Links 3/22/2025

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214 comments

1. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 7:09 am

   Pretty sure that today’s Antidote du jour is a dog but damn, it looks like a camel.

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   1. harrybothered March 22, 2025 at 7:47 am

      Looks like a sheep to me. But, yes, there’s no link to confirm.

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      1. GF March 22, 2025 at 3:33 pm

         Speaking of sheep, has anyone seen/heard JD Vance in the past week?

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   2. Revenant March 22, 2025 at 7:58 am

      It’s a sheep, surely?

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      1. Randall Flagg March 22, 2025 at 11:14 am

         I’ll agree. And please don’t call me Shirley…

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   3. Ignacio March 22, 2025 at 8:00 am

      I bet for a sheep. A hairy one.

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      1. JMH March 22, 2025 at 9:01 am

         Sheep, but that nose looks like a face.

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   4. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 8:39 am

      Most likely a sheep – possibly merino? There are also some Alpine breeds with woolly faces like that, presumably to keep their noses nice and warm.

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   5. Paleobotanist March 22, 2025 at 8:55 am

      Llama or alpaca

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      1. harrybothered March 22, 2025 at 10:34 am

         I believe you are correct. I looked up the photo with Google lens. It’s identified as an alpaca.
         https://images.app.goo.gl/tx31cexHp2Us2jpu5

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         1. Wukchumni March 22, 2025 at 2:09 pm

            I’ve only ever seen alpacas once in the backcountry of the High Sierra…

            This older couple had 2 of them and they were on a ‘leash’ of sorts, and a black bear startled one of them, who beat a path with a 78 year old woman being dragged through the brush and understory, before vamoosing.

            There was 6 of us on a backpack trip and I was tail end charlie, and everybody else had asked what happened, and by the time I met them, she was kind of storied out and hardly said anything, I can still see her face all scratched up by the encounter.

            The next day we came across the wayward alpaca and a couple walking back to the trailhead decided to accompany it back to it’s owners and was reunited.

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   6. heh March 22, 2025 at 10:26 am

      It’s a dog in sheep’s clothing

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      1. Antagonist March 22, 2025 at 11:53 am

         My favorite Looney Tunes cartoons involved Ralph Wolf and Sam the Shepherd Dog. Sam and Ralph would clock in like it was a job, and Sam would proceed to beat the stuffing out of Ralph. There was on episode where Ralph dressed up in a sheep costume in order to steal actual sheep only to be foiled by Sam also dressed as a sheep.

         Strangely enough, I was always disappointed that Wile E Coyote (who looks almost identical to Ralph Wolf) would meticulously build some contraption to trap Road Runner yet fail spectacularly due to his own incompetence.

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         1. cousinAdam March 22, 2025 at 12:45 pm

            At nearly 70 yoa I can say without hesitation that Wile E. is still my hands- down favorite cartoon character of all time. Probably responsible for my fondness for Rube Goldberg and all things gizmo. Who could forget the “Acme Indestructo Steel Ball”? And for that matter, the ‘board game’ Mousetrap?

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            1. ambrit March 22, 2025 at 3:30 pm

               My favourite “blurb” on the ACME packages: “Hours of Fun!”
               The backgrounds, if I remember correctly, were by Philip DeGuard. His work was pure impressionism meets deconstructionism.
               See: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=philip+deguard+cartoon+artist&qpvt=phillip+deguard+cartoon+artist&form=IGRE&first=1

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2. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 7:34 am

   Re: Thorium molten source reactor (tweet)

   As even the person who wrote that tweet acknowledged further down the tread, it’s not as big a deal as it seems. Molten salt reactors have been worked on by multiple countries since the early 1960’s, without even coming close to being commercial. Thorium fuelled ones are the latest craze, but there is no particular reason to think they are much better than all the other failed designs. For a technical overview, this nuclear industry article gives a quick history, while the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists are a bit more sceptical..

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   1. jefemt March 22, 2025 at 9:03 am

      Seems there are under-reported and marginalized significant failures in Simi Valley, California in the late 1950’s early 1960s. Extraordinary anomalous cancer rates in that area.

      Bill Gates (who else?) and the State of Wyoming (who else?) are On It!

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory

      https://www.engineering.com/americas-worst-nuclear-disaster-was-in-california-who-knew/
      

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      1. Lunker Walleye March 22, 2025 at 10:17 am

         My late sister-in-law grew up in Simi Valley and was diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s in her late 50’s. I was shocked to later learn about the nuclear accidents there.

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   2. Skip Intro March 22, 2025 at 10:29 am

      Is it not the case that the main reason thorium reactors were not pursued in the 1960’s was that they didn’t produce materials that could be processed into weapons?
      If Iran had thorium reactors, would ‘the world’ still be sure they were trying to create nuclear weapons?

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      1. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 10:40 am

         Yes, because nearly all nuclear research in the 20th Century focused on military needs, thorium was largely overlooked. Plus the simple reality was that Uranium is cheap and plentiful, as is waste plutonium, so there was never a particular need to look at other sources for fuel.

         But there has been renewed interest in it – especially from India, which has vast thorium reserves. But the Indians appear not to have been able to develop useable conventional thorium reactors. The technical/economic reasons are beyond my pay grade. But the consistent failure of thorium projects has been a long standing thread in all this. Maybe thorium/molten salt will prove successful, but its just one of many nuclear unicorns being pursued worldwide.

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      2. Michael McK March 22, 2025 at 12:26 pm

         No, the americium content would fry the electronics of a reprocessing robot or in a bomb or kill any humans doing the work but a suicide team or really rich group with many robots could do it. It would need to be used asap so the bomb elements did not fry. Of course it would easily make a horrible dirty bomb.
         The Americium also means that it is functionally a lie (not a total lie but more like one a sociopath makes, true in some out of context sense but misleading) that it “burns nuclear waste”. Really it turns mid level waste into really gnarly high level waste.

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   3. Grumpy Engineer March 22, 2025 at 9:30 pm

      “It’s not as big a deal as it seems.”

      Agreed. The tweet notes that the thorium MSR reactor produced 2 MWt (megawatts thermal) at full load, which is just under 0.06% of the 3400 MWt produced by the recently commissioned Vogtle Unit 4 reactor.

      It’s not a real power station. It’s a pilot project. I doubt they even bothered to hook up a small steam turbine to produce a few hundred kW of electricity. [It would be too much claptrap for too little gain.]

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3. Terry Flynn March 22, 2025 at 7:35 am

   Err,

   Medical school advocates warn Trump order could impede aspiring doctors

   You say that like it’s a bad thing. I was teaching med stats, health economics and general public health to medical students as far back as 1998 and considered very few of them to have adequate skills to be someone I’d EVER want treating me.

   Maybe we should be encouraging engineers to retrain as physicians……they often are better at maths, thinking holisticially, thinking about triple redundancy etc. Even any lack of bedside manner is something I could put up with if they did the damn job right.

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   1. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 8:42 am

      I’m sure that IM Doc would back up your thoughts on newer students. In the end it comes down to trust as in do you trust the doctor whose advice you are seeking and can they do their job properly.

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      1. Terry Flynn March 22, 2025 at 8:53 am

         Thanks for thinking IM Doc would support me but of course in an ideal world we’d be training our doctors plus (and moving back along the educational line) PEOPLE at high school level better.

         It’s all profoundly depressing how badly things have got. Monday I have GP appt about latest long COVID flare-up. She’s the senior partner of the practice. She might actually do something……since our last interaction involved her whispering to me (to ensure no phone overheard this?) that they’d had to “let go” a junior GP for gross misconduct regarding my care. I had not even initiated the complaint – once you’ve been a whistle blower you NEVER want to go through that again, so it was actually the local hospital who made official complaint to the GMC, which dragged me in.

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   2. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 8:48 am

      Funny you say that – the husband of a good friend of mine is a former engineer turned emergency room doc. He is very much admired for his medical skills, but does lack a little something on the social side of things to put it mildly. As a mutual contact once said to me ‘I really dislike having him over for drinks, but if I was run over by a car, I’d definitely want him in the hospital’.

      The Irish education system exempts medicine from the college allocation system (based on final exams) for precisely the reason that medical schools were complaining that they were being sent academically brilliant young people with almost no social skills or real aptitude for dealing with people). So they are allowed to be more selective and to focus on older graduates (often people studying other subjects who decide to switch to medicine in their 20’s or later). My niece went into medical school straight from school at 18 and was somewhat shocked to find she was at least 2 years younger than everyone else. She is now a neurologist and used to the ‘but you’re just a girl, I want to see the doctor!’ comments when dealing with patients.

      The system has had mixed reports – Scott from the statestarcodex site trained for a while in Ireland and he wrote a few years ago that the only reason for it was that teachers liked to deal with more mature students, and it didn’t lead to better doctors. Others disagree.

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      1. Daniil Adamov March 22, 2025 at 10:38 am

         “He is very much admired for his medical skills, but does lack a little something on the social side of things to put it mildly. As a mutual contact once said to me ‘I really dislike having him over for drinks, but if I was run over by a car, I’d definitely want him in the hospital’.”

         Now I’ll wonder if the surgeon who operated on me after I broke my hip three years ago had an engineering background… Come to think of it, nearly everyone I interacted with in the traumatology-focused hospital I ended up in could be described as having above average medical skills and below average social skills by the standards of Russian medical personnel I’ve known (which is a moderately long list but I have no way of knowing how representative it is, of course). Better that way than the other way around, though. I wonder if being the city’s go-to hospital for accident victims had something to do with this. At the time I thought they were overworked and/or jaded and lashing out, but maybe there is a selection in play too.

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         1. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 10:53 am

            I can’t find a link to it, but apparently there is a very close overlap between orthopaedic surgeons and psychopathic traits. My medical friends frequently joke about how many of them are truly terrible human beings.

            I don’t know about emergency room docs, but I would imagine that it attracts the sort of mindset that likes variety and intensity. I have a distinct memory after an accident 15 years ago where I found myself unable to speak, but listening to the argument over me between the female chief surgeon and a French intern as they gave me a tracheotomy. The intern made a suggestion to be told ‘this isn’t f**king France’. I was told later by a nurse that the surgeon was in a particularly bad mood as apparently I’d disturbed her dinner party.

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            1. IM Doc March 22, 2025 at 11:17 am

               I do not know about psychopathic orthopedic surgeons, I have never run across one –

               They do however have a reputation. One of the long-standing gags in medicine – is the orthopedics motto – “You break bone, me fix bone.”

               For the most part when I was younger, the orthopedics service tended to be very masculine, very athletic, and very male. And like any jocks, not the brightest bulbs. Those days are obviously long gone.

               FYI, in reference to a comment above, we no longer in medicine even attempt to guide the young ones into something that will suit their personality and abilities. It is all about money. That is currently the big draw for things like orthopedics – in the USA they make big bucks, so it has drawn in some of the most greedy. It is possible that is why there is a psychopathic overlap that you may have read about. And you can say the same about dermatology and many other specialties. In my day, the very bright kids were ushered into primary care and internal medicine. Since those are the fields in medicine now that are relatively and severely underpaid, they are viewed as radioactive. The mountains of ridiculous paperwork do not help either. The problem left unresolved is that of all the fields in medicine, primary care requires the most brain power. To be fully functional, you have to be able to process and retain quite a bit of stuff. But the kids that are really able to do this are flocking to dermatology, where the best minds in medicine are completely wasted.

               What I am trying to say – we have a very pervese incentive structure around medical training and career choice. Since most of these kids are in debt to the hundreds of thousands ( the size of a mortgage ), they simply cannot afford to do anything but the most lucrative specialties. Who cares about what you really want to do? Or the gifts you were given?……Add on to that the intense drive in the past decade or so for equity……as but one example, so many young urologists are now young women who when they get out cannot build a practice if their life depends on it…….all the while, male OB GYNs are just profoundly rare…..the big difference between the two training tracks – nowhere in the USA are OB GYN depts being forced to correct this and accept men, but urology programs are being forced to accept women…….thereby catapulting urology into the stratosphere of income, because the actual numbers of male practicing urologists that old men want to see are so low……

               You get the point. All this talk about merit is just that, talk. It is all about money and very skewed incentives. I find it completely unsurprising that suicide is so prevalent among younger doctors. We have a real epidemic.

               You can call us that are pointing out these issues all kinds of names, and believe me they are being called names. The problem is, there is a thing called reality. And until we as a profession begin to deal with reality, these issues are just going to get worse.

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               1. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 11:43 am

                  I tried a quick google for that orthopaedic/psychopath study, but can’t find it – I think I read it in Jon Ronsons book on psychopaths, but I might have just dreamed it up. I could just find this article.

                  A brother in law teaches medicine and what you say is quite similar to the complaints I’ve heard over the years, although on this side of the pond the problem is more the general prestige of medicine pushing young people into it who don’t really have the aptitude. The economist Ha Joon Chang has written a little about how a high focus on pushing children into medicine can be a sign of a malfunctioning labour economy – it is seen as a safe/lucrative and prestige career over (for example) engineering (I’m going from memory here, I can’t recall his exact arguments).

                  Your comments on urology reminds me of a dinner conversation with my sister and brother in law one time – a friend of theirs, a family doctor, was trying to get new partners into the practice and his wife had told him bluntly that if he invited a female doctor to join the practice she would divorce him. The reason was the tendency of female docs to insist on more family friendly hours of work, which ended up pushing the older male doctors into doing all the antisocial hours. It was, apparently, a known ‘issue’, which wasn’t widely discussed.

