Black holes seen ‘cooking’ their own food in fascinating discovery Earth
The #1 cause of maternal death in the US: suicide/homicide ZMEScience (Dr. Kevin)
Guillain-Barre syndrome: India faces outbreak of creeping paralysis BBC
Big Pharma Is Pushing Potentially Deadly Alzheimer’s Drugs Jacobin (KLG)
#COVID-19/Pandemics
I don't know who needs to hear this, but…
A few weeks of online school five years ago is not why kids are struggling now.
That's Covid brain damage. pic.twitter.com/quGMDZjB4Z
— Cat Herding Science Nerd 🔬 (@catladyactivist) February 3, 2025
1st they said kids wouldn't catch covid. Then they said if kids got infected it's no big deal. Then they stopped talking about it cuz kids in classrooms helps drive capitalism. The ruling class doesn't give a single f*ck about you if you're not a productive cog in the machine. https://t.co/PzJVpiRM3Y
— David Christopher 🏥🥼🔬 (@MLS_Dave) February 3, 2025
Climate/Environment
Europe ‘can’t cope’ with extreme weather costs, warns insurance watchdog Financial Times
China?
Trump Tariffs: China Hits Back With U.S. Penalties Wall Street Journal. Live blog. Archived version as of Links launch.
China Hits Back Against Trump’s Tariffs With Targeted Actions Bloomberg
China’s exporters to step up offshoring to beat Donald Trump’s tariffs Financial Times
🚫 Decoupling #America’s Artificial Intelligence Capabilities from #China Act 🤦♂️
If this bill passes you could go to jail for $20 years and fined $250k for downloading the Deepseek model. 🤯
Shutting down the global exchange of advancements in #AI is neither good for the U.S.… https://t.co/uB91NjzkCe
— Alvin Wang Graylin (@AGraylin) February 2, 2025
China warns that US tariffs will hit fentanyl cooperation efforts, damage trust South China Morning Post (guurst)
Koreas
Retail sales post steepest fall in 21 years amid prolonged economic downturn Korea Times
Bangladesh’s economy sinks deeper into crisis amid growing uncertainty BDNews24
Africa
In Sudan, Doctors Forced to Operate in Shipping Containers Buried Underground DropSite (guurst)
Another sign of collapse in South Africa’s richest city Business Tech
Empty Shelves in Zimbabwe as Economic Crisis Deepens All Africa
Hospitals in eastern Congo are crowded with wounded and exhausting their supplies Independent
European Disunion
Three Years After Ukraine Invasion, Europe Still Deals With Energy Crisis Financial Times
EU-Russia split leads to purge of France’s oligarchs Vyzglad via machine translation. Micael T: “I don’t see “guilloutine” mentioned so I don’t understand what kind of purge.”
Old Blighty
UK economic growth forecasts downgraded in blow for Reeves Independent
Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform Party leads in UK poll for first time Aljazeera (Kevin W)
Barclays working to update account balances after tech outage BBC (Kevin W)
Thames Water and Altice France set to push European high yield default rate to highest since 2008 Financial Times
Court Quashes Hopes for New Oil, Gas in UK’s North Sea OilPrice
Israel v. The Resistance
🧵🚨 16 days after the ceasefire, Gaza’s humanitarian crisis is worsening. Aid remains severely disrupted, and the urgent needs of 2.3 million people are unmet. Infrastructure is in ruins, while essential supplies like tents, fuel, and medical equipment are still blocked. ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/fkSLOIx7zV
— Ramy Abdu| رامي عبده (@RamAbdu) February 3, 2025
Footage recorded by Israeli forces show soldiers rigging demolition bombs in multiple homes across the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
Drone footage shows Israeli forces detonating all explosions at once, destroying a large swathe of the camp, with reports of over… pic.twitter.com/GutRrBsXM6
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) February 3, 2025
Houthis escalate military operations on Yemen’s fronts amid global focus on Gaza ceasefire Khabar Agency
Hamas officials say ‘ready’ for negotiations on phase two of Gaza truce Agence France-Presse
Trump turn is bad news for West Asia Indian Punchline
Trump’s ceasefire dilemma: Enforce peace or bow to Netanyahu? Elijah Magnier
A Mossad Fantasy Tour SpyTalk (Micael T)
Iran unveils new ballistic missile that can reach Israel Times of Israel
New Not-So-Cold War
Donald Trump wants Ukrainian rare earths deal in return for US military support Financial Times (Kevin W). Um, Ukraine does not have much in the way of rare earths. And look at the rate of drop off from China:
What he likely wants is lithium, which is not a rare earth. So Trump will buy an empty bag! Oh, and two of the four big lithium deposits in Ukraine are under Russia control. Even RE/RFL says getting the lithium was not a war objective for Russia, it already has plenty.
EU opens door to UK and Norway for defence ‘coalition of the willing’ Financial Times
Finland and Sweden in NATO: Disregarding the Benefits of Neutrality Finn Andreen (Micael T)
Syraqistan
Dozens of soldiers, fighters killed in Baloch separatist attack in Pakistan Aljazeera
After Saudi Arabia, al-Sharaa now heads to Turkey, the ally that helped Syria ‘regain freedom’ Agence France-Presse
Imperial Collapse Watch
A new world order? Julian Macfarlane (Micael T)
How Trump’s Bluntness Shatters the Liberal World Order Russia in Global Affairs (Micael T)
Freeze of US foreign aid will result in humanitarian disaster Doctors Without Borders
Trump 2.0
Trump agrees to pause tariffs on Canada and Mexico after they pledge to boost border enforcement Associated Press (Kevin W). To continue the image we invoked yesterday, when discussing that this all might be bluster: “The problem is he’s blustering with a loaded AK-47 while not observing any gun safety protocols.” So he pulled the trigger and what came out of the barrel was a flower. That’s how weak the demands were v. the threats. Admittedly, readers discussed in comments that Trump’s authority to impose the tariffs rested on the invocation of an emergency, and it looks like the only thing that fits the bill is the purported border crisis.
Be sure to click through to read of more tariff threat shortfall:
Panama is dropping out of the Belt and Road Initiative, the country's leader announced after meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The small country will no longer take part in the biggest global trade project in world history.
In closed-door talks, Rubio reportedly… pic.twitter.com/BjqRNMxenh
— Nury Vittachi (@NuryVittachi) February 3, 2025
However:
Canadian twitter is lit…they’re on it quick 🤣pic.twitter.com/YGzvjUvuIi
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) February 2, 2025
Trump tariffs could raise medication costs and exacerbate shortages, drug trade groups warn CNBC (Kevin W). Remember our pharma dependency on China.
Hegseth’s goal for fewer civilian professors at military academies faces roadblocks The Hill
Musk Calls USAID a Criminal Organization Vyzglad via machine translation. Micael T: “Says the man who twittered: “We coup whoever we want.” after Morales was couped 2019. Do not expect less coups, only coups prepared and executed in another way for the purpose of enriching Musk and other techoligarchs.”
Elon Musk Installs Illegal Server to Seize All Federal Workers’ Data New Republic (Kevin W)
Trump orders creation of sovereign wealth fund, says it could buy TikTok Aljazeera (Kevin W)
Trump fires chief of the federal consumer watchdog agency NPR
The Damage to Federal Medical Research Is Already Done Wired (Dr. Kevin). From last week, still germane
Immigration
Trump revokes deportation protections for 300,000 Venezuelans in US Guardian
Thousands rally in downtown Los Angeles, shut down 101 Freeway to protest Trump’s immigration policies Los Angeles Times
Our No Longer Free Press
EU’s “Disinformation” Code Becomes Mandatory Under Censorship Law, Platforms Preemptively Enforce Rules Ahead of German Elections Reclaim the Net (Micael T)
Mr. Market is Moody
Hedge funds bet billions on market crash in Trump’s America Telegraph
AI
AI systems with ‘unacceptable risk’ are now banned in the EU TechCrunch (Kevin W)
Gamers help solve quantum physics problem where A.I. failed ZMEScience (Dr. Kevin)
Antidote du jour. mgl:
These birds are Great Crested Grebes (aka Australasian Crested Grebe, and, in New Zealand, the Puteketeke), as seen on Lake Dunstan, central Otago, NZ, JAN 2025.
Readers may recall the silliness that went on the end of 2023 when the annual Bird of the Year contest conducted by Forest and Bird, became the Bird of the Century that year. Puteketeke was one of the contestants, and won in a landslide (should have been the kiwi, IMHO) thanks to the antics of John Oliver.
And a bonus:
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) February 3, 2025
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
163 comments
Comments are closed.
The #1 cause of maternal death in the US: suicide/homicide – ZMEScience
Those causes for maternal death have been at or around the top spot for years.
