Ocean Census Expeditions Discover More Than 800 New Marine Species Colossal
While everyone is looking for aliens in space, real aliens are right here with us!
“Lampocteis Cruentiventer” is the only species in the family of the same name. These are large, jelly-like, brightly colored sea animals.
They live at depths of 200 to 900 m. pic.twitter.com/R6j2zaChv1— Black Hole (@konstructivizm) December 23, 2024
Mini-satellite paves the way for quantum messaging anywhere on Earth Nature
‘Once in a Century’ Proof Settles Math’s Kakeya Conjecture Quanta
COVID-19/Pandemics
Long Covid stole the life I had BBC
How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect remote work in Europe? euro news
Health insurers made big profits during COVID-19. Now premiums are rising Seattle Times
Climate/Environment
CLIMATE EVENTS #March2025
March 19, 2025
These events are just a part of the climate anomalies that occurred on our planet in only one day! Disaster doesn’t wait. Are you ready? To learn more about the reasons of the climate crisis and the way out of it, read the report ON THE… pic.twitter.com/p13T4DivoI— Creative Society (@CreativeScty) March 22, 2025
Climate and environment updates: As climate gets warmer, sleep may suffer, study says ABC News
“Unseen heroes in a petri dish”: these new viruses massively combat climate change now Sustainability Times
China?
Move aside DeepSeek, Unitree is the real disruptor from China.
Nothing will ever be the same. pic.twitter.com/iqa4pS9O9g
— Dr. Danish (@operationdanish) March 22, 2025
Tencent’s Hunyuan T1 AI reasoning model rivals DeepSeek in performance and price SCMP
25 Movies That Define Chinese Cinema Forbes
China is practicing ‘dogfighting’ with satellites as it ramps up space capabilities CNN
South of the Border
Mexico seeks to dam ‘iron river’ of cartel guns flowing in from US shops El Paso Times
Shackles, shock troops, windowless cells: How bad is Trump’s favorite Salvadoran prison? USA Today
European Disunion
Meloni urges ‘pragmatism’ on tariffs and backs Ukraine ceasefire efforts The irish News
Who’s Going to Unite Europe on Defense? Carnegie Endowment
Israel v. The Resistance
🚨Breaking: The Israeli army blows up and destroys the Turkish Friendship Hospital, the only hospital in Gaza dedicated to cancer patients. pic.twitter.com/QM0b3JKsDI
— Gaza Notifications (@gazanotice) March 21, 2025
Israeli minister threatens to annex parts of Gaza DW
Gaza is being starved and bombed again. Why are we allowing it? Aljazeera
Gaza death toll tops 49,700, with 130 killed in past two days Middle East Eye
Is Israel the Deep State? Sam Husseini
New Not-So-Cold War
Trump says ‘contract’ being drafted on ‘dividing up’ land in Ukraine war The Hill
Over half of Ukrainian media outlets may shut down due to U.S. support cuts Ukrinform
M1 Abrams Tank Was Smacked with a Reality Check in Ukraine War 1945
Seizing frozen Russian assets is ‘an act of war,’ says Belgian PM Politico
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
A Win for Encryption: France Rejects Backdoor Mandate EFF
Amazon ends little-used privacy feature that let Echo users opt out of sending recordings to company Detroit News
China lays down the law in facial recognition first with focus on privacy, security SCMP
Imperial Collapse Watch
Fentanyl and the U.S. Opioid Epidemic Council on Foreign Relations
How Los Angeles Is Getting Scorched by Its Homeless Problem RealClearInvestigations
Coming up at 10pm tonight on #KXAN… People are asking why nothing is being done at this homeless encampment in South Austin. Complaints about open drug use, trash piling up, open fires and vandalism have been brought up, but why has the camp continued to grow for months? pic.twitter.com/0gXRrzOewp
— Nabil Brent Remadna KXAN (@RemadnaKXAN) March 8, 2025
Trump 2.0
Trump hangs sword of Damocles over the American legal system Politico
Columbia University agrees to Trump administration’s demand for mask ban BBC
Trump wants a ‘Golden Dome’ capable of defending the entire US CNN
BlackRock’s Fink made Trump happy with Panama Canal deal. The cost may be an unhappy China Yahoo Finance
DOGE
Elon Musk lashes out at US judges as they rule against Doge The Guardian
DOGE Anger Escalates With Leak of Tesla Owners’ Personal Information Inc.
Democrat Death Watch
Has Trump caused the establishment Democratic Party to implode? The Hill
No decency in Democratic party The Boston Hereald
Kamala Harris emerges as clear frontrunner for 2028 Democratic Party nomination Mint
Immigration
US tourism industry faces drop-off as immigration agenda deters travellers The Guardian
Hatian immigrants in a meatpacking plant face deportation Mother Jones
Students Call on California Colleges to Protect Campuses From Immigration Enforcement KQED
Our No Longer Free Press
Trump’s attacks on freedom of speech are a threat to us all The Guardian
Mr. Market Is Moody
Dow, S&P end flat, Nasdaq snaps four-week decline on tariff hopes Reuters
Boomers are in big trouble if the stock market keeps sliding Business Insider
AI
Why Anthropic’s Claude still hasn’t beaten Pokémon Ars Technica
Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End Futurism
AI cuts US programming jobs to 1980s levels VN Express
Nvidia says ‘the age of generalist robotics is here’ The Verge
The Bezzle
Hollywood filmmaker charged with defrauding Netflix of $11 million NPR
New Phishing Scam Uses Fake Instagram Chatbot to Hijack Accounts Hack Read
This company is taking advantage of sextortion victims, some customers say USA Today
Guillotine Watch
Everything You Need to Know About Safe Rooms Cathy Marie Galvin Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties
Antidote du Jour (via)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“China is practicing ‘dogfighting’ with satellites as it ramps up space capabilities: US Space Force’
Quick. The US Space Force is demanding $100 billion to build their own X-Wing fighters to counter the Chinese dog-fighting satellites. Somebody give them more money.
I’ll bet the real number is 10x that and they want to build a Death Star, not x-wings.
We can just hope Elon gets the contract. That critical hole Luke shot a Proton torpedo into will be a lot larger!
The role of Jar Jar Binks will be portrayed instead by SC senior senator Graham…”meesa got to vote yes and always more and more for our pitiful defense contractors…”. \sarc
As Judge Smails inquired of a young Danny Noonan, do you want to be for good or for bad?
Thanks for the “Cady Shack” snort this fine Sunday!
Ask Australia. They are the biggest suckers in the world.
At least one of those two clever mathematicians has an Erdős number of only 2 so they’ve collaborated with the right people.
(FWIW my math psych guru also has an Erdős number of 2, so mine is 3).