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               2. abierno March 22, 2025 at 12:15 pm

                  Your comments are well taken. I would also indicate that many medical students begin their studies with high ideals but little financial understanding of the debt load they are incurring, the silo-ing of medicine, the imposition of rigid treatment protocols for particular diagnoses, and the iron clad grip the insurance industry holds over funding health care. To say nothing of the deleterious effect of companies such as Blackrock moving into health care. When all of this hits home, many aspiring physicians are simply walking away – to research, to well paid pharmacy companies, to hedge funds etc. Have seen occasional years in local med school wherein 50% of grads chose to utilize their skills in very well paid positions outside of health care delivery. In many cases the brightest and the best. More and more physician positions in some specialties being filled by ARNP.

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               3. Carla March 22, 2025 at 1:23 pm

                  @IMDoc: As you say, “The problem is, there is a thing called reality. And until we as a profession begin to deal with reality, these issues are just going to get worse.”

                  But I wouldn’t hang it all on the medical profession. I would amend your second sentence to say “And until we as a COUNTRY begin to deal with reality, these issues are just going to get worse.”

                  P.S. Many, many thanks for all the important thoughts and experiences you have shared here. We all are the richer for it, and not a penny changed hands to make us so.

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               4. pstuartb March 22, 2025 at 1:41 pm

                  Please allow me to vent for a moment. I don’t know many doctors, I can imagine many of them are selfless and honorable, and in the profession for the right reasons. But my recent experience with them is to the contrary. My wife of 37 years died a few months ago. She was diagnosed with colo-rectal cancer about a year ago. She was given radiation treatment for five weeks along with a relatively light round of chemotherapy, which was to be followed by a relatively strong round of IV chemotherapy for a couple months. The radiation treatment hit her hard. I watched this woman give birth to our first child without any painkillers without uttering a sound, even during an episiotomy. She was tough. But the radiation treatment reduced her to tears, for weeks. One day, after she collapsed three times in a few hours, we called 911. When she got to the hospital, her blood pressure was 70/40. The medical team decided to perform exploratory surgery. Turns out a foot long section of her colon was severely scarred from the radiation treatment–the surgeon said it was an “innocent bystander” of the radiation that had been aimed at her tumor. Just before the surgery, a team of about a dozen doctors and nurses swarmed around her in the ICU. I was absolutely aghast at their demeanor. Some were laughing, telling jokes. As a group, they were callous and indifferent to her suffering. I pulled the anesthesiologist into the hall and told him to talk to me, not her, she’d had enough bad news. The surgery had been presented as being laproscopic, just exploratory with a tiny camera to see what was up. But just before they took her to surgery, one doctor, whom I later found was not the surgeon who performed the operation, proclaimed loudly, “I may have to take all your intestines.” She visibly deflated, and I think that sentence may have taken away her will to live. She died of spetic shock a few hours after the surgery. I can’t convey how frustrated and disappointed I am with the behaviour of these medical professionals.

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                  1. Terry Flynn March 22, 2025 at 4:04 pm

                     So sorry to hear that. Unfortunately a “that’s the way it goes” mindsset is all too prevalant.

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                  2. amfortas the hippie March 22, 2025 at 4:09 pm

                     condolences, pstuartb.
                     my wife died of colon cancer sequelae, too.
                     but we had a thoroughly good experience with all of the doctors and nurses and other assorted staff(down to teh cleaning ladies) we dealt with over 3 1/2 years.
                     even the financial woman at texas oncology was just cool as hell.
                     the entire experience somewhat restored my outlook on humanity…at least for a time.

                     my bad experiences with healthcare are all on the dental side of things…i suspect that fancy periodontism is a racket.

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                  3. IM Doc March 22, 2025 at 5:10 pm

                     I am so very sorry about how you and your wife were treated. Something has gone off the rails in my profession. Many of us see it, we are trying to do something about it, but are often thwarted by the powers that be.

                     If it makes you feel better, I am asked by my old patients in the big city and my family members weekly how situations similar to yours should be handled.

                     In my opinion, the problems are legion.

                     You can tell by books like “The House of God” from the 1970s that gallows humor and all around inappropriateness have been a part of medicine for the ages. There is a lot of stress involved and this kind of release is how many if not most people deal with it. HOWEVER, in times past, as in “The House of God”, this was done in locations with doctors only, far away from patients, families, etc. As you so eloquently put it above, this kind of behavior is now happening right out in the open and often as in your case at very unfortunate times. I cringe when I hear these stories. But unfortunately, this has many times in the past 5-10 years happened right in front of me. And right in front of my patients – I look at the jerks – and demand they leave the room. Pronto. I have done this so many times, that people don’t mess with me or my patients. This gets back to the comment from a few days ago where from minute 1 of my career, I was dealt with in the most stern and serious of manners. So was everyone back then. There are those who think this is abuse or humiliation. It is not. We in this profession have the privilege of taking care of people when things are at their worst for them. A level of behavior and confidence must be projected by all and there can be no compromise. And part of this goes right back to those days of me being yelled at for the most simple of mistakes. I would never have dreamed of cutting jokes in front of a terminal and suffering patient back then and that has carried on to today.

                     You can see the immense trouble we are in as a profession with the early COVID behavior. We had nurses dancing either in empty hospitals OR WORSE right in front of supremely ill patients with bewildered faces. IN ADDITION, we had all kinds of young MDs taunting people about dying or being intubated and laughing and taunting as they belittled them about their vaccine status. Neither of these behaviors, among many more, were roundly chastised in our media. Instead, we had senior doctors, including ETHICS PROFESSORS at our most elite universities coming out and actually celebrating this behavior. So as you can see, it is not just your local doctors. This kind of behavior is being continually and loudly being applauded by the actual leaders of the profession.

                     Part of this is the lack of intense training as I described a few days ago. Part of it is the hospitalist movement. You are admitted to strange doctors, you see a different MD every day and soon no one cares. Contrast that to me, probably one of the last dinosaurs. I am an internist. I see my own people in the hospital. I have OWNERSHIP. All the employees know that. They know who to call, they know who will be answering at 3 AM. They know the hell there will be to pay if I see anything going on like you describe. We as internists have thrown away our reputations because the MBA class said the hospitalist approach was more efficient. Efficient for whom? Them of course and their bonuses. It has nothing whatsoever to do with efficiency for patients.

                     I could go on. I am so sorry when I hear stuff like this. It is wholly inappropriate – but I know it is true. I hear these stories all the time. And I witness it in the hospital myself. God help us.

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                     1. Pstuartb March 22, 2025 at 7:06 pm

                        Thank you very much for taking the time to reply. These were primarily people who worked in the ICU. I assume patients die on them constantly, and I can understand them dealing with the stress through gallows humor, as you said. But I was stunned that they would do this in front of family members and a conscious patient about to head into surgery. I’m glad doctors with good hearts like you exist.

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               5. Jason Boxman March 22, 2025 at 2:39 pm

                  It is all about money. That is currently the big draw for things like orthopedics – in the USA they make big bucks, so it has drawn in some of the most greedy. It is possible that is why there is a psychopathic overlap that you may have read about. And you can say the same about dermatology and many other specialties.

                  The worst people I’ve dealt with in medicine have been dermatologists. Almost every single one was a caulk. And it was common for practices to sell “other” stuff to beautify you, that I imagine is not covered by insurance, and thus is a pure profit center. It seems like outside of missing a cancer, you can’t really hurt anyone too badly, so it’s easy street as well it seems.

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                  1. dave March 22, 2025 at 4:27 pm

                     Dermatology is the most competitive specialty to get. It pays well, the hours are more flexible, and if you choose to be, you will never be on call. There are also almost never any emergencies.

                     As medical specialties go, it’s easy street.

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                     1. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 6:26 pm

                        Funny you should say this. I have a novel called “Doctor in the House” from which a famous British TV comedy series was made in the 70s. In one part he talks about two friendly, polite dermatologists turning up daily in their Rolls Royce and it occurred to the author that they never had to go to emergencies and kept only office hours. And that though their patients never got any worse, they never got any better thus providing lucrative employment.

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                        1. KLG March 22, 2025 at 8:19 pm

                           (In)famous local dermatologist to an Internal Medicine resident: Why do you want to do that? My PA makes more money than you will. Yes, mostly from kickbacks from the Botox injections he does on men and women of a certain age. Cash business, of course.

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            2. Terry Flynn March 22, 2025 at 11:27 am

               Orthopods were hated by my old boss, the guy who literally wrote the rheumatology textbook for the UK, Professor Paul Dieppe.

               I accompanied my mother on a follow-up to the one who did both her knee replacements – unfortunately way after I was based in Sydney and wasn’t around to help her choose a good surgeon at the outset.

               Years later I discovered, via a medic friend from my Cambridge days, who did a rotation under this orthopod, what everyone called him behind his back. I won’t put myself or NC into trouble, but suffice to say it was not a nice name.

               Being serious for a moment, to be a good orthopaedic surgeon you must be strong. VERY strong. Which is why it is one of the branches of medicine still dominated by men who went to private schools and played rugby. Unfortunately a lot of the baggage that goes with that whole way of living has also lived on right to today.

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               1. Vandemonian March 22, 2025 at 12:58 pm

                  Another hospital joke:
                  “Never expect much subtlety from a doctor who practices his trade with a hammer and chisel.”

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                  1. Terry Flynn March 22, 2025 at 1:12 pm

                     Yep LOL

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            3. Yves Smith Post authorMarch 22, 2025 at 11:41 am

               The guy who did my hips had very good interpersonal skills. Visited me every day in the hospital (on days when he was in NY so he missed one). And he modeled over 100 joints to pick the one he used on me, which he still had to modify.

               And per IM Doc and echoing Terry, one reason that orthopedic surgeons were often jocks was before the day of robot-assisted surgery, it often took strength to perform some procedures.

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               1. Terry Flynn March 22, 2025 at 11:58 am

                  I so wish I’d been in UK to advise my mum about this kind of info. IIRC I was reading NC back then so might have gained some pearls of wisdom.

                  Instead, I have a mum whose replacement knees are duds and she’ll never consent to secondary surgery. Thanks for the insight about your experience.

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               2. Chet G March 22, 2025 at 2:32 pm

                  The first orthopedic surgeon I had seen about my hips was somewhat strange but was going on an extended leave of absence. At a different medical center, the second one (who did the surgery on both my hips) had good people skills. (I had no chance of hospital visits because I was released on the same day after each surgery.)

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               3. amfortas the hippie March 22, 2025 at 4:01 pm

                  similar, here, with the bone guy who did my hip replacement(last name Hurt, no less).
                  he was definitely a jock, and about 6’5″ and exuberant.
                  knew his stuff inside and out, though.
                  he told me after my surgery that i started to wake up(due to tolerance for opiates) right as he was getting the new joint in, and he was on top of me at the time.
                  i said “huh?”.
                  and he went on with some pride that doing hip replacements is very physical work….and that his team goes to teh hospital gym together for weight training, etc…so they are able to manhandle, literally, the bones and stuff around.
                  he indicated that this aspect is sort of an open secret, and that he rarely tells patients about the brute force involved, lest they get nervous.

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                  1. Ann March 22, 2025 at 4:50 pm

                     I’ve been in the OR watching hip replacements. Yes, power tools are involved. It sounds like a wood shop in there.

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                     1. amfortas the hippie March 22, 2025 at 5:35 pm

                        yeah.
                        i saw his toolset while they were prepping me.
                        i speak doctor pretty well, so i always get along with them.
                        and more often than not get a good peek at this sort of insider thing.
                        my right hip was severed at the trochanter in a wreck, december 1989 or 90.
                        when that kind of trauma happens to bones, the tendons and muscles contract into tightly wound balls…and to get them back, brute force is necessary.
                        same contraction happens during hip replacement….and, too, those are the strongest muscles in yer body.
                        dr hurt’s disclosure was shocking, until i thought about it.
                        i admire y’all for what you do.
                        during wife’s cancer adventure, i was continually amazed at how much the nurses cared.
                        and it was the same for me after the hip thing.
                        i was like, “where do y’all keep yer capes?”
                        on my way out the door, i insisted that we stop by the boss office(a major detour,lol) so i could lay into some suit that these folks all need a raise, and pronto.

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         2. Ann March 22, 2025 at 5:00 pm

            Back in the Pleistocene when I was a practicing nurse, I had to get an order for a very sick orthopaedic patient late in the evening. The ortho surgeon was an MD and a DO and a jerk as we all knew. I couldn’t get him on his pager. I paged another doc who I figured might be with him, and he answered the page and called me. He told me the surgeon had thrown his pager into a pitcher of beer, but he got him on the phone for me and I got the order I needed for his patient. I called the attending doc on call and complained. He told me, “Yeah, we know, but ….MY GOD YOU SHOULD SEE HIM IN THE OR. He’s got magic fingers!”

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            1. AG March 22, 2025 at 10:18 pm

               >”Yeah, we know, but ….MY GOD YOU SHOULD SEE HIM IN THE OR. He’s got magic fingers!”

               Apparently this is a truism in this profession.
               As much a truism however as being a patient you never want to get your surgery done by the head physician.
               At least in Germany.

               Reply ↓
      2. AG March 22, 2025 at 10:11 pm

         Do we have knowledge on how this entire complex works in China?

         In Germany money is an incredibly important factor.
         Once they have become doctors many turn to open their own medical practice.
         There are some areas where you print money that way.
         And some areas which are less attractive like working in the country-side.
         Which is why we have huge shortage of doctors there.

         I heard so much as to China that there it used to be an honour to work in rural areas and help enhance sit. But may be that´s just old-fashioned philo-Chinese prejudice.

         Reply ↓
      3. hk March 23, 2025 at 1:25 am

         He sounds a bit like the doctor (a Swiss) who operated on my dad when he had the cancer surgery. Outstanding surgeon, but something was odd about him socially.

         Reply ↓
   3. Afro March 22, 2025 at 9:04 am

      Engineering departments are not immune to the grade inflation and plagiarism that has affected other areas of undergraduate education.