I can’t decide if it’s the worst or best kept secret.
Just doesn’t fit the fantasies being promoted.
A former college classmate of mine and her baby were murdered by their husband/father.
He shot them with a gun he stole from relatives.
He was apparently suffering from severe economic strain trying to keep up a modest but expensive (because Massachusetts) house in the suburbs.
That is not a single cause or an excuse, but, if we’re looking for reasons why these numbers are high in the US: horrible economic inequality/decline in living standards + easy access to guns.
About 30 years ago a numismatist I knew had met the dream girl for him, and she was gonna wear the pants in the family and it was just what he needed in a mate, and one day a month before the wedding she was at his sister’s house when despite a restraining order, her soon to be no doubt about it ex showed up for another round of arguments, this time equipped with a hand cannon, and he shot her and as my friend’s ill-fated fiance was trying to call 911, why he killed her too, despite the pair never having met prior.
Restraining orders don’t seem to matter to many of the stalker/angry ex types. And enforcement is spotty for the average human. Seriously depressing how common this can be.
On TV, the grieving period allowed when a friend or family gets murdered is about 38 seconds (unless it’s a movie with somebody wanting to square said gun violence and spends an hour and fifty eight minutes seeking vengeance) and my friend was a complete wreck of a human for a couple years, and then to add insult to injury, the murderer became a jailhouse lawyer and somehow got the case brought back to life about a decade ago-which was quickly squashed-but brought all the hurt and anguish back, all nice and fresh.
You’ve noticed it too. The ‘Law and Order’ franchise is notorious in that regard. Grizzly deaths, no tears or distress. No state of shock.
No stupid questions. Could Musk’s bro techs access to the fed payment system have any connection whatsoever with the Barclays outage?
file under USAID:
Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn spend most the this episode discussing USAID. / ;) utube, no paywall, ~2+ hours.
ATW Live on Monday 2/3/25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3WBh2CNH7U
The Duran has also just dropped a long video called “Dismantling regime change machinery”-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zStZiLu_F_U (41:14 mins)
Let a country nationalize some resource the USA needs badly…the Musk Administration will hit the regime change 2.0 button and with X playing a key role.
“We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”
Seems to me more happy-faced Stalinist purge (no shootings and that sort of thing) going on in the Blob rather than any kind of real retreat from Empire.
Those tools that work and can be made to work for MAGA world will be sharpened and openly used going forward.
The only shame in Trump world is losing, we’ll now openly do what we did with misdirection before, and as loyalty is established the uses of misdirection will come back into service as well. My guess.
Riddle me this…what does the two Alexes think was said to the leader of Panama about what would happen if he didn’t cancel the China deals?
Easy:
“Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?”
Yes, USAID was ALREADY the instrument of predatory US trade policiy and regime change. After the Grenada invasion, the CIA used it to break up the country’s lefty trade unions; this has gone on everywhere, with the AFL-CIO often working hand in hand. Can’t believe that Trump is dumb enough not to have read the USAID charter, but–then again–I CAN. A lot of doe-eyed little liberals, coming out of the Ivies and better schools, sucking at that teat for decades, never glommed on either (or cared to admit) that they were working hand in hand with such malign forces. I have (nice) smart Black middle-class friends who made their careers on those increasingly prevalent one-year contracts, which all but guarantee that no real change ever comes about. (But once you have intro’d a well in a village with water problems, and walked away, you may have harmed its delicate economy forever.) They still crow idealistically–now live in Jo’burg and other places in great luxury, with servants, rail about Trump–and CLUCK THEIR TONGUES endlessly about how Africans need to get their sh*t together, not be corrupt, yadayada. It was Blair and Clinton, btw, who really pushed this NGO work–pioneered by the likes of Rostow, predicated on the dubious idea that we WERE developed and everyone else needed to emulate our growth/consumption model–into a new professionalized stratum of absolute predatory liberalism. This ish can’t be fixed. The best every other country can do is get far away from us. Crying about Panama this morning.
He [Elon] accused USAID of funding bioweapons research and believes that USAID “should die.” “Did you know that USAID, using your tax dollars, funded bioweapons research, including COVID-19, which has killed millions of people?” he said .
Could Musk actually be running SpaceX, Tesla, and other companies and be able to assume such a role in the Trump admin? I’m beginning to think he is just a front man, an actor, who has been put in place to give a face to deep state actors behind the scene. I see how much the CEO of the company I work for spends at the office, doesn’t even have time to be with his family.
“I’m beginning to think he is just a front man, an actor, who has been put in place to give a face to deep state actors behind the scene.”
The way to the executive branch goes through “the deep state”….officially in the USA since 1947. Thoroughly enforced since 1963.
BTW: I think the same about Zuck.
The techbro or type is the face and image the national security state put on this program. They have the media and industry committed to the particular image as well.
“Did you know that USAID, using your tax dollars, funded bioweapons research, including COVID-19, which has killed millions of people?” he said .
Has Elon paid Sam Harris for the bet he made? When people were being carried away in body bags in Italy and China and air travel was going full steam ahead, Musk said there wouldn’t be more 35,000 cases of Covid to develop in the USA.
Is it impossible that he’s learned more about COVID since then?
My money’s still on the bull, not the china shop.
He still owes Sammy.
I would not place any trust in a man whose thinking conforms to the libertarian hive mind.
Could he become the richest man in the world without becoming a part of the system?
I suspect not. I have noticed that some individuals and companies are allowed to grow over others e.g. Google. Once they are huge comes the demands. They have to give political donations to Congress critters. Bill Gates nearly lost it all in the 90s by refusing to do so for years until he got the message. They have to kick money in to think tanks and places like the Atlantic Council. They are expected to have board seats made available for ‘worthy’ individuals. You follow all these demands and more and you will thrive under this system. You refuse and you will find you or your corporation being investigated by the justice department.
Musk is like a Justin Trudeau trained to act like a human to be shown only in highly controlled environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhpOcK1cbQw
I guess we can make this story about Musk instead of asking just what the h— the USAID program has been doing for the last 10-20 years.
Adding, Musk is a military contractor. Look at his companies. So there’s that.
The idea that the guy who did this is an “outsider”….
https://satellitemap.space/
https://satellitemap.space/?constellation=starlink
An outsider, from outer space, that came to save humanity from itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KarWCgIw3Wk
Oh no, NOT the David Bowie Syndrome!!!
Thanks for that black and white kitten in Antidote. I smiled for the first time today.
Working link for “Freezing US foreign aid will result in humanitarian disaster” article at-
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/freeze-us-foreign-aid-will-result-humanitarian-disaster (missing the initial ‘h’ in ‘https’)
Well if USAID gets folded into the State Department, all those food and medical deliveries will continue. What won’t continue is the billions going through USAID for regime change operations, think tanks, protests, NGOs, cookie handouts, etc. and this article makes me wonder if Doctors Without Borders has been getting money from USAID as well. Turns out that USAID was basically a spook operation with a thin veneer of humanitarian work. Who knew? /sarc
Now the thing to watch for is how many operations around the world such as media companies, NGOs, civil society organizations, etc. just mysteriously fold or slip away into the dark.
The Musk administration is going to rebrand and keep a good deal of the spook and regime change operations.
These f’ers are going to be spooking and regime changing like the worst of them and with their own bad actors to partner with in other countries.
I suspect that as well, with a change in focus to the W. Hemisphere.
Operation “Trudeau gets the heave-ho?”
And their usual on the menu favorite countries for regime change: any country that wants to maintain ownership and control of resources, eapecially make resources a part of the commons or doesn’t go to enriching some singular grifter.
Standing up to Trump is the first thing in a while to improve Trudeau’s standing with Canadian voters.
Trump gave pretty boy the chance to show some teeth.
Sounds like Trudeau agreed to stronger border enforcement against human and drug trafficking, as did Mexico, so the tariff threat has been mooted for both countries for 30 days as negotiations are ongoing.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/04/us/trump-tariffs-news#heres-what-mexico-and-canada-have-agreed-to-do-to-delay-us-tariffs
here’s the AP story, no paywall.
Trump agrees to pause tariffs on Mexico, Canada after they pledge to boost border enforcement
The two U.S. neighbors agreed to boost border security efforts.
https://www.presstelegram.com/2025/02/03/trump-trudeau-speak-tariffs/
Double secret probation, sir?
Bernie in 2015. twtr-X
Open borders? That’s a Koch brothers proposal which essentially says there is no United States. It would make everyone in America poorer. Right-wing people would love an open border to bring in all kinds of people to work for $2 to $3 an hour.
https://x.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1886505868763746609
Funny how the Schumer plan of ditching working class for rich donors would gain them two Republican voters in suburbia for every voter they lost worked out.
