Rat sommeliers demonstrate advanced olfactory learning in wine sniffing test Phys.org
Rich People Are Firing a Cash Cannon at the US Economy—But at What Cost? Bloomberg
Why Trying to Be Happy Ironically Makes You Unhappy ZME Science
Climate/Environment
NRG, GE Vernova, Kiewit Have Plan to Build Four New Gas-Fired Power Plants Power. 5,000 MW, which can power 2-4 million homes. For data center demand.
US to get 30 nuclear microreactors to generate clean energy for data centers Interesting Engineering
Is it Lunacy to Put a Data Center on the Moon? IEEE Spectrum
Nope. You probably can’t cash in by turning your office or farm into a datacenter The Register
Water
Millions of Americans lack affordable water access. Here’s how local utilities can help. Brookings. So. Much. Innovation.
Mysterious Congo outbreak likely linked to contaminated water, researchers say Science
Pandemics
Kennedy Jr backtracks and says US measles outbreak is now a ‘top priority’ for health department The Guardian
Concerning New Study Reveals That We Are No Longer Living Longer SciTech Daily
Africa
Plundering Africa – Income deflation and unequal ecological exchange under structural adjustment programmes Review of African Political Economy
India
Adani Group’s US investment plans likely back on track thanks to Trump Business Standard
Japan
Thousands flee after Japan’s biggest wildfire in decades Channel News Asia
The Japanese Mayor Who Built a Floodgate No One Wanted — and Saved His Town ZME Science
China?
Japanese navy ship makes 1st solo transit through Taiwan Strait Taiwan News
Is Trump attempting a “reverse Nixon” to peel Russia away from China? Bne Intellinews
China and Russia are ‘true friends tempered by fire’, Xi Jinping tells Kremlin aide South China Morning Post
Vietnam PM vows quick licensing for Musk’s Starlink Channel News Asia
Syraqistan
Israel says it is stopping the entry of all aid and supplies into the Gaza Strip AP
Netanyahu Again Promises Victory in Gaza, and Hostages’ Fate Rests With Trump Haaretz
US moves to expedite delivery of $4 billion in military aid to Israel Times of Israel
Israel proposes Gaza plan that gives it tighter military control than before war The Guardian
***
Senior al-Qaeda-affiliate leader killed in US airstrike in Syria Anadolu Agency. Remember when Trump said in December that the US should stay out of fighting in Syria?
Uyghur Jihadists Gain Senior Posts in Syria’s New Islamist Security Forces: Terror Attacks Into Central Asia Expected Military Watch
PKK has declared a ceasefire w/ 🇹🇷after a decade of conflict in response to Ocalan’s call. Key question: Will Turkey end attacks against the SDF in Syria? | PKK: Önder Apo’nun çağrısına uyacağız, ateşkes ilan ediyoruz https://t.co/ap1H0KGOEc
— Amberin Zaman (@amberinzaman) March 1, 2025
Israel strengthens ties with Russia in bid to curb Turkish influence in Syria Ynet
***
Islamic Resistance Movements and Israel Craig Murray
Orthodox pro-Israel group to honor Steve Bannon, unfazed by straight-arm gesture Times of Israel
European Disunion
How Germany’s new leader can make history Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Bonkers. More:
Kallas didn’t really say that China must be defeated. Here is what she said.
Moderator’s reaction is telling though. https://t.co/pLqMgagdJK pic.twitter.com/ObC2u8RyJ5
— Leonid Ragozin (@leonidragozin) March 1, 2025
And more:
They really couldn’t even slightly change the wording to make it seem more sincere? pic.twitter.com/4LN7cPoxBQ
— Sopo Japaridze (@sopjap) March 1, 2025
***
Norwegian fuel supplier refuses U.S. warships over Ukraine Uk Defence Journal
U.S. Marine Corps joins large exercise in northern Norway amid Trump turmoil The Barents Observer
***
🇷🇴 Georgescu stood today in front of a massive army of supporters who came to demand their country back
We demand the resumption of the second round of elections, an end to arrests and political persecution, and no more EU and NATO interference!
Georgescu is our president! pic.twitter.com/KgpXzgNLEB
— Daily Romania (@daily_romania) March 1, 2025
New Not-So-Cold War
Trump’s support still ‘crucial,’ Zelensky says Al Mayadeen
So horrifying to watch senior US politicians bring the Ukrainian vassal state to heel — something which is totally unprecedented in politics and has never happened before https://t.co/GEgi3lZ3FO
— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) February 28, 2025
UK, Ukraine sign loan agreement after ‘meaningful and warm’ visit The Hill
Ukraine’s Four Coming Collapses, Parts 1-2 Gordon Hahn, Russian & Eurasian Politics
***
As Trump warms to Putin, U.S. halts offensive cyber operations against Moscow WaPo
***
Russia claims Ukraine attempted to attack TurkStream pipeline infrastructure during Zelenskyy’s US visit Anadolu Agency
India’s Crude Oil Imports From Russia at Two-Year Low OilPrice
South of the Border
Pentagon to send nearly 3,000 additional active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border NBC News
Patrick Lawrence: Speak, Claudia! Scheerpost
CHAINSAW DIPLOMACY: JAVIER MILEI’S ARGENTINA DESTRUCTION IS NIGHTMARISH MODEL FOR MUSK, DOGE Mintpress News
Spook Country
USAID and the CIA Larry Johnson, SONAR21
Democrats en Déshabillé
Nursing home families urge NYC voters to reject Andrew Cuomo as mayor over COVID deaths New York Post
Trump 2.0
Trump eases rules on military raids and airstrikes, expanding range of who can be targeted CBS News
$60 Billion in Waste and Fraud Easily Found Where Trump Refuses to Cut: The Pentagon Common Dreams
***
Where Medicaid cuts would hit hardest through 2035: A state by state breakdown Becker’s
***
Trump’s effort to fire government watchdog ‘unlawful’, judge rules NBC News
DOGE
How Elon Musk Executed His Takeover of the Federal Bureaucracy New York Times
Fresh Musk Emails to Workers Lead to Renewed Chaos at Federal Agencies WaPo
What did Musk get done last week? Musk Watch
it’s going great! pic.twitter.com/ltvNc08mGt
— austerity is theft (@wideofthepost) February 28, 2025
Immigration
DHS asks IRS for addresses of people believed to be in U.S. illegally WaPo
ICE awards $1B contract to private prison firm for major immigrant detention center News from the States
AI
AI-powered bookmark wants to revolutionize the way you read — $129 Mark 1 offers AI-generated summaries Tom’s Hardware
Alibaba Releases Advanced Open Video Model, Immediately Becomes AI Porn Machine 404 Media
Supply Chain
US Port Fees on China Vessels Would Affect All Shipping Firms, CMA CGM Says Reuters
Police State Watch
Sports Desk
Screening Room
And the Oscar goes to … the Pentagon! Responsible Statecraft
The Bezzle
Trump — America’s “first crypto president” — to host summit on the currency Axios
FROM BULLION TO BITCOIN: CRYPTO RESERVE IS LATEST FISCAL FOLLY IN TEXAS Texas Observer
Class Warfare
‘Look, there’s nowhere else to go’: Inside California’s crackdown on homeless camps Cal Matters
Nearly half of Americans who are homeless are employed.
That’s insane. The world’s richest country has a “working homeless” crisis.https://t.co/1N7L8F2Yip pic.twitter.com/g7zKE0QFk6
— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) March 2, 2025
Dynasty behind US egg giant looks to cash in as profits soar amid bird flu Financial Times
The Long-Livers Switchyard
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“Alibaba Releases Advanced Open Video Model, Immediately Becomes AI Porn Machine”
I wonder what the Chinese is for Rule 34–
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_34
One thing that internet taught me is that there are at least two in the world for any kind of perversion. There is/was a clip from Jerry Springer where a couple drank some luminescent fluid and vomited on each other for sexual pleasure.
The housing theory of everything
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/
Most US problems come from the high cost of housing compared to 50 years ago.
Fifty years ago in the US, you did not have private equity firms buying up houses wholesale so that they can turn them into rentals. If you want a rentier society, obviously you do not want ordinary people being able to buy their own homes. Then you have to factor in that even though prices have gone up for food, education, healthcare, etc. average wages have flatlined since the early 1970s which makes it harder for ordinary people to afford to buy a house.
In the wake of the LA Infernos, I asked the internet what a home sold for in 1975 in tony Pacific Palisades, and the first one popped up sold for $75k and hadn’t sold since and was valued @ $3.2 million before it turned into an empty lot maybe worth only a couple million.
What transpired to make a very average 2,300 sq foot home worth over 40x its value 50 years ago?
There had been regional bubbles of not just houses, but everything you can imagine in a collector vein. When Enzo Ferrari died there was a crazy bubble in Ferraris in the late 80’s.
In my biz, we’d convinced ourselves with the advent of 3rd party impartial grading of coins (condition of coins is of utmost value typically-not age) that Wall*Street would surely get involved in the early 90’s-but it was as if we were the Coin Go Cult, lower Manhattan wanted nothing to do with us, and Crash! down went the market in flames-just another silly bubble.
Collectibles & cars and whatnot are mostly window dressing for a tiny amount of the population, but when we got not only a USA wide housing bubble, and the rest of the world played along too-yikes!
There was an international report that came out saying that Aussie house prices are at least three times what they had any right to be – and that report came out over a decade ago. It warps our economy but no government will do anything about it as it has become a third rail in politics here.
For a lot of communities it was all about collecting property taxes, even here in the land of Proposition 13, all those homes sold in the recent past pay only 1% (really more like 1.3% here with added on stuff) but when damn near every home in LA is worth a million-it adds up quick, and other states are Johnny on the spot at assessing newer higher values of homes so they can jack up property taxes-which seems to be the only reason many a city hasn’t gone out of biz.
Shakespeare
What do you mean by a “right to be”? If Australia is a market economy it would seem to be that either there’s a monopoly or the free market determines, more or less, prices of houses.
“Free market” in the Adam Smith sense is a market free from the distortions of a rentier class. That is free from a oligarchic mortgage ‘market’, free from a RE industry cartel, free from a captured tax regime that has a heavy thumb on the capital gains side of the scale. Otherwise, you have no grounds to stand on when you’re couching it in an either / or binary.
Right. The reason Smith favored big free markets was because he felt that, if markets get big enough, no political entity would be powerful enough to extract rents via playing politics. Increading returns to scale, amobg other things broke that in 19th century and we are still tryingvto sort through that…
I think it’s a question of how much it costs to build a new residence. Excluding the cost of the land, which varies widely, the construction has skyrocketed. I have built and rebuilt houses. I would never build another wood frame house but even wood frame construction is very expensive from both material costs and labor costs. Permit cost is based on projected value and after completion taxed value is based on appraisal. County governments are happy to use housing inflation to fatten their coffers.