      Separately, your comment has nothing whatsoever to do with the contents of the article you’re quoting. The article says that fewer people will be able to afford medical school of the department of education.

      It doesn’t say that medical standards will increase or that more students will be brought in from engineering. Actually, we should expect the opposite. If fewer people can afford medical schools, then they will probably lower standards to admit more rich kids.

      Reply ↓
      1. MooCowsRule March 22, 2025 at 11:09 am

         Engineering departments are not immune to the grade inflation and plagiarism that has affected other areas of undergraduate education.

         From a US perspective, this is definitely true in ECE. There is pressure from administrators to “just pass them”. What helps keep this in check is accreditation agencies (despite what some think of them, they are helping prevent knowledge erosion). Student evaluations are now used for promotions and raises, so there is also indirect pressure to make grading easier.

         I think the largest driver is actually recruitment. Given the level of education required for PhDs and PE licenses in ECE, the profession is losing out to finance and medicine, which also adds pressure on grades.

         Off topic a bit but I don’t know what the US is going to do if the trend continues.

         Reply ↓
      2. Sub-Boreal March 22, 2025 at 2:06 pm

         Back in the mid-1970s at the Canadian uni where I was an undergrad there was a clear ranking of the desirability of the professional programs, and it was almost totally based on earnings expectations: dentistry was at the top, followed by medicine, then law, with engineering bringing up the rear.

         So it was common for students to start out applying for dentistry or meds, then after repeatedly failing to win a place they’d settle for law, or engineering if they were a real loser. The sibling of a high school friend was desperate to get into meds, so to boost his grade average he took a course from his father who was a humanities prof at his uni, but that still wasn’t enough. So he ended up having to settle for becoming a lawyer. I lost track of his subsequent accomplishments, but I’m sure that his practical approach to ethical matters stood him in good stead.

         Because my uni had a large med school, the students who just wanted to major in Biology had to put up with 1st & 2nd year classes that were bloated with pathologically competitive pre-med classmates. One guy that I knew transferred to a smaller uni (lacking a med school) to finish off his Biology degree just to get away from this atmosphere.

         My undergrad major was in Geography, so I missed out on this, but when I went on to graduate work in Soil Science at a larger uni in western Canada, I had to make up some background courses including basic introductory microbiology. That course was required for the pre-med stream, and it had hundreds of students. I recall that deliberate contamination of lab experiments was a problem.

         So these formative experiences were useful in that they convinced me to stay healthy, stay out of court, and not linger too long on bridges!

         Reply ↓
         1. Ann March 22, 2025 at 5:10 pm

            In my undergrad, all the medical types took full four year degrees in zoology and then applied to both the veterinary school and medical school. Vet school was much more competitive. Those that got into vet school stayed. Those that were not accepted into vet school went to med school. University of California Davis.

            Reply ↓
            1. Sub-Boreal March 22, 2025 at 6:42 pm

               That squares with the pattern in Canada. Back the ’70s there were only 2 vet schools in English Canada (Saskatchewan & Guelph), and these programs certainly had the reputation of being harder to get into than meds or dentistry.

               Reply ↓
   4. Carla March 22, 2025 at 10:23 am

      @Terry Flynn — are you sure that engineering students today display all the math skills and thorough habits of thinking that you attribute to them? I honestly don’t know, which is why I’m asking.

      Reply ↓
      1. Skippy March 22, 2025 at 10:47 am

         I can corroborate Terry’s observation through many heads of Dept in Universities I knew back then, late 90s to early 2000s. NC even had a commenter from University of Sydney in admissions that bemoaned what was going on after working for more than a decade in the job.

         The most informative one was a retired engineering head of Dept for a few decades, chat was late 90s at his home. In that he remarked how computational effects were diminishing the minds of the students e.g. cad et al. One no longer needed the mental facility to grasp what they were working on and just relied on the comp to do the work after data entry. So much so that the knowledge requirement in royal physics was watered down for the course. More certificates for the market to sort out post student loan dynamics.

         See share holder income needs …

         Reply ↓
         1. Terry Flynn March 22, 2025 at 11:31 am

            Thanks Skippy. I’d forgotten about the support back then. Though to answer the question by Carla, I’m guessing there has been atrophy in skills in engineers too. It’s just that their mindset and “way of doing things” are less easily atrophied and why I in many cases would trust a qualified engineer over a GP so often.

            Reply ↓
            1. skippy March 22, 2025 at 12:32 pm

               I have an old well worn side rule and it was a double barrel shot gun of maths that has taken many others down.

               Yet here we are …

               Reply ↓
      2. matt March 22, 2025 at 12:04 pm

         in my experience engineering classes tend to be more critical thinking while premed classes tend to be more memorization. premeds can pass off a good memory, but engineers have to understand the boundary conditions of the system and integrate things by hand during exams. i dont know if integrating things by hand necessarily makes us smarter. but i do think having to model systems and decide the approach based on the qualities of the system makes us smarter.
         as to if engineering education has atrophied, well, probably. a notorious class in my major had averages of 30 on the exams but he curved so that everyone passed, including guys who didnt do their homework. (a friend was upset about that.) generally the weed out classes at my uni are the 100 level classes, which are massive and have no mercy. once you’re in upper level courses people don’t often fail. you can fail chem 111 and drop from environmental engineering to natural resource conservation as a freshman with no loss, switching majors as an upperclassman is harder. (there are a lot of majors that seem to exist only as the easy version of another major. CS majors drop down into info science, architects drop down into building and construction technology, etc.)
         i think premeds are annoying because they are almost all obsessed with getting a perfect 4.0 gpa for med school over understanding the content. which drives them to take easy electives instead of challenging electives they might learn more from. and just generally be high strung perfectionists. and whiny. its more of a personality issue. which is petty. sorry.

         Reply ↓
         1. Terry Flynn March 22, 2025 at 12:19 pm

            Thanks for understanding the point I was making. Premeds learn a few specificity/sensitivity numbers the night before the exam. Someone like me knows (or I knew, given that my memory is not so reliable in a Long COVID world) the Bayesian equation so I could quickly establish false positives and false negatives of ANY test.

            These days I can rely on some rules of thumb that still hold true – like don’t (unless you have a prostate cancer diagnosis) get a PSA test. It’s almost certainly misleading. FFS the guy who invented the damn thing told us this in a lecture in Bristol 20+ years ago.

            I like that I did academic research all about the PROCESSES of medicine etc. As you say, so many medical doctors just want to regurgitate numbers. I admire disciplines that teach processes so their skills are more likely to hold true.

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         2. Stephanie March 22, 2025 at 12:52 pm

            A relative who did some graduate research work in his institution’s school of medicine in the late 90’s complained constantly about the pre-med students he tutored and their favorite question: “Is this going to be on the test?” If it wasn’t, they didn’t want to know it.

            Reply ↓
            1. Terry Flynn March 22, 2025 at 1:07 pm

               One of my best friends is a GP. He really should have been a specialist but had to resort to General Practice because hospital medicine was not conducive to dialysis, which he might need, when at the time his transplanted kidney (from his mum) was showing its age. (He was one of, if not, the first kidney transplant recipient in the UK in the early 1980s).

               As it turned out his kidney was and is still fine! But he knows and has told me that most GPs are morons. They “passed the test” but never learnt the processes.

               Reply ↓
            2. Terry Flynn March 22, 2025 at 1:33 pm

               This reminds me of the behaviour of my former mentor. Forgive the long story.

               The mentor (JL) at conferences showed behaviour strange to me so I called him on it. I asked “presenter x was clearly wrong but you said nothing. Presenter Y seemed wrong but you piped up. Presenter Z was clearly good and you were pretty critical. Why?”

               His answer sticks with me to this day. “Presenter x was an economist wedded to a paradigm that would NEVER be compatible with real life so why waste time saying anything? Presenter Y was wrong but showed ability to understand WHY they were wrong, and understood the key paradigm. Thus I wanted to give some signposts as to how to make their work right. Presenter Z knew they were in the right area but was making up stuff to connect dots. Needed some examples of reality but should be encouraged to carry on since they DO know how humans actually make decisions.”

               Thus how I learnt that the WORST thing from my boss was silence. He thought you were beyond hope. If he spoke, it was because you’d effed up but were redeemeable or you’d over-extended and needed reigning in.

               Reply ↓
               1. hk March 23, 2025 at 1:38 am

                  Wow, I wish there were/are more people like your mentor…

                  Reply ↓
      3. Rick March 22, 2025 at 3:07 pm

         I got a graduate degree in ECE just before the GFC 15 years ago. The ability of many if not most of the students was abysmal. One of the best profs I had was forced out of the classroom for being too difficult. He mentioned the weekly quiz he gave on a short (2-3 page) paper on an engineering topic as being a source of anger among the class. I was puzzled – the quiz was simple, the papers relevant and easy to read. He replied that the problem was most of the class wouldn’t bother to read the paper. Many of the classes required rudimentary coding skills which were severely lacking.

         Well, I had a good time, it was a nice break from the corporate world, even if I did graduate into the recession.

         Reply ↓
      4. chris March 22, 2025 at 3:52 pm

         As a practicing engineer, with advanced degrees, the current crop of people I work with and train are a mixed bag. I think the kids coming out of school are eager to learn and do a lot of hands on stuff. The 30 or so I’ve mentored over the years really enjoy connecting the dots between theory and practice. But, they tend to become frustrated quickly without support. Many go on to various management roles and leave the technical side behind quickly. It pays much better to be a project manager.

         I am not a genius or God’s gift to anything but I’ve done well. The more experienced engineers I work with tend to be overwhelmed. The pace of change and the expectations keep ratcheting tighter and tighter. Many try to find a position where they can retire at their desks and coast into retirement. They feel like there are few rewards for learning new things and it’s hard to leave jobs for new opportunities after a certain point in your career. Even if you have a lot of certifications. Being your own boss sounds fun until you have to do all the business stuff you didn’t like which made you go into engineering in the first place.

         On the other side of that, if you’re curious, if you have support at your career, and your personal situation permits it, there’s never been a more interesting time to be an engineer. So many new tools are available to solve interesting problems. There are lots of good problems to work on. There are lots of good opportunities for consultants. Software licensing options are starting to make incredibly powerful software much more accessible. Public facilities like Ohio State offer super computing processing options for pennies to dollars per hour.

         I’ve never regretted becoming an engineer. I’ve never regretted keeping my license. I love having to learn new things. I like retraining myself every few years. I’m sure I won’t be able to keep up sometime in the future. Pretty sure I’ll be able to make it another 20 years though. That would be the end of fun career at that point. I look forward to sharing what I’ve learned along the way to that point.

         My recommendation to those who want to be engineers is find an employee owned firm solving interesting problems and work hard. It’s probably better if those problems are more real world oriented than imaginary. I don’t think being only good at coding is a promising path. But if you can code amd also tune the sensors/robots/systems the code is controlling? I think you’ll be OK.

         Reply ↓
4. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 7:44 am

   Shanghai panda tweet (Chinese HSR)

   I hate to be ‘that guy’, but this is a classic example of using statistics in a misleading way. Yes, China has far more HSR than any other country, but then again, China is very very big and has lots of people so it has lots more of nearly everything. Plus, HSR is just one side of the rail equation.

   When you break down HSR statistics by other metrics, such as length per person, you get a very different picture. China has 3.6km per 100,000 people (impressive), but a lot less than Spain (8.42), France (5.73), Germany (4.02) or Sweden (16). Whichever metric you choose, you will find very different (and often very surprising) headline figures.

   Its not length that matters, its what you do with it….

   Reply ↓
   1. no one March 22, 2025 at 12:04 pm

      Why did you not pick countries of comparable size to China (like Canada, USA, Brazil, Russia, India, Australia)?

      Reply ↓
      1. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 12:13 pm

         Because I linked to a source that does.

         Reply ↓
         1. no one March 22, 2025 at 12:22 pm

            I hate to be ‘that guy’, but it seemed that you were using statistics in a misleading way, instead of showing us the proper way.

            Reply ↓
            1. Revenant March 22, 2025 at 7:27 pm

               PK gave a full worked counterexample to demonstrate that the rank order of countries depends exquisitely on the metric. That was his point and he made it.

               What exactly is your point? Is there something about countries of “similar” area to China (Russia is a log2 magnitude bigger so it is bizarre to include…) that you wish to illustrate? (I’m genuinely interested to hear what is because people usually have something good to say in comments)

               If so, why not tell us rather than invest your energy in setting PK an assignment and then attempting to patronise him when he declines to take the bait?Otherwise, it feels like “username checks out”, as they say on Reddit.

               Reply ↓
5. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 7:48 am

   Geography Willian Schreyer. Important.

   I think Schreyer is missing the point with this. If the US is stupid enough to start a war with Iran, it won’t be led by the USN – the USN is, and always was, conceived as a blue water navy, operations in the Gulf were never a core part of their doctrine. Their presence in the Gulf at presence is essentially flag waving, it’s not (in itself) part of a military operation.

   Any war against Iran would be primarily focused on strikes by the USAF, using stand off missiles and B-2s, based in the nearest ‘friendly’ country (whether this includes KSA of course is a huge question). Deep Dive Defence on YT just did a very intestine video on strike options, although it only touches on the issue of the most highly defended Iranian sites. If Israel/US were to choose more vulnerable targets, like oil and gas facilities or airfields, they would likely be far more successful.

   Reply ↓
   1. Daniil Adamov March 22, 2025 at 10:20 am

      Wouldn’t that just be an intensification of Israel’s recurring air campaign against Iran? If the US joined in and hit more targets, they would be able to do a lot of damage to Iran’s infrastructure (and population). I have trouble seeing what else they can achieve, though. I really doubt more attacks would cause a regime change. An overland invasion seems like an extremely tall order even from a logistics perspective, never mind what would happen when Iran fights back. In which case I’m not sure what America would gain from all this trouble. And while the carriers may be kept out of harm’s way, an intensifed war with Iran is bound to disrupt the oil trade, so there would be a lot of trouble.