The thing I find amusing is isn’t as if the people who turned to the Republicans, especially Trump and friends, aren’t getting played again. we got to see the tech bros go ballistic when their ‘legal’ flood the system with cheaper immigrant labor system was threatened. Everybody who is anybody wants cheap foreign labor, but the people they are trying to throw out of the jobs. It was fun watching Musk get owned during that, but I’m afraid our system is too reliant on things guys like him control, and getting more so, to throw them out.
I think this guy, the reelected finance chairman (?) of the DNC, is the kind of suburbanite Schumer was talking about. / ;)
utube, clip starts at minute 57. Interesting part lasts about 3 minutes. Click out at that point. From Due Dissidence guys. utube.
DNC Picks NEW CHAIR in TOTAL CLOWN SHOW, Maddow Frets FBI Purge, Trump ISRAEL FIRST Agenda Arrives
https://youtu.be/3IuMlFdYxk8?t=3442
Re: Médecins sans frontières, look up the sordid history of one Bernard Kouchner.
According to Wikipedia he co-founded MSF in 1971 and then started a different similar organization in 1980 due to a conflict of opinion with the MSF chairman.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Kouchner
According to the original link “MSF does not accept US government funding and our programs will not be directly affected…” and the link below “In the interests of maintaining our independence and neutrality, Doctors Without Borders has not received or solicited funding from the US government since 2002.”
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/get-involved/ways-to-give
I’m not an accelerationist so I have no idea how smashing things up can somehow open a path to the emergence of something better.
If there is to be such a path, it requires making some distinctions between corruption, a hidden agenda, etc. at the top of an organization (whether business, government at all levels, or ngos); the people who do the work (including people motivated to do good works, and ordinary people earning a living); and people served by the people who do the work (including many in dire situations and receiving necessary care, and ordinary people doing ordinary things who may need information, a license, a grievance procedure, the benefits they’ve earned, etc.).
https://thegrayzone.com/2025/01/31/trump-executive-order-us-regime-change-network/
Of course even in the time of the sainted JFK foreign aid was part of cold war competition with the option of bombing those ungrateful enough to still oppose us.
Now, with the cold war over, the competition continues suggesting it was never really about “freedom”–the constant mantra of the ’60s–at all. Or perhaps the cries of outrage are really over Deep State rice bowls. Will the nation’s richest zip code turn into Appalachia?
Larry Johnson today.
https://sonar21.com/donald-trump-sends-vladimir-putin-a-subtle-message/
Meanwhile the Guardian up page collapses onto the fainting couch over Trump sending Venezuelans back to the “dictator” Maduro. The exile oligarch community in Miami is panicking. Will Guaido be frog marched onto a military transport and shipped back to his enemy? What really is going on?
Freedom, democracy, and human rights have been sullied by their use as cover for US infiltration into nations to advance political and economic control and if that does not bring expected results replace the government with one that will do as “suggested.”
Looking back to the Monroe Doctrine, the Roosevelt Corollary, dollar diplomacy, Smedley ( War is a Racket) Butler breaking heads for United Fruit, to the 1947 Italian election, to the Russian election in 1996 etc. ad infinitum. There are always high flown goals announced in reverent voice, eyes lifted to the flag and the heavens. It has become quite tiresome,transparent, and squalid by its repetition. The threats and the bloodier moments that follow are equally loathsome.
Now the thuggery is in the open. The knuckledraggers stand openly behind the honeyed words. I am not at all happy with what my country has become. I am not at all happy with the ever declining level of what passes for discourse in the DC Bubble and Echo Chamber. Come to think of it, the denizens have been hearing only themselves speak for so long that the collective vocabulary has been dumbed down in the manner of Orwell’s New Speak.
From what I’ve read and listened to recently from both the center-left and center-right, it seems like USAID substituted DEI for Freedom and Democracy as a wedge issue in a lot of countries. (Once the old Soviet Union fell I guess USAID needed a new ‘color revolution’ opening.)
Also, commenting about fomenting revolutions in other countries is above my pay grade. But it seems like USAID has been turning their tools on US politics, being a financial sponsor of domestic sensorship among other activities. Turning their tools on US politics is a big ‘no’ for me. Mike Benz has a lot to say about this.
Was Pussy Riot on the CIA payroll? When House of Cards did a Russia subplot it was all about how the Putin-esque character (far more flamboyant than the real thing) was mean to gays.
So yes freedom in general has been turned into DEI in particular–domestically and in FP.
Putin is religiously orthodox but the Studio 54 loving libertine Trump, who surely rarely darkens the door of a church, gets the same treatment. Has he ever said anything against gay people (as opposed to trans)? Rights are important but when weaponized for other reasons sincerity is questioned
From Lee Fang, public excerpt:
USAID Funded Censorship, Smears of Americans
The controversial agency provides backdoor ways for the American government to finance propaganda against American citizens.
https://www.leefang.com/p/usaid-funded-censorship-smears-of
Russian culture is decidedly Orthodox and conservative. Putin would not be president if he was otherwise. As the Democrats discovered in the last election, LGBQT+ alone is not a winning ticket. Americans are more conservative than recognized.
DWB seems to do good work around the world, so it getting USAID money for that is a plus. But I suppose you’re implying that their doctors are spooks?
Doctors Without Borders does not accept government funds. USAID spending did not go to DWB.
Re: Donald Trump wants Ukrainian rare earths
This was his M.O. in Syria. Steal the oil. It worked to a certain extent, but Ukraine is not Syria.
1. Russia already has possession of a lot of the land where the lithium is (Trump is an ignoramus who doesn’t understand (or is paid not to understand) the difference between lithium and rare earth minerals.
2. Russia continues its relentless march westward, and will no doubt control more territory next year.
3. Europe isn’t going to like having an even more failed state left at its doorstep. Ukraine needs to keep some natural resources to be a functioning state, after the war, else it will be like Syria or the Sudan.
Unlike the “shock and awe” optics of Trumps DOGE attacks and tariffs, he seems to be really thrashing on Ukraine. His latest musings contradict earlier statements that he would cut off the aid. Part of me suspects that these inconsistent statements are a way to distract the public, so that he can concentrate on higher priorities such as immigration and turning Canada into the 51st state.
Will Trump be saying in a few months-
‘We’re keeping the Lithium. We have the Lithium. The Lithium is secure. We left troops behind only for the Lithium.’
Lithium is not in short supply. It’s available from many western countries.
The US doesn’t have any refining capabilities to speak of.
But lithium based batteries require lots of other materials with graphite being a big one that we don’t manufacture and China makes most of it.
And the new generation batteries are going towards sodium, ie no lithium.
I don’t know why he would care about lithium anyway, he’s against EV’s.
Trump sometimes suffers for a severe case of verbal diarrhea and spouts out all sorts of ill-thought out bs. I think that he does it on purpose so that people find it hard to find out what he is really thinking.
Or he’s in cognitive decline.
BINGO!
DJT is purely transactional. Who knew?
Here’s the top ten rare earth mining projects:
RANKED: World’s top 10 rare earth projects
https://www.mining.com/featured-article/ranked-worlds-top-10-rare-earth-projects/
Given the projects in Greenland and Canada, it may explain Trumps interest in those countries. But as noted by others, China’s real expertise is in the processing of the ore. REE ore is often mixed with thorium (as at the Mountain Pass mine in California) so processing is “messy”. But if one is going to pursue nuclear power in a big way, thorium as the fuel may be a good option. It is much more common than uranium.
Here’s more on REE and thorium:
USGS – Rare Earth Element Mineral Deposits in the United States https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1454/circ1454.pdf
Thorium Deposits https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/thorium-deposits
Where will the offered rare earths be refined?
US has rare earths, it seems reluctant to refine much.
Mountain Pass was trying to be able to process all of the ore from the mine by 2020. I think they are running late, but making progress. This reports processing was on-line in 2023:
MP Materials – What We Do
https://mpmaterials.com/what-we-do/
And this news release has rare earth magnets being delivered this year:
MP Materials Restores U.S. Rare Earth Magnet Production
https://mpmaterials.com/articles/mp-materials-restores-us-rare-earth-magnet-production/
Note the use of the word “restore”. At one time America was one of the very few countries that made these magnets. I think compared to China’s experience in this area, America is way behind, and quite frankly will stay way behind without significant effort by the Federal government.
Wait! The American troops in Syria were sent there by Obama. At one point Trump tried to remove them. Let’s keep things straight.