I am currently building a concrete and glass structure. It has been a rather slow process because I am doing all the work but in the last three years my material costs have doubled. In this area it is hard to find competent labor but even mindless grunt labor cost $20 per hour and that is before insurance and uncle sam costs.
What I am saying is there is more to it than bubbles and rent seeking. Those are secondary effects as is rising inequality. Civilizational wealth has accrued in the last century because of a demographic explosion but that petri dish has the seeds of it’s own demise.
There’s more than half a century of sunk cost in that PP home built in 1964, where else does such sunken treasure appear in our lives, everything I purchase goes down in value immediately, cars bucking the trend somewhat since Covid.
You must not own a piece of the S&P 500. Of course the smart money on that boat is now looking at the life rafts.
Yup. In 2010 I replaced all windows and slide doors in the house with double pane ones and it was all about 7000 and lowerd to 5000 due to federal subsidies.
Now, trying to replace two smaller windows in the garage, I was quoted with 2800. While the hole garage door, if replaced with something better insulated, with some more glass for light and visibility and a better power system for opening would be about 6000! Crazy.
I guess adobe houses might come back…
We need a new front door as the frame has rotted. 2 years ago we were quoted $7,000 for a basic replacement including labor. That was from a big box store and we couldn’t get any other big box stores to return our calls/emails. We did finally get a local contractor/handyman to come out and look at it. He said he’d send us a bid then ghosted us.
Here you go:
https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2025-02-20/superadobe-calearth-hesperia-fire-resistant-los-angeles
He uses adobe in bags with barbed wire reinforcement. Simple semicircular barrel vaults tell me he has had no real structural engineering advice. But he has a following and is selling it.
Good luck pulling a building permit and are you in a seismically active region? You will still want windows and doors.
$75K in 1975 to $3.2M in 2025 is a 7.8% CAGR. Mainly it shows that a bit of growth above inflation over a long time can pay huge dividends to the owner and be crushing for any prospective buyers.
Not just private equity. I was living in an ADU for five years. The owners kicked me out because they found they could make nearly triple by turning it into an AirBnB. But I guess that is super private equity? Personal Equity?
Are reverse mortgages a stealthy way to acquire houses from borrowers?
Has there been any exposé of that business?
It seems shady and predatory.
housing is…death from 990 small cuts and 10 bigs ones.
One of which….the death of 19th cent. “mega town/midsized- city” America—Rochester NY, Buffalo, Toledo, St Louis, etc. (with lots of excess land and infastrucure)
They all used to be thriving cities, but as their local industries-services either consolidated or went belly up, people became internal migrants and moved to the Sun Belt
Bring back tariffs (reasonably, slowly). Limit bank asset balance sheets via punative taxes (One JPM Chase = 15+ regional banks). I’d even break up the vertically integrated telcos like Comcast/Xfinity-Universal.
not holding my breath.
A ” Make America New Deal Again” Party could run on stuff like that, if some first founders could invest the near-prohibitive time and energy into it to begin with.
And if Clintobamacrats and their secret agents could be prevented from joining it, infiltrating it, etc.
That piece is a lot of nicely researched and well written YIMBY nonsense that never once questions “market” pricing of housing and the explosion of personal debt required to maintain it.
Every house in LA is pretty much worth a million, and @ 7% on a 30 year fixed, that’s looking at 30 years in the big house-paying it off.
What is that, around $8k-9k a month on an LA crib, you’d have to make around $150k a year to pull it off, how many jobs pay that?
My parents bought their first home in LA in 1960 for $12,000, it Zillows for a little over a million, and the monthly payment was $133.
For it to put in a similar performance by the year 2090, it would then be valued at around $85 million.
Adjusting for inflation alone from the $12,000 initial price of the house would result in a current price of $128,785.54. So, as you asked above, what is it about CA housing that results in housing prices 8 to 9 times more than the rate of inflation?
https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1960?amount=12000
The fact that the California population was 16 Million in 1960 and nearly 40 million in 2024 is at least part of the problem. I don’t think housing stock has kept up.
Google and the engineers. Could they leave Google and punish it? I am not sure because AI seems to have no serious application except for scamming “investors” – see OpenAI so Google wouldn’t lose any money. On the contrary, they would save a lot of money.
The best way to f%#k Google right back I guess would be to double-down on Scrum and add as many small flawed codes as possible just to make it a loss-making eternity project that need total overhaul when eventually launched. Cf. Diverse Nazis
https://www.corporate-rebels.com/blog/cia-field-manual
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/21/24079371/google-ai-gemini-generative-inaccurate-historical
I am the DOGE of hell fires and I bring you
Fired, I’ll take away your ability to earn
Fired, I’ll make you learn
I’ll see you churned
You fought hard and you saved and earned
But all of it’s going to burn
And your mind, your tiny mind
you know you’ve really been so blind
Now’s your time burn your mind
You’re falling far too far behind
Oh no, oh no, oh no, you gonna burn!
Fired, to destroy all you’ve done
Fired, to end all you’ve become
Feel the burn!
You’ve been living like a little Fed apparatchik
in the middle of your little payday picnic
And your mind, your tiny mind
you know you’ve really been so blind
Now’s your time burn your mind
you’re falling far too far behind
Fired, I’ll take away your ability to earn
Fired, I’ll make you learn
Fire, by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TysIkGtf_a8
That is one of your many best.
Thanks, it flowed so close to the original, I had to pinch myself and now there’s a large welt on my left arm.
Hey, take it easy! You pinched so hard, I got a welt too, but on my right arm. Be more careful, please. I have to use my right arm whenever I give someone the finger, and I can’t afford to have it injured; I use it all the time.
Keep doing what you, until they drag you into the van
I think the Musketeers have more to fear…
Great song pick! That was a wild one.
“You’ve been living like a little Fed apparatchik
in the middle of your little payday picnic
And your mind, your tiny mind
you know you’ve really been so blind
Now’s your time burn your mind
you’re falling far too far behind”
– excellent
Oh my! Look at all those avowals from Europols calling Z their dear leader in Sopo Japaridze’s tweet.
On Friday I thought that Z knew his position with the USA and he wouldn’t get the security guarantee. So he put on a great theater for the Europeans, using their fear and loathing TDS and his strong, brave, fearless Che Guevara-stylings, followed by a storm of gracious thankyous. The idea (in my theory) is to split Europe from the USA and get them to commit to the fight without the USA backstop. Idk if he’ll get the troops but it’s like they are kissing up to him as if he were the incoming Supreme Leader of Greater Europe.
At the moment, this looks like double bluffing. Z bluffing that he doesn’t need the US by running to UK and the EU. The UK and the EU bluffing they don’t need the US and can go it alone against RU and prolong the war successfully. The mice that roar. (The bluff being that if they get themselves in a jam they secretly believe they can count on the US to come in and save their bacon — again.) It’s going to be an interesting year. / my 2 cents
I plus everyone round here is wondering “WTF is Starmer on?” Nobody, whether in our equivalent of the PMC or “proper old-school Labour round here” believes for one minute the UK “vision” is tenable.
My Dad, who reads/listens to a lot of similar stuff to me, asked me yesterday “What’re these predictions that Starmer will be gone in a year?” I told him that my recent bad bout of COVID brain fog meant I’m not keeping up with stuff as well as I’d like, and am unqualified to venture a strong opinion, but I do certainly wonder whether Starmer is as secure as his big parliamentary majority might suggest.
Your comment, plus the equally informed comments from others on this site suggest UK is a paper tiger and sooner or later reality must intrude, and the Labour government will have to cut Ukraine loose if it is to have a hope at the next election. It’s already making all the “wrong noises” regarding balancing the books, which will send the UK into full-blown recession and stoke the already growing fast Reform vote round here. Here’s what people round here in the keystone of the red wall are thinking “don’t give a stuff about Ukraine, please just fix stuff round here”. Trump’s recent take down of Z made good TV in the same way our silly saturday night TV does……we don’t care for Z (muttering among some about the Canadian Parliament debacle) but Trump’s reality TV-type roots are the only thing getting attention and that attention is not pro-Macron or Pro-Z. It’s all “let’s just live with Trump and Putin”. People are tired of politics.
You can show your Dad the chart with British force strength – if he doesn´t already know the numbers.
British Army around 18k. With Navy and Air Force it´s around 70k.
Decline in combat-ready personnel over last five years
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/decline-in-combat-ready-personnel-over-last-five-years/
p.s. Considering that around that number was killed in the Kursk pocket…
and that the Brits have no control over their Tridents without US agreeing…
GB putting boots on the ground in Ukraine sounds almost Charge of the Light Brigade all over again.
But Starner of course knows these numbers and all he wants is a nice post or re-election. Does that agree with a military operation in Ukraine? I am not in GB but I have the impression anger level is high among the people. And it would be political suicide.
Thanks, you have interpreted the “tone” correctly and thanks the the facts. The only issue that keeps coming up – and which I know I probably should be able to establish by myself but I am guessing there are more knowledgeable people on here like you who have a bookmark to a key article on this – is “Can a UK Prime Minister order a nuclear strike independently of the US President?”
I know the history quite well. Us Brits gave a lot of key nuclear info (which we got from German/East Europeans fleeing the guy with the funny moustache) to the USA in the expectation that we’d be part of the post-WW2 program. One example of the USA being “agreement incapable”. Ouch to UK. But I don’t know recent levels of independence of the UK when it comes to using a nuclear bomb. Don’t wanna make work for anyone but if they have a link to hand it’d be great.
Yeah anger against Starmer is building. He needs to get back in touch with everyone north of Watford Gap.
Not a chance.
The duty officer has no interest regarding what went before (the blair identity) or results (the blair supremacy (circulating drainwards into spin offs like cameron->sunak)).
He just wants it to be simple and fair.
He has a duty to deliver the blair ultimatum.
And , with his clod footed, middle management, expense fiddling martinet,reeves, will happily salt the earth behind them.