      Reply ↓
      1. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 10:37 am

         There are so many unknowns here. As you suggest, it’s not even clear if the neocons intend an actual invasion, or what US war planners are gamed out. It may be that the US aim is similar to Israels – to cripple Iran to ensure it’s not a threat and then set off internal conflict with no need for boots on the ground, which is probably impossible anyway.

         In a strategically logical world, Israel will pull back from any threats to Iran – the core strategic conflict over control over the Levant is now between Israel and Turkey – Iran has been comprehensively defeated now that Assad is gone. It no longer has the capacity to support Hezbollah and has no possibility of access to the Mediterranean (roads, pipelines, etc) without Israeli or Turkish assent. Of course ‘logic’ and ‘US/Israel’ aren’t words that always go together. Iran has always been more focussed on conflicts on its historic borders than with Israel/US as both are ‘far’ enemies as opposed to those it shares a border with or are within easy range (i.e. Iraq, KSA, Gulf States, Pakistan and the ‘Stans/Russia’ to its north. So there is no incentive for Iran to keep the pot boiling between itself and Israel/US. It has too much other things on its plate – not least its terrible economy.

         The big question for me is what the deal between KSA and Iran consisted of, assuming it had any substance. At a guess, it involves Iran stepping back from too much support for the Houthi’s, while KSA suggests it won’t give the US rights to launch attacks from its territory. But really, it could be that, it could be anything else. But whatever it is they decided together, it fundamentally changes the form of any conflict in the overall region.

         So much in that region now depends on what KSA wants to do – and what price they will extract from the US or anyone else for agreeing to go one way or another. MBS is proving far more shrewd than everyone thought.

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         1. Polar Socialist March 22, 2025 at 11:32 am

            I really doubt the last chapter has been written on Iranian influence in Syria.

            Last I checked, there were something like 400 tribes/clans in Syria, and it’s is ruled by the consent, if not most of them, at least by the biggest or most influential of them. Given that initially Mr. al-Sharaa/al-Julani did seek the approval of the tribal councils, but lately has been relying more and more on his cadres of “foreign fighters” for his massacres, it’s not given his rule will last long.

            It’s my understanding that Iranian operations in Syria have always depended more on the networks of clans, and they just paid off the Assad regime not to bother them or the clans and also provided some intel on the general opinion in country to the totally alienated government.

            In this sense Iran’s very quick withdrawal from Syria could be interpreted as more of an agreement with their network to suspend collaboration until the political situation in the country clears up. And perhaps return as quickly as their “friends” deem they need some foreign backing against Turkiyet funded Tajiks killing people for self-appointed “president”.

            Reply ↓
            1. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 12:12 pm

               It’s entirely possible – I wonder if anyone really knows what is going on among all those groups in Syria – but I would be a little sceptical. Iran never had many ethnic, linguistic or religious connections to Syria – its ’emotional’ connection was always with the Shiites of Lebanon. The Assad connection was always pragmatic and political. The Alawites, like so many of those minority religious groups in the region (such as the Druze, Maronites, etc), have always been very careful about maintaining ambiguity in who they support – it rarely turns out well if they are anything but entirely pragmatic.

               Right now, the only external powers who really matter in Syria are Turkey and Israel, so every group will in the short term at least pick sides from one or the other.

               But of course in the long term, anything can change, especially if Israel starts to collapse internally, which is always a possibility (as is Turkey being forced for one reason or another to reverse its ambitions). But for now, I think Iran has been firmly cut out the Levant. I suspect that even the Gulf Arabs, with their money and connections with sunni groups have more influence with many of the tribes. And they have their own agenda.

               Strategic thinking in the Middle East is always on a different temporal scale than everywhere else. They’ve all been playing exactly the same game for millennia. The Europeans and US and Russia and Chinese are just occasional storm clouds that wander over those skies, irrelevant in the long term.

               Reply ↓
   2. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 10:33 am

      Of course in such an existential fight for their lives, the Iranians might strike every gas and oil facility in the middle east causing economic chaos throughout the world for years if not decades to come. Their own version of the Samson option. And of course they would attack every US base in the region and especially Bahrain’s US Navy base. And it is unknown if the Russians might send even more radars and ant-air to make Iran too tough a nut to crack as setting the middle east on fire serves nobody’s interests. Well, perhaps Israels. But I am sure that they will attack Iran. Just as soon as they beat Yemen first. So, how is that going?

      Reply ↓
      1. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 11:04 am

         This is true of course, but realistically, Iran’s infrastructure network is far more vulnerable to attack. Its oil and gas industry is rickety and dependent on a relatively small number of key nodes, some of which are in vulnerable areas along the coast. Its electricity network is almost entirely dependent on a handful of very old large thermal plants.

         I’m sure it also hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Iranians that Russia hasn’t been too successful at defending its own refineries from drone attack.

         So yes, Irans primary defence is immediate and highly destructive retaliation. It’s not a conflict that anyone will come out of well. The thing that worries me is that some in the Trump administration would actually welcome a very big oil spike as it would give domestic production a big boost (many of his people are big supporters of going large on fracking to ensure the US will always be a net exporter). High oil prices will hit the US hard, but it would hit Europe and China harder, and maybe thats what’s important to the oil neocons. Only Russia (and Venezuela) would be truly happy.

         Reply ↓
6. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 7:56 am

   “Operation Unthinkable: Churchill’s top secret plan to invade Russia”

   Everything old is new again. A UK government is scheming to start a war against Russia where the majority of fighting will be done by American troops. In 1945 those GIs had mostly one thought – to go home, be back in Civvy Street and put the war behind them. The idea of invading Russia with a looming Russian winter is not one that they would tolerate or even accept and there may have been a revolt. I have heard about this plan and I believe that serious thought was given to recruiting the defeated Wehrmacht to be re-armed and go after Stalin again alongside all those Allied troops. But when you get down to it, this was just Churchill coming up with grandiose plans because someone was foolish enough to let him have access to map. At Yalta it was obvious that he was second fiddle as it was the Russians and Americans that were doing the heavy lifting now. And nobody would have taken this plan seriously and certainly not Eisenhower. Even the British had enough of him and threw him out of government while WW2 was still going. He was too much into war, war rather than jaw, jaw.

   Reply ↓
   1. Carolinian March 22, 2025 at 9:14 am

      Lots of Churchill in the movies over the past decade or two–in H’wood and UK–and while these films often dwell on his prickly personality they can’t quite bring themselves to criticize his rabid racism and imperialist obsessions. But then Hollywood wokesters have also been making pilgrimages to Nazi adjacent Ukraine, as though Z has become the new Churchill on the Dnieper. Like Lord Nelson they wear an eye patch over the things they don’t want to see. Or perhaps, true to form, they simply don’t want reality to get in the way of a good story.

      Reply ↓
   2. Bsn March 22, 2025 at 10:48 am

      Yes, even older is new again. Remember that we, the collective west, invaded Russia in 1918 – 20. Brief story here.
      Needless to say, it didn’t go well.

      Reply ↓
      1. Eclair March 22, 2025 at 1:17 pm

         Interesting article, Bsn. The Brits especially seem to get bent all out of shape when some formerly-monarchical country overthrows its royal (or imperial) rulers and opts for rule by the people (whatever that might entail.) France, Russia, Iran.
         But there must be more to it than an aversion to Revolution. Russia, which has the temerity to occupy lands stuffed with resources, has always successfully resisted colonization/exploitiation by the Western Europeans and maybe this accounts for much of the Russophobia.

         Reply ↓
         1. Terry Flynn March 22, 2025 at 1:44 pm

            It is because most of us are clinical morons.

            Reply ↓
         2. Ann March 22, 2025 at 6:15 pm

            It’s because of this:

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halford_Mackinder

            since transferred to the U.S.:

            https://voicefromrussia.ch/angelsachsische-geopolitische-strategie-unverandert-seit-120-jahren/

            (you will have to have your browser translate this, I can’t get it to link in translation)

            Reply ↓
         3. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 6:41 pm

            The British royal family was closely connected to the Russian royal family like they were with the German royal family – all through Queen Victoria. But when things were falling apart in Russia, the British royal family abandoned the Russian royal family and let them get the chop. So much for family ties.

            Reply ↓
7. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 7:59 am

   Solving the Drone Dilemma: Can Russia Succeed? Simplicius. Important but paywalled. He usually offers a big chunk for free.

   I can’t access the full article, but I think to focus on drones is to fail to see the wood for the trees. The tactical and strategic importance or otherwise of drones can’t be seen in direct casualty breakdowns. The importance of drones lies in their position within vastly improved intelligence systems. A suicide drone, unilike a shell, can send vital intelligence up to the moments before it strikes, which in itself is only important if that information is part of an effective kill chain. It is their ubiquity, along with a huge overall increase in the quality and effectiveness of other forms of long range intel that have dramatically changed the battlefield. The drones themselves are just the most visible element of the change.

   Reply ↓
   1. skippy March 23, 2025 at 2:39 am

      I agree with his summation, especially the part about Russian doctrine using long range hyper-sonic ballistics e.g. priority targets in conflicts moving forward will be EW/Intel gear.

      I personally don’t think Russia is using it full potential at the moment. Why give potential future combatants that information.

      I also have seen talks about Russians prioritizing drone operators and hunt them down ruthlessly. Taking out these skilled* operators are not easily replaced and have a huge impact on the local battlefield.

      Reply ↓
8. Wukchumni March 22, 2025 at 8:11 am

   Why don’t we remember being a baby? New study provides clues ScienceDaily
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   My earliest memory is being roused awake in 1965 when I was 3, in order to watch the first US spacewalk, my parents thought it was that important…

   1965 Gemini 4 NASA

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwQPaoYZgp0

   Reply ↓
   1. Lieaibolmmai March 22, 2025 at 8:28 am

      My earliest memory, three years old, waking up on an operation table when they were removing my undecended testicle. Talk about traumatic childhood events… I can still see their eyes. Apparently they did not have a good grip on how much anesthesia to give children in the late 60’s.

      Reply ↓
   2. Pat March 22, 2025 at 12:05 pm

      My earliest memories are largely flashes, and although I have been told it isn’t common I know what is a memory and what is family story. For instance I remember climbing onto a counter to get the orange candy aka baby aspirin, but I know the aftermath from the family stories. My first clear long memory is from kindergarten/daycare when I was four. I am waiting on a window seat excitedly watching for Daddy, instead of a nap he is going to pick me up early and take me to the movies. It is rainy and the window is damp and chilly. I feel lost and forgotten and my tears mix with the condensation on the window as I fall asleep waiting. End of my memory, family story is that dad, who was in college, crashed after he finished his last final, funnily enough I have never been told how my parents put it together that I was still at the school.
      I also know memory does twist in odd ways. For years I remembered a bit from one of those movies my father would take me to during that period. I could never figure out what movie it was from. Who were those people singing so intensely in circles of colored light. I was in high school when I next saw West Side Story and found the visual, but it wasn’t quite right. my memory had a different soundtrack than “Tonight”. The kicker came a few months later when I heard the music. My supposition is that I saw the coming attraction for West Side Story before seeing an entirely different film as somehow I had Natalie Wood and crew singing the theme to Exodus. Still can “remember” it even though I know it isn’t “real”

      Reply ↓
      1. Daniil Adamov March 22, 2025 at 12:20 pm

         Re: memory twisting. Harold Nicolson, “Some People”, 1927:

         “Until recently, the first thing that I remembered was that railway accident in Southern Russia. Stamped upon my mind was the picture of our train brought to a standstill in the open steppe: a snow-bound horizon glimmering like a large white plate under the stars: the engine in front upwardly belching sparks: the carriage at the back, which was the cause of our stoppage, crackling into little scarlet flames; and myself a supine bundle being lifted down from some great height to many hands stretched up towards me – their fingers flickering, as in a Reinhardt play, to the light and shadow of the conflagration. That picture, so vivid to me and so sincere, became a cherished mental possession: it was labelled “The first thing I remember.”

         I was disappointed therefore when, on my telling my mother how curiously vivid was this my recollection, I was informed that I had got it all wrong. It was true that on returning from Persia we had travelled across the Russian steppes: it was true that the last carriage had caught fire and that the train had stopped; but the incident had happened in the early afternoon of a warm spring day, and I, who was but eighteen months at the time, had slept on unmoved, sucking subconsciously at an india-rubber comforter, indifferent to adenoids and accidents. This adventure has thus been taken from me; it has become but the first of my illusions.”

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   3. Lee March 22, 2025 at 12:11 pm

      I have three vivid memories from when I was about 3 years old. When later in life I told my parents of one of them, they provided context: I was being allowed to wander around a large room full of people sitting around tables. My parents were operating an illicit poker den for the Dragna family in the L.A. area.

      Reply ↓
   4. Lefty Godot March 22, 2025 at 1:37 pm

      I think we do remember random brief scenes from infancy, but so much of our memory is narrative construction, which capability we don’t have at that age, that we will never remember when or in what context that random image happened if does happen to pop back into our adult mind on occasion. I believe around 23 months old and after we start to form more coherent memories, but most everything before that is lost in a kind of neural memory “heap” (in computer science sense) with no tag for retrieving it. I certainly remember sitting with my great-aunt, who died before I turned 3, and there are a few other memories like that which I can date from around that age. There is also the fact that young kids just don’t think and experience the world like adults, and it’s difficult with an adult brain trying to recapture that very early mindset where everything is new and slightly eerie and has a logic of a wholly different order. To some extent I think the process of our socialization involves forgetting how to think and experience things like that.