Your empire is fadin’
I feel it fade
Ah, your empire is fadin’
I feel it fade
Ah, your empire is fadin’
Donald, I feel it fade
Ah, Donald, Donald your touch, your touch has gone cold
As if someone else controls your very soul
I’ve fooled myself long as I can
Can feel the presence of another man
It’s there when you speak his name
It’s just not the same
Oooh, empire, I’m losing you
It’s in the air
It’s there everywhere
Gaslightnost, I’m losing you
When I look into your eyes
A reflection of a face, I see
I’m hurt, down-hearted and worried, America
‘Cause that face doesn’t belong to me
It’s all over your face
Someone’s takin’ your place
Oooh, America, I’m losing you
You try hard to hide
The emptiness you feel inside
Oooh America, I’m losing you
I can’t bear the thought of losing you
Rare Earth “(I Know) I’m Losing You” on The Ed Sullivan Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq0FvPLWo0Y
For heaven’s sake. The original version by the Temptations of “I’m Losing You” from 1966 has David Ruffin on lead and a Norman Whitfield production from before he jumped the shark (check out the horn arranging in the middle segment).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWr_F4Gg8sY
Accept no substitute. Even the Rod Stewart version is superior to the plodding Rare Earth one, though I’ll grant that the go-go dancers on the Ed Sullivan Showdo earn points for cheesy non-hipness..
I specifically used the Rare Earth version in keeping up with current news…
I own the 45 of that one and I salute your choice.
Good tune! I like the Faces (Rod Stewart, Ron Wood) version best, turned up loud. Very loud.
Woods’ guitar intro on that version could slice glass. It’s definitely the best. Faces were awesome.
a famous drummer buddy of mine described that rthymn section as ” A truck with no brakes racing down the mountain bouncing off the guardrails side to side. Yet somehow they hold it together.”
It is barely controlled insanity. Brilliant.
as a proud Detroit boy it’s the Temps and nobody else – no apologies, just the fact – y’all can have freedom to choose, but when it’s a Motown hit there’s only one version that’s the gold standard – imho – cruising to work in a big block chevy down 8 mile rd with windows open and Motown on the radio announced by Butterball or Martha Jean is where it’s at –
On eight-track I’m hoping.
>A Mossad Fantasy Tour SpyTalk (Micael T)
“Go behind the scenes of Israel’s legendary Mossad!”
Curious about those exploding pagers, a terrorist action which goes unpunished, indeed, it’s “legendary.” Not to mention Epstein’s potential role in suborning U.S. politicians of all stripes
“A Mossad Fantasy Tour”
If you think that that is something, you can also try the IDF Fantasy Tour. They take you in a group to a high point in Gaza with a telescopic rifle to shoot terrorists. How do you know if the Palestinian in your sights is actually a terrorist? If they are in Gaza they are either a terrorist or support terrorists so easy to decide. Person with the highest score gets awarded an acre of freehold land in Gaza itself after the war. Unfortunately no coastal land as all of it has been reserved for Netanyahu and his friends plus someone – whose identity we cannot reveal – called J. Kushner. No! Wait! That should be Jared K.
Here come the jesters, 1, 2, 3
It’s all part of my fantasy
I love the Tik-Toks and I love to snipe the crowd
Hidin’ in the aisles, and makin’ Jared proud
Yeah …
Here come the excuses, one by one
They’re Yahweh’s chosen – they’re just havin’ fun
You’ll find you’re dancin’ on a number nine cloud
Put your hands up in the air and take another round (to the chest)
It’s all part of my IDF fantasy
It’s all part of my lebensraum dream
yeah …
It’s all part of my IDF fantasy
It’s all part of my lebensraum dream
It’s all part of my IDF fantasy
It’s all part of my lebensraum dream
Hit ’em with drone strikes, kids and all
And let the slaughter shake right off your soul
The bombs are so loud, you can hear the sound
Screaming from the sky and churnin’ up the ground
It’s all part of my IDF fantasy
It’s all part of my lebensraum dream
It’s all part of my IDF fantasy
It’s all part of my lebensraum dream
Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50ZB3M31jfM
Bad Company, It’s a classic rock morning. “Losing You” into “Rock and Roll Fantasy” into… somebody’s gonna have to do Heart’s “Barracuda”. If you’re driving into Portland (Maine, thank you) this morning on your way to work listening to the Shark (rock radio station) you will undoubtedly hear one of these.
“unacceptable risk” under AI. Sheesh, do they even know what might be?
I am reminded of anecdote from medic friend in run up to year 2000. The NHS proclaimed it was “Y2K proofed”. To be fair, it largely was. However, a number of potentially high profile failures went under the radar that were NOT considered vulnerable. My friend was doing a rotation in OBGYN. All of the key artificial breathing instruments for the premature babies shut down at midnight. Never considered to be Y2K vulnerable. Thankfully there were few babies needing the system and a frantic rush by drs and midwives ensured no injuries/deaths. But it was real. And totally unreported.
>A new world order? Julian Macfarlane (Micael T)
Rome didn’t give up on Empire until the Barbarians were at the gate. In fact, not even then: the Empire moved to Constantinople.
And where did it go after Constantinople fell? The LaRoche organization for all their faults, does a good job trying to provide the answer.
https://youtu.be/utkhD0Gypro?si=04t2slY2n6L6cERu
A new money world order occurred when the western Roman Empire fell, in that the Byzantine Empire issued only bronze and gold coins primarily, eschewing silver coins on account of what had happened in the 3rd century when high-tech of the time allowed for the minting of nearly completely debased silver Denarii, which certainly helped things come a cropper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_coinage
The article ‘Black holes seen ‘cooking’ their own food in fascinating discovery’ is a pathetic piece of PR puffery.
There’s no discovery involved in what it says has been discovered. It’s long been known that because stars retain their rotation after they contract into black holes, they spin nearly at light-speed, dragging along — distorting — the spacetime surrounding them beyond their event horizon, and so the gas and dust—the accretion disk—caught in that spacetime.
The gravitational and frictional forces that result then clump that gas and dust into filaments, and again heat and ionize it as it’s infalling, generating the visible and ultraviolet light we detect, as well as the even hotter gas radiating furious X-ray energies above the accretion disk.
Fascinatingly, even the largest black holes—the supermassive ones in galactic centers—rotate like the smaller ones do, at speeds that can be an appreciable fraction of c, lightspeed. Their accretion disks’ ionized gases thus emit a spectrum of wavelengths, from radio to gamma rays, so each central black hole has a pattern of emission lines as uniquely identifying as a biometric portrait is for a human individual.
Anyway, the original study from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) that this piece is a write-up of has given specifics of the mechanics of an already-known phenomenon, which would be the entirely worthwhile point of the research. But it’s not a new discovery.
The Republicans control the House, Senate, Supreme Court, and White House.
If they want to make changes to the USAID, Department of Education, Department of Treasury, etc., why aren’t they doing this legislatively, by law? Why go on a spree to rifle through these departments?
As pointed out by The Duran, if the Dems or anybody else challenges them in court, they are probably going to win so in fact the Repubs are looking forward to legal challenges to establish a legal precedent for what they are doing. This way also means that they are not giving their opponents time to react and slow-walk any laws that they want to change and bog it down in the bureaucracy. They must have spent years planning this all out.
Even if they lost, the question is would they obey the law? Indications so far are no.
I never bought into the Trump will be a dictator/TDS but now I’m starting to wonder.
Biden wasn’t obeying the law when he sent bombs to plausibly impeached Israel.
Ignoring the law has been a presidential prerogative for quite a while….
USians please correct me if I’m wrong, but several of the key changes proposed require changes in the constitution. The bar is MUCH higher. It’s practically impossibly for either party to do what is necessary to introduce any new constitutional amendments.
However, I do agree with you that “doing things on the quiet” – aka using existing laws in weird ways rather than using proper legislative routes – might be their best way to sidestep issues that wouldn’t get ratified into the constitution.
Constitutionally, Congress has the sole power to appropriate funds. However, with money being scarce back in the day, I doubt our framers contemplated a situation where the executive branch would refuse to spend what Congress allocated.
It may be more of a grey area than a black/white one. What if the money Congress appropriates gets “lost?” You know, due to incompetence, buggy IT systems, etc. What if an agency head accepts money from Treasury but lets it pile up in an account, and rolls around in it like Scrooge McDuck?
Musk could introduce “chaos monkey” to the Treasury’s IT systems. Redirect a few billion from the foreign aid bucket to a random taxpayer in Des Moines, Iowa. Use your imagination – the possibilities are limitless.
Thanks – glad although I didn’t exactly get stuff right, I did anticipate some of the types of shenanigans that Musk etc might be tempted to use.
…cruel and inhuman punishments are being carefully described in tiny paragraphs so they won’t conflict with the constitution (which, itself, is being modified in order to accommodate the future) Central Scrutinizer
Frank Zappa
Joe’s Garage
A classic from Frank.