PhD thesis
“The Development of Nuclear Military Strategy and Anglo-American Relations, 1939 – 1958”
by Skinner, G
2019
https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/37022
Abstract:
“There was no special governmental partnership between Britain and America during the Second World War in atomic affairs. A recalibration is required that updates and amends the existing historiography in this respect. The wartime atomic relations of those countries were cooperative at the level of science and resources, but rarely that of the state. As soon as it became apparent that fission weaponry would be the main basis of future military power, America decided to gain exclusive control over the weapon. Britain could not replicate American resources and no assistance was offered to it by its conventional ally. America then created its own, closed, nuclear system and well before the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, the event which is typically seen by historians as the explanation of the fracturing of wartime atomic relations. Immediately after 1945 there was insufficient systemic force to create change in the consistent American policy of atomic monopoly. As fusion bombs introduced a new magnitude of risk, and as the nuclear world expanded and deepened, the systemic pressures grew. It was these pressures which forced America to review its security alignment. Science can hold a mirror to changing strategic relationships during the militarisation of nuclear affairs. From leadership during the inception phase, through to becoming one part of a multi-dimensional defence environment as technical progress accelerated, science reflected wider atomic developments in both Britain and America during the 1950s. It was the benefits resulting from its increasingly linked internal science-military structures, combined with the changing worldwide geopolitical forces of the late 1950’s, which encouraged and constrained America to consider previously unthinkable external nuclear relationships. In 1958, America moved away from separatism in atomic affairs. It chose to create a nuclear state partnership with the nation that best reflected its new security orientation, and which had also reached a significant level of maturity in fusion weaponry. That country was Britain.”
p.s. French WMD-program owed much to the Brits
p.p.s. This is “old” by current pace, from February 2022, LRB´s Tom Stevenson:
Vol. 44 No. 4 · 24 February 2022
A Tiny Sun
Tom Stevenson
reviews of:
The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War
by Fred Kaplan.
Simon and Schuster, 384 pp., £15, April 2021, 978 1 9821 0729 1
The Myth of the Nuclear Revolution: Power Politics in the Atomic Age
by Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press.
Cornell, 180 pp., £23.99, June 2020, 978 1 5017 4929 2
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n04/tom-stevenson/a-tiny-sun
Admitteldy I have not read the item since. It was a first step for me. Back then Stevenson appeared a rare voice of sanity.
By now I have read e.g. Lieber/Press myself and being both very critical and a bit appreciative of them.
But since you write about GB – the paragraph on Trident:
“Since the 1960s, Britain’s nuclear forces have been based on submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The missiles are leased from the US and stored at a naval base in coastal Georgia. In March, the UK committed to increasing its nuclear stockpile by 40 per cent, reversing four decades of reduction. In keeping with local custom, this important strategic decision was slipped into page 76 of the government’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. Britain is replacing its Vanguard submarines with four bigger Dreadnought-class boats, which are due to arrive in the early 2030s. The government has also ordered new warheads, which must closely adhere to American designs so that they remain compatible with the Trident missile and its aeroshell. British politicians like to talk of Britain’s ‘independent nuclear deterrent’ but in practice its nuclear weapons are an appurtenance to US power. There is no chance they would ever be used without approval from Washington. Nor would those of Israel or France, despite the unwillingness of their leaders to look like American lackeys.”
I might give my 2 cents on MAUD later, which I have studied a bit in the past. To understand its significance for “Manhattan” is to understand the level of authoritarianism, imperialism and dishonesty of what then became the US-MIC. .
Many thanks for the comprehensive reply. My feelings regarding the US vis-a-vis the UK in the run up to and end of WW2 was “kicking a man when he’s down”. It should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain that the UK was broke, its Empire would be wound down no matter what, so UK should have got Marshall Plan funds as early as its continental neighbours – which it did not.
I note your comment regarding “would not be used without approval from Washington”. I’m more curious about something bandied around on social forums as to whether the UK could, if it had a “more independent Trump like leader” be PHYSICALLY able to nuke someone without someone at the Pentagon doing a “screen captcha” or somesuch nonsense! ;-)
Can the UK physically nuke someone without Trump’s approval?
That’s a good question. And while we are at it: France and Israel?
@ Terry –
You’ve got a couple of issues conflated here —
[1] You write: Can the UK physically nuke someone without Trump’s approval?
Not with the Trident II D5 missiles, as far as is known. Yes, the thermonuclear warheads are British. The delivery system, though, is the missiles, provided by the Americans, on a lease basis.
It’s also not clear, however, that the UK could nuke someone with Trump’s total approval.
That’s because the last two test launches of those Trident missiles from one of the UK’s Vanguard-class nuclear submarines (it has four: HMS Vanguard, HMS Victorious, HMS Vigilant, and HMS Vengeance) failed pathetically. From last year —
Trident missile test fails for second time in a row
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68355395
If you read that piece, note this sentence near the end: “The missiles the UK uses are drawn from a common pool that the US and UK both use, and the US has conducted multiple tests without these kind of problems.”
Has the US had multiple tests without these problems? I’m sceptical. I lived in the US for decades till a couple of years ago, and I’d say the extent to which US real-world technological competence has now been hollowed-out by neoliberalism and plain old Yank grifting isn’t something outsiders can grasp.
See, though, forex: the US auto industry; Intel (so that ARM, which has only hitherto done chip design, has been able to move from chips for appliances like phones up to data centers, and now has a larger market cap than Intel); and, of course, Boeing, which has planes falling from the sky and sends up rockets to the ISS that aren’t fit to bring astronauts back down.
Note that Boeing went down the tubes when it merged with McDonnell- Douglas, a US defense contractor. Note, too, in this connection, the F-35; the Littoral Combat Ship; the US failure to produce hypersonic weapons when the Russians, Chinese, and possible even the Indians and Iranians have been successful; and many more vastly overpriced pieces of US junk big platform weapons systems than is worth discussing here.
The black heart of US rot and corruption has arguably been its military-industrial complex, in other words.
Now, on some level, the UK establishment knows this and is scared to confront what it means. i.e. in the future, if it wants to maintain a sub-launched nuclear deterrent, it’ll have to spend the UK’s money to build its own missiles.
And we know this because after the Trident’s second failure to launch in 2024, the UK sent a team of British scientists and engineers to work at the Lockheed Martin plant in the US — Titusville, Florida, I think — that’s supposed to produce the missiles.
[2] All the above said, the UK could still theoretically nuke someone by doing it the Old School way.
That is, as at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or as Curtis LeMay’s SAC or the South African nuclear program would have done it, by dropping or firing them from an aircraft. I don’t know what precisely would be involved. But it’s possible. Maybe they could get one of those old Avro Vulcan bombers out of mothballs; that was a fine-looking piece of kit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Vulcan#/media/File:Vulcan_Bomber_MOD_45133331.jpg
More worrisome is the question whether Israel would “go rogue” and use its nukes on one or more of its neighbors w/o US sign-off. Given its history of priors (I’m thinking of USS Liberty), and its purported Samson Option, if push comes to shove, I think it’s the most likely kick-off to WW3. “We’ll all go together when we go.”–Tom Lehrer
Following now from an NLR essay from 1984, which I had purchased as pdf so I can´t put up a link here:
1984 Nov-Dec. Issue, NEW LEFT REVIEW
https://newleftreview.org/issues/i148/articles/donald-mackenzie-nuclear-war-planning-and-strategies-of-nuclear-coercion
“Nuclear War Planning and Strategies of
Nuclear Coercion”
by Donald MacKenzie
“The case of Britain is more complex.
British government statements about British nuclear forces consistently
emphasise deterrence, not nuclear war-fighting, and the major present
British nuclear weapons system, Polaris, is ill-suited to counterforce
attacks.26 But British strategic nuclear forces, uniquely in the nuclear
world, are targeted not in Britain, but abroad, according to the Nuclear
Operations Plan drawn up by the NATO Supreme Allied Commander,
Europe, in co-ordination with the US Joint Strategic Target Planning
Staff in Omaha, Nebraska.27 So, under anything other than extraordinary
circumstances, the question of British nuclear strategy resolves itself
into that of NATO, and ultimately American, strategy.”
p.s. Andrei Martyanov on domestic executive decision over France´s and GB´s WMD writes in his 2021 “Disintegration” :
“France, while hardly exemplifying successful social, cultural, or
economic policies, still maintains a military capability which provides for a
reliable national defense in case of just about any type of attack on French
territory, including by a global power, since France deploys a robust naval
nuclear deterrent, also known as a Strategic Oceanic Force, all of which,
from strategic nuclear power submarines to sea-launched ballistic missiles,
are of French origin. The British Royal Navy, while having its own naval
nuclear deterrent, uses American-designed Trident SLBMs and is not
allowed to modify them, despite the British prime minister having the
authority to launch.
This is accompanied by following footnoted source:
Directorate of Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Policy – Assistant Director (Deterrence Policy)
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
Main Building, Level 4, Zone A
Whitehall, LONDON, SW1A 2HB
July 19th 2005
https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20121109140513/http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/E2054A40-7833-48EF-991C-7F48E05B2C9D/0/nuclear190705.pdf
The site address I can only operate on an old Safari browser version. Firefox won´t show it. I have no time to figure out why.
In order to understand the second-rate position of GB Martyanov explains the French which I will reproduce here because it offers the necessary context:
“the French Navy, aka Marine Nationale, operates not only a fully French-designed and built
nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, but de Gaulle’s air
wing consists, with the exception of two U.S.-made E-2 Hawkeye early
warning aircraft of French-designed and made Dassault Rafale M fighters,
which gives France a degree of flexibility and independence, which no
other NATO member, including the United Kingdom has. But what is
important about French defensive posture, once one removes France’s
aggressive attempts on regime change in Libya and Syria, force structurewise,
is that France looks like a well-balanced defense-wise nation and the
term “nation” is crucial here, since French military views evolved as that of
an independent nation which was able to formulate its national interest,
which included its agreeing, after a bloody war, to the independence of
Algeria, letting go French colonial possessions and establishing the Fifth
Republic. Quitting NATO de facto, including by means of removing all
U.S. troops from French territory in 1966, was one of the more prominent
endeavors of a national interest undertaken by de Gaulle, who also clearly
understood that an indigenous and comprehensive military-industrial
complex and ability to deter the enemy was at the foundation of national
sovereignty. France, being a true continental power unlike the United
States, certainly had had its own history of war and invasions, both as
aggressor and as a victim, and was able to arrive to such conclusions.”
Needless to say the last comment would not only apply to US but GB as much.
However I was never sure how realistic a French unilateral effort with WMDs would be. If one follows Tom Stevenson´s LRB text, not at all likely. Martyanov I think is more affirmative.
If this is 100% true then any of the now floated EU-force in Ukraine is in fact a tripwire designed vis a vis RU AND USA TRUMP. Only backed up by French Force de frappe.
Short answer yes, and a lot of money has been invested in the firing chain to make sure this is possible. The unspoken but very real function of Trident (as with the French equivalent) is precisely to have a last-ditch threat available if the US leaves us in the lurch.
Long answer: first this is all about political status and potential political blackmail. I’ve never met an informed person who believed that any of these weapons would actually be used, but the name of the game is nonetheless to be able to do so if you wanted to. Second, the first answer cannot be publicly admitted. Third, these things are so bloody expensive that, unlike the French, the UK have compromised by using US missiles, although the warheads and guidance systems are nationally developed. This obviously compromises independence to some extent. But there’s a fundamental difference between political independence and operational independence. The UK has the latter, the former depends overwhelmingly on the political situation at the time.