      Reply ↓
      1. Wukchumni March 22, 2025 at 1:54 pm

         Narrative is important, when I was 4 and we were in Wawona going to Yosemite NP, my dad crashed the Ford station wagon we were in and it was moderate damage, but what everybody remembered was what came out of the mouths of babes…

         ‘Are we poor now?’

         …was my response~

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         1. Ann March 22, 2025 at 6:22 pm

            People who are autistic can remember very early experiences much more often and more clearly than those people who are not autistic.

            https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/aspergers-diary/201312/early-memory-and-autism

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            1. amfortas the hippie March 22, 2025 at 6:33 pm

               well thats innerestin,lol.
               shrink lady says no, but ive long suspected that im on the more functional end of the spectrum.
               she says i just dont like being in crowds and otherwise noisy environments…at least outside of say a cafe kitchen where im the jefe.
               and this is just furthering my statement above, that we think we know what Mind is, and how it works…but we really dont.
               i tend towards the david bohm/krishnamurti way of thinking…Mind is a field, and the brain is an antenna….see: Dean Radin, et alia, for lots of crazy stuff along those lines

               Reply ↓
            2. Revenant March 22, 2025 at 7:53 pm

               That’s fascinating. Only four or five memories before the age of seven for Normies?!!!?

               I can remember *books* of memories earlier than that. Every year of my primary school (age 4-7) is as clear as an adult year: Sports Day, the monkey bars on the climbing frame, the teachers, their cars, learning to tie my shoelaces, the cap room, the safety glass door, the Christmas tree, the library shelf, the different classrooms, the songs we sang, the flatulent Boxer dog that ate our packed lunches under the table, the carol service (singing Mary’s Boy Child by Boney M), the school play of Noah’s Ark where I had a papier máché rabbit mask, and on and on.

               I remember kindergarten before that but it is more fragmented.
               – the cat dying;
               – taming the stray with bacon from my breakfast;
               – the television catching fire;
               – the Winter of Discontent (I was three) and the bins not being collected and the blackouts;
               – my pushing my arm out of the buggy in the supermarket into the row of glass jars, to watch them fall off the other end of the shelf! :-)

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               1. Lefty Godot March 22, 2025 at 10:27 pm

                  No kidding, I have far more coherent memories than that from the first few years of school. But it’s difficult to put much stock in anything that comes out of Psychology Today (which I keep misremembering as being called Popular Psychology). These pop science magazines, like many pop science websites, exaggerate the import of scientific studies which show less definite and less significant results than what the headlines that summarize or cite them try to claim. The behavioral sciences are probably the worst offenders on this score, although medical research is close behind. Scientific research is important for our future ability to deal with the many severe challenges we face, but I think at this point in time Musa al-Gharbi is correct when he says, “An overwhelming majority of published scientific findings are wrong, trivial, and/or non-impactful.” There are way too many perverse incentives in 21st century “advanced” societies.

                  Reply ↓
      2. amfortas the hippie March 22, 2025 at 6:16 pm

         aye, Lefty…i remember lots of things from early toddlerhood(back to at least 2 and a half).
         but they’re disconnected flashes, and impossible to put into context.
         but hot shrink lady over yonder hill has indicated that i have something she calls “exceptional memory”…i remember the smell of a cow that my grandad shot and burned(anthrax) when i was 3 yo…and by remember, i mean i can smell it if i put my mind to it.
         same with that pinkish worming medicine the ancient doctor gave me at 3-ish…i can taste it.
         same with the day my dad suddenly realised that i had taught myself to read(3yo)..me muttering in the back seat, and he groks that im reading street signs and billboards.
         and first beer(7 yo) at a family reunion(PBR out of a keg)…i told late wife about that, as i hadnt had it since. next day she shows up with a sixer of it, and i am transported to that day.
         shrink lady says she might want to do her phd on this facet of me,lol.
         which is somewhat worrying…
         fmri machines arent really portable, as far as i know…and im only comfortable out here in the wilderness.
         and im allergic to clinical environs.

         a mind is a terrible thing, sometimes.
         and we only think that we understand how it all works.

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   5. Jeff W March 22, 2025 at 3:00 pm

      [SAM] WELLER: What is your earliest childhood memory?

      [RAY] BRADBURY: I remember the day I was born. I have what might be called almost total recall back to my birth. This is a thing I have debated with psychologists and with friends over the years. They say, “Its impossible.” Yet I remember. My response to people who say, “It’s impossible” is: “Were you there? Because I was.” I was a ten-month baby, you see. Most people are in the womb for nine months, but when you stay in the womb for ten months you develop your eyesight and your hearing. So when I was born, I remembered it.

      —Listen to the Echoes:The Ray Bradbury Interviews by Ray Bradbury and Sam Weller

      Ray Bradbury, the US author, is perhaps best known for Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. The birth recollection, according to Bradbury’s biographer, Sam Weller, was one of Bradbury’s favorite stories to tell.

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   6. matt March 22, 2025 at 3:45 pm

      for me, the only decent way to figuring out what memories were “early” was when my parents moved into our current house. we moved in 2007, so if it was at the old house, i must have been 3 years old or younger.
      i have several memories from that house. climbing atop my sister’s bunk bed to steal her stuff. my brother getting a bath in this baby bath contraption. catching the ding dong cart with my cousins. being in the driveway outside that house surrounded by relatives. my older sister was wearing a blue dress and i was trying to steal her stuffed cat. (me stealing her stuffed cat was a saga in itself. she did not appreciate me touching her possessions.)

      Reply ↓
9. vao March 22, 2025 at 8:25 am

   I think that the correct link for Long Range Acoustic Device (LRDA) is this one.

   Reply ↓
10. SocalJimObjects March 22, 2025 at 8:26 am

    World’s longest high speed railway lines. China is 19 times the size of Spain, so you take China’s 40474 km of railway lines and divide that by 19, and you get 2130 km, so a lot shorter than Spain’s 3661 km i.e. Spain is a really well connected country. Japan is even smaller than Spain, and yet the total length of her high speed railway lines is almost the same as Spain’s. Another wumao post?

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    1. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 8:38 am

       Australia has its own problems with organizing high-speed rail-

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8av3knflbQo (3:53 mins)

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    2. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 8:41 am

       Yes, Shanghai Panda is a wumao (as are a few others regularly featured here). Although more recently its less the yuan than the residents visa that is the pay-off I think.

       Reply ↓
       1. amfortas the hippie March 22, 2025 at 6:27 pm

          word of the day:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

          thanks!

          Reply ↓
    3. Louis Fyne March 22, 2025 at 9:19 am

       to nitpick….half of China is practically uninhabited (a bit like the US great plains) so one should only count the eastern coast and central provinces. and apply some discount factor for the size of tibet and the far west.

       Reply ↓
       1. Ignacio March 22, 2025 at 10:34 am

          In its scale, China it is not that different (proportional thinking) from Spain with very low density rural regions and high density coastal regions plus a couple of cities (in Spain) apart from the coasts and the two main river basins (Ebro and Guadalquivir). Besides, Spain is highly problematic in terms of mountain ranges. Not high, mind you, but you cannot connect two major cities in Spain without having to pass through a couple of Sierras at least. The Tibet by itself is a different thing but who wants to ride it in a high speed train to nowhere?

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          1. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 10:46 am

             Yes, in some respects Spain can be seen as a small China in geographical terms – the same combination of relatively dense coastal and river valley areas, with very large unpopulated arid regions.

             In engineering terms, Spains HSR’s are very impressive, the topography is unfavourable in contrast to (generally) flat China. Spain has been very successful worldwide in selling railway tech, even if it flies under the radar while everyone focuses on China/Japan/France. Spain benefited from second mover advantage in Europe (avoiding the French mistakes) and has a very good tradition of strategic infrastructural planning.

             Although one reason why Spain needed HSR was the confusing mix of gauges adopted in regions which made interlined long distance railway journeys very difficult. So it went for a ‘blank slate’ approach, which is proving very expensive, but ultimately I think worthwhile, even if (as usual), its all focused on Madrid.

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             1. Revenant March 22, 2025 at 8:08 pm

                At least Madrid is in the centre so it is not a bad focus, unlike say Dublin. ;-)

                Also, the high speed network includes a lot of inter-regional links along north, east and south coasts but these are only being connected up now. You can travel from Barcelona down the Mediterranean coast to Alicante (eventually Almeria) in the east and from Cadiz to Granada (eventually Almeria) in the south. The Cantabrian Sea Corridor from Galicia to Pyrenean France is still merely proposed in the north.

                It is an amazing achievement and puts France in the shade.

                Portugal is Spain’s Tibet. :-)

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             2. hk March 23, 2025 at 1:49 am

                I don’t know if China can be considered “flat” South of Yangzi and west of Nanjing. It’s a lot of rocky mountains crisscrossed by rivers, historically very difficult to transit by land, thus “horse in the North, boat in the South,” plus accounting for all the language diversity. It certainly doesn’t strike me as good HSR terrain, but something that has to be crossed if you want to connect coastal cities in the South to the North…

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    4. upstater March 22, 2025 at 9:38 am

       China has plenty of lightly populated regions so dividing the network by 19 doesn’t make sense. The wikipedia article on the track network puts it in proper perspective.

       The relevant question is whether the HSR networks go where people need to travel. Mostly yes for all of the systems, but there are always some projects constructed for political reasons.

       Finland doesn’t belong on the list; there are some segments of track capable of 220 kmh, but it isn’t a dedicated network. Using that criteria Acela would qualify as HSR which it is not.

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       1. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 10:57 am

          Yes, you always have to dig deep into the details to make any sort of comparison. And thats even before you look at things like investment payback. The Japanese system is amazing, but even going back to the 1970’s it built up enormous debts, and huge sections will never be justified economically, even using the most generous possible measures. At one stage, the main criteria for deciding which line would be built was (allegedly) where the PM had his constituency. Allegedly, this also applies to large parts of the HSR in China, but it’s very difficult to find transparent data.

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          1. hk March 23, 2025 at 1:55 am

             I’d suspect that, on the whole, Chinese HSR network is the modern day Grand Canal. It’ll pay off in the long run, especially in dividends beyond mere money, but the Grand Canal was one of the ventures that bankrupted the Sui and caused its overthrow…

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    5. Wukchumni March 22, 2025 at 9:45 am

       We’re just hoping to get HSR from Chinatown in LA to Chinatown in SF…

       Reply ↓
       1. Socal Rhino March 22, 2025 at 11:09 am

          Hopefully before the Universe’s heat death.

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       2. Louis Fyne March 22, 2025 at 12:56 pm

          to nitpick….both LA and San Fran would be better served if all that HSR money was put into local light rail, commuter rail, commuter buses, local buses. But HSR is sexier so it hoovers up money irrespective of utilitarianism.

          YMMV.

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    6. Daniil Adamov March 22, 2025 at 10:25 am

       “Spain is a really well connected country.”

       I’ve just been reading about how poorly-connected it had been for much of the early modern period, with Madrid in particular having very troubled communications with the rest of the country, causing no end of economic difficulties. If that’s true, perhaps it drove home the importance of transportation and made the Spanish particularly keen to avoid such problems in the future.

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       1. Ignacio March 22, 2025 at 10:39 am

          If you compare Spain with, let’s say, Britain, in geographical terms, communications are far easier to develop within the island. Or in France, Germany. That has been historically a difficulty to deal with. The Romans had merit in their times! We can say something similar of Southern Italy.

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          1. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 11:09 am

             It’s not just roads – Spain also lacks the deep navigable river/lake/canal systems which has been the key to economic growth in many countries including the US (Missisipi/Great Lakes), China (Yellow River), Russia, Northern Europe (Rhine), etc. I guess its economic saving grace has always been its double layer of coastal ports. Madrid really is a geographical anomaly – a major capital city in an illogical location, and not particularly well connected with its own country. But sometimes countries are forged not through geographical advantages, but in struggling to overcome them. You could argue that it was the Canal du Midi (linking the Atlantic to the Mediterranean) and the canals linking the Rhone to Seine that truly ‘made’ France.

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             1. Revenant March 22, 2025 at 8:12 pm

                And the canal linking the Loire to Seine and Rhone.

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             2. hk March 23, 2025 at 1:59 am

                And the canal building was accelerated when the Revolution took place–Torqueville made the general argument, but one of my, eh, people (my UG advisor’s grad student from way back, if you need the particulars) demonstrated the changing pattern comprehensively.

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    7. Red Snapper March 22, 2025 at 12:14 pm

       It’s all Putin’s propaganda. Trump said that it’s all fake news, and that America has the greatest railroads in the world, with Spain being the best in BRICS.

       Reply ↓
11. Lieaibolmmai March 22, 2025 at 8:37 am

    Wow, that Lutnik video…he is the personification of “Hurt people hurt people”. I see his mother died when he was in High School, and his dad when he was in college. That dude needs therapy and some empathy.

    But I can imagine the economic fallout from people not getting Social Security checks would cause a sharp economic downturn, let alone the riots…I am on SS disability and I know what I would do.

    Reply ↓
    1. Michael Fiorillo March 22, 2025 at 11:03 am

       Let him get his therapy and empathy, but in the meantime he should be kept away from the rest of us.

       Reply ↓
12. Steve H. March 22, 2025 at 8:41 am

    > And yes, it does affect younger people by reducing inheritances and/or leading some to spend more to support aging parents.

    Wolfgang Munchau > The brains behind this transition is Bessent. He is the guy who did the critical analytic work that allowed George Soros to carry out his infamous assault on the pound in 1992 — one of the most devastating acts of financial speculation of all time.

    John Michael Greer > Collapse now, and avoid the rush.