Well down at Joe’s Garage, we didn’t have no dope nor LSD
But a couple bottles of beer would fix it so the intonation would not offend your ear …
Wish Frank were still here to make social commentary.
ouch :(
Double ouch when you extrapolate from its writing back in ‘79.
There is a long history of presidents “impounding” appropriated monies by Congress. The legal term used is “impoundment” and this began very early: Thomas Jefferson, in 1803, was the first to exercise it, by not spending the money approrpriated for the navy. I don’t believe this was ever seriously challenged on Constitutional grounds.
If Trump outright refused to spend appropriated monies for this and that, this would run afoul of an act of Congress, though–the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974, which was enacted in response to Nixon not spending the appropriated money (and Congress generally not liking Nixon), which requires the president to request Congress if he doesn’t want to spend the money, in which case Congress has to act to approve the impoundment (or just ignore the request completely). I’m not sure if this is what’s in play here, though: I don’t think Trump is saying he wants to not spend the appropriated money per se, but simply redirect and reorganize it (for now, at least in legal theory–whatever the reality actually is.) This runs into a different legal arena: what the legal authority of the president is over agencies like USAID. Some gov’t entities, mostly regulatory, agencies are creatures of Congress and cannot be messed with easily by the president; executive agencies created by the presidential orders are not. USAID was created by an executive order (by JFK, shortly before he was shot) and, in principle (well, according to some people anyways), the president should be able to do whatever he likes with it–and the president should be able to redirect its budgets among different agencies under his control as he sees fit, but this has been controversial in one way or another since, well, forever.
Now, I’m not a lawyer, but I used to be a specialist in US politics, among a few other things (you can’t be a plain stats guy when you are nominally a poli sci prof), (and I have worked at a law school), I tend to think that the Trump’s people are in the right here, legally speaking. USAID and similar agencies have no existence outside the presidential authority, which created them in the first place and no legal authority has been vested in them by Congressional action, as far as I know. (some agencies are a bit complicated this way–they were created by presidential action, but they also have mandates granted by Congressional acts.) So these should be entirely in presidential domain to do as he likes. If his actions are challenged legally, those challenges would have to rest on very thin ice legally speaking, unless there’s a new act of Congress that grants USAID and comparable agencies a life independent of president.
Wikipedia has a good overview on these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impoundment_of_appropriated_funds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_and_Impoundment_Control_Act_of_1974#Byrd_Rule
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_agencies_of_the_United_States_federal_government
Bonus Antidote du jour
What a great metaphor for Trudeau viz. Trump.
>Trump agrees to pause tariffs on Canada and Mexico after they pledge to boost border enforcement
Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, said Monday that it was misleading to characterize the showdown as a trade war despite the planned retaliations and risk of escalation… Trump was absolutely, 100% clear that this is not a trade war,” Hassett said. “This is a drug war.”
So we’re back at war with “drugs.” I thought that went out with Bush the Elder.
Isn’t the last available mechanism to thwart Trump et al being the utter tanking of Dow Jonestown?
Perhaps Musk’s geek squad can tunnel into the Fed’s balance sheet and delete the confetti money cannons that the banks rely on, to our detriment.
Now, that would be a mass casualty event on Wall St.
Musk now has the ability to chop off all the free Fed money going to Wall Street. I would call that a strategic win for Musk/Trump without firing a shot. And how did they do it? They followed the money until they came to the ultimate spigot.
…that isn’t the same spigot kool-aid comes out of?
We like to refer to that as a “mess causality event.”
Hah! Now that Trusk has refused to drink the Kool USAID, new congeries of oligarchical and sub-oligarchical factions can coalesce.
Underestimate Muuump @ your own risk.
re: Trump agrees to pause tariffs on Canada and Mexico after they pledge to boost border enforcement
This para:
Rather invoked images of Neville Chamberlain declaring peace in our time.
Also, removing American liquor from Canadian shelves sure seems to have spooked the Fuhrer.
“Finland and Sweden in NATO: Disregarding the Benefits of Neutrality”
One of the most bizarre things to come out of this war is the number of countries who threw away decades if not centuries of neutrality to become hostile against Russia. So now they are having to devote a bigger part of their budget on the military, cut back on pensions, schools, hospitals to pay for it all, give up their defense policy to NATO and allow foreign forces to take up bases in their country that are above the law, build fences and fortifications so what exactly did they get out of it exactly? The people will now be worse off and they may not have much to show for it. In fact, do not be surprised to see Finnish and Swedish troops be sent to Asia as part of a NATO mission to deter China or something. Would you believe that-
‘The Finnish foreign ministry has published official guidelines for its citizens who want to fight for Ukraine as mercenaries. An information page that appeared on the ministry’s website on Monday contains a broad range of recommendations covering anything from practical steps before moving to Ukraine, through to payment, compensations and “declaring death in Finland.”
“Volunteering in the Ukrainian Armed Forces is not a crime in Finland,” ‘
https://www.rt.com/news/612122-eu-state-guidelines-mercenaries-ukraine/
This is just nuts. When the body bags come back will they be given a hero’s welcome?
It’s not nuts, but the (half-assed) continuation of the Continuation War.
Plus their cities and installations have been added to the target packages of Russia’s nuclear weapons systems.
This will certainly help everyone in Finland and Sweden sleep better at night.
Another sign of collapse in South Africa’s richest city Business Tech
~~~~~~~~~~~~
My friends were in Capetown a few years ago in a rental car on an on ramp that was merging onto a freeway, when a steel bar in the arm of a determined smartphone thief smashed the passenger window and made off with the booty which was in a cradle on the dashboard.
My sister was told repeatedly to not expose her smartphone in public in Nairobi last year when she was there. One person in her group had his snatched right out of his hand.
Doesn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling for the continent…
What good is a stolen smart phone if it’s encrypted and has built-in self tracking?
Like those two cats in the bonus video and it just goes to show you – don’t mess with a ginger. That other cat knew.
Many would take exception to the notion of purported. The porous border over the past several years led directly to deaths of many Americans, from assaults and fentanyl among other causes. Videos of the Jacumba area east of San Diego showed scores of people entering, with little to no resistance. That gave more indications of the problem to a wider audience. Interviews of those enterers revealed quite a range of origin countries from all over the world. The shocking number of subsequently documented criminals is reason enough to question the policy intentions.
Sorry, crime rates among illegal immigrants are lower than among native Americans. That is well documented.
And the US has had a drug crisis pretty much my entire life. The issue here is that fentanyl is vastly higher potency than any other opioid-like substance, which among other things = higher value per volume (as in extremely profitable to smuggle even in very small packages) and far more fatalities on minuscule doses.
I sometimes wonder if fentanyl isn’t some sort of wonder drug in these dystopian times when it still wouldn’t be prudent for city leaders to send nooses through the mail with instructions on locating a good rafter. when it takes only a minuscule amount of a substance that they themselves pay to play, to rid a metropolis of those that probably cost the most to keep alive in city revenue going out?
Am reminded of the govt provided drug (Quietus?) in the brilliant film “Children of Men”.
I also feel shame that i had a major part in getting Fentanyl reimbursed for use by the UK NHS in the 1990s. My only “defence” is that my research was disproportionately influenced by a bunch of British oncologists who’d moved to Ontario…….
brilliant film “Children of Men” – second that – with the falling fertility and birth rate i sometimes remember that flick – Clive Owen excellent
But the book is better — P.D. James is the author. I highly recommend it, as they say.
What some consider brilliant, others may find to be pretentious, and trying way too hard. I love dystopian fiction in general, but the good stuff here is ruined by sheer ammount of references (aka memes) that have been crammed in (in order to try to look smart or whatever). Some of them are more-or-less noticable by a viewer (to positive or negative effect), while many are easily missed (though they still could make things seem off).
The rest is spoiler for this movie (and The Godfather), so those that haven’t watched should not read. One of the suspension-of-belief breakers were the oranges (in the concentration camp of all places). They shoved in the oranges in order to imitate The Godfather, but forgot that Sicily is where oranges are naturally occuring. In dystopian societies, exotic fruit are, well, exotic and reserved for the rich. The regular people eat ze bugz. The long shots are also an opportunity missed (I also love long shots, and would recommend two single-shot movies, the German, and the Russian one). The long shot in the car was nice (sans the oranges), but the birth one was so bad that I had to fast forward trough it.
Since this amateur movie critique is getting too long I’ll stop here, thought there’s probably a couple beers worth of things that I could say, if was in a pub. :)
I’ve considered fentanyl for my grand exit plan if need be, but I’m going with a firm grip on the lightning rod.
go down swinging – i’ve watched folks turn blue – cleaned up after a 12ga toothbrush – make it worthwhile –
Carfentanil is even stroger, so it would be super-wonder drug.