Many thanks
Aurelien: This obviously compromises independence to some extent.
To some extent? This is like being a little bit pregnant.
Would you be so kind as to recommend some information sources on those all-British guidance systems to me? (Yes, I acknowledge the warheads are British.)
Also, I don’t believe that Lockheed Martin (purveyor of fine F-35s to undiscerning governments everywhere) is necessarily capable of building reliable Trident missiles after two failed test launches.
Not only that, but the UK government knows this (though it doesn’t want to), which is why last year it sent British scientists and engineers to Lockheed Martin’s Titusville plant to “collaborate.”
“I plus everyone round here is wondering “WTF is Starmer on?”
Cutting heating aid and preaching austerity, as finds billions more for Ukraine. That’s a big reason Dems lost in 2024. But then, what difference does it make? The other choice UK voters are allowed to have will do the exact same thing.
Yep. And that is why I spolit my ballot paper at the General Election last year. I think everyone should vote but there should be a “none of the above” option, which currently you only get to show in the UK by turning up and spoiling your ballot.
The Green Party was the ONLY one that seemed to have some understanding of the need for govt spending in key areas, MMT and land value taxation. Problem was, they’d clearly written their manifesto on the basis of just concatenating the views of 100 or so people from focus groups, giving a manifesto that was internally contradictory and deserved no attention.
Yeah, trends that can’t go on forever won’t, but it’s astonishing how long they can go on!
I guess one way to think of the layers and layers of rent seeking manifest in the S&P and other asset markets is they’re like the air Wiley Coyote runs way, way out on before he realizes there’s nothing below him.
Western media coverage starts in the 45th second.
I think that blair starmer (and his colleagues in the alarmingly authoritarian structure of the EU) are looking at the ankles, bound by their sodden,blood stained underwear.
The horrific sights of press ganging of those without the resources or connections to escape, chills me to the bone
I’m saddened to read you’re doing poorly, Terry, and send my best wishes.
Starmer is leader of a political party that is pledged to the neoliberal cause so he has no room for policy to “fix stuff around here”. He, perhaps more than anyone, has done a great job stamping out left populism in the UK so the drift of voters to demagogic nationalist populism that I expect is in large part on him.
Many thanks for kind words. It is ironic that there are major articles in today’s UK version of the Observer about Long COVID, so many of which chime with me……but getting docs round here to do anything is like pulling teeth.
My only successes in getting local health Trusts to do anything is when I’ve learnt via 3rd parties that they’re under special investigation by the national NHS and that “now is the time to make a BIG FUSS. They’ll be so terrified of a bad score that they’ll do something”. That is not how healthcare should work.
Sorry to hear it also. I have had no success in acquiring the “Drug That Dare Not Speak Its Name” here in the rancid underbelly of the North American Consumption Zone. I have had to make resource to veterinary formulations. My medica doesn’t even want me to mention the subject. (Hint: We might be on Candid Camera.)
I am beginning to wonder if I might have a mild case of Long Covid, arising from a possible case of the original “wild” strain of the virus back in Spring of 2020.
It’s either that or I suffer from a strong case of Gerentropy. (As ‘things’ age, they fall apart.)
Jump on any chance to make the medicos do right by you. If the Oligarchs can lie, cheat, steal and murder with impunity, then the People shall do so too.
One thing I’m fairly certain the Neo-liberals have not factored into their plans; Karma. Often, deficiencies in one’s philosophical education will lead to adverse outcomes.
Stay safe. Take care.
… as a EU citizen I´d prefer boring over interesting 🤔
“May you live in interesting times”. I’m often amazed at how few people know that what that saying requests is a BAD thing, not a good one.
I think I first cottoned on to it via Terry Pratchett!
One of my big mistakes has been not to read Pratchett – so far – because I am so old-fashioned with literature that I only read the “serious” stuff. Which I am aware is dumb on so many levels.
That “May you live in interesting times” is – and forgive me taking this mental detour – one of the major points of where and why fiction and entertainment as manifestations in form of real policy become life-threatening. By which I mean nothing but the nauseating term “narrative”. Unfortunately I cannot point it out often enough.
Whilst a story is almost always only entertaining to the audience who has nothing to do with it – in contrast to those who had to live through it – the creation by design must be sharpened out and formatted along aesthetic rules and laws of narration to make them entertaining and thrilling.
Initially the stories as one wisdom goes were in fact created for that very reason of teaching lessons to the new generations in a time without written records and printing press culture. The purification i.e. eventually enhanced thrill was a means to make the “lesson” memorable.
An old friend of mine does it to this day – if forced to remember a long list of items or phrases (like a route description to navigate to a destination in a foreign city) she sings a spontaneous tune containing the main terms. Rhythm as a muscle memory in the brain…
I said it yesterday, and I will say it again today, that if indeed there was an ambush in the Oval Office, it was one planned by the Euros and Z, and executed by Z. Not so much to split Europe from the US, but to attempt to bring Europe back into the game and force the US to the negotiating table.
Failing that, manufacturing concent in Europe for the €1 trillion for rearming Europe that’s being thrown about mostly by EPP circles.
Greetings from BG.
You may be right.
BBC News has lots of short missives and photos from the ongoing Securing Our Future London Summit. The biggest smile is on Mark Rutte’s face. Comments from the President of Finland, Alexander Stubb made me chuckle unironically.
Mark Rutte: would that be the same Mark Rutte the voters in Netherlands had enough of after his rule devastated farming communities there? The guy who is now head of NATO? (Always fail upward.) That Mark Rutte? / ;)
That’s the one. I assume his big smile reflects his anticipation of weapons sales.
So King Charles receives Z, but says nothing against the threat to the sovereignity of one of his dominions, eh?!
BBC News has lots of short missives and photos from the ongoing Securing Our Future London Summit.
Oh, just think of it as like the fifth season of Blackadder. Except they couldn’t get Rowan Atkinson to come back and Baldrick’s playing the British Prime Minister.
Sorry, Baldrick is playing the King.
Now that the Trump card has been played…..
Time to count the tricks?
That may very well be true, but if so, who do they think they’re fooling? It’s admittedly very difficult to find meaning from the entrails Trump leaves in his wake, but over the years he has been fairly consistent in saying that Europe needs to stand up on its own two feet and pay for its own defense, and that the Ukraine war was a mistake. I think he has a very superficial understanding of all this, and because of that is subject to changing his mind depending on who he just spoke with, but still he has been pretty consistent with that message.
So he’s basically told Europe that they need to spend more on their own defense and the Ukraine war will be wrapping up soon. If they don’t like that, they can fight it out with Russia on their own.
So Zelensky the beaten cur runs back to Europe looking for support from the well groomed poodle dogs of Europe, who seem to be pledging to do exactly what Trump told them they had to do – go it on their own. What do they have to negotiate with? Some claim to Ukrainian minerals??!? That seems to be a giant MacGuffin to begin with, especially since Ukraine doesn’t exactly control its own destiny at this point and Russia will have a large say in how events play out, and maybe al of the say.
So who is the audience Europe and little Z are trying to impress with this scheme? The idea that Z was coked to the gills and shot off his mouth makes more sense. That, or maybe will all just continue to overestimate the intelligence of Starmer and the like, despite the brains bar being so low to begin with.
I’ve learned to never underestimate how stupid they are and how much they are locked into the sunk-cost fallacy. The cost being their political capital after all the propaganda and fear-mongering about Russia and Putin. Frankly, Europe is drowning in it and they can’t afford to stop now, it’sa matter of political survival for manybof them. It’s nuts.
The Duran on Jimmy Dore. .utube, ~23+ minutes.
Ukraine DESPERATELY Regretting Not Signing 2022 Peace Deal! w/ The Duran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68DZhuOXM8I
So Z has been running around Europe talking to his “friends” who say what he wants to hear. His “friends” are European poodles with a direct line to the Dems/MIC/US intelligence that want war and more war.
My guess is that Z was probably advised by his “friends” to keep playing the role of a military tough man, to shout and disagree and talk over POTUS. To ignore protocol and not wear a suit. And to show Trump The Illegitimate President how Z couldn’t be browbeaten into signing that agreement. Well, that went well!!
There is a pattern here. Because the European poodles are doing what they have been doing for five decades.
Their foreign policy and military strategy can be summed up in “Let’s You and Him Fight”.
First they sat on the sidelines, powder dry, wallet firmly in pocket, and cheered on the US funding a Cold War with Russia.
And now they sit on the sidelines and cheer on Ukraine killing all its young men and destroying its country to weaken Russia. Pipe dream.
While their own risible battalions and military equipment sit safe and snug at home.
That seems right. The idea of fighting the Russians is very glamorous for the Euro-elites as long as the Ukrainians fight. The Europeans don’t have the infrastructure to manage a real war in any way either in men or materiel. So, the idea they have is that by continuing the war forever is that they will weaken Russia and it will collapse from inside as happened, they think, during the end period of the USSR. Not an unreasonable position in terms of logic but these ruling-elites are used to thinking in terms of ideas and abstract principles and don’t advance by realism and practicality–it’s just the state of Euro-civilization. They believe their neo-liberal ideology is, as the communists believe, historically inevitable. Since they thrive on group-think they are unequipped intellectually to entertain alternative ideas which is why they repress their publics from being exposed to assaults on the dogmas they hold as absolutely true.
The US Wall Street shadow government/deep state is now doing an end run around Trump The Illegitimate President by using Europe and the UK.
So Starmer has just signed a deal with Z for £1.6bn that will keep the war in Ukraine going and the arms money flowing. Starmer and Macron are talking peace while ramping up war. Will any backdoor public or private US money ooze its way towards Ukraine arms and mercenaries?
How will Trump react to being cut out and being made to look like a bit player? I have no idea right now. More fireworks on the way.
American boys (or weapons or money) ain’t going to do for EU/UK boys this time!
Dreaming of EU/UK boys calling in air cover! Which ain’t.
If they want to trip nuclear war for Stalin’s adminstrative traps…….
Conor’s ‘The Empire Rebrands’ post is deep and wide, well worth a look.
Glenn Greenwald on twtr-X:
Trump has made it clear that his goal is to end the war in Ukraine, and yesterday’s explosive meeting with Zelensky reinforced this commitment to stopping the U.S. from fueling a losing and dangerous war.
https://x.com/SystemUpdate_/status/1895853057520648580
Good link. After Trumps 360 whirlwind within a few weeks on Ukraine alone, I’ll take the sincerity he has regarding ending the war in Ukraine by his actions.
First test: end all US military aid and otherwise to Ukraine. Now.