    Janet and I are using a working hypothesis that the intent is to crash the dollar. The privilège exorbitant has been collapsing via foamed runways and asset seizure for awhile now. The mechanisms of the Quiet Coup were subjected to a hostile takeover. And the guy who did it may think that his Enemies in the State tried to publicly blow his brains out. Not a stable situation.

    The Jenga Tower swaying, our rivals holding enough US bonds to knock out a tooth or two, the geopolitical breaking wave but a rivulet on the climate change tsunami, why not bring it down on the heads of your enemies? A Mercantilist approach demands a weak dollar after all. MAGA!

    But you and I know that’s BS. Yves > A point this humble blog and many other have raised is that restoring manufacturing prowess, even if that can be achieved, will take one to two decades.

    But if your goal is to ‘harvest the wealth of the lower classes’, if you now have enough power to squish out some class layers (‘at lower σ we expect to find more classes’), you can use uncertainty as leverage, and ‘capital can be still quietly and nicely withdrawn.’ Can Federal workers get a mortgage given their job uncertainty?

    Who was it that said,
    If you know next week’s headlines, you can make a lot of money.

    Reply ↓
    1. Wukchumni March 22, 2025 at 8:55 am

       I’ll throw some read meat your way…

       Similar to them being the only cohesive voting bloc, the evangs have always been really fruity in regards to anything in the bible and the barbarous relic is mentioned 417 times-so a good many of them have physical positioning, and if the almighty buck gets debauched-they become 1-eyed-financial kings in a nation full of blindsided paupers.

       Reply ↓
       1. Michael Fiorillo March 22, 2025 at 11:10 am

          And as I’m sure you know Wuk, they’re supah big on silver, with private mints churning out all sorts of Christian and Trump- related products, along with their hoarding of “constitutional” pre-1965 silver coins.

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13. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 9:00 am

    “Venezuela Rejects Canada’s Sanctions, Accuses Ottawa of Acting as a “51st U.S. State”

    Justin Trudeau rejects accusations by Venezuela that it has lost its sovereignty and is acting as a 51st State. He says that his Canada is a free, independent democracy guided by a wise Parliament – and he has Trump’s permission to say so.

    Reply ↓
    1. Afro March 22, 2025 at 9:10 am

       Mark Carney is the prime minister now, and realistically Canada has been a US vassal since 1945 or so.

       Reply ↓
       1. Anonymous March 22, 2025 at 2:04 pm

          And France would like to have the Liberty Statue returned to where it really belongs!

          Reply ↓
14. Wukchumni March 22, 2025 at 9:09 am

    Maybe you could refer madness to Big Gov, but really it seems more akin to malice. People have been smoking reefer for a long time now, and suddenly young adults are having heart attacks on account of long green?

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 9:15 am

       Not a smoker myself but is the weed on sale now the same as was sold on the sly decades previously?

       Reply ↓
       1. Wukchumni March 22, 2025 at 9:30 am

          It has higher THC levels certainly, and really the big difference if you will, was back in the stoned age your connection likely had only 1 type of strain to offer you, whereas now it’s kind of similar to Baskin & Robbins, but not just 31 flavors of ice cream, think 310 types.

          A local guy I knew was a chancy gardener, and I remember him driving down to Venice Beach to sell his wares for $3k a pound (he related at the time that it was worth $6k a pound dlvd in Texas-the doubling of price in accordance with the risk of being in a prison for a long stretch in the loan star state*) and then the price started drifting ever downwards to the point now where a pound retails for $800, and he stopped growing when it hit $1500 a pound, the electricity cost on an indoor grow and everything else conspired against him making a profit.

          There are oodles of others similar to him, forced out of biz.

          *i’ve never seen any state with more pawn shops than Texas

          Reply ↓
       2. Neutrino March 22, 2025 at 10:07 am

          Whatever it is, the smell often precedes the inhalers to announce arrivals.
          I’m told that is skunk weed. :(
          With a marketing genius behind that name, what could go wrong?
          Then again, get off my lawn get out of my airspace. Bah, humbug.

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          1. Lunker Walleye March 22, 2025 at 10:36 am

             >I’m told that is skunk weed. :(
             https://ifunny.co/picture/either-someone-s-smoking-2-pot-or-it-s-a-2QTFOVt0B

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          2. Socal Rhino March 22, 2025 at 11:12 am

             Gummies don’t smell and are legal in almost every state.

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15. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 9:32 am

    “Elon Musk visits Pentagon after bombshell reports on access to China war plans”

    I don’t know about you guys but seeing Musk strut down the halls of the Pentagon with this manic look on his face was just weird. If he was not there for a special briefing on US plans for China, what was he doing there? Was he just a tourist? If so, he could have signed up for one of the official tours-

    https://www.defense.gov/Pentagon-Tours/

    Looks like in Trump America, that billionaires can go wherever they want and get special briefings so that they know where to put their next investments so that a ‘government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires, shall not perish from their natural place.’

    Reply ↓
    1. AG March 22, 2025 at 9:43 am

       >”Looks like in Trump America, that billionaires can go wherever they want ”
       Larry Wilkerson said that in his time it was almost impossible to get any key for the Treasury. Not to speak of being handed over all keys.

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    2. judy2shoes March 22, 2025 at 9:43 am

       “Looks like in Trump America, that billionaires can go wherever they want and get special briefings so that they know where to put their next investments so that a ‘government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires, shall not perish from their natural place.”

       I suspect that this is another version of Trump saying the quiet part out loud, only visual instead of verbal.

       Reply ↓
    3. Wukchumni March 22, 2025 at 9:44 am

       It’s Ayn’s world, we’re just living the dream…

       See if Wesley Mouch doesn’t sound vaguely familiar…

       The incompetent and treacherous lobbyist whom Hank Rearden reluctantly employs in Washington, who rises to prominence and authority throughout the novel through trading favours and disloyalty. In return for betraying Hank by helping broker the Equalization of Opportunity Bill (which, by restricting the number of businesses each person may own to one, forces Hank to divest most of his companies), he is given a senior position at the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. Later in the novel he becomes its Top Co-ordinator, a position that eventually becomes Economic Dictator of the country. Mouch’s mantra, whenever a problem arises from his prior policy, is to say, “I can’t help it. I need wider powers.(Wiki)

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    4. Mikel March 22, 2025 at 10:08 am

       If Starlink is going to be involved, how do they avoid not telling Musk about certain things?

       Reply ↓
       1. Mikel March 22, 2025 at 10:17 am

          Or rather, how would they avoid telling Musk…

          Reply ↓
       2. urdsama March 22, 2025 at 10:51 am

          If the US military starts using Starlink, you can guarantee US military abilities will be further degraded.

          Russia must be laughing its ass off.

          Reply ↓
          1. Mikel March 22, 2025 at 11:05 am

             With all the privatization going on, why wouldn’t satellites be next or on the menu?

             Reply ↓
16. AG March 22, 2025 at 9:36 am

    re: German election vote recount for BSW

    First comprehensive interview with MP Andrej Hunko (BSW).
    For those who wanna understand important.

    Of course this was originally published not even in Germany but in a fringe Swiss online publication:
    https://zgif.ch/2025/03/19/mandatsrelevante-unregelmaessigkeiten-bei-der-bundestagswahl/

    Engl. translation of the German blog version:
    Federal election: “In light of the various irregularities, we demand a complete recount”
    https://archive.is/BFLkC

    “(…)
    How can something like this happen?

    Andrej Hunko: I’m initially assuming unintentional errors during transmission. The BSW was ranked 16th on the electoral lists in North Rhine-Westphalia. The order of the parties on the lists is determined by the results of the last election. The party that received the most votes there is ranked first. The BSW, as a new party, obviously hadn’t yet received any votes and was therefore ranked 16th. The names of the new parties are listed alphabetically, which is why “Alliance Germany” was ahead of BSW in 15th place. Transmission errors can naturally occur. This occurred systematically in several dozen cases in various federal states and different constituencies. All of the BSW’s votes were usually attributed entirely to “Alliance Germany,” but sometimes to other parties.

    The incident in Aachen was blatant. In the EU elections, 50 votes went to the BSW in the same polling station. Of course, there are cases that aren’t so obvious. One can represent this statistically and thus filter out the extreme cases. But it’s also possible that only individual votes were incorrectly counted during the count. “Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht” and “Alliance Germany” are very similar in terms of their names. If there are only one or two votes, it’s not noticeable from the outside – unlike if there were ten or more votes. Let’s take an example: We had 38 votes, and ten were wrongly attributed to the Alliance for Germany; in that case, they wouldn’t have been statistically detected.

    How high is the expected loss in votes?

    Andrej Hunko: In Germany, there are 299 constituencies and approximately 90,000 voting districts – most of which coincide with polling stations. If this case in Aachen alone, the first one we noticed, were representative, so to speak, with 48 uncounted votes, we would have received enough votes to enter the Bundestag. There are 299 constituencies. If you extrapolate the number from 48, that’s 14,352 votes that BSW lost. We were initially missing about 13,400 votes. The limit would be 45 votes per constituency, then we would have exceeded the required 5 percent.
    There are also transfer errors from the local level to the state and federal levels. It is very complicated to filter these out. These transfer errors have also been partially corrected. It is striking that they also predominantly occurred at the expense of the Federal Office for Social Affairs and Health.
    But there’s another irregularity that goes unnoticed without a recount: The BSW predominantly contested the second vote, which determines the composition of the Bundestag. There are reports that ballots containing only second votes were declared invalid. In Berlin, two additional BSW votes suddenly appeared during a recount in 12 polling stations, even though no statistical irregularities were apparent from the outside. If we extrapolate that to the whole of Germany, we would have 15,000 more votes, or more than 5 percent.
    (…)”

    Reply ↓
    1. amfortas the hippie March 22, 2025 at 7:49 pm

       so….like with the “Democratic Party(tm)” over here, theyre not really all that interested in “democracy”, save as a talking point/bloody shirt.
       typical, these days, i suppose.
       are the german centrists/neolibs/neocons also suing to keep third parties off the ballot?
       to protect the hallowed “democracy”?

       Reply ↓
       1. AG March 22, 2025 at 9:44 pm

          >”suing to keep third parties off the ballot?”

          As NC has reported there were repeated attempts in recent years to get AfD banned – which has now around 20% in parliament – for affiliations with Nazis. Those attempts however failed. And most legal experts knew this would happen and said so openly. So it was additionally seen as a way to just scare voters away from AfD. It did not work.

          This however helped to keep BSW small.

          BSW is a genuinely left party. But they are toning down progressive positions on immigration and trans issues. Former offered media to equal BSW with AfD, which is anti-immigration (just like the now ruling CDU and most of SPD) and scare voters away.

          In this case it worked to an extent. BSW one year ago when it was brand new had 15% in polls. Then the huge media campaign started to draw people away which worked. And which is why we have the above situation.

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       2. AG March 22, 2025 at 9:57 pm

          p.s. the immigration issue was pivotal in splitting left voters. If you had one real left working-class party and the establishment would not do anything against that you could have a potential of 40-50%. Which is a nightmare for German elites. Has been since 1918 actually.

          BSW with 15-20%. The LEFT PARTY with 10-15%. AfD with 15-20% but I guess AfD only could form due to the demise of genuine left options and the destruction of civil society due to neoliberal policies. Most of those I would categorize as working-class. This used to be SPD territory until it went all Tony-Blair 25 years ago.

          Reply ↓
17. MicaT March 22, 2025 at 9:44 am

    Oil price/lithium.
    A quick review of the actual statistics shows the world produced 107,000 tons in 2021 not 105 tons. In 2024 it’s 240,000 tons.
    Also the price of lithium is almost the same in 2024/25 as in 2021, about $10 per kg.

    Reply ↓
18. Es s Ce Tera March 22, 2025 at 9:45 am

    re: Trump escalates threats against those who destroy Tesla vehicles Washington Post (Kevin W)

    Why do I get the feeling Trump’s team wants to fan the flames via Streisand effect. Vandalism against Tesla cars has been going on since they came out, just watch Wham Bam Teslacam on YouTube for an endless stream of vids of people who, remarkably, have absolutely no idea they’re being videorecorded from multiple angles by the very cars they’re vandalizing or road raging against.

    Reply ↓
19. Camacho March 22, 2025 at 9:53 am

    The official Twitter account of the Lockheed Martin says that the Pentagon formally denies having the ability to remotely disable F-35 fighter jets. I guess that settles it. Buy now, and get one for the price of two!

    Reply ↓
    1. Wukchumni March 22, 2025 at 9:59 am

       I heard that sales of the F-150 Lightning have been remote, and similar to the F-35, a money sink…

       Ford lost an estimated $36,000 on each of the 36,000 F-150 Lightning EVs it delivered to dealers in the third quarter, the company said in October, after announcing earlier it would slow the ramp-up of money-losing EVs, shifting investment to Ford’s commercial vehicle unit and citing plans to quadruple sales of gas-electric hybrids

       Reply ↓
    2. Skip Intro March 22, 2025 at 10:33 am

       Never believe anything until the Pentagon denies it!
       But in this case, I think it is true, the kill switch is not remote controlled. In fact it is not even controlled.

       Reply ↓
    3. John Wright March 22, 2025 at 1:37 pm

       People have been suspicious of unexpected behavior in the various disabling features in US military hardware for years.

       Someone related to me that Francis Gary Powers did not activate the “destroy the U2 plane feature” when his plane was spiraling down in Russia in 1960 because he did not trust that there was the assured time delay after activation to allow him to eject.

       He suspected that there was no time delay as the designers wanted both the plane and the pilot to be destroyed.