I find it oddly amusing that I recently saw an official warning on YouTube about a deleted comment that clearly implied that it had been deleted because of giving advice about how to top oneself!
I am NOT making comments either way about topping oneself……just remarking on the weirdness of YT, given that every other ad is for an activity that is known to massively lower life expectancy.
Youtube also have videos against “sucide forum that has instructions to end onself”. Those videos (and similar news articles) send the biggest traffic there, because without them people would not even know such a place existed. :-)
P.S. Those advertised things that lower life expectancy are profitable. People ending their life by themselves are not. That’s (naked) capitalism.
But they’re paying to be shown. That’s different.
Americans have fallen prey to fentanyl as they did with bathtub gin in the ’30s. Is fentanyl stronger than homemade gin? Most certainly, but your average American nowadays is falling from a greater height and hitting the gutter with much greater impact.
Leading up to the crash in ’29, most Americans still had a good view of the gutter. Many of the folks who’ve crashed in this century didn’t know what the gutter looked like until they got there.
Stronger drugs for greater pain? I could say that we used to be tougher but that’s not a factor. As in the ’30s, once you’re knocked down in a stagnant economy, you’re out for the count so howzabout some more fentanyl to ease your pain?
Suicide by handgun is the commonest use of weaponry in these not so united states, and what a mess they leave behind for somebody to clean up, whereas a fentanyl overdose is bloody easy to take care of in a jiffy.
My father is a retired law enforcement officer working in various capacities in Southern Arizona and will confirm this. He has worked, lived, hunted, fished and camped in Southern Arizona for 30 years. He did the same in San Diego.
His take is that the immigrants are far more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of crime.
Is that crime rate well documented? I wonder about the many sanctuary cities. Is immigration status documented in these locales when crimes are committed? If not, wouldn’t that throw off the count?
I can’t believe how propagandized you are. From NPR:
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/08/1237103158/immigrants-are-less-likely-to-commit-crimes-than-us-born-americans-studies-find
And Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-focuses-migrants-crime-here-is-what-research-shows-2024-04-11/
The Reuters piece does mention a couple of studies that claim to have found higher crime rates among immigrants, but they have been described as having engaged in data crimes like double counting and misclassification.
Great Info Yves, thank you!
“I can’t believe how propagandized you are. From NPR:”
Is this satire?
Ad hominem. NPR summarizes a series of studies. You need to address the content of their argument and information. You can find plenty of similar coverage had you bothered using a search engine rather than trying to enforce your priors.
Film evidence: Reefer Madness 1936, The Man with the Golden Arm 1955, Panic in Needle Park 1971
An aside, riffing off your phrase ‘among native Americans.’
short read from NBCnews last year:
Mexican drug cartels are targeting America’s ‘last best place’
Cartel associates have flooded Montana with fentanyl and meth – and also set up operations on Indian reservations, where law enforcement is scarce.:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/mexican-drug-cartels-are-targeting-americas-last-great-place-rcna130822
long read from US Dept of Justice:
https://www.justice.gov/archive/tribal/docs/fv_tjs/session_1/session1_presentations/Meth_Overview.pdf
Second para:
Some of the reasons drug cartels have targeted Native communities are the complex nature of
criminal jurisdiction on Indian reservations, and because Tribal governmental police forces have
been historically under funded and understaffed. However, given this new challenge, Tribal leaders
have been at the forefront of new and creative solutions and approaches that many other
communities may find helpful in their struggles.
Mayorkas and his crew, or Becerra and his, did not protect Americans, and certainly not immigrant children. They let in millions without proper controls, follow-up or transparency.They aren’t the only ones, as the US has form both domestically and across borders. It is not too late to address that rather than doing the wave again.
Reading about and seeing the horrors inflicted on those coming to the border, and on this side, is chilling.
Letting in foreigners known to have been adjudicated criminals in their country of origin is an abdication of a fundamental responsibility of any government. To then lose track of them is beyond careless, and places an unnecessary burden on everyone living here. Business as usual, for reasons, is irresponsible and too often fatal.
As for fentanyl and other drugs, constructive engagement with Mexico and Canada, and China, on solutions to interdict the flow anywhere along the route from origin to importing is highly desirable. There are, and have been, drug problems in the US due to many reasons. Failure to take concrete steps to address what appears to be relatively low-hanging fruit, like enlisting some elements of cooperation and mutual interests, is also irresponsible. Why not try?
On the domestic front, the Sacklers of Purdue Pharmaceuticals and plaque fame got some measure of justice after much delay, manuvering and deaths.
higher value per volume
Well, there is always carfentanyl.
re: fentanyl/immigration
a “progressive” view by Rodney Coates
Why Trump’s Tariffs Can’t Solve America’s Fentanyl Crisis
Treatment works and bans don’t.
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-trumps-tariffs-cant-solve-americas-fentanyl-crisis/
A different position but as reporter at large,Todd Bensam, former Homeland Security (!)
(for me as German its astounding that such a former state official of national security apparatus is publishing on a site that calls itself “Center for Immigration Studies”, that´s like “Newspeak”)
3-part series from Mexico
Mexico’s Duplicitous ‘Ant Operation’ Moved Tens of Thousands to the U.S. Border Sight Unseen — and Will Again Through 2022
https://cis.org/Bensman/Mexicos-Duplicitous-Ant-Operation-Moved-Tens-Thousands-US-Border-Sight-Unseen-and-Will
And this sort of hit piece by Brennan in the New York Post:
“Kristi Noem stops taxpayer money from funding illegal migrant flood”
Febr. 1st 2025
https://nypost.com/2025/02/01/opinion/how-us-taxpayers-funded-the-largest-illegal-migration-in-history/
edit: Bensam not Brennan
Has anybody been following the Portugal experiment? Several years ago they decriminalized ALL drugs and set up massive treatment programs. The last I heard (pre-Covid) was that it was working well, with few problems.
Here’s a more positive link, when I am not in burn it all down mode. :-)
Some of you, especially PK, may remember my occasionally mentioning various family and friends apropos of different environmental issues in Ireland. Here’s an article in the Guardian with quotes from some of those people, about ancient woodland and controversional “reforestation” targets.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/04/ancient-rainforest-island-of-ireland-ecologists-northern-ireland-forestry
Apparently hours of interviews turned into a few lines of quotes but that’s journalism!
Why in the world all EU countries should be aiming to meet a European hypothetical average of tree cover when most of those trees are contributed by Sweden and Finand is the usual EU nonsense, sadly….
Also, something not in the article but it should have been are the conifer plantations on the Lough Navar plateau, which rises from the Correl Glen that is mentioned and ends in the sheer Cliffs of Magho overlooking Lower Lough Erne. We go blueberrying on the cliff top in summer, hundreds of feet up with a glorious view across the lough, but the drive up the back of plateau from the Correl Glen is through stunted conifers planted wholly inappropriately in bog. The conditions were so inappropriate that, after they were planted, the Northern Ireland forestry board had to bomb them with fertiliser from the air to get any of them to grow. :-)
Indeed, that’s quite a good article.
The march of conifer plantations all over Ireland is quite depressing, and entirely the result of misguided policy. It seemed reasonable back in the 1960’s to promote tree planting to create an industry on marginal farmland, but its out of control now and the damage is insidious – its not just visual, it is a major factor in degrading water quality and destroying soils. And its not even a particularly good crop. Ironically, imported conifers grow too fast in Ireland (thanks to mild winters), resulting in low grade timber. And its actively promoted by government grants for no apparent reason other than sheer bureaucratic momentum. Add to this further policies which encourage over stocking of sheep and you end up with a patchwork upland of bare overgrazed heath and monoplantations of fir, spruce and pine.
Back a few decades ago, I remember tramping up one of those gloomy forests in Tipperary, trying to find a clearing where some crusty types had organised an ‘unofficial’ music festival (this being the ’90’s). I found myself walking with a tattooed and multiply pierced German hippy girl who was looking around with horror. It looks… she said… like Germany. She didn’t mean it in complementary terms (at least, I think so). I assume she thought all Ireland looked like the wilder parts of the west coast.
The irony is that many people now regard it as normal or attractive. There is a conifer plantation up near Djouce in Wicklow which has by a random twist of Instagrams algo become very famous. Its just a plantation with a timber boardwalk running through it – entirely ecologically sterile, but in some lighting conditions it takes a good photo, and these have gone viral. Almost every time I hike up there someone wearing sneakers and carrying a phone asks me for direction to the ‘famous Ballinastoe forest walk’. I don’t know if they are disappointed or not when they find it.
