
Black Chicagoans Are PISSED OFF & Support Trump’s Illegal Immigration Raids!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=616-KCpDq9c
A commenter at Ian Welsh recently linked to a recent CounterPunch article about what Trump’s response to the Washington ( so-called “Reagan”) National Airport displays about Trump and the TrumpAdmin’s approach to governance over the next 4 years. It begins by noting all the firings that Trump carried out at FAA in the days leading up to the crash. It contains the following quote about the reason for one of those firings in particular. . . . ” Meanwhile, according to The Verge, Trump ousted FAA commissioner Michael Whitaker on January 20 at the behest of Elon Musk, who was furious that the FAA fined SpaceX for failing to get approval for launch changes.”
Clearly “President Musk” is no joke and is not funny.
Here is the link.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/31/roaming-charges-the-trick-of-disaster/
I didn’t predict any particular thing in particular. But I predicted this approach in general. That is why I wrote a few times that I was going to vote for Harris ( Brezhnevian stagnation) in order to vote most effectively against Trump ( Yeltsinian burndown). Anyone who voted for Trump ( or voted or non-voted to permit Trump) in order to “teach the Democrats a lesson” or “give the Democrats an enema” voted for this and for everything else that President Musk will roll out in this vein. They should be proud of it because they own it. Its theirs.
Including all the Trumpy genocide against Palestine yet to come.
With all praise & glory to “The Verge”, it did not require a “President Musk” for Trump to want to clean house at the FAA. Here’s some conversative propaganda to “counter” your liberal link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiclZKcCr8g (& please note the date of the video’s publication)
GAO did not praise the scarce to non existent “modernization” plans for the US’ Air Traffic Systems under the Biden watch.
FAA commissioner Michael Whitaker is an attorney who litigated things for airlines, likely help airlines lobby to avoid regulations that required expensive new navigation equipment…… he was appointed by Biden.
Each inauguration day political appointments from the outgoing administration tender resignations.
Wiki links Whitaker, a private pilot, to advocating ADS-B as deputy from 2013 t2016, an Obama appointment. ADS-B was not rocket science!
He is one of those revolving door pols appointees!
Possibly a foolish remark, but looking at a New York Times illustration, I found the “T” pattern of airliner approaching a landing and helicopter flying across the path of the landing airliner to be an inherent problem. Later, the NYT noted there were indeed 2 close-calls for this T pattern before.
Also, a reader added the military route seemed needless.
Lastly, a chronic shortage of air traffic controllers even as an airport is adding to traffic would seem to need considering.
Voted against genocide bro.
One life is worth all the money in the world.
Peace ✌️
Love
Unity
Respect
How about this version-
‘Effortlessly
Peace
Love
Unity
Respect
In
Beautiful
United
States
Under
New
Unified
Meaning’
Trump has signed three executive orders imposing 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and 10% for China for all goods (except 10% on oil from Canada) effective Tuesday.
NYT
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/01/us/trump-tariffs-news
I wonder how ISDS clauses in NAFTA could come into play, and if maybe that is the point for some (of his buddies).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1BKXk
January 15, 2018
Consumer Price Index for Food and Energy, 2000-2024
(Indexed to 2000)
ISDS clauses will not come into play, unless Canada doesn’t declare a security interest, then Americans can sue.
Article 32.2 Essential security
Nothing in this agreement will be construed to
b) preclude a Party from applying measures that it considers necessary for the fulfilment of its obligations with respect to the maintenance or restoration of international peace or security, or the protection of its own essential security interests
Anybody have a take on Somalia. Been off my radar.
Trump says U.S. carries out airstrikes on Islamic State in Somalia
Temporary Protected Status Designated Country: Somalia
Among the very poorest of countries, the destabilizing force is Al Qaeda:
https://english.news.cn/20241213/e9547be7f5204382a2bd919c67f75508/c.html
December 13, 2024
ATMIS lauds Somalia, Ethiopia deal to end bitter dispute
MOGADISHU — The African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) has welcomed an agreement signed between Ethiopia and Somalia Wednesday to end their bitter dispute over Addis Ababa’s plans to build a port in Somaliland, a region of Somalia.
Special Representative of the Chairperson of the African Union Commission for Somalia and Head of ATMIS Mohamed El-Amine Souef described the deal, inked in Ankara, capital of Türkiye, as an exemplary act of leadership that is crucial in advancing regional peace, security and stability.
“ATMIS remains fully committed to supporting Somalia’s state-building and security transition, in line with the aspirations of the Somali people and the African Union’s vision for a stable and prosperous Africa,” Souef said in a statement issued in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, Thursday evening.
He urged the two parties to implement the agreed measures and further consolidate mutual trust and cooperation.
Tensions had been escalating between Ethiopia and Somalia after Ethiopia and Somaliland reportedly signed an agreement earlier this year allowing Ethiopia access to the Red Sea in exchange for its recognition of Somaliland as an independent state, an agreement condemned by Somalia…
Thank you. i need to read up on the regional strategic importance.
I’m late to this party as usual, and apologies if this has been mentioned above, but the piece on IKEA logging of Romanian forests recalled for me this piece by Richard Conniff in Yale-360, in which he argues that the Forest Stewardship Council has had a very mixed record towards real sustainability:
File under AI. From Due Dissidence guys, utube, ~13+ minutes.
Pro-Israel AI Bot TURNS AGAINST Israel In HILARIOUS Fashion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whHvJN8TrPc
Credit Slips blog looks at possible reasons Musk might have for wanting access to Treasury data:
https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2025/02/musk-and-treasurys-payment-systems.html
As usual over there, nice explainer.
Thanks for the link. One thought: this might be one way to find out what the US’s so-called dark budget is actually paying for. Catherine Austin Fitts calls it the missing money.