       Reply ↓
    4. cfraenkel March 22, 2025 at 1:39 pm

       Phft…. A sign of how shallow our sound bite press and discourse has become. DOD saying there’s no “kill switch” is just a PR exercise, and that it’s being accepted at face value just shows that our society is only functioning at the PR level. Anyone paying attention knows that the F-35 is a less than stellar airframe, and it’s operational effectiveness is thanks to it’s integration with the rest of DOD’s intel network (A), and (B) is able to be kept flightworthy only through Lockheed’s central maintenance database system. Sure the Pentagon can say there’s nothing they can do to prevent an F-35 from taking off and landing, but that doesn’t mean that the F-35 can fly a mission against opposition without DOD’s cooperation.

       Reply ↓
       1. Stephanie March 22, 2025 at 4:13 pm

          is able to be kept flightworthy only through Lockheed’s central maintenance database system

          So, buying one is national defense on a subscription plan?

          Reply ↓
    5. ACPAL March 22, 2025 at 3:55 pm

       I have no idea whether the F-35 has a kill switch or not. During the Falklands war the British ship Sheffield (IIRC) was sunk by a French Exocet missile. Following the uproar over that I read that the French would install a “kill switch” in all foreign-sales Exocets. All the world’s militaries noticed.

       I have my doubts that any country involved in foreign-sales of weapons would sell them without some sort of protective feature. If I were in charge of a military I certainly would not want my own equipment aimed at me. Of course, they may plan on those foreign-sales F-35s falling out of the sky on their own. Think of the resale business.

       Reply ↓
       1. Revenant March 22, 2025 at 8:18 pm

          IIRC, the Exocets were export version and had disablement codes and Mrs T asked the French for them and was refused.

          Reply ↓
20. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 9:57 am

    “Trump to announce new Air Force contract for next-gen fighter jet”

    Boeing is going to design this new super-duper fighter. Boeing. The same corporation that has forgotten how to build safe aircraft. The same one that Trump cannot get his Air Force One delivered from. The one that was thrown out of a major NASA contact through incompetence. The same one that built a ship to take two astronauts to the ISS only to leave them stranded there for seven months as it was too risky to bring them back on the Boeing Starliner. That Boeing. Of course it is only a coincidence that it will be named the F-47 and Trump right now is the 47th President. But once it is built, will they still give technical support and updates to all those F-35s that they sold around the world? Or will all those countries be forced into an “upgrade”?

    Reply ↓
    1. ilsm March 22, 2025 at 12:38 pm

       The jet engine is center to a successful fighter. When reliability is poor you need two engines like on the F-15, F18 and F 22. But that increases all kind of costs!

       When engine is not reliable you have the F-16 (which has optional GE or Prat and Whitney high tech experiments) and F-35.

       I hope the F-47 has two engines! US seems to be severely challenged to make a reliable jet engine that fits in a cramped fighter aircraft.

       Big part of not mission capable is attributed to engine failures, and the cost to keep spare engines is very high. If the aircraft does not crash engine repairing/rebuild is big business, cost plus good return.

       One last observation: Surprised is that only Boeing noted! in the case of F-22 and F-35 a second offeror built a prototype to reduce risk….

       Did not seem to work with F-35, to be clear the differentiator was the Lockheed F-35 settled more smoothly in hover mode…….

       I was around when F-4 was a new aircraft!

       Reply ↓
       1. AG March 22, 2025 at 12:58 pm

          Was there a point in time when engines started to be built less reliable?
          And if so what were the most likely reasons?
          p.s. This is only Hollywood but I am thinking of the Howard Hughes biopic “THE AVIATOR” by Martin Scorsese (2004). It ends with Hughes making clear in the public Senate hearing that during WWII billions had been spent on planes that had never flown or never even built. Simply because that´s how it was done and may be it has always been part and parcel of the business. Or has there been still a qualitative shift to the worse despite this historical truism.

          Reply ↓
       2. PlutoniumKun March 22, 2025 at 2:10 pm

          The program seems to include two parallel engine proposals, likely one from GE, the other from P&W. They are currently designated the XA100 and XA101. Details are sparse, but it seems that they are being built to similar specs and to be the same broad dimensions as the P&W F-135 (the engine for the F35 and F22). The idea seems to be that these engines can also be used for future upgrades of the F-35 and F-22. It looks like they’ve learned some lessons from past programs that it’s dangerous to rely too much on one engine design (the Su-57 has suffered from this too).

          From the little information available, it seems the new engines are intended to have a little more power but around 30% higher efficiency, as well as being stealthier in IR. They are really pushing the envelope for what seems possible.

          Much as I hate the waste of money on this stuff, the aviation nerd in me is fascinated. The new F-47 appears to be a very radical design (similar to some previous Boeing X-projects) that is intended to be stealthy to a much wider range of frequencies than existing stealth aircraft. It also looks like it’s intended to have a very long range. It’s very obvious looking at the overall spec who they intend it to be used against.

          Reply ↓
       3. MicaT March 22, 2025 at 2:31 pm

          For fighter jets engine reliability is only 1 aspect for having 2 engines.
          Getting shot at by guns and missiles it’s really nice to have a spare.
          Plus the usual stuff like birds and debris.
          Can’t bring an airplane home on 1 dead engine if you only have 1 engine

          Reply ↓
       4. ACPAL March 22, 2025 at 7:13 pm

          As I recall the early design criteria for the F-16 was to make them cheap enough that we could buy many. At the time the USSR had so many planes that even if ours were better we would lose an air war against them. Hence, the F-16, a light-weight, low-cost fighter that could be bought by the thousands. Since then they’ve added so much stuff that it’s now neither.

          An engine problem on a single-engine plane gives you a hit on reliability (and mission capable rate). Two engines gives you twice the hit on reliability. A lot of the bean counting though has to do with when, during your mission, that the engine gives you trouble. Now, if your plane is too heavy for one engine then you have to have two or more. The B-52 typically came back from a mission with one or two engines out but with eight that was not a major problem.

          To counter the F-16’s possible loss due to an in-flight engine failure it has a hydrazine-powered Emergency Power Unit to provide electrical and hydraulics for a few minutes so the plane can be landed safely (in most non-combat cases).

          Putting my tin-hat on, if you don’t really expect to take your planes into war then you can move your priorities to making companies (and billionairs) rich rather than buying planes that are actually combat capable. Nah, nobody would do that.

          Reply ↓
21. timo maas March 22, 2025 at 10:03 am

    Trump to announce new Air Force contract for next-gen fighter jet Seeking Alpha. resilc: “The F-35 doesn’t work so why another, especially when drones are the current and future……….”

    Why? Because Chinese have recently shown theirs. Trump has to show that America is great(er).

    Reply ↓
    1. cfraenkel March 22, 2025 at 1:45 pm

       why another, especially when drones are the current and future………? because drones can’t become Generals.

       Reply ↓
22. flora March 22, 2025 at 10:05 am

    Jimmy Dore with Sharyl Attkisson, utube, ~17+ minutes.

    “I WAS THERE When Big Pharma Corrupted The Media!” – Sharyl Attkisson

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvaD864Qmdw

    Reply ↓
    1. flora March 22, 2025 at 10:52 am

       One more from Dore and Attkisson. utube, ~7+ minutes.

       Medical Journal Editors ADMIT They Do Pro Pharma Propaganda! w/ Sharyl Attkisson

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiDZtXVnr2w

       Reply ↓
23. stefan March 22, 2025 at 10:11 am

    At this point, I think it is fair to say that America is being raped by stupidity.

    Reply ↓
    1. chris March 22, 2025 at 4:04 pm

       Based on what? The chaos being caused by intra elite warfare hasn’t touched most of America yet. Whether team Trump or Team Blue is suppressing your wage, you’ve still been broke for decades. The inflationary pressures are new but most in the middle to lower earnings sectors of our country haven’t had it good for years now. Covid shutdowns were a weird bright spot that Biden quickly snuffed out. Families are still relying on food banks in record numbers. There hasn’t been much change for people unless you were a fed employee. Which means the pain is concentrated in a few areas of the country but overall it’s not a big deal.

       It’s strange how the loss of our constitution is causing so little to go wrong for most people right now. You’d probably never know what was going on unless you listened to the breathless whirring of the business press or the sad antics of people on CNN.

       Reply ↓
       1. JBird4049 March 22, 2025 at 8:16 pm

          >>>It’s strange how the loss of our constitution is causing so little to go wrong for most people right now. You’d probably never know what was going on unless you listened to the breathless whirring of the business press or the sad antics of people on CNN.

          The denial of constitutional rights, corruption, and incompetence including the denial of even funded government services is was done retail as was the chaos. It was the poor who were affected, not the middle class, and certainly not the wealthy. Now, it is the poor, working class, most of the middle, and increasingly the lower ranks of the wealthy, but still not the elites of the oligarchs, the billionaires.

          Reply ↓
24. timbers March 22, 2025 at 10:23 am

    Texas’s GOP Governor Can Arbitrarily Deny Democrats a Seat in Congress Until Next Year Intercept

    Maybe Chuck Shumer should introduce a Sense of the Senate resolution in supporting that Republican Texas Governor to allow Democrats to show support.

    Reply ↓
25. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 10:24 am

    “International call to suspend genetically modified wheat”

    A lot of countries are banning that HB4 transgenic wheat but I see that Oz approved it back in ’22-

    https://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=19463

    Hopefully we will ban it as well. Gotta say in reading it I was reminded of John Michael Greer’s “Retrotopia” where a future America has broken up into several statelets. And what triggered the Civil war that did this was a new strain of genetically modified commercial corn – that caused miscarriages. The government denied it, the corporation denied it, the experts denied it and anybody that said otherwise was sued into the ground until a “celebrity CEO” went to the corn belt to talk sense into the idiots that had stopped planting it. They tore him apart and the civil war was on. Here is a version of that book for those interested-

    https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/john-michael-greer-retrotopia

    Reply ↓
26. Mikel March 22, 2025 at 10:41 am

    Solving the Drone Dilemma: Can Russia Succeed? – Simplicius

    And where will all the excess garbage be taken from this global drone production?

    Reply ↓
27. Mikel March 22, 2025 at 10:58 am

    The EU Elite Also Wants Access to Private Savings – Finn Andressen

    The Great Global Looting. The GFC rips off its mask to reveal the GGL.

    Reply ↓
28. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 11:02 am

    “The EU Elite Also Wants Access to Private Savings”

    I know of bank bail-ins where the government will seize your bank accounts to save some bank but this one? They actually want to seize people’s bank accounts so that it can go into Ursula’s slush fund? Will they at lest leave an IOU in your bank account? What if they take all this money and they proceed to lose much of it. Will your bank account have a large chunk taken from it to cover those loses. But if people knew that the government was going to take their bank accounts, then you had better believe that there will be one almighty bank run that could crash the economy. But if they shut down banks and ATMs to stop that, will they be prepared for the riots? Or will they make a law saying how you are only legally allowed to have a certain amount of cash at home – and no more less it be seized. Man, the kleptocrats never sleep.

    Reply ↓
    1. Mikel March 22, 2025 at 11:23 am

       They need collateral for all the loans. What loan doesn’t need collateral?
       They don’t have the same number of or influence over colonies (the resources of the last few hundred years).
       Not clear how differently this would work for Eurozone vs all EU countries.
       Alexander M. over at The Duran is convinced that one of Starmer’s main objectives is to bring the UK back into the EU. Confiscation of savings accounts should go over really well with the Brits. (snark off).

       Reply ↓
       1. Yves Smith Post authorMarch 22, 2025 at 11:35 am

          Please do not Make Shit Up and misinform readers.

          All sorts of loans are not collateralized. Credit card debt. Student loans. Corporate bonds, which are effectively loans. Commercial paper. The aforementioned deposits.

          Reply ↓
          1. Mikel March 22, 2025 at 11:41 am

             Good to know. They don’t have to do this.

             Reply ↓
          2. bertl March 23, 2025 at 2:46 am

             I always thought Lucifer had your soul as collateral while you have outstanding credit card or student debt.

             Reply ↓
29. bobert March 22, 2025 at 11:22 am

    re: self-reporting immigrants

    I was in a store last week and there was a radio playing over the speakers. Suddenly a booming PSA came on. A woman’s voice demanded that illegal immigrants turn themselves in immediately. If they did so, they MAY be able to stay. If not, they WOULD be deported.
    It was chilling to my ears, I can’t imagine the impact on an immigrant’s.

    On a related note, a friend who works as a health inspector was approached by an immigrant worker while on the job. The man begged him to give the boss a good report. If they were to be fired, it would be impossible to find new work given the current situation. I don’t know if the man was illegal or not.

    Reply ↓
30. LawnDart March 22, 2025 at 11:35 am

    Re; Octopus jumps shark and goes for a ride on its back

    It’s a metaphor.

    Reply ↓
    1. Revenant March 22, 2025 at 8:22 pm

       Lol, very dry.
       Comment of the day!

       Reply ↓
31. Mikel March 22, 2025 at 11:58 am

    EU capital flight tops $300 billion – European Council president – RT.

    Getting a bit of whiplash. There were also claims about money flowing into European defense companies.
    But then I have to consider that I read that in financial press news that wants people to buy, buy, buy.

    Reply ↓
32. antidlc March 22, 2025 at 12:20 pm

    https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/beyond-long-covid-1.7485888
    Beyond long COVID — how reinfections could be causing silent long-term organ damage
    Even if you think you’re done with COVID, COVID might not be done with you

    COVID may no longer be considered an official global emergency, but mounting scientific evidence suggests every COVID infection a person gets increases their risk of developing long-term health issues.

    “There is no such thing as a COVID infection without consequence,” says long COVID researcher, David Putrino, from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

    The long-term effects can show up as long COVID, with symptoms such as shortness of breath, digestive problems, fast or irregular heartbeats, extreme fatigue and brain fog, or as silently accumulating cellular or organ damage.