The native forest of Ireland is, or was, oak/holly/hazel and assorted other deciduous trees. The country was almost entirely deforested in the late 18th century, with just a few fragments surviving in remote valleys where even sheep couldn’t penetrate, or small areas of private demesnes. The remaining fragments, such as in Glendalough, are being destroyed by feral goats and out of control populations of Asian deer (brought in to replace the native red deer which were largely hunted out of existence by the 19th century). The government body that is supposed to protect and enhance these areas seems to be permanently bogged down in lawsuits and indeterminate studies that go on for years without resulting in any action.
One bizarre outcome of EU policy is that these plantations are sometimes implicitly protected by EU habitats law, despite their ecological damage. A pattern of new and establishing conifer plantation blocks provides some shelter to the hen harrier at various stages of its roosting/foraging. The harrier is protected under the EU Wild Birds Directive. The result in a situation where ecological schemes to remove the conifers end up getting blocked because they would harm this one species.
Guillain-Barre syndrome: India faces outbreak of creeping paralysis BBC
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My 69 year old buddy from Tucson contracted G-B-S when he was 9 and spent a year and a half in an iron lung. imagine that?
He’s kinda recovered-but can only walk about 1/2 a mile before he gets really tired. We did a month long road trip in his rig with handicapped plates, they’re damned handy for snagging car camping spots.
“Gamers help solve quantum physics problem where A.I. failed”
Not surprised by this at all. I have seen videos where gamers have found secret spots or ways to open entrances that appear to be blank surfaces. They seem to have the determination to try every surface and every object in a game in order to find any secrets hidden by the game designers. No surprises that they do well as amateur scientists.
Secrets and unplanned access. Weird unintended uses of the rules. Half the fun in a single-player sandbox game.
This story is from 2016 and is unfortunately discredited: it’s based on a Nature article which has since been retracted. (For summary and links to Danish sources, see .)
‘Glassnost’ = the policy or practice of a more open invasive government and wider dissemination of Federal information and payoffs, initiated by leader Musk
We know what it did with the good old USSR…
If you want a good playbook, try the CPC receipe, seems to be still going strong…
He’s a good boy, loves his money
Loves Greenland and America too
He’s go blood bag sycophant servants
Hedgefunds and a soapbox too.
We got pizza, soon it’s going to cost more
But it’s delivered, if McDonalds won’t do
Thank god for bitcoin, cause the dollar went under
So did congress, the executive too
Now I’m Snow
Snow Crashin’
Yeah I’m Snow
Snow Crashin’
(the irreplaceable) Tom Petty
Free Fallin’
Good effort there…
Not a whiff of snow @ my cabin in the sky @ 7,000 feet, and the incoming storm is of the warm variety with the snow line @ 8k to 9k. Little chance of snow crashin’.
This is what I see coming down the pike with Teetotalitarian leader…
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-press-was-not-impressed
Didn´t Mr. Patton engage into designing uniforms? But the “fucking” generals rejected his haute couture…
They liked Eisenhower’s better.
That´s being ironic or serious re: uniforms? Did Eisenhower indulge in that kind of thing?
re: climate change
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
So much for Paris
by Brett Christophers
Review of
Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown
by Andreas Malm and Wim Carton
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n02/brett-christophers/so-much-for-paris
long read
beginning:
“(…)
Around fifteen years ago, a new term entered the climate change lexicon: stranded assets. The concept was straightforward enough. If global warming is to be kept from getting out of hand, there is a limit to the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted into the atmosphere. Yet the fossil fuel reserves currently held by the world’s energy and mining companies would, if extracted and burned, emit far more than this amount. The problem is carbon dioxide: CO2 accounts for roughly three-quarters of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions, and the combustion of fossil fuels in turn accounts for roughly three-quarters of CO2 emissions. Either we exploit our fossil fuel reserves and the planet burns, or we don’t and some of the reserves are left in economic limbo. These unexploited reserves are known as stranded assets.
In 2011, the think tank Carbon Tracker estimated that in order to keep the probability of exceeding 2°C warming to 20 per cent or less, the total amount of CO2 emitted before 2050 would have to be limited to 565 gigatonnes. Yet known global fossil fuel reserves at the time contained the equivalent of an estimated 2795 gigatonnes of CO2. In other words, only a fifth of the existing reserves of coal, gas and oil – not to mention the vast new reserves that continue to be discovered – could ever be ‘safely’ combusted. Four-fifths would have to be left alone, and that’s without taking account of the quarter of emissions from sources other than fossil fuel combustion.
The notion of stranded assets was soon taken up by climate campaigners, who argued that fossil fuel assets needed to be actively stranded. ‘Keep it in the ground!’ The owners of these assets were unlikely to strand them voluntarily but other solutions were suggested. Governments could prohibit extraction and combustion beyond certain levels, impair profits through carbon taxes or dampen demand by reducing consumer fuel subsidies and supporting competing sources of energy, renewables in particular. Investors could divest; after all, they risked losing out if and when stranding took place. Some campaigners have argued that investors are mispricing the risk of stranding by continuing to invest, and that accurate pricing of that risk would help bring about stranding by limiting the funds available to fossil fuel companies to exploit their reserves.
In 2010, fewer than a hundred published articles contained the term ‘stranded asset’; in 2015, there were more than a thousand, and by 2020 the number had more than doubled again. But since then, something has changed. People have stopped talking about stranded assets. What happened? At the start of this decade, the three major European oil and gas companies – BP, Shell and Total – seemed committed to moving to clean energy. All made statements promising to reduce fossil fuel extraction and exploration. BP pledged that it would shrink its oil and gas production by 40 per cent within ten years and would stop exploring for oil and gas in countries where it didn’t already operate. In February 2023, however, it performed a volte-face. The new plan was actually to expand oil and gas production for several years to come, and the 40 per cent target was abandoned. Instead, it would aim for around 25 per cent, though the small print mentioned that ‘underlying’ production would be maintained at a ‘broadly flat’ level to the end of the decade. In other words, any substantive reduction would come through asset sales to other operators, meaning zero reduction in output or emissions at the global level. Total and Shell followed suit. In June, Shell dropped its previously announced plan to cut production each year for the rest of the decade and said it would invest $40 billion in new oil and gas production between 2023 and 2035. Like BP, it anticipated that underlying output would remain stable.
This pivot back to hydrocarbons was widely interpreted as a reaction to profits and share prices. Profits from oil and gas production had surged in 2022 as the war in Ukraine drove up commodity prices: the companies were evidently hungry for more of the same. As for share prices, the European trio had underperformed their American peers – ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips – since announcing plans to cut oil and gas output. The wish to please shareholders was part of the explanation, but other factors were at work too. For one thing, it was clear by early 2023 that the Covid pandemic had not marked the turning point in energy consumption patterns that many had predicted. When BP, Shell and Total committed to cutting oil and gas production, demand for their products was crashing; many believed it would never recover to previous heights. Having stopped flying, for example, economists predicted that rich-world consumers would be more modest in their air-travel habits once the pandemic was over. But in 2022, demand came roaring back.
(…)”
end:
“(…)
I am not starry-eyed about any of this. More often than not, the law comes down on the side of fossil fuel capital. The multi-year custodial sentences recently given to Just Stop Oil activists for conspiring to cause gridlock on Britain’s roads says much about the illiberalism of the legal system. And we can expect the right-wing supermajority on the US Supreme Court to be emboldened by a second Trump term. But Thompson was right that even a legal system weighted in favour of propertied elites can and sometimes must rule against their interests if they ask too much of it. There is precedent, too, in the successful use of the legal system to curb the influence and power of Big Tobacco, which was eventually undone by its own misinformation campaigns. When all other avenues to the timely stranding of fossil fuel reserves, including government intervention, appear to have been closed off, perhaps the law – ably navigated by determined campaigners – is all that remains.
(…”
Good interview with Brett Christophers: Woke Capitalism Just Collapsed. Here’s Why.
thanks!
Christophers does look like someone I´d trust. (more like a novelist). I have never seeen him before. But his texts and now his visual appearance fit.
As if he had seen more rough times than your usual former “consultant” would have in today´s media world. More of 60s kinda guy, like Mike Davis. A man not a model or impersonator with a PR agency in his back.
p.s. just a detail: odd editing though and the moderator could scale it down a notch.
German commentary against natural gas, from JUNGE WELT, by Wolfgang Pomrehn, who argues there is no serious energy crisis
“Comment: Exit natural gas now!
The information about a gas shortage that was used to justify the rapid acquisition of floating liquefied natural gas terminals from 2022 onwards was obviously exaggerated. Against this background, the circumvention of environmental law, the discharge of toxic chemicals into the North Sea or the additional threat to the Baltic herring stock around Rügen, which is already on the verge of collapse, appear in a new light. But actually, none of this is new: exploiting perceived or actual crises to take unruly social movements by surprise is part of the tried and tested instruments of power that elites in this country also like to use. Occasionally, crises are brought about for this purpose by refusing to work and waiting things out, as can often be seen in climate policy, among other things.