BTW this is kinda like the Kevin Bacon game but in mathematics.
‘Gaza Notifications
@gazanotice
🚨Breaking: The Israeli army blows up and destroys the Turkish Friendship Hospital, the only hospital in Gaza dedicated to cancer patients.’
In other news today, the IDF has announced the successful bombing of a Palestinian kindergarten killing all there. A spokesman for the IDF said that the Palestinians tried to disguise it as a Hamas command center & logistics hub but that Israeli intelligence using AI was able to see through this ruse and identify the real target.
Do you want to know more?
Dark. But I like the “Starship Troopers” reference.
Someone please tell me that “Mint” is a competitor to The Onion, although I doubt it is.
I know this site has regularly pointed out the lack of depth of the Democratic bench, and I guess it now really shows.
You want to know the real situation? The Democrats could nominate Liz Cheney as the 2028 Democrat Presidential nominee. And right after that announcement both AOC and Bernie Sanders would endorse her.
Lambert: Biden is still the best politician in the Democrat Party. Who’s better?
[2:00PM Water Cooler 1/10/2023. Still germane.]
AOC and Bernie are out on a talking tour across the country right now, trying to unify the Dems. smh. Good luck with that.
Bernie’s schtick was medicare for all but then endorsed Biden who promised to veto M4A if it ever came across his desk as President. He then abandoned M4A in April of 2020 just as the Pandemic was taking off in America. These days he is all in on fighting Russia and shutting down criticisms of Israel’s genocide. Bernie is not the progressive that you are looking for – and maybe he never was.
I don’t think bernie was ever progressive.
Maybe back in the 60’s, or in the dark reaches of his mind.
Back when he was a local vermont politician, he had the ability to CLAIM to be on the right side of history…. he would have known there was no downside to CLAIMING to be progressive in the tiny ecosystem that is vermont politics…. He would never have to walk the walk… and could just talk the talk….Since he was never in charge of anything more than what a mayor can do… which doesn’t extend very far.
And his career in the senate has been nothing but , talking the talk, and being prevented from walking the walk. He has a specific eco-system in vermont. No actual power, so he doesn’t have to accept the charge he has never DONE anything…. as his supporters in vermont are not very aware of the smallness of their eco system.
The decades he has been a placeholder for the establishment…. prove he is all hat and no cattle , as they say.
I am even of the opinion of his campaign for medicare for all…showed his scam.. he should have really been for universal healthcare. Not a system where there are different plans, different costs and coverages. Details that are to be exploited were anything to come of it. By those who always do.
And now…
His true colors…
More war..
More zionist crimes against humanity
More money….
Someone should tell that old schmuck, to just retire already.
I’m a one time Bernie-bro. I agree with everything you say here. I once was proud of myself because I had never bought into Obama’s Kumbaya presentation. I could see it for what it was, a sales job. I voted for him over McCain because I thought he was calm, not hot-headed, period. I nailed it.
Then Bernie came along and I went all in on his whole schtick, all because he advocated for Medicare for all. I thought, “Finally, here’s one who’s truly progressive, for the people.”I’ve come to realize it WAS just a schtick, for the time. He got me. I can no longer brag about seeing through Obama’s BS, because I was completely taken in at the next carnival stand.
I forgot, because I don’t pay attention to AOC because she’s crap, but she was busy nuking Stein and the Green Party from orbit and supporting genocide just this past cycle. What a horrible person AOC is.
I heard parts of both their speeches, and I didn’t hear anything about uniting the democrats. On the contrary, sanders didn’t have much to say about that party, instead stating that all like-minded people, such as those in the crowd, have to (organize now) come together to defeat trumpism and try to create a better world for themselves and their neighbors. His emphasis on collective action, as opposed to trump saying that he (trump) alone can solve the nation’s problems, is a constant in every speech I’ve heard sanders give. Whether or not you believe him to be acting as a sheepdog, at least throw him an honest bone, and don’t misrepresent what the man is saying.
um… ‘coming together to defeat Trumpism’ means voting Dem, does it not?
adding: I was a Yuuge Bernie supporter in 2016 and 2020. Watching him fold – twice – to the Dem machine machinations was both disillusioning and enlightening.
I still remember the Dem estab saying the estab chose the candidate. What the Dem voters did in primaries didn’t matter because the Dem party was a private party run by the estab.
Does it?
Absolutely. Flora is right. The Democrats actually went to court a coupla years ago where they won their argument saying that was how their party was set up. The bulk majority of Democrat members have got no say in how the party is run.
Yep.
DNC to Court: We Are a Private Corporation With No Obligation to Follow Our Rules
https://ivn.us/posts/dnc-to-court-we-are-a-private-corporation-with-no-obligation-to-follow-our-rules
Perhaps, just perhaps, ‘coming together to defeat Trumpism’ means this?
Good morning, and thank you for this article, mrsyk.
While I commend bernie for being on the right side while in college, in the 1960’s…. I have to think that was a time when standing firm for civil rights was all the rage.
I also am not even guessing he really didn’t have civil rights as 100% of his motivations; at the time.
But I know plenty of people who were idealistic in their youth. Then they choose their own decisions in every era of their lives. The phrase, “what have you done for me ,lately?” really is what counts in the real world.
Just because someone once upon a time had a better idea, doesn’t mean they don’t spend their life going down the wrong road.
Look at milton friedman being one of the economists who supported the chicago plan in the thirties…. then to go on with his working life to usher in neoliberalism.
And bernie’s clinging to the democratic foreign policy , is enough to damn him forever. Even if it is just his actions of the last two years.
Once you are in for genocide… you’re done.
yeah i was boutta post something similar to rob about how activists might have noble intentions and care deeply about the cause. or they might just be fighitng for whatever’s in front of them. like any group you’re involved in, it can be a way to make friends and gain influence as much as a cause. i see this so often on my college campus.
maybe sanders was quiet on his activism not out of humbleness, but because he wanted to keep it quiet for political reasons.
i think activism is largely good. right. even if it fails it can help build community structures. which is good. but man. a lot of “activists” are just super annoying people with rampant infighting and power struggles who just wanna feel like theyre the underdog.
Yeah well the same could have been said of Benito Mussolini: began his political career as a committed socialist abandoned socialism, founding the fascist movement in 1919. He embraced ultranationalism, authoritarianism, and anti-communism,
Or Whittaker Chambers a dedicated communist in the 1920s and 1930s, working as a spy for the Soviet Union in the U.S. government.Later became a prominent anti-communist, testifying against Alger Hiss in the 1948 espionage case
Or Eldridge Cleaver…
You get my point.
thanks!
Were I correspondent on the US for a paper I´d be having a field day with this stuff.