    Nothing new to NC readers.

    Reply ↓
    1. Mikel March 22, 2025 at 12:42 pm

       Nailing down the origin of this virus REALLY matters.

       Reply ↓
       1. converger March 22, 2025 at 1:47 pm

          Why?

          Reply ↓
          1. Terry Flynn March 22, 2025 at 1:55 pm

             Errr maybe because some of us are aware of being on a much faster track to death?

             The fact you ask that suggests trolling. I’ve refrained from calling out another example today so I’m not really in the mood for people who post comments that are BLATANTLY against the NC policy of understanding COVID etc.

             Yves clearly reluctantly allowed commenting again and I know why. Stuff like this.

             Reply ↓
          2. jobs March 22, 2025 at 11:37 pm

             If it was man-made, wouldn’t you want man to stop making things like it? So we REALLY want to know its origin.

             But I personally see far more “(long) COVID still bad” than “COVID origin unknown bad” messaging. Odd that.

             Reply ↓
    2. Jason Boxman March 22, 2025 at 2:56 pm

       Immune disregulation:

       Well, if it has the ability to suppress the immune system, how does that affect our ability to fight off other external pathogens that we might be susceptible to?

       It’s something that we worry about a lot. In 2023, we published a paper in Nature where we showed that individuals with long COVID were much more likely than a cohort of healthy controls to express signs of what we call “T-cell exhaustion.” Meaning that their T cells, which are parts of the immune system that are typically used to fight off infections, are starting to present as exhausted — that there has been a persistent stimulation of these T cells for long enough that their responses over time are starting to weaken.

       As a result, in this study we saw immune dysregulation, we saw hormonal dysregulation, we saw reactivation of herpes viruses that were previously thought to be latent.

       And as we have made leaps and bounds in our ability to understand the role of these persistent pathogens, these things that we used to think, “Everybody’s got Epstein-Barr virus, but don’t worry, it sort of just lays dormant in your body and it doesn’t cause any trouble.”

       What we’re learning is that, well, it very much can cause trouble. If it’s mixed with another pathogen and that pathogen causes the reactivation, then people can get very, very sick.

       For the longest time in the field of immunology, there was the sort of adage that your immune system needs to be tested every now and again to stay strong. That’s an old-fashioned idea.

       The more new-fashioned and evidence-based idea is that, although your immune system can take on [a COVID] infection, you want to avoid testing it as much as possible because your body is sustaining damage with each infection that it survives.

       (bold in original)

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33. Aurelien March 22, 2025 at 12:52 pm

    Martyanov on the Telegraph article.

    I think our Andrei is losing it. He strikes me as someone who was never exactly modest, is the product of a very narrow and technocratic education system, but now seems to feel entitled to hold forth about anything, including countries he knows little if anything about, and shows no signs of ever having visited. The UK spends a lot of money on ensuring the preservation of a national capability for using the missiles if necessary, and some information, at least, about this is in the public domain. (Only a fraction of its nuclear capability is deployed at sea in peacetime, as is the case with other nuclear powers.)

    I don’t think he understands nuclear strategy (why would he? It’s not his area.) I’ve no idea what he means by the reference to SSKs (diesel powered submarines) in the Bay of Biscay: the UK has had none since the Upholder Class were disposed of in the 1990s, and the French haven’t had any for a very long time. He could have checked that. There is likewise no connection with Early Warning and ABM systems. UK SSBNs, like those of Russia and every other P5 nation, are second-strike systems, intended to provide a capability, in principle invulnerable, to strike back after a nuclear attack, and thus (it is hoped) to deter such an attack in the first place. (Whether you find that convincing or not doesn’t matter: it is the rationale for all nations with SSBNs). Thus, warning systems are irrelevant, and all nations with SSBNs have VLF communication systems that would come into operation after an attack.

    The idea of ABM defence has been unrealistic since the Star Wars days, and, whilst the S-500 is believed to have some potential capability against ICBMs, there’s no more reason to believe that the Russians will develop an invulnerable shield than that will keep them safe against BM attack than that the US can. (The A-235 system is a one-shot system deployed around Moscow to soak up the first wave of any surprise attack.) Oh, and Russian strategic systems are in practice targeted against population centres, just as everybody else’s are.
    Et cetera.

    Reply ↓
    1. AG March 22, 2025 at 1:44 pm

       What I am trying to understand is why the S-500/550s are supposed to work so much better against nuclear missiles. I understand if Tomahakws are shot down as they obviously were in Syria. But those are very slow by comparison. And I also buy EW downing ATACMs. But Minutmen fly 28.000 km/h according to Wiki.
       Additionally as I understand at least Western ABM systems are guided by radar which limits their range extremely.

       Ted Postol who´s name is by now verboten with Martyanov (I understand if he is annoyed that Postol is argueing on outdated knowlege and might not admit it) – but if it were so obvious to build serious ABMs why not do it? At least as a design. Postol always argued the best system would be space-based. Something he worked out with Garwin. I doubt they would have suggested a concept that makes no sense.

       p.s. This was Martyanov´s 2024 reference for S-500 shooting down MIRV in a test:

       “The S-500 Prometheus air defense system was tested with the R-29RMU.2 missile”

       https://archive.is/biZ93

       On the other hand only one side has solved the hypersonic issue. And Martyanov´s books at least made an excellent impression at least so far on particular subjects I was researching.

       Reply ↓
       1. Polar Socialist March 22, 2025 at 4:16 pm

          S-500 can use 53T6M missiles also used by the A-135 system protecting Moscow. It’s capable of Mach 17 and carries a 10 kT nuclear warhead (so it doesn’t have to be that accurate).

          It can also launch 77N6-N1 kinetic missiles with 500 km height, apparently to catch the incoming missiles before they dive or start evading.

          And most importantly, the S-500 command post can interoperate with the A-135 ABM system. We probably can assume that the Russian Missile Defence Command can take control of the ABM equipped S-500 launchers if the need be.

          Reply ↓
    2. Polar Socialist March 22, 2025 at 2:29 pm

       I think (but can’t say for sure) that by SSK he refers to Russian Kilo-class hunter-killers, which are diesel-electric and from Polyarnyi do have the range and endurance to patrol a week or two in the Bay of Biscay.

       Also, not taking any stance one way or the other, the current Russian main ABM system, A-135, is tightly connected to the Russian early warning radar network, even if it has it’s own Don-2N “battle control” radars. Which could explain why he thinks the two are somehow intertwined.

       Frankly, to me the absurdity in Rear Admiral Parry’s opinion is that Russia can “incinerate” the whole British Islands several times over, and yet that doesn’t seem to give any food for though for either the admiral or the prime minister or make them fearful.

       Reply ↓
       1. bertl March 23, 2025 at 12:25 am

          If it wasn’t for the Online Safety Act, I would be tempted to point out that the UK’s military leadership hasn’t exactly been noted for its intellectual acuity and knowledge of weapons system design for at least the past 50 years, and that our temporary prime minister is as thick as an Accrington brick and wholly dependant on Sweeny McTodd’s pixie dust to keep him in office until Tony Blair finds a suitable replacement prime minister who is not Wes Streeting.

          Reply ↓
    3. schmoe March 22, 2025 at 2:43 pm

       “UK SSBNs, like those of Russia and every other P5 nation, are second-strike systems”

       I have read articles which state that the most likely NATO first strike against Russia is SSBN-launched Trident II missiles from the Indian Ocean. They will have a very short flight time to Russian ICBM silos in central Russia and have the accuracy to take out hardened ICBM silos (in theory, there have been various failed test launches, including by the UK).

       Reply ↓
       1. AG March 22, 2025 at 3:41 pm

          US SSBNs in that area are indeed closest and launches from there most difficult to identify. Theory claims that “Super-fuzes” enable almost the entire US triad to destroy any Russian launch site via excellent CEP.
          One question is of course whether or not Russians can track those US-vessels or not. And with hypersonics some elementary outlines are now outdated. To assume US can strike without impunity is not in the cards any more. There might have been a small window here late 90s early 2000s. But that´s another era now.

          Reply ↓
    4. Jason Boxman March 22, 2025 at 2:53 pm

       Kind of terrifying to think about; I don’t know why, but I dreamed about getting nuked a few weeks ago. I can’t remember the last time I woke up in a panic. There I was, walking outside on some trail past a group of people. Then there’s this large burst in the sky, and my last thought was: You’ve got to be f**king kidding me. It took a few minutes to calm down, I don’t remember when I actually went back to sleep.

       I guess I need to work up a more interesting final thought, but maybe you don’t even make it that far.

       Reply ↓
       1. AG March 22, 2025 at 3:30 pm

          I had a similiar phase until 1,5 years ago when I understood more about Russian nuclear doctrine and capabilities which are almost nowhere talked about in the Western media. Russia for now is superior enough so that US StratCom understands they would be insanely dumb to carry out a Counterstrike.
          Studying nuclear strategy more closely really helped with sleeping properly again. 😂

          Reply ↓
34. AG March 22, 2025 at 1:27 pm

    Doug Henwood latest podcast

    March 20, 2025
    -Brent Cebul and Lily Geismer, editors of Mastery and Drift, on professional class liberalism
    -a brief reprise of a 2019 interview with Gabriel Winant on the PMC

    His opponents are identified in min. 1. But I´ll give him a chance just for the sheer joy of punishment.

    direct mp3-link
    https://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2025/25_03_20.mp3

    https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR09T_XX-5zXMtXYBl9LkJ1-3mQuNOohhX3fsYNp-aQa6iPe5GHcioSUpMA_aem_z71VXPeCsiEAoDoOa1aU2A#S240704

    Reply ↓
35. ex-PFC Chuck March 22, 2025 at 2:34 pm

    The Great Demolition Persuasion. Micael T: “This is not honest. The deconstruction of the New Deal started earlier. Trump is not changing anything, just radicalizing the trajectory.”

    The demolition of the New Deal began at 10:00 PM on July 20th during the 1944 Democratic National Convention. As Henry Wallace was about to be renominated for Vice President by acclamation, a group of big-city machine and southern party bosses prevailed on the temporary chairman to gavel the session closed. After an overnight flurry of wheeling and dealing Wallace fell narrowly short of the required 50% of the votes in the first ballot the next morning. His support collapsed and Harry Truman, a machine pol from the erstwhile slave state of Missouri won the necessary majority on the 2nd ballot. The Democratic Party establishment has never never on board with the New Deal.

    Reply ↓
36. Xihuitl March 22, 2025 at 2:55 pm

    Re: “French scientist denied entry to US over views on Trump’s policies”

    Homeland Security now claiming he had “confidential” information from Los Alamos on his personal device. From the Houston Chronicle.

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 7:01 pm

       Had a thought the other day. When the LA 2028 Summer Olympics comes rocking around, will the visas for all those visiting international athletes be reviewed to see if they hold “appropriate” views on Israel and antisemitism? Trump will still be Prez then and I could very easily seeing this happen in one way or another.

       Reply ↓
    2. Brian Beijer March 22, 2025 at 7:16 pm

       Haha! The absurdity of that claim is hilarious! So, let’s say this guy did have “confidential” information from Los Alamos (that wasn’t from the 1940s). Homeland Secrutiy’s response is to NOT allow him into the US and send him BACK to France?! With all of this “confidential” information?! They didn’t do any further investigation. They “dropped charges” against him (accroding to The Guardian), assumingly for “espionage” since it was “confidential” information. And then, they just put him on the next flight back to France. Wow. What a marvelous time it must be to be a foreign spy in the US.

       The lies and hypocrisy that come out of the USG are far more awe inspiring than any of their military campaigns.

       Reply ↓
37. AG March 22, 2025 at 4:09 pm

    re: Germany EU VdL ideology

    This guy is at the centre of the utter incompetence, Björn Seibert, Chief of Staff of the EU Commission in Brussels since July 2019.
    His German Wiki reeks with lack of serious understandig of what really matters.
    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B6rn_Seibert

    But according to POLITICO one of Kallas´s mistakes with her failed plan to provide UKR with another 40B (how insane and sick is this woman???) was to include Seibert.
    These individuals are just beyond any description.

    POLITICO
    EU plan to send more military aid to Ukraine in shambles
    The bloc had aimed to send billions in military aid and artillery ammunition to Kyiv, but member countries split on the plan.
    20.3.25
    https://www.politico.eu/article/military-aid-ukraine-kaja-kallas-ukraine-eu-leaders-rounds-artillery/

    I assume none of these clowns has asked anyone if Europe in fact has enough TNT for shells.
    On this again the older text by Khairullin:
    https://maratkhairullin.substack.com/p/in-europe-if-youre-sitting-in-the

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    1. The Rev Kev March 22, 2025 at 7:09 pm

       Kallas got into a fight with Sanchez of Spain a few days ago. Sanchez suggested that the EU appoint a special envoy to deal with the negotiations with Russia, the Ukraine and the US. People are really starting to really dislike Kallas for her pro-war mania and have recognized that the Trump admin don’t take her seriously or even want to deal with her meaning that so long as Kallas is there, the EU will never get a seat at the table. Kallas flipped her lid and got into it with Sanchez saying that it was her job. Truth is, if the Democrats were still in power then Kallas would have been ideal as being pro-war and anti-Russia but with Trump in power, she has become a major liability for the EU as she won’t change or learn. Thus the attempt by Sanchez to bypass her for the sake of the EU.

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       1. AG March 22, 2025 at 9:31 pm

          People from outside ask me how is this possible? We are completely sealed off. Both within Europe and within the countries. Blog-level knowledge exists in a world parallel to the other media.

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    2. AG March 22, 2025 at 9:19 pm

       edti: Kallas´s mistake was to NOT include Seibert. Sorry!!

       Reply ↓