Yves observed, I think very accurately, that Trump has no fixed beliefs.
He’s an opportunist using chaos and confusion to surface opportunities.
It remains possible he’ll grab and hold some good one, or not, but the structural damage he’s doing will in the coming months begin to generate activated constituencies in all kinds of surprising places.
Thanks but what I said was “no fixed positions”.
Senior moment, my apologies!
“Be strong, be brave, be fearless.”
And going out to Ursula and Volodymyr this beautiful Sunday morning, some beach music from the very best: “Be young, be foolish, be happy.“
“And the Oscar goes to … the Pentagon!”
No real surprise here. The Pentagon even has an office to coordinate with Hollywood studios when they want to use military gear. Of course it is not simply the Pentagon saying yes or no to a production. Sometimes they will not only change a script around but also add their own lines of dialogue. A producer can refuse to play ball however. Those for the film “Independence Day” were boycotted by the Pentagon when they refused to remove all references to Area 51 so they just used digital effects instead. But what this article does not get into is how the CIA has gotten into the act and is doing the same sort of stuff with Hollywood films to make the CIA look good. Now all we need is for Congress to do the same with Hollywood. /sarc
The article mentions Tom Secker’s website Spy Culture, which is a very good source on this issue.
Coincidentally, I recently read a hilarious, yet informative, piece by Secker that is relevant to this subject and also to the subjects of AI and internet censorship. The title: “How I Persuaded ChatGPT that Tom Hanks is Working for the CIA.”
https://www.spyculture.com/how-i-persuaded-chatgpt-that-tom-hanks-is-working-for-the-cia/
I think it would be of interest to NC readers.
I don’t have the same tony taste that many others here have. I enjoy procedurals. And sometimes they can be very interesting regarding the political zeitgeist.
For instance watching the silly Dick van Dyke Diagnosis Murder decades after it was produced turned out to be very interesting. Things that were B plots included predatory HMOs, and private companies buying hospitals to strip them and close them. Some of those problem plots could have been written today.
But the subject is the Pentagon and the CIA, and though the Pentagon is given a pass, there has been a seeming shift regarding the CIA. I’ve recently been watching the early NCIS and its spin offs. Even a decade ago, the CIA was often shown as as much the problem as the terrorists. While rogue operations were the norm they were not the only way that ‘CIA bad” was portrayed. Probably. as much as two or three times a year, ‘CIA bad’ was a big part of the plot. I haven’t seen much of the most recent years, but that seems to be a thing of the past so far.
I can’t take watching the Oscars anymore; I’ll have to let my wife inform me of the winners. I am interested in the Best Documentary category, however. It has also become an effective propaganda outlet; the last two winners were 20 Days in Mariupol and Navalny. This year, however, there is an interesting set of nominees. Of course there is an obligatory pro-Ukraine film (Porcelain War); there are also films on sexual violence (Black Box Diaries) and racism (Sugarcane) – worthwhile topics, but not exactly rare in this venue. However, there are also two works on somewhat more subversive topics. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is about the 1961 UN protests by American jazz musicians over the CIA abetted murder of Patrice Lamumba. No Other Land is about the steady ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank (for some completely mystifying reason this film could never find a US distributor, though a one week showing at Lincoln Center made it Oscar eligible).
It will be interesting to see if the Best Doc voters of the Academy make it three imperial propaganda wins in a row. Sexism and racism are always safe subjects. So is criticism of the CIA – if it concerns CIA sins of 60 years ago (they’re the good guys today). I will be pleasantly surprised if the doc on Palestine wins.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is excellent and further validates the genius and courage of the great Abby Lincoln.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFbq6XKKrik
“Soundtrack to a Coup d’état” is excellent, particularly if, like me you came of age to that music. I was in my early teens in ’61, but the reverberations of Lumumba’s murder were ringing loudly in 1970 when I joined what we now call the ‘radical left.’ We think we live in a nearly destroyed society now, but looking back at where America was, with tanks in the streets of Berkely, and fires devouring cities across the nation, can lend a bit of perspective.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/02/lookout-mountain-secret-film-studio-in-laurel-canyon-hollywood.html/
Lookout Mountain, Hollywood’s Top-Secret Nuclear Film Studio
Rumors and “conspiracy theories” abound about what used to happen at the secret film studio.
But on another big picture take of the situation: the Oscar should go to the Pentagon. Hollywood owes its rise to the heights of the filmmaking industry to global wars destroying so many other parts of the world.
Someone once said that the US will go in and destroy a country. And then twenty years later Hollywood will go and make a film about how sad it made the soldiers that did it feel.
On data centers: Mr. Valentine talking his own book, but as Lambert says, but if true!
[Can the Doge eat Doge of the AI Collapse come soon enough?]
https://open.substack.com/pub/fractalcomputing/p/the-ai-bubble-driven-by-legacy-software?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=jz47a
‘Uber for guns’ app Protector lets you hire armed body guards like you would an Uber — but does anyone need this? – TechCrunch
If it’s not tech that has great uses for the disabled (a laudable aspect, but sinister when pushed as the end all be all for everyone), then it’s usually some kind of tech that is the next big crime wave tool.
I’ll let everyone use their imaginationsfor all the ways this could go wrong.
If they failed to protect your life, you think that the person’s family would be entitled to a refund? Being a tech based firm, probably no.
Considering that they are not responsible for anything but the app regarding their ride share business, I am sure their independent contractor
mercenariessecurity on the cheap are not vetted and totally are on the hook for everything.Yeah, if you request Audie Murphy and you get Private Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence, can you get a refund?
How would they apply surge pricing?
Please allow us a large proportion of your remaining time on earth,to process your claim through our mechanical,energy hungry slave.
UVERSAFE ad campaign:
100% OF VALID CLAIMS RECOGNISED
“with appropriate deductions and variances found in our loving T&C
I think a ‘companion’ app that could generate threats could really help them with market penetration.
Brings a whole new meaning to “competition”!!!
From the article: “Protector isn’t just working on “Uber for guns.” It plans to launch an app called “Patrol,” where users can crowdfund security guards to surveil their neighborhoods. The more money users donate, the higher the level of security they can unlock, including robots and drones to monitor the area.”
A very Libertarian Dystopia ahead of us as tech entrepreneurs enact their own version of “grabitization”, expressing their own paranoia and exploiting the often legitimate fears of the rest of us.
Sort of like the Simpson’s bear patrol-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkV_ztynYDM (4:30 mins)
Thanks for the laughs! The difference being that, in the clip, the service is public; the Patrol app is private. Kev, it’s been a while since I watched the Simpsons, which was a big part of my childhood. I denied myself the enjoyment for years on the grounds that it was what Harvard –where many writers were schooled– thought of the ‘middle class’. I’ll reevaluate!
So I tried to get to PubMed this morning and it was timing out. Seems like the DNS entries for NIH.gov are all gone for the last 18 or so hours.
Internal revolt against MAGA/MAHA or incompetence?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43229201
No problem here. I just went to pubmed and searched for my latest paper and it came up.
They just came back online 50 minutes ago so you were probably getting a cached version of the DNS entry.
https://xcancel.com/brentdwatkins/status/1896302565555601508
Rat sommeliers demonstrate advanced olfactory learning in wine sniffing test Phys.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tasting notes:
This Cabarat Sauvignon has distinct tannin droppings and is fruity, but dry and fine, exhibiting a rose-like like bouquet, some sweetness in attack, drier on the second nose. It’s hard enough to gnaw away at the cork to really give it a good sniff, and forget about screwtop bottles-even if we do sort of have opposable hands, and besides how déclassée in a Thunderbird or Boone’s Farm fashion.
Findings indicate that non-human animals can categorize complex olfactory stimuli without linguistic or human-specific cognitive abilities.
I mean for F sakes, can anything be more catagorized as nothing more than a blinding ability, a keen sense of the obvious!!!
Next they will be saying something like dogs can categorize complex olfactory stimuli without linguistic or human-specific cognitive abilities as shouwn by ability to distinguish cocain from sugar.
Why can humans not get over the fact that non-humans can do many or most things far better than humans – like living in balance with their environment.
Yes, for all its obvious value, language (and math/logic) is unnecessary for cognition. We humans are less special than we tend to think. But clearly more dangerous.
I’m old enough to remember a study that concluded cats use cuteness to manipulate their owners (servants?).
Mine certainly do….mercilessly
“The Japanese Mayor Who Built a Floodgate No One Wanted — and Saved His Town”
Lots of respect to that Japanese mayor Kotoku Wamura. He had seen with his own eyes the death and destruction that a tsunami could do. Was told by old people that there was a worse one a generation ago. So he drew the obvious deduction that sooner or later another one would hit again and that a floodgate was the only viable solution. This is the sort of long term thinking that gets big, important works done. He stuck to his guns and had it built and because of that, he saved many, many lives decades after his death. They should build a monument or even a local shrine to the guy and is an example how not everything important will appear in a quarterly budget.
This sounds like a bigger version of the story told in the great Kurasawa movie, Ikiru.
Ryan Grim interview with fired CFPB director Rohit Chopra. It’s clear why the robber barons wanted him and CFPB gone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jWS9gq5xMw
Thanks, watching that.
I wasn´t aware what a bad liar Zuckerberg is. Which of course is something I should hail because he clearly still has a conscience. But if that won´t materialize in appropriate action it´s meaningless.
Enjoyed that. I lack the knowledge to judge it. But found it instructive. And what really is remarkable:
Grim pushed his agenda repeatedly but Chopra never lost his professionalism.
Which is also why the title of the show is rather dishonest as it intends to be a sell instead of informative:
“Fired CFPB Director HITS BACK At Zuckerberg, Jamie Dimon, Tech Bros”
Chopra was exactly not hitting back. Nor did he ever indulge in such terms as “tech bros” which I personally reject. Nor did he indulge in that practice by using such really annoying words as “weaponizing”.
“Japanese navy ship makes 1st solo transit through Taiwan Strait”
I suppose for the Japanese, there has not been anything like it since J.E.B. Stuart rode around McClellan. Thing is, it was only a year or so ago that a joint Russian-Chinese naval force sailed in international waters between two main islands of japan. What is the bet that this is going to be a much more frequent event going forward. Somebody should have told them – ‘Don’t poke the dragon!’
Explain to a random American from 1946 that DC can “rehabilitate” Berlin and Tokyo, but Russia and China are existential threats, they’d probably havean aneurysm.
South Park would put it as: “Don’t poke the ManBearDragon!”
Where is Al Gore when we need him? (That looks suspiciously like A I Gore. He did ‘create’ the Internet, right? Is “he” really real, or just an electronic avatar? Curious coincidence, or demonic plot? You be the judge.)