Forget the Democratic Party. I think that we are living in revolutionary times. There is nothing certain of what might happen if the establishment (a good term to define the power block controlling american life) feels threatened. Trump seems to think that he’s the son of god, but he’s not. I can’t think of Jesus going after grandma’s pension, her social security, but I can think of trump, musk, lutnik, et.al., going after them like the greedy, elitist miscreants they are. The same goes for medicare, education, agricultural assistance, the whole kit and kaboddle that the billionaires want. The crowds that are coming out to hear sanders are giving the Establishment something to think about, or in trump’s case, something to post about. Right now, by appearing in public, a public energized by the moment, there’s no saying what could happen. That goes double if there’s a tesla dealership in the area. I’m certain that trump’s vanity has been wounded by the spectacle occurring around sanders, and he doesn’t like it. His response will be interesting, if he’s not being too busy daydreaming about destroying Iran. And, oh, if you think americans can hardly wait to send their sons to go and die for the Jews (and they will call them, the Jews, not zionists) you’d be in error. Oh wait, trump can get around that particular problem, by nuking Iran, or some section of it, and keeping his financial stream intact. Goody, goody, for trump.
All I’m suggesting is that no one can know what might happen in the near future. Maybe sanders will stumble into a revolution, but probably not. Maybe nothing will come from his rallies. But maybe he will inadvertently push the needle forward. I do think that this is a revolutionary moment, and a great unknown is now upon us. Power still belongs to the people, and they still retain the power to change history.
Bernie had that all in his hands after the 2016 primary. That was his moment to propel a new wing of the Dem party. Many of us were expecting he would pick up and run with that. And… he let it drop. Instead of using the electoral voting base force he’d generated and using it for non-establishment candidates in states and even for state elections, he let it drop.
So there’s that.
Agreed, and here we are.
I think that in 2016 sanders was loathe to split the democratic party and open the door for trump. He might have had the sense, after campaigning himself, that h. clinton stood a good chance of losing, but as Yves has reminded us, sanders, being an independent, and being allowed to run as a democrat, had promised to support the winning candidate.
And sanders had always said, in campaign speech after speech, that he couldn’t do it himself, but that it would take ‘the people’ to ultimately change the system. And I think there’s a lot of truth in that.
And so here we are in 2025. Sanders was politically whacked by the dem establishment in 2020, the democrat biden was a disaster, a genocidal and ruthless politician who never spent a day in office without thinking, Now what can I do today to help Joe Biden, and the monstrous and pathological trump is ruling like a mob boss. So what is to be done? Voting got us into this hole, and voting will only keep us in this hole, but only sinking deeper and deeper. I suggest a course shift, a revolution, if you may.
Daily life is threatened for many by chaos and want, so that life is growing unbearably hard and miserable. The liberty that we have is a sham, and can be ignored at will by our nation’s leaders; e.g., brave men and women who have stood up to peacefully protest the Gazan genocide are now being swept up and removed from their homes and families. Happiness, then has grown more ephemeral for most americans, and a greedy and morose spirit has replaced it. There, life, liberty, and happiness. Recall when you first heard those words, and how hollow they sound now. The Democratic Party? The Republican Party? There is a better way.
And yet, by not splitting the Dem party and demanding a rethink of the Dem party elite’s basic domestic goals he did open the door to T, imo.
Efforts to start a better realer party would have to be forced over, under and through the 2-Party Conspiracy to prevent such a better party arising. But people could still try, if they had the patience.
Such a party could call itself the New Deal Party. It could call what we have been living through the Reagan Revolution in honor of its first founder. It could call it the Reagan Revolution and Beyond.
It could flip the script on “revolution” and call itself the Party of Counter Revolution. It could state one of its aims as being to tear out the Upper Class Revolution and burn it all the way down to its Reagan roots.
” Back to the Future”
“We are the Counter Revolution”
Who’s the contra now, eh?
I agree that Flora is right about what the Dems did in court. However, that does not answer the question that Erstwhile asked at 9:42, which I think is directed at Flora’s statement, “coming together to defeat Trumpism’ means voting Dem, does it not?”
The estab didn’t even offer a primary last year and foisted Kamala on the voters; And were then angry at the voters they’d disenfranchised from a primary vote for not voting for the estab’s chosen nominee. Nice….
The party estab machined Bernie out of the 2016 and 2020 race and then refused to even hold a proforma primary last year. That’s 3 pres election cycles in a row where the Dem estab didn’t care a bit about their base voters preferences. That’s 3 pres cycles of being told ‘you don’t matter, little voter.’
I think most of us here are clear about democrat perfidy, but that still doesn’t negate what Erstwhile wrote above.
The question is how, exactly to address the problem.
By third party vote? Maybe. I’m pretty sure Bernie and AOC would be aghast at the thought.
By voting in the Dem primaries for better Dems? Maybe, (but after the last 8+ years, I’m not so sure that’s a realistic working answer).
By voting out the T admin by voting in another Dem estab admin? The same Dem estab that’s been trying to cut or privatize SS and Medicare since the C admin? The same Dem admin that greenlights what’s happening in Isr, except asking it to proceed more slowly to create better optics? The same Dem party estab that gleefully mocked its working class voting base with woke bs?
If I sound just a tiny bit p.o.’d with the Dem estab its because I supported them for decades and received nothing in return, well, except for the “fighting for you” kabuki theater.
It’s called the uniparty for a reason.
By voting in the Dem primaries for better Dems?
Judging by the reaction of establishment dems to the self financed candidate in i think mississippi telling him he didn’t go through the right channels I’d say the dems are making sure no one unacceptable to them will be allowed in a primary….if they even deign to have one. The dem establishment simply view themselves as the good republicans, so uniparty it is…I am not sanguine. The dems did this to themselves. Controlled flight into terrain…and yes, aoc and bernie are stumping for the dems as the lesser of two evils, but it’s a hard sell for them as it is no longer obvious that they are in fact lesser….authoritarian surveillance capitalism and privatizing the commons are right in the dems wheelhouse and they are swinging for the fences (and with a whiffle ball and plastic bat if they choose kamala again. Bernie and aoc’s pitches are full of holes.)
I predict that Democrats will win in 2028 as a reaction to Trump, and then fail to roll back much of what Trump has destroyed. As usual, they will do the absolute minimum (or less) while telling voters they did a lot.
The Dems remain the pawl in the Uniparty ratchet ensuring that all policy only ever shifts rightwards at the expense of American working people
I agree with you, flora, and I understand why you are angry with the dems. I don’t have any answers to your questions mainly because I don’t think we are going to be able to vote our way out of this situation.
The only one making sense today is Chris Hedges.
If we don’t “hit the streets” everything will continue as is.
And the odds of enough people hitting streets are, as a friend of mine used to say, “somewhere between Slim and None, and the last I knew Slim was somewhere south of Texas.”