Beyond this rather general consideration, the handling of gas supplies is generally in question. A broad camp of the bourgeois parties condemns gas imports from Russia and also finds support in this from many for whom climate protection is a particular concern. However, the alternative so far has been liquefied natural gas from the USA. But this is even more harmful to the climate than conventional natural gas because many greenhouse gases are released during fracking and transport. In other respects, both conventional and fracking extraction is also extremely harmful for the environment and residents.
Therefore, a return to Russian imports cannot be the answer, because natural gas is a fossil fuel that releases greenhouse gases when burned or used in other industrial applications, which accumulate in the atmosphere in the long term. In order to make even a halfway fair contribution to preventing the worst climate change, Germany would have to stop all greenhouse gas emissions in just a few years. Not only coal-fired power plants, but also gas-fired power plants would have to be taken off the grid as quickly as possible. In addition, gas heating systems must be replaced by finally – as would have been possible 40 years ago but was mostly neglected in the West – significantly expanding the district heating supply and converting its power plants to geothermal energy and other renewable energy sources. Finally, industry must significantly reduce its natural gas consumption, for example by drastically reducing the production of plastic products and producing the hydrogen still required by electrolysis instead of from natural gas as before.”
* * *
the article following this is about the new German LNG terminals which are hardly in need:
”
There is no ship off Rügen
The LNG terminal on the Baltic Sea island is largely idle. Not even ten tankers have called at Mukran in 2024
By Wolfgang Pomrehn
Even 28 months after the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, which interrupted the direct import of Russian natural gas, there is still no energy emergency in Germany – despite higher demand in winter and although Russian natural gas has no longer flowed to Western Europe via Ukraine since the beginning of the year. The latter means that the Czech Republic and Slovakia must now also be supplied via production in Western and Northern Europe and via liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals on the coasts. Nevertheless, the gas storage facilities in the underground caverns in this country are sufficiently full. According to the Federal Network Agency, the storage level on January 29 was 57 percent, a good ten percentage points above the minimum of the past seven years. Meanwhile, the German Weather Service is predicting mild temperatures for the rest of the winter and for spring, so that consumption for heating purposes can be expected to be comparatively lower.
Accordingly, the new German LNG terminals on the North and Baltic Seas are hardly being used to full capacity. In particular, the facilities of the terminal operator Deutsche Regas in Mukran on the Baltic island of Rügen are largely idle. No liquefied natural gas has been landed there since December 14, reports the German Environmental Aid (DUH). Last year, capacity utilization was only eight percent. Contrary to claims, the terminal is not necessary for security of supply.
This reasoning and a supposed energy emergency were used at the time to justify the rapid construction of the plant, which was carried out in violation of all the usual environmental regulations. The local population was largely deprived of its usual right to have a say. Various lawsuits filed by environmental associations, the neighboring Baltic Sea resort of Binz, private residents and the German Youth Hostel Association, which operates a hostel just over four kilometers away in Prora, have so far failed before the Federal Administrative Court. In September 2023, the court argued that there was a gas supply crisis and that the planning approval decision for Mukran was therefore legal.
According to the environmental organization, this is no longer the case, although the storage facilities remained well filled in the previous winter. Not even ten ships would have called at Mukran in 2024, reports the DUH after evaluating the “Gas Infrastructure Europe” platform, on which all LNG deliveries must be reported. For the terminal’s neighbors in Binz and Sassnitz, the low utilization is certainly also a blessing, as it means less noise and pollutant emissions. The terminal ship still generates the electricity it needs with the ship’s engines, rather than via a shore connection, as is actually provided for in the operating license.
The terminal on Rügen consists of two units, one for storage and one for regasification of landed LNG. The capacity is 13.5 billion cubic meters. A pipeline on the bottom of the Greifswalder Bodden brings the gas to Lubmin on the mainland, where the now largely destroyed Nord Stream pipelines also end. As reported at the time, the pipes leading from the island to Lubmin were only laid in early 2024 through an important spawning area for the endangered Baltic herring, approved by the non-specialist mining authority in Stralsund, also without an environmental impact assessment.
Deutsche Regas was only founded in 2022 by newcomers to the industry. According to research by lawyer Reiner Geulen, who represents the municipality of Binz, managing director Ingo Wagner previously ran a company in the Cayman Islands, which are considered a so-called tax haven. In 2023, the Munich Regional Court banned the claim that the company was being used for money laundering. However, the municipality’s finding that the background to the financing was not transparent was permitted. Geulen therefore does not consider the company to be trustworthy enough to operate a plant at risk of accidents.
Meanwhile, the DUH is raising the question of how to deal with the lack of shore power supply for the facilities in Mukran. In their view, there has been a significant change to the permit, which requires public participation. Constantin Zerger, head of the Energy and Climate Protection Department at the DUH, said: “Instead of fulfilling its promise to set up a shore power supply, Deutsche Regas wants to have the permit changed. Changing the rules retrospectively is not exactly fair play for the residents, who have to suffer from higher pollutant emissions. The operating company was clearly never concerned with security of supply in the project, but only with its maximum profit. The state government must now finally draw a line under this chapter. This infrastructure is superfluous and is damaging to the local people and the environment.”
Trump donated his first WH paycheck of $78k to the National Park Service back in 2017, and now it looks as if he wants to privatize our NP’s.
Asked a friend high up in the hierarchy of Sequoia NP to describe events that have transpired in the past fortnight…
‘hostile takeover’ and ‘engineered chaos’
And this is just 1 of 63 National Parks, imagine the turmoil in the others, especially with no seasonal hiring, none of them will open, Trump will say the old ways of doing things have failed, and Americans loving NP’s, will rally to his cause, and that area to the right of Moro Rock in the parking lot could easily be made into a McDonald’s with drive thru, if we have the will.
https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/foia/upload/20-2257-Sus-Trump-Salary-Donation-REDACTED.pdf
Of course park concessions have been private for decades with the Curry Company back in the day somewhat controversially dominating Yosemite. A McD seems unlikely since he company insists on owning the land on which franchisees build their restaurants.
One could also point out that the National Parks–established in the name of conservation as much or more than tourism–are being loved to death by the public in many instances.
So far it seems like the national lands that are really under threat are the ones that have oil under them. Hope your park isn’t one of those. But this war over the parks isn’t new at all and Ansel Adams versus Reagan comes to mind. Trump at least is an Easterner, unlike Reagan, and may not be obsessed with the cries of Western businessmen and the cow/oil culture.
Well. maybe just a Starbucks there instead.
The concessionaires have a fairly tight leash on them as to what they can charge for things to the most possible cloistered audience imaginable, makes the movies, sporting events and concerts seem like small potatoes, in terms of what they could be charging.
I can see it now, a $9 XXL soda and all-you-can-eat endless tub of popcorn with golden flavoring is $13, that’ll be $24.14 and would you like to round up to $25 to donate to the hypoglycemic kids fund?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwpuoOvU2KU/
Helmer talking about some of things in the Iran-Russia deal that go my spidey senses tingling as I read it.
Tl;DR?
Apologies for being time starved to wade through an hour of that.
IMO, Trump is trapped in both Iran and Ukraine. His best bet would be to make sure that Ukraine collapses quickly so that it doesn’t become his tar baby. Cutting off all economic aid is a start, but he needs to stop with the military aid. I am afraid he is too weak to do so.
Guess what? Nima’s title for the video is all off point (using Trump as a hype word) as to what Helmer was really talking about.
He was talking about Russia and Israel relations, the present and history and Russia and Iran relations – present and history.
I barely remember Trump being mentioned the entire time. Well worth the listen for his take on the Russia/Iran deal.
You can speed it up to 1.5 and still highly understandable.
I left the title off for the video because it was so NOT the main focus.
During Trump’s first term he provided concrete material benefits to the American Public, he “Provided for the General Welfare” in addition to providing welfare to the Generals.
From speaking to a number of Trump Voters they expect him to do so again, it is an implicit part of the deal.
If he does not do so there will be a sense of betrayal and his followers are not all like liberals, they won’t say “Please sir, may I have another?” .
Some will act, and that could get very messy, very fast.
And it ain’t the Gunz, it’s some one with a laptop who knows how to use it.
Doesn’t the blame really lie upon the lowly index finger, and if you want to go back further that same digit whose firm grip on a pacifier once kept them abreast of the action.
The other fingers are pretty much innocent except for the thumb, and that’s really only on old revolvers.