Little Marco and the Genocidaires …
I have signed a declaration to use emergency authorities to expedite the delivery of approximately $4 billion in military assistance to Israel. Marco Rubio
(Sung to the tune of, “Cadillac Ranch” by Bruce Springsteen)
Genocide Ranch
Thar she sits: a body, just a rottin’ in sun!
There to greet an aid worker when his day is done
You’d better pack a will, cause Bibi squishes us like ants
Gonna take you down to the Genocide Ranch!
Stabilizing fins, baby, glide bombs hit the dirt!
Slaughters like a little bit of Hades here on earth
Well, buddy when I die throw my body in the back
Drop a daisy-cutter on these maniacs!
Chorus:
Maniacs, maniacs
Long night of knives, shiny and black
Owning up to their inner war whore!
Tearing up Gaza like a big old dinosaur!
Himmler in a blitz like ’39
Stern gang just a rollin’ through the woods of Palestine
Even Little Marco sends another arms tranche
All gonna meet down at the Genocide Ranch!
[Chorus]
Little girlie in the hijab so tight
Riding along through the Bethlehem night
Yer my last love, baby yer my last chance
Don’t let ’em take me to the Genocide Ranch!
Maniacs, maniacs
Long night of knives, shiny and black
Pulled up to my house today
Went and took our humanity away!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODQgHmRCBHo
A different breakdown of Medicaid cuts’ impact: These 15 Congressional Districts Would See Large Medicaid Funding Losses Under Republican House Budget Resolution https://www.americanprogressaction.org/article/these-15-congressional-districts-would-see-large-medicaid-funding-losses-under-republican-house-budget-resolution/
Thanks for that link, searchable by every district and very informative as to how it will whack Vermont if it all comes through as now proposed.
Chris Hedges with Jimmy Dore on the Deep State
The Deep State and Trump — Full Interview w/ Jimmy Dore
I went on The Jimmy Dore Show this week to discuss some of my latest columns on the second Trump administration, and to respond to some takes on Trump’s dismantling of the deep state from journalists.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-deep-state-and-trump-full-interview
“Uyghur Jihadists Gain Senior Posts in Syria’s New Islamist Security Forces: Terror Attacks Into Central Asia Expected”
That;s been the plan all along. To set up a sort of Syria situation in the Uyghur homeland. China made sure to short-circuit that idea which upset western politicians no end. That is why all those allegations of concentration camps and the like. And that is why the west tries to sanction the Uyghur homeland and impoverish their people – to try to get something going. So maybe the west will use them to attack China’s belt and road projects which has already happened. Maybe destabilize the Caucus and I am sure that Erdogan will help them there as he has his own ideas of greater Turkiye. Years ago we would send troops to fight a war. Then we started to use corporate mercs instead. So now we are just going with terrorists as they have deniability. And there will never be any blowback from their actions. Well, apart from 9/11 that is.
It’s hard to find the whole western Uyghur narrative believable since most Americans don’t like Chinese or Muslims but apparently care about this specific group of Chinese Muslims which is something I think George Yeo, the former foreign minister of Singapore commented on. And that’s even before how Gaza exposed their Xinjiang narrative as fake even more than ever before
I never believed it, since the first time I heard of Uyghurs was when the US picked up Abu Bakker Qassim and sent hime to Guantanamo.
Might be me being an OIF veteran, but Starmer, Macron and Z’s Euro “Coalition of the Willing” is seriously triggering me in more ways than one. Besides suffering from historical amnesia, they may be just stupid and determined enough to actually build it and attempt to put it in action.
Truly, Europe’s misleadership might have gone mad, and I don’t mean mad as in ‘angry.’
We have to understand that the Euro-elite rose through an establishment that has become deeply ideological and dogmatic in their believe in what we call neo-liberalism. They are, because of their backgrounds and intellectual development, unable to see nuances and alternative views. We can make the comparison to communists and crusaders. I fault the miseducation system in Europe (and to a lesser degree the USA).
Sure, but I would venture that greed, nepotism, a psychopathic disregard for the welfare of society, and an addiction to both power and fame have something to do with it as well.
I honestly think these elites believe that what they are doing is right for their societies and the world. Again, they are guided by ideology that is rigidly dogmatic. I used to be familiar with the Eurocrats a quarter century ago and that is what I saw.
Divine Right in new clothes? / ;)
Not really, since they usually don’t believe in divinity.
The Emperor in see through fast fashion?
As usual, you all rock.
Being ideological and dogmatic does not exclude madness, especially in a group setting characterized by groupthink and mutual reinforcement of biases, fears and hatreds. These people exhibit all of the above.
If we take Col Wilkerson’s word on the investment US put after the 2003 Iraqi flop, to shepperd a new generation of EU leaders going in tandem with US wishes, the present crop really IS the US creation.
Yep, that’s pretty much what happened after “Old Europe” refused to support the Iraq War, unlike “New Europe.” Now “Old Europe” is gone and instead we have jilted US-created misleaders trying to assume America’s mantle, right down to recycling the “Coalition of the Willing” nonsense. All cheered on by civilian chickenhawks and courtier media. There are no signs that the militaries, who should be issuing caution to the civilian leadership, are doing it. Contrarians like me are being stigmatized and accused of being Putin’s lapdogs. Being opposed to escalatuon is being equated qith being opposes to the European project. Frankly, Europe right now feels not so much like 1939 but more like 1914 with the enthusiastig rush to war and glory. It’s quite disconcerning.
More like 1914? Absolutely like 1914.
These are the New Donkeys running Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions_led_by_donkeys
‘…The phrase …implied by English military historian Alan Clark in the title of his 1961 study of the Western Front of World War I, The Donkeys.’
They truly are like a display of inbred Hapsburgs, smiling and laughing like hyenas that think they will have a bear for the next month to eat. All those alpha females with enlarge clits like mini penises (the hyenas I mean)…
Hapsburgs is right. For all the WW11 analogies being spit out, as better one is WW1, where royalist “security guarantees” avalanched one upon the other, until millions ended up dead in trenches along a line of contact that barely moved over 4 years.
WRT to “security guarantees,” it is my understanding that US policy is that we don’t give them and never will. Not even Art. 5 in NATO is a guarantee. The proper diplomatic response to that kind of ask is “All options are on the table.”
Reason being: if we say “assume x happens, we will do y,” there are plenty out there who’ll make damn sure x happens.
The US Wall Street shadow government/deep state is doing an end run around Trump The Illegitimate President by using Europe and the UK.
So Starmer has just signed a deal with Z for £1.6bn that will keep the war in Ukraine going and the arms money flowing. Starmer and Macron are talking peace while ramping up war. Will any backdoor public or private US money ooze its way towards Ukraine arms and mercenaries?
How will Trump react to being cut out and being made to look like a bit player? I have no idea right now. More fireworks on the way.
Things are really gonna come to a head in our National Parks when the public realizes just how much will be cut out of their experience, and I suggest those fired NPS employees pull a Doukhobour-as in nude protest marches, when you got nothing-you got nothing to lose.
We’re so ashamed of seeing ourselves without a stitch on, and yet that’s what fired NPS employees had done to them, they lost not only their jobs, but in many cases their Federal housing in the NP’s. Everything stripped away.
Imagine how we’d squirm as a country feeling reaaaaaly uncomfortable watching such a spectacle. It would make quite an impact.
This. Imagine a video, a long video of mini-vignettes one after the other, former NPS employees disrobing, doesn’t have to be graphic, while speaking to the camera, “ the clothes on my back are all I have left to give”, “I voted for you, will you have the shirt off my back as well?”, etc.
Perfect, I’d have them leave their hat on though.
I believe this would be far more effective than another march.
Join us in DC for our epic million meme march!
Now seems as good of a time as any to admit to streaking with another classmate @ Grazide elementary in the sixth grade in 1974. We were apprehended and sent to the vice principal’s office, and his role was strictly disciplinarian, and yet he couldn’t stop laughing when we were in his office.
I think we got off scot-free.
A winter streaking tale. Without elaboration, western Maine, after dinner and well into a 12+ inch snowfall early April, mom kicks us three sons outdoors. We’re having a blast. Dad and uncle decide to streak us. Once outside in the buff plans we’re quickly reconsidered as they were taking a shelling in the snowball department. Mom, of course, locked the door. A mad dash for the front door ensued under heavy fire. The affair was considered highly regrettable by some, an epic triumph by others.
You and Mickey. I had forgotten that the movie (9 1/2 Weeks) used a Joe Cocker cover of the Randy Newman song.
If all the small donors for Bernie could reach eachother and form a 27 a Month Club to do things like raise money for all the NPS people to keep them off the job and keep the Parks functionally closed until a woken-up public tortures and terorrises the Republican Majority into meeting the paid-to-stay-away NPS workless workers’ conditions for agreeing to come back.
They could make those conditions as big and visionary as they wanted to, if they thought in those terms and if there really were a 27 a Month Club to pay them all to keep staying off the job.
Ukraine’s Four Coming Collapses, Parts 1-2 Gordon Hahn, Russian & Eurasian Politics
Very long read. But what really stood out IMO, is the suffering of the people. The decimation of an entire generation plus misery for everyone else.
It appears, however, from the outside that the Ukrainian people want to suffer, fight, suffer some more, fight some more and so on. They have a very strange culture that, though they claim to be “European” they are not other than cosmetically. Their hearts seem to be bent of glory and martyrdom or at least most of those still living in Ukraine. They will not give up easily particularly since the cynical real Europeans will continue to lead them on for their own, to me, nefarious purposes.
> though they claim to be “European” they are not other than cosmetically. Their hearts seem to be bent of glory and martyrdom
I think 111 years ago, at the outset of the first modern bloodbath in Europe (a consequence of “volkskreig”, as Big Serge called it in his survey of land warfare, episode “the end of cabinet war”), this was pretty widespread (the glory part, if not martyrdom). Perhaps the Ukrainians are indeed European, but from an earlier era.
dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, as a much earlier European put it.
RE: “US to get 30 nuclear microreactors to generate clean energy for data centers”
First – this quote was eye opening. Data centers are already nearly 10% of the power consumption of Texas…
Second – all these short articles discussing nuclear power (including ones I’ve read about a potential power plat arriving ~15 miles away from where I live) never discuss what to me is the key question – where does the nuclear waste go and how does it get there? Am I the only one uneasy?
Re what makes me happy article. I largely scroll past these articles due to fundamental flaws in the mathematics (a score must be cardinal), and/or survey flaws (don’t compare ranking with pairwise comparisons) and/or just general nonsense to generate clickbait.