Defeating ‘Trumpism’ may or may not mean voting for Democrats . . . or voting for some and against others, etc. It can also mean upgrading the daily-behavior culture of millions and then tens of millions of people to base their daily lives on conducting a slow grinding semicott against those businesses and sectors most pro-Republican and also pro-Trumpist. Making ” pro-Trumpism” not pay anymore.
If enough people can exterminate Tesla from existence and wipe it off the face of the earth, then Trumpism may turn out not to pay for Mr. Musk, for example.
It would take steady economic undermining-type behavior by tens of millions of people for years. It would take a massive high-population culture-change.
Good luck, yes.
But sooner or later it´s gonna be AOC if nothing out of the ordinary happens.
(Admittedly no clue how she performs on stage)
But those teens who will be voting in a few years all will be “Gen AOC”.
“Mark my words, mark them well” (this “the Merovingian” speaking)
AOC is good when she’s on script.
When she’s not on script it’s a disaster.
She’s currently being encouraged to primary Schumer next year. I bet she won’t.
Sorry but Chuck isn’t up for reelection until 2028. A lot can change in that time, she might really have a statewide constituency then, she doesn’t now. I don’t know who they’ll get, but the bench in NY is even shallower than the national one. As disappointing as both AOC and Fetterman have been, I still hope someone outside the mainstream of the state party enters and takes it.
Hell I pretty much hope that for every election going forward, not just Chuck’s in 2028.
Thanks.
Say, did you hear that Fetterman went to Israel a coupla days ago and Netanyahu gifted him a silver-plated pager? Pity it wasn’t a working model but I would be checking it for bugs anyway.
Nah, but I can believe it. Fetterman has never lived up to his team’s brilliant social media campaign.
I don’t know if I hope to live long enough to see it (it is horrific), but I do believe that sometime in the future something similar patterned on that pager/cell phone trick will happen to important Americans and Israelis. Probably every country will be attacked that way. It is diabolical.
So the Dems seem to have a thing for pretty women who can´t do impro? May be Schumer should put on a wig, put on some lipstick and run for office. His chances might turn out to be better than we think…
AOC and Buttigieg are the same generation, both millennials. AOC is grassroots and firebrand, Buttigieg seems to be the more polished speaker and particularly good at off-script which probably comes from having his head firmly grounded in policy understanding, whereas AOC seems to think an angry speech here and there conjures all the magics needed. AOC wants to be anti-institutional, anti-establishment, Buttigieg is a Biden in spirit, much institutional, much establishment.
I’m not American and don’t pretend to understand, but assuming logic, which is probably the wrong assumption, to my mind Americans will vote for Buttigieg if Trump keeps up his hijinx of destroying government and institutions. With the country and economy in ruins they will not want to hear AOC’s anti-establishment scripts, will want a return to normalcy, will want a Biden but without the advanced years.
So it seems to me in order for AOC to win she needs a different approach, needs a rewrite, whereas Buttigieg only needs to keep doing what he’s doing, there will always be appetite for a calming, stabilizing Buttigieg-type-person in between the periods of chaotic upheaval.
wait this is true. we’re only a little bit into the trump admin so i havent fully adjusted to what the political climate will be like come 2028. you’re right that after a bunch of trump upheaval a stability candidate might fly. it really depends on how the trump admin is doing come 2028.
i really feel like AOC will not fly no matter what. she has a lot of the same issues as harris.
Re: flora at 10:04 am
> AOC is good when she’s on script.
> When she’s not on script it’s a disaster.
There’s no politically correct way to say this so I’ll be blunt — and I can’t imagine that I’m the only one who thinks this.
No matter what AOC says, it’s the way she says it that drives me mad. She is always so familyblogging shrill!
Ms. Harris’ singular ability is to get people to care about her political success. She might actually be the best option for the next cycle. In which case, the Dems are doomed. We will be subjected to awful media attempts over the next four years as the junkies keep trying again for that sweet 2018 high.
Speaking of 2018, what’s Neera Tanden up to these days? / ;)
Polls done before campaigns have started are pretty meaningless. I remember sometime not long after 2000, Droopy Dawg Joe Lieberman was also polling as a heavy favorite to be the Dem nominee in 2004 Alas, the Joementum didn’t last.
Ahhh, I was in the mood for inflicting pain on myself, so I had to read that “Kamala Harris emerges as clear frontrunner for 2028 Democratic Party nomination” story too, just for the utter ridiculousness of the concept. It’s obviously nonsensical to be polling about 2028 at this point. Plenty of right-wing sites are also in on the nonsense, talking up a third term for Trump already. But, at any rate, the linked article offers up such a parade of losers, it reinforces the feeling that the Democratic party should just shut down: Harris, Buttegieg, Newsom, Walz, Josh Shapiro, AOC, Pritzker, Whitmer, Mark Cuban (!?!)…none of these people should be allowed anywhere near the 2028 nomination. And what kind of platform would they run on? A “kinder, gentler Republican” again, like before they got all woke? Don’t any of the larger unions have leaders that could stand for the nomination? Look for the union label, I would say, if you (the Democrats) are going to even bother with 2028.
Ah, the Cheshire Panda! Grin and bear it? (Naturally, it being from China, it is a Red.)
Oh frabjous day! We have lost the Mandate of Heaven.
NC keeps on coming up with animals that I have never heard of before but are adorable nonetheless-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_panda
Also known as the Lesser Panda.
https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Lesser_Panda
Too soon.
“Kamala Harris, 60, received 36% support among Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters, giving her a significant double-digit advantage over her closest competitor, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who secured 10%.” From the article at Live Mint, “Kamala Harris emerges as clear frontrunner [in promoting any proxy war that gets her attention.” I read it so that you don’t have to.
At this moment in spacetime, speculation about anything the Dems plan to do is pura fuffa.
I would like some general opinions, it being Sunday, when the groundlings here have a moment to make coffee and contemplate the sorry state of the Anglosphere.
About:
The Bernie and AOC tour Against Oligarchy. My strongest impression in the last few days is that it is much ado about nothing. Something like that one-day boycott of major platforms on 28 February. Remember that revolution?
Bernie is good a lecturing, but he hasn’t been effective at, errr, winning the nomination to the presidency. He was a loyal soldier to Biden, going into full “Putin under the Bed” mode and expressing some minimal doubts about the seemliness of the slaughter in Palestine. Certainly, he and AOC haven’t quite clarified their opposition of the proxy wars / genocides in Palestine-Israel and Ukraine-Russia — and they are now in the liberal dilemma of being against negotiations and an armistice because Trump and Vance are for them.
The wars did in Kamala Harris. I recall her braying, “I’m Speaking” to a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including people whose family members had been slaughtered in the West Bank and Gaza. When the wars come home, the wars come home.
So is Bernie a spent force, stumbling from one concealed defeat to the next? Is AOC mainly a huckster, trying to get out in front of the aspirations of potential Dem voters?
PS: Isn’t this the same AOC who had it in for Jill Stein and the Greens in the fall of 2024? Well, at least, she didn’t go Full Hillary and call Jill Stein a Russian agent.
PPS: Isn’t Elizabeth Warren still all worried that Bernie Sanders is a sexist?
Dunno whether Bernie is a tragic figure or a concealed villain, but while he’s speaking the truth, the question is “To what end?” To put the silent establishment Dems back in the game or to create a truly progressive alternative? I somehow doubt it’s the latter, given that he’s only diagnosing the problem without endorsing a political alternative. I also doubt that the majority in those crowds think in any other terms than the political duopoly or in terms of taking over the Dem Party the way MAGA took over the Republican Party. Given that, the end result will likely be to safely sheepdog the disgruntled voters back into the Dem fold, where the neoliberal centrism is being given a cosmetic face-lift under the new Abundance brand.
What a depressing thought.
Sadly, I think Bernie is yet another elderly politician suffering cognitive impairment. In his prime he was great. Now, he is relying on guff like friendship with former presidents/senators.
I think he gets more of a free pass because his repeated “rallying cries” resonate. However when it comes to ACTION he doesn’t deliver. Though I value what he espoused, I would no more want him in power than Trump/Biden etc.
OIFVet: I think that you have hit the mark.
It isn’t depressing. It is being a realist.
Oddly, this dog-and-pony-and-hopey show doesn’t pass the smell test in Italian politics. Italian politics look unusually straightforward and even focused on results compared to Bernie’s Kumbayaganza. (An Italian journalist, Michele Serra, just organized an EUKumbayaganza demo in Roma that is getting withering criticism.)
And you have to admit, the sheer idea that Rahm is considering a run for president means that we both are considerably better off out of Chicago, eh.
Rahmbo Emanuel, who called progressives pressuring Obama for single payer “Effing retarded”? That tried to bust up the CTU? That Rahmbo?
Yeah, he will bring the working class back into the Democrat plantation, no doubt 🙄
Sadly, amongst the BG equivalent of the bicoastal liberal elites, that type of dog and pony show sells like $10 donuts. I’m saying that, because they actually take pride in being able to pay $10 for a single donut with passion fruit filling, while demonstrating contempt for the peasants in flyover Bulgaria who inexplicably refuse to vote for their party. The funny thing is, today there’s lots of buzz amongst them about the civic organization I am part off, because they are deluded enough to think they can use us to penetrate into the province. We won’t gonna allow them to use us in any way, but it goes to show that it’s all about the electoral with them, not about substance and societal needs.
Frankly, that model needs to be killed with fire.
“Rahmbo Emanuel”
😂😂😂
Rahm! Rahm!
He’s the BOMB!!!
Sweet Elissa!
Our CIA Sistah!
Pete! Pete!
Kept the airports neat!
Talk about a deep bench!
As someone who considers the fact that Emmanuel, along with the chief of police, is not currently in prison for multiple counts of kidnapping and wrongful imprisonment to be one of the abominations of our system and one of the largest atrocities of the last couple of decades that disgusts me. It is even worse than our granny killing criminal of a former governor being the front runner to be the mayor of NYC.
With shining lights such as these, along with Obama, Biden and Clinton, is it any wonder the Democratic Party is stinking cesspool incapable of even pretending to be representative of any decent human any more.
If it barks like a sheep dog? We had this debate here back when Bernie was a lot more relevant. Personally I think he was always sincere while at the same time being very much part of the DC political establishment. To think outside the box you have to be outside the box and he wasn’t. It’s the Dem party that must go first, then Bernie’s “billionaires.” Institutions decay.
I also think Bernie was sincere in 2016 and maybe in early 2020. I tell myself that he thought (as if I know what anyone else thinks) that if he could demonstrate huge crowds approving of his message then that would move the Dem estab toward his policy prescriptions. Of course, it did not.
He is now a spent force. Most of us know the Dem party estab is indebted to its own oligarchs — Bernie and AOCs current speechs notwithstanding.
There are those who call Bernie and AOC ”sheepdogs’, whose purpose it is to shepard radicals into the Dem tent. For my part, I think AOC is an opportunist – a commenter here, I think it was Wukchumi, called her “Antionette Of Color”. The rumor in parts of The Left in America has it that Bernie abandoned his true populist crusade as a consequence of federal prosecutors deciding not to pursue charges against his Catholic wife for bankrupting a college she was president of in order to funnel money to the Church, which needed it to settle lawsuits over predator priests; kompromat is, according to this theory, alive and well in America. The tour he’s gracing us with is, I think, intended to lay ground for get out the vote efforts for the 2026 midterms. At the same time, he’s drawing crowds, albiet not at the level he used to, which I take as a general measure of left-populism.
interesting indeed…everyone has those corpses somewhere
You bring up Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. I lost all respect for Mrs. Warren when she ran up to Bernie in the debate ( I think it was the debate ) and started to confront him on a hot mike about his alleged sexist remarks. I remember being profoundly disappointed for days. Not disappointed with him. With her. As in, someone capable of that kind of thing will never have my vote. Ever.
However, the most unfortunate thing your comment brought to my mind was the Warren vs Sanders discussion during that election of 2019-2020 – when they were arguing about bringing a true single payer universal health care system to the USA. Not so much arguing about doing it, they both seemed to be in general agreement, but how much it was going to cost and where the cost would have to come from. As a physician, I have come to realize that this will be the only way going forward. How quaint it was – I believe they were arguing about 18 billion vs 25 billion – or some such to get this system going. I know they were not discussing numbers north of 50 billion. Whatever, the amount of money they were arguing about for that very important issue for ALL Americans literally pales in comparison to the hundreds of billions spent on Ukraine by Biden, the eventual victor.
How quaint. How sad. It is literally the first thing that comes to my mind the minute I hear their names.
My feeling is the Dems are so tainted with this kind of thing right now and their continued behavior, that the only hope for the party is for someone to arise out of the mist, not unlike Obama.
The Second Coming of Joe Lieberman?
I never suspected Lieberman was a Lubavitcher.
will never happen. Kill it with fire imo
Long list of likely future candidates, starting with 2028. But what will they run and what forms the organizing thoughts behind any future Presidential run….being against the current Administration isn’t quite enough. Hey let’s return to those great times we shared under Joe Biden. Okay but what if that just wasn’t so great in hindsight?