This one was a doozy. No indication that they understood the mathematics of ranking (no mention of ranking depth scale factors – crucial to interpretation). No alternative explanation as to why people dropped out of pairwise comparisons (I always read the free text comments – did they? No reporting of the “whys”). The old style “discussion” section of an academic paper where you used to propose limitations to your work and alternative possibilities seems to be dead and buried – it certainly is not insisted upon (if written in first place) by authors as being referred to in the news article. Trash.
The exposition of the survey design suggested no training in that area. Idiocracy is really progressing at speed in applied psychology and those branches of economics that have latched onto it looking at life satisfaction.
Finally, here is an article which, although full of flaws, does at least expose something those of us working in quality of life for 20 years noted: why are the countries with high happiness average scores the same ones with highest suicide rates? The cynic might say “they have high scores because the low scoring people have exited the gene pool”. May well be true, but I don’t rely on that. You don’t need to, if you have a modicum of skills in mathematical scales and statistics. I look forward to the day when happiness studies get the level of attention they deserve: zero.
I don’t have good understanding of the math–but I do know that life is deeply paradoxical and “happiness” cannot be measure through self-reporting for a whole host of reasons. I do know, however, that for individuals there are things that tend to make them happier long-term, i.e., caring and helping others for a start. So happiness studies as a study in psychology is, in my view, helpful–sociology might not be a good fit. As for the suicide problem you mention it might be a result of living among people who are happy and I am not (or so it appears) is depressing–this has been noted in psychology.
Which is why my work in the area of “quality of life” was firmly rooted in mathematical psychology and I agree with your views. I don’t want to run afoul of self-promotion on here but the instrument my group developed eschewed happiness in favour of a (slightly simplified) variation on Sen’s key Capability Approach to aspects of life, which are in line with what you argue. We then used methods of self-report that were by nature invulnerable to the stupid biases so obvious in giving “happiness scores” etc.
I don’t doubt that our methods can be improved upon even further, but I’m profoundly tired of the maxim in the general media that “oh these numerical scores seem OK so lets go with them”. No. That rubbish was discredited by a bunch of top mathematicians in the 1960s who were looking around for interesting things to do once they or their supervisors had devised the nuclear bomb. Unfortunately their field of mathematical psychology didn’t have the Swedish Central Bank behind them (/snark) so they got largely ignored. But they indisputedly allowed at least some of the steps forward that you mentioned.
BTW In case anyone didnt know, Daniel Kahneman did NOT win the “Economics Pseudo Nobel” for happiness scores. He won it for Prospect Theory, which was very quickly demolished by his peers and led to an in joke regarding why he got the prize. (The joke has been reported here at least once by others but I’m not going to repeat it for fear of looking bad). His happiness stuff is demonstrably trash according to basic rules of mathematics.
I like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Flow” theory, that people are happy when they are engrossed in an activity. https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/0061339202
Thanks, I’ll have to look that up in more detail but from a quick look it is in accord with how we phrased our questions “how much of the time…..” you could experience each of the key dimensions, thus indirectly inferring “flow”, albeit in a somewhat indirect and possibly vague way.
As I mention, a lot of our work is not the final word on this (and indeed I regarded it as “proof of concept”!) but it taps into ideas of longitudinal experience rather than “immediate” experience (which I am suspicious of).
Two examples of dimensions of ours that explain a lot are “ability to do things that make you feel valued” (positive) and “frequency of worries about the future” (negative). Both phrased in attempt to capture ongoing feelings……..though I’m first to say ours was first attempt.
There is some discussion on the idea of flow here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvgLmTkCwc4
That’s a useful Larry Johnson on the history of USAID and the CIA. Johnson of course was once an employee of the CIA.
Nobody watched Joe Rogan Elon Musk?
I didn’t either but I did read the transcript.
https://singjupost.com/transcript-elon-musk-on-joe-rogan-experience-podcast-2281/?singlepage=1
There is about 20 minutes of good info on space business and the musk ufo story faction so it would not be a total waste of time.
Rogan has interviewed him more than once (three times?) I admit I haven’t had the stomach to watch each one in entirety but Musk certainly, as you compare his interviews and general behaviour, exhibits behaviour that is consistent with someone with a severe personality disorder, who MIGHT be taking meds that are absolutely contra-indicated (*cough*Ketamine*cough*). Note I am not making diagnosis, I am not qualified, but I’ve observed a lot of mental health stuff up close and personal, not least via co-supervising alongside a mental health professional a PhD student.
Whether you think I’m over-speculating or not, I really don’t think someone in his current position of power should be doubling down on “weird behaviour” or giving anyone grounds to wonder if he’s high. The one good thing you can say about Trump is that he’s teetotal. Whilst being teetotal is hardly a defence against all personality disorders, it gives you a a major step up from people who are not (let alone using other meds with no guarantee that their use is clinically justified). It’s not hard to find tragic examples of famous people whose mental health problems were fed/enabled by greedy doctors.
Because I’m familiar with autism in its many guises both from study and from family members, I have always viewed him as autistic or, as they say now, “on the spectrum.” I don’t agree with the notion of “personality disorder” which is a term I’m very skeptical of. Anyone of very, very high intelligence will usually be seen as having a “peronality disorder” because they are different. At any rate, I see no sign of that though he appears narcissistic but then, to be honest, we live in a society that encourages and supports narcissism as noted long ago by Christopher Lasch.
I think we may be in danger of arguing over nuance here but I have family members diagnosed and very demonstrably on the spectrum and have a personal diagnosis of a personality disorder (thankfully a “minor one”). I see the difference, though my professional work has taught me that we really need to start thinking holistically about all these conditions.
But, whatever Musk has, it strikes me as worrying. I’ve worked for someone who my shrink was never happy with and now he’s dead I’m not afraid to say how messed up and awful the boss was. I was one of two people in Australia who made official complaints, thus invoking their “two strikes and you’re out” rule, getting him ejected from post. (Thank you NSW!)
I’m very sensitive to such folk these days. Musk, as I say, is someone I am not qualified to diagnose…….but, in the interests of not putting this site in the firing line, I have to say I simply have “questions”.
This article seems interesting but I have zero experience in judging when someone’s on ketamine. https://www.yahoo.com/news/know-musks-ketamine-120000781.html
I’m a gay man who’s watched a variety of guys on a variety of non-prescribed drugs over the years. I can’t for sure verify/agree with the Ketamine (mis)use claims but his behaviour increasingly fits guys I’ve known to use it as their primary stimulant.
Too many supposedly clever people think “a little is good, more is brilliant”. Medicine doesn’t work that way. I’m on an anti-depressant that for a long time was thought to be akin to methamphetamine (because the effects appeared so similar at the high doses initially used in the USA). Psycho-pharmacologists now know it is definitely not metabolised to any amphetamine derivative but it can MIMIC the effects so docs need to know what they’re doing.
People like Musk don’t exactly strike me as folk who go through the long drawn-out process of dose-checking and think they can “move fast and break things”. When the thing you break might be your cognitive faculties………ouch ….. for us all.
One can only hope Musk would start taking so much ketamine so fast and so hard and so often that he self-destructs in public more totally and embarrassingly than Biden did in his debate with Trump.
That might pre-occuppy and weaken DOGE just enough for just long enough to allow some sudden actions against it, if anyone has any such actions ready-to-go.
It is no surprise that the authors at SBM hate RFK. They have spent the last 5 years promoting mainly Big Pharma, all one has to do is search “Vitamin D” or “Ivermectin” and you will get many articles all against the use of anything that is not from a “RCT” trial.
A quote from one such article “ Courts in several states have ordered hospitals to administer ivermectin to COVID patients against the medical judgment of treating physicians. Patients have no legal right to a particular treatment and health care providers should not be forced to administer this drug.” No mention that treating physician may not be patients physician. Nor was there a mention if any or all lived or died without following up on his links, some of which are paywalled.
Here https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/to-unblind-or-not-to-unblind-that-is-the-question-about-clinical-trials-of-covid-19-vaccines/
Gorski justifies the unblinding and administration of Covid vaccines to the placebo group. He makes this claim in the above article “ The initial clinical trial results have been announced and demonstrate that the vaccine is highly effective in preventing COVID-19 with no major safety concerns.” This was in April 2021 only a few months after rollout. AEFI’s were already being noticed around the world yet Gorski was dismissing them calling any doctor questioning the jabs as “Quacks”.
In 2022/23 I was putting comments to SBM and providing data right off Health Canada’s web site showing that show minimal if any vaccine efficacy in the vaccinated. Claims made to me were I did not understand “Base Rate Fallacy”. I provided the base rate in my data. Since I couldn’t be converted to their way of thinking I was banned.
Something of the sort has happened to many people including one of my good friends who is a physician.
Wow, they sent Mike Ev (cleverly disguised as Clark Kent, that is if he wore an old glory lapel pin) to have Zelenskyy walk their plank…
When you’ve lost the Supine Swamp Stooge …
Huey Short?
Short Arm Serenade. As played by the Norns Trio?
Dynasty behind US egg giant looks to cash in as profits soar amid bird flu,
“Amis the crisis, Cal-Maine Foods last month reported $356mm in gross quarterly profits from a year ago, a fourfold increase.”
Greedflation
Conceivably there is an upside to the egg price inflation — more people who are in a position to do this are considering keeping hens. Assuming this can be done safely (and not create further ways for avian ‘flu to spread into the human population), it might be a good (though admittedly small) thing for food supply resiliency.
There are locations, usually urban or semi-urban that ban the keeping of fowl and livestock on “health and safety” grounds. Our little half-horse town is one such. No keeping live chickens allowed inside the city limits.
>CHAINSAW DIPLOMACY: JAVIER MILEI’S ARGENTINA DESTRUCTION IS NIGHTMARISH MODEL FOR MUSK, DOGE
So what happens when the “honeymoon” is over and it turns out that Milei cannot deliver on his promise of an Argentinean revival? I see only two options for him in the future: exile or imprisonment. Will Musk face the same end?
I have been wondering whether EM will be able to evade blame if there is a recession attributable to direct and multiplier effects on unemployment and consumption due to the achievements of the DOGE. DJT really does not like bad economic news, and while he may be able to control the dissemination of USG statistics, widespread suffering will be very hard to conceal.
“Heck of a job, Elon!”
The oligarchs, bankstas, and other officials will continue to say what they always say (it’s been the same for centuries now) after a financial crisis fueled by greed: workers aren’t productive and/or efficient enough.
Since no one mentioned it and it wasn’t in the links – the fabulous David Johansen, singer of the seminal New York Dolls, passed away yesterday. He was the last living member of the great band.
When I was a young man and I played their debut album for a friend of mine, he said “this is the kind of music that parents don’t want us to listen to”.
https://pitchfork.com/news/david-johansen-famed-new-york-dolls-singer-dies-at-75/
Recommended song: Jet Boy
Thanks for that. RIP David.