For the record, tone deaf antics by a sitting governor make them appear highly unserious, and perhaps serving an own goal against their brand. Tim Walz….rooting against Musk is doable without rooting versus the interest of state run investment funds or pension funds, which own publicly traded auto manufacturers…
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tim-walz-cheers-tesla-stock-204115455.html
It seems to me the Dem party has become the war party and the spooks party. When did liberals start loving war and the spooks?
It won’t matter to me who they run until they change course in a deep way; I don’t think the change can happen in 2 years. The party will need a long time in the wilderness before a change can happen, imo. The same Dem estab will still at the top until that happens. Voting for the lesser of two evils is past its sell-by date to me.
Case in point: in Germany the GREEN PARTY of all parties – which had been the Civil Rights Movement party and anti-establishment for 20 years – added a demand to the now passed war budget: They explicitely wanted more money for the secret intelligence services and the support of countries under “hybrid” attack by foreign forces (i.e. Russia of course.)
Yes I ask myself the very exact same question: “When did liberals start loving war and the spooks?”
A Diana Johnstone who worked for the GREENs in Brussels for many years saw it all coming 30 years ago…
The two US parties take turns doing this, it seems. It’s like alternating current. If they keep doing/representing the opposite of whatever the other is doing, they’ll both eventually end up doing a 180 on their own principles, then round and round we go again. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually we could time the cycle.
you mean like this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uV8g-S_Hg0
Indeed They are lost, and so are their supporters.
20+ years ago, I was among those who hit the streets to protest against the Iraq war. “US out of Iraq” and “No blood for oil” were common themes. The lefties at the time saw through the Bush administration ruse that it was about “freedom and democracy”. Nobody was clamoring to “Free Kuwait”.
Yesterday in my very liberal city I walked by an anti-Trump protest with maybe a couple hundred people gathered in the middle of downtown. There were lots of anti-DOGE signs, placards calling Trump a ‘fascist’, etc. Mixed in were quite a few signs with “Free Ukraine” or a Ukrainian flag. Noticeably absent were any anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian signs. Evidently Michelle Obama slipping W a little butterscotch a few years again worked like a charm in refocusing the minds of the graying puffy coat PMC crowd, which was the demographic at yesterday’s protest – pro-war “liberal” is a thing now.
I was not in any way tempted to join the demonstration and briskly walked away, cursing under my breath. Well, maybe not that silently.
And someone somewhere is congratulating themselves on this propaganda achievement.
America and the Dems have been here before, but as I get older I forget that this is not “the past we lived thru” for so many Americans. LBJ decided not to run for President because of the unpopularity of the Vietnam war, and Nixon ran on ending that war:
Nixon struggles to achieve ‘peace with honor’ and end unpopular Vietnam War
https://www.stripes.com/special-reports/vietnam-stories/1969/2019-08-15/nixon-struggles-to-achieve-%E2%80%98peace-with-honor%E2%80%99-and-end-unpopular-vietnam-war-1483390.html1
That the Dems are so supportive of the Ukraine war is a mystery to me too. The idea to have Ukraine join NATO was pushed hard by W, a President whose foreign policy wars were a bit of a disaster:
Bush to press for Ukraine and Georgia in NATO
https://www.reuters.com/article/world/bush-to-press-for-ukraine-and-georgia-in-nato-idUSL01417062/
But it seems every American President around that time had a hand in creating this situation:
The Strategic Blunder That Led to Today’s Conflict in Ukraine
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/nato-clinton-ukraine-russia/
Probably because every American Presidential administration had neocons with disastrous war plans:
Victoria Nuland: Farewell to the Spearhead of US Foreign Policy Disasters
https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/victoria-nuland-farewell-to-the-spearhead-of-us-foreign-policy-disasters/
We used to talk about campaign finance and the importance of getting private money out of politics. For a while Citizens United v. FEC was discussed as a serious blow to democracy (e.g Carter’s “oligarchy with unlimited political bribery”) but I don’t hear those conversations so much any more. Presumably both cartel parties are satisfied with this status quo. To the very limited extent that I understand the legal theory, political speech is constitutionally unlimited and that includes spending money to speak louder and corporations are people so limiting how politicians raise money is unconstitutional. Makes no sense to me but I am not a constitutional lawyer.
So presumably the party prefers the opinions in proportion to how much their holders’ donate. Hence Harris and Buttigieg are front runners because they are empty vessels that will do as they are directed. On the other hand we’ve seen how the class populists are handled so we won’t have the option to vote for them.
And then there’s the two party system. As Michael Hudson put it in Oct 2020 on Macro n Cheese episode 88:
An insurgent class-populist movement can influence and perhaps take control of the Democratic Party only if it is ready to fight the party to the point of being a spoiler. I don’t think Sanders or AOC are likely to lead such an insurgency.
In this regard I’m at the moment particularly curious about how recently fired public sector members of the PMC will react to their current predicament. If, as some contend, the PMC has evolved into a class for itself, might they be amenable to and collectively act in service of progressive policies? Or, as some already have done, buckle under in response to extortionate demands for policy changes? As a group, many of them have useful skills necessary for the operation of a complex society. They just need to be reeducated as to what sectors of society they should be working for.
For Bernie, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Rather than encourage his followers to sit out an election and thereby hand a victory to the cultists, he sees the value of having less-than-perfect candidates at least deny office to the GOP. He’s always been practical; he has gotten more legislation passed than any other Congressperson in American history. He subordinates his ego to what, no matter how imperfect, might improve things. And he has the savvy not to hold his nose when he backs the people who stabbed him in the back.
Harris would have won if 7,000,000 who voted for Biden had not decided she was not perfect. Bernie’s support of her almost got her across the finish line.
Kamala is not perfect? I would suggest that she is America’s version of Annalena Baerbock.
More like Eva Peron.
Eva Braun?
Except that Eva Peron was loved by the people.
This line of thinking is what drives corporations to do everything possible to improve stock prices in the short run even if it means sacrificing long term sustainability. Voters can see that continually voting for the better “imperfect” candidate has brought the country to where it is. Bernie dragging Biden across the finish line in 2020 is largely responsible for those 7 million voters staying home in 2024
Really? Since when is “the lesser evil” the same as “good enough”? I would have settled for “good enough”, most Bernie supporters would have settled for it. Except it was clear as day that she was another torchbearer for “lesser evilism” and many had simply had it with it.
How much longer before some people stop blaming the voters for their own failures and broken promises?
Rather than the lesser evil. The Dems have proven to simply be the slower evil.
Perhaps the 7 million who voted for Biden who didn’t vote for Kamala did that because Biden sold them out on one issue or another. And knew she was more of the same. She might have gotten more votes if she had indicated his administration was deeply flawed, change was needed, and America needed more help than Ukraine. She might have had to risk annoying AIPAC by actually condemning the ongoing devastation of Gaza and promising to actively support humanitarian aid including troops. But one thing that absolutely needed to happen was her being honest about inflation and much of its source (domestic profiteering).