Evacuations ordered as 175 wildfires erupt across South and North Carolina
Myrtle Beach amongst the locations.
Throwing this out here for those that still rockin’ Windows 7:
Windows 7 lives! How to keep your favorite fossil running
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/01/running_windows_7_2025/
I’ll try out the instructions listed here on a the Windows 7 VM to see what happens (probably not a very good test, but it’s as close as I can get to running Windows 7).
Thank you for this. I still have some side computers rocking Windows 7.
A question people on forums never answered consistently: If you re-install W7 like in a VM environment, is a previously used activation code invalid?
I’ve jumped through a multitude of hoops to re-activate W7 on a machine I like which required phone calls, weird code recognitions etc……and even then didn’t always work beyond some arbitrary (28 day?) period.
I’d love to re-install W7 on an airgapped PC to do a load of stuff that “better” (ha) OSes won’t do…..but after the bruising experience of wiping and reinstalling W7 I’m a bit hesitant.
In my experience, the activation codes should continue to work. But understand that most of my experience was in the corporate side where we built new images from a corporate image which must of had tens of thousands of Windows OS instances.
I quit using Windows at home a long time ago. I used the Windows VMs so I could try out various things at home and stay current on Windows OSes which I used at work.
Thanks. I’m in not toally dissimilar position to you: just want Windows to run a program or two and keep up to date.
Most things I need, I’ve worked out how to do on Linux……but W7 is still something I miss sometimes to do certain things I used to do! :)
I’ve installed both W7 and W10 on VMs reusing the old key, no issues. Both were ‘pro’ versions. Have not bothered to do so with W11 yet. (Old VMs are still working, so why?). If you think about it, the scenario is no different than reinstalling after a hard crash, or a major HW upgrade.
So a quick report:
I ran the instructions listed under “Clean Your Room”, and “Get with it, grandpa”. The first are pretty common sense clean up tools that have been around forever (and still work on Windows 10 – I’m running these now on a Windows 10 VM). Update Legacy installed and actually ran at least one update on trust certificates (another one was detected and ran by the OS which shocked me a bit – didn’t think Microsoft was still doing any on-line updates for Win 7).
What follows below that looks like pretty sound advice for going on line with Windows 7, what browsers to use, avoid old apps as detailed under “Careful with that axe, Eugene” (had to link after I saw THAT!), but my Win 7 is a VM inside an up to date Linux box so I’m just have no good reason to try any more out.
So the thing is, I don’t use these VMs enough anymore to get a sense if this does much, but running those first basic clean ups is always a good thing to do with Windows, it does seem to get crufted up over time.
Pandemics
In this week’s Clinical update with Dr. Daniel Griffin, overcoming their reluctance to make political comments, they take off the gloves in criticizing RFK, Trump et al for their undermining public health with their policies. Worth a listen.
Thanks; I’m new to that podcast. In addition to the news roundup, the Q&A at end was useful; for example there was a question about people of a certain age considering getting MMR booster.
I didn’t notice much political animus; under current conditions, just describing what is happening, in light of what one understands to be sound clinical practice, is going to sound harsh.
—
It will be interesting to see whether emerging infectious threats are dealt with more through narrative control or more through implementation of effective public health practices.
Me thinks it’s gonna be an interesting next four years.
File this under “question everything”: / ;)
CIA Central Casting: The Means Episode
Who are Casey and Calley Means? Genuine medical freedom leaders or carefully curated agents of deep state control?
https://debbielerman.substack.com/p/cia-central-casting-the-means-episode
Adding: I was really impressed with their Tucker episode, bought the book, read it (nothing new in the info as far as I could tell, but a good recap of what’s already known), then I read this article and started wondering if they were too good to be true, as the say. sigh….
Andrei Martyanov for fwiw:
“the “deal” (so to speak) between Russia and the US has been already reached and the rest is a Kabuki Theater to put a front what is happening under much stricter security”
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-school-of-thought.html#disqus_thread
p.s. RUs expecting more major disruption by EU and UKR. At least on the level of terrorism.
OMG, we’re in big trouble now, thanks to Trump!
Trudeau to bring up Trump’s threat to annex Canada in meeting with King Charles
Let me get this straight, Trudeau appeals to the King of England to assure Canadian independence? Is he inciting a redux of 1812 with England burning DC?
“…a redux of 1812 with England burning DC?”
Sign me up! While we’re at it, let the Crown retake Maine and Florida, including West Florida.
West Florida: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_West_Florida
I’m not sure about anti-54-40 and Fight.
54-40 dispute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_boundary_dispute
Oh, look…The Atlantic discovers that with diversity, a diversity in viewpoints should be “a thing”.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/bezos-restrictions-editorial-independence/681878/
“…Aside from the mind-numbing monotony, why does it matter that the Post’s opinion pages will no longer allow pieces from, say, a social-democratic or economic-nationalist point of view? One reason is that “viewpoint diversity”—the airing of various and conflicting ideas—prevents the onset of orthodoxy, creates an atmosphere of open inquiry, and thereby comes closer to the discovery of truth. This argument goes back to John Stuart Mill’s defense of free speech in On Liberty: “Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.”
So this happened – and is now all over my Facebook feed as I look over it tonight for family members – very disturbing because people are literally believing this and this mind craze completely fogs a true medical problem.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/carville-speculates-trump-syphilis-mad-222228185.html
And I mean it is all over the place – the MSNBC types among my family and friends are discussing this in huge numbers and they are doing so as if they are experts in infectious disease.
It appears my life is now going to be doing my best to correct medical misinformation. It really is quite dangerous to make claims like this and have no idea what you are even talking about. Syphilis is a real problem and it can kill people. Making up stuff about it is not a good plan.
From what I can tell, about a year ago, Trump had a bright red lesion on this index finger that was completely gone later that day and was described as being a “paper cut”. Fast forward a year and add in his performance in the Oval Office on Friday – and now we have James Carville announcing that he has dementia from syphilis. Lordy Mercy. I can understand that Carville was maybe in a very bad way trying to troll Trump like Trump does to all of them. However, if this is all they have, things are really quite pathetic for them. And I mean that.
Carville is suggesting the President had secondary syphilis last year. Well, I have seen lots of secondary syphilis – it happens when one works in an inner city hospital for decades. At no time in any way shape or form did anyone’s hands even remotely look like that single red splotch on Trump last year. The lesions are reddish-brown – not bright red – like the color of pottery and there are almost always quite a few of them. Carville seemed to be suggesting that Trump’s current mental status is syphilitic dementia. Again, no. Not even close. Syphilis is a completely different kind of dementia – it does not even closely resemble what Carville is trying to pin on Trump. I can go along with Trump having a narcissistic storm on Friday – but no way no how does he have dementia. He has a unique personality – but he is not demented.
I do not understand someone like Carville even daring to do this. Again, it was a clear and embarrassing miss for him – if you are going to troll the President, it is best done well. So he gets an “F” for the day. But how dare any national figure make light of tertiary syphilis. After all – it was this country that allowed dozens of black men to purposely languish with it for decades. Not an appropriate topic for jokes and not a good look. And just FYI, Mr Carville, the dementia from tertiary syphilis is far more common in blacks. In Caucasians it does not happen commonly at all; rather, whites are far more commonly going to have what are known as leuitic anuerysms and drop over dead from blowing their aorta right open.
I would really recommend that public figures run this stuff by an MD first – before making complete asses of themselves.
Goodness. I will look out if this hits German news.
Wouldn´t be surprised if some smartass behind this micro-campaign in fact had the Hitler analogy in mind…
It´s quite something – European media did not settle with the elections in Nov. They keep on hating Trump. It´s quite sick and disturbing. Putinophobia 2.0…
T is threatening to break a lot of rice bowls including EU rice bowls. / ;)
TDS has no bounds.
Liberals I know [one a 1970’s anti war hippy] are now “standing with Kiev”.
I told “she who must be obeyed” who is also “standing with Kiev” that when her democrats take over in ’29 her grandsons can enlist to “standing with Kiev”.
Cold shoulder and hot tongue for me!
I gave in tp the urge to play Country Joe McDonald and his fish cheer………
This one I am anti war!
When you are out of power, as is the Democrat Party at present, the old Hollywood adage is central to your public relations strategy: There is no such thing as bad publicity. Absent any positive policy prescriptions of their own, the Democrat Party is reduced to trolling as their primary political strategy.
What is “funny” here is that the Democrat Party has been dealing with a Supreme Leader over the last four years who showed signs of actual dementia. Is this thus “projection” on the part of the Democrat Party nomenklatura?
If Trump were an astute politician, he would publicize his medical records, with particular attention to the syphilis allegation.
The lesson here can be that one should never lie about something that can easily be checked up on.
Trump should call the Democrat Party out on this and lean heavily into “Creepy” Joe Biden’s medical status.
“Politics ain’t beanbag” cuts all ways.
I’ve noticed for some time that the old, original Star Trek series weekly reruns often pick up on some point of current US interest, in an indirect way.
Last night’s episode was Elaan Of Troyius (s3, ep13), about an arrogant, demanding, spoiled brat of a high princess the Enterprise must escort to another planet to be married. The parallel to recent US events were unmistakable. / ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmF8gm4lZkA
Made me chuckle.
I thought he told the Dems to play dead. Why is he suddening ranting? Carville the ranting jack-o’-lantern. / ;)
Probably as close as satire comes to surviving under Trump:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/02/trump-has-turbocharged-the-news-cycle-and-im-struggling-to-keep-up
Monthly Review
Western Marxism and Imperialism: A Dialogue
by John Bellamy Foster and Gabriel Rockhill
https://monthlyreview.org/2025/03/01/western-marxism-and-imperialism-a-dialogue/
Good time to rip your DVDs to some other storage:
Hundreds of your Warner Bros DVDs probably don’t work anymore
https://www.joblo.com/hundreds-maybe-thousands-of-your-warner-bros-dvds-dont-work-anymore/
Bernie Sanders apparently still hasn´t understood. He has turned into a caricature regarding Ukraine:
“Sen. Bernie Sanders says calls for Zelenskyy to resign are ‘horrific’: Full interview”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZt5-oQzsnI
Something tells me if Team Trump won´t fuck up, 2028 should be a win. And may be even 2032 if they are willing to read the signs of BRICS correctly. Sad considering the once great labour tradition.
At the risk of sounding trite, if the Democrats win the presidency and Congress in 2028, they will continue the policies of the Trump administration and will let the Republican minority party dictate the terms of what bills are passed and they will vote with the Republicans 98% of the time. If we get a Republican president and/or Congress, the Democrats will do nothing to oppose the Republicans and will vote in their favor 98% of the time.
The Democrats might go the way of the Whigs in the near future, but the party does not really care as they will be lining their pockets from their corporate donors as they go.