The same people who had already decided not to vote for Biden again needed to know she was not going to just be his second term. She lost because she never made that case. And while Bernie is not perfect he could never have done enough to make up for that.
Democrats will always lose if they do not give a reason to vote for them not just that the other guy is X, if the other guy is actually promising the desired changes.
Yay, I was waiting for the post with the blameless for the left staying home. I am sure it had nothing to do with the farsical non open process where Biden just abducated and Harris took over. Nope that wouldn’t affect turnout at all! And then seeing all of the tech bros and oligarchs just toss money at her wasn’t at all sickening.
I wasn’t going to vote for Biden because (for one thing of many things) he had lost his mind four or five years earlier and the lying Democrats and their media partners were covering it up; and I wasn’t going to vote for Harris because she appeared to be very stupid and unprepared and also because she had never won any sort of primary. The Democrats rolled the dice on the durability of Biden’s steadily rotting brain and lost. I blame the Democrats for putting Donald Trump in the White House. Now they just make me sick to my stomach.
I see Bernie drawing crowds (assuming he is) as a way of reminding the dems what they could have had. Reminding them of the truism: Those who made Sanders impossible made Trump inevitable.
I agree with this, and I don’t agree that Bernie was responsible for Biden’s victory. Biden won because of the Biden camp’s strategy of whipping people into a frenzy of fear & hatred of Trump and his rural supporters, while marginalizing the left and also downplaying & lying about their policy intentions.
Why does everyone want to blame Bernie supporters? His strategy of “picking his battles” served him pretty well as far as I can see, and if he had only been able to reform healthcare in some way, it would have been a historic accomplishment. As it was, he drew people’s attention to this still urgent issue.
People in the Democrat party want to blame Bernie supporters because they still can’t blame Hillary or the many consultants she wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on. Just like we will hear about the $250 million Musk gave Trump II all day long, but hardly anything about the $1.5 billion Harris lit on fire during her campaign.
Bernie not only talked about real issues, he threatened to do something about them if elected. The people in charge of the Democrats could not then and cannot now permit that to happen. Hence, we are where we are.
It’s not just party leaders though. A few years back, David Autor, a labor economist during the Clinton administration and one of the architects of the prophesied Giant Sucking Sound that was promised with China entering the WTO, was asked to reflect on his role in destroying labor in the US. This was during an NPR interview around 2018 I think. Despite all the evidence, he still couldn’t say he made a mistake. He complained that they needed more data at the time. That’s where the Democrats are. 10 years after the planet is destroyed they’ll defend their positions as acceptable because they didn’t have enough data to understand what they were doing was going to start WWIII. After we’ve already recovered from the next Depression, they’ll recommend going back to theories from people like Larry Summers because we can’t really say they were to blame, can we?
re: “they still can’t blame Hillary or the many consultants she wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on.”
Um, yeah, her campaign sounded so much like the ‘old boys club’ stuff translated to (new) old girls club stuff. Hill’s running as the wife of someone with old boy connections?
As a second generation feminist that didn’t really translate to me as progress.
So David Autor’s strategy is “Sit tight and assess”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-GVe2McaDA (54 secs)
biden got booted for being old. i’d imagine it would be the same for sanders. id also imagine kamala is also popular only because of her name recognition thanks to her failed 2024 campaign.
warren is decent in her anti monopoly policies. unfortunately she is extremely white woman professor. “i have a plan for that” is a line that appeals to a specific group of people. warren just doesnt have the populist swag of trump which is an L when it comes to convincing people to listen to you.
im hoping some rando decides to run and spice up the pot. id say the dems need a candidate of change away from the mainstream democratic party ala obama to win. (regardless of if they’re actually pro change or not.)
I used to think Warren was great…. until…. she showed she’d sell out for a promotion. See her attack on Sanders as a sexist. That was her ‘Zelensky at the Whitehouse’ moment to me, and about as effective.
adding: as we learned later, O was not a change from the mainstream Dem party, he only campaigned that way. Campaigned as a New Dealer (like C had done) and governed neoliberal and neocon (as C had done). B did the same thing. Remember how B was touted as the ‘next FDR’ in his 2020 run? Joe Biken: our new FDR. It’s like a pattern or something. / ;)
Biden was booted because he was a senile fool who had a firmer grasp on his nap schedule than the economy or the many wars his handlers started during his term. People can be OK with old, hence Bernie and the Dead still doing the touring thing. But old and clueless? That, they can’t handle.
I don’t know how general this opinion is,, but from my swamp adjacent post, this is what I see…
There isn’t a single person in our government currently who couldn’t make things better by resigning. There isn’t a single main stream media analyst who couldn’t improve the conversation by losing their voice. Most business leaders could improve their companies by retiring early and naming no successor.
The US is a failed state. Our critical needs for the human condition are experiencing concurrent market failures. Healthcare, housing, food, education, energy, have all been manipulated to the point where nothing makes sense. We are just starting to make teeny, tiny, baby steps, to talk about this complete failure of government at all levels. Already, the “Left” hates it.
We are not going to move past these troubles until we accept the failure and excise the “liberals” who have been in government for the last 50 years. Even then, if by some miracle that were to occur, we will still face the challenge of focusing on our internal politics rather than engaging in more wars of choice. So we’d need to somehow prevent Russo and Islamo phobia from infecting the next class of leaders.
In short, I see the US splintering into multiple regional confederacies long before Russia does, or before we address any of these problems. But maybe my coffee is too dark this morning. I’ll think about it some more after I’ve added some sweeter cream.
>In short, I see the US splintering into multiple regional confederacies long before Russia does, or before we address any of these problems.
This is only one article of many about movements within the US to succeed.
https://www.newsweek.com/california-secession-movement-wants-national-divorce-avoid-civil-war-1866739
https://www.governing.com/politics/secession-schemes-within-the-states
https://www.newsweek.com/secession-movements-now-12-us-states-campaigner-grant-dahl-1939044
Sigh… if only there was a movement in the US for our country succeed.
I kind of want California to try to secede though. I would love for them to realize how quickly their BS doesn’t work without the federal government to back them up. Just like I would love for NY and other states to stop with their stupid “we pay more in taxes than we get in benefits…” shtick. We’re not getting pandemics, financial crises, or new wars because people in Mississippi or Missouri are acting up. People in Tennessee didn’t decide we should outsource our industrial capacity to China. New York and California have not yet begun to pay restitutionfor all the damage they’ve done to our country. Of course they should pay more in taxes. They’re the source of all our risk!
“25 Movies That Define Chinese Cinema Forbes”
The article names two films by director Wong Kar-Wai: In the Mood for Love, and Days of Being Wild, and these both deserve to be on the list. However, I want to add Chungking Express: in my opinion, Wong Kar-Wai’s best work, partly because I was in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, and watching it brings up waves of nostalgia, for Hong Kong, and for my long lost youth. Not to mention, Chungking Express redefined what can be accomplished in a romcom, and I’m still in love with Faye Wong…
Chungking Express is one of my all time favourite movies – I’ve watched it so many times (not just because of Faye Wong…). I haven’t watched it for a while, it’s a good reminder to do so. Hong Kong cinema was always so good, sadly it was one of the biggest casualties of streaming and pirating and various crackdowns, its a very thin shadow of its former self.
The fifth Generation (1980’s) Chinese films are amazing – as a movie obsessed student I fell in love with the incredible aesthetics. It’s such a shame that there has been such a marked drop off in quality since then. Taiwan also had a wonderful film industry at that time, which has never quite hit those peaks again. I guess these things come in waves, but for now South Korea seems to consistently produce the very best cinema from Asia.
I agree all the way! Too bad they’re cutting out the free streaming sites.
Loved Chungking Express, and also “Comrades A Love Story”.
Mickey 17, the new Korean film by “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho is pretty good too.
That’s a useful article for all the streaming links. While I watch a lot of movies I’ve only seen a few on the list and some that probably should be on the list (Zhang Yimou is, in my just admitted limited experience, the best).
Of course all such lists are quirky and opinionated including the famous Sight and Sound best films of all time list. As a noted film critic once said, “taste is the great divider.”
I’m surprised that YI Yi (2000) wasn’t included, one of my all-time favorites. Though I have to say it is an excellent list.
The Spring River Flows East (1947) is inexplicably missing from this list. I thought it was very good indeed
> La Jeune Tulipe Diamond Dog Pet Collar
> Law & Order: Criminal Intent: Tuxedo Hill
Look at this collar. It’s diamonds. It’s stunning.
Yes. Jack surprised me with it.
Well, he has excellent taste.
Yes. But I nearly spoiled the surprise.
How’s that?
I walked in on him when he was ordering it on the phone.
Really? What did you hear him say?
I heard him say that he wanted to buy a collar.
That’s funny. You heard him on the phone buying a collar.
What’s so funny about that? He was ordering it from a catalogue.
Diamonds and dogs. All the best friends a girl needs.
* * *
Your fiancée told us you bought a collar a few months ago. A dog collar for her dog.
Oh… yes, no… of course.
You thought I was talking about another collar, didn’t you?
No, I don’t… no.
It’s another new expression that I’ve learned… buying a collar.
Do you want to explain to your fiancée what it means?
Maybe I should.
It means collaring your position on your stock options.
It’s a quiet way of dumping your stocks without sending up a flare as to what you’re doing.
The diamond pet collar page has been taken down. Too many *ahem* specialist customers?
I’ll be honest and admit I think just about those specialist uses just about as often as one for a pet dog or cat….. but I’ve mixed with some very non-mainstream groups in my time (but no I am not into that particular area of interest….. being gay in big cities in UK and Australia does tend to open your eyes)
The stock option interpretation is interesting thanks.
Having lived in New Orleans and worked in the French Quarter during the latter 1970s and the 1980s, I can attest to some of those other “meanings” for a “collar.”
I also thought of the old coppers slang term, “to collar,” as in to apprehend and ‘secure’ a suspect.
The stock market meaning I had not heard of before.
Heaven forbid we send off for a ‘collar’ for a hamster.
Stay safe and as healthy as you can be.
My nightmare scenario: I finally persuade elderly parents to at least accept online shopping and delivery of non-perishable goods….. they get a new cat collar being unavailable and a “human collar” is sent instead.
It’s the whole “what is pegging?” discussion that was asked in most British households a few years ago following a story about a certain Royal all over again.
Silly old me. Here I was thinking that “pegging” was something you learned on the playing fields of Eton.
There is also a story about said subject involving the “nightspot” in N’Awleenz called “Lafitte’s in Exile,” but this is, ostensibly, a familyblog.
Heard it said the other day that NIH should now mean ‘National Institute of Hurt.’
“I am his highness’s dog at Kew,
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?”
“Your pedigree sir, is naught but bark,”
“I came across on Noah’s Ark!”
“Shackles, shock troops, windowless cells: How bad is Trump’s favorite Salvadoran prison?’
Salvadoran prisons are so bad, that Trump wants to take Americans accused of damaging Teslas or Tesla dealerships and ship them south to them-
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-suggests-tesla-vandals-prison-el-salvador/story?id=120019715
Sorry for another dis on X imbeds on your site. Today’ useless example, imho,
Israel v. The Resistance
What’s the point in another video of an explosion? Doesn’t add any news value that the article from AP does not provide.
It is there so that we can be witnesses to this genocide. List to me how many other countries can bomb an international hospital out in the open and boast about it without suffering any consequences or push-back-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73tGe3JE5IU
I guess I have to use sources like Twitter because of reports like the following –
https://x.com/Aljarmaqnetnews/status/1903749657534095430
As someone whose life is full of books and many hours in the library over my life, this was like a gut punch. Why are we bombing school libraries? Why is our media not highlighting this? Why do we have to look at alternative media that many times has its own agenda to get hopefully true information?
There are multiple other tweets of charred little kid bodies from yesterday, but I won’t share those. You can find them if you want to look. I am surrounded by kids that age in every aspect of my life. It is heartbreaking to see these photos. Where is our main stream media?
There have also been so many photos of Gaza Orthodox Christians and all the kids surrounding the altars during this Lenten time. In their churches with two walls bombed out, etc. Why is our media not reporting these things?
The tweet with the young man with the books is a poignant series of photos. He risked his life for those books. But even more poignant to me is there are probably more books in his apartment than in many medical school libraries I have been to lately. All digital all the time nowadays. I am of course exaggerating, but the point is the same. That young man surrounded by books was a photo of a lost and dying world – in so many more ways than one.
> Doesn’t add any news value that the article from AP does not provide.
Jalen Rose uses the term ‘Broken News’. Two data: new temperature record. Three: the rate of temperature records is accelerating. Four: The rate of the rate is accelerating (termed ‘jerk’).
The jerks are starting to make the News™. Later the News™ will note the Snap Crackle & Pop of temperature records.
Let’s distinguish Evidentiary from Volitional (knowledge v will). Every incident is a Bayesian stone on the scales of justice. When does a preponderance of evidence turn into an avalanche? Will it? That’s the political question.
So What? What can you or I do about such atrocities? About nuthin’, and too much focus is a tax on time under urgent conditions. What can you change? Covid is a good example. You can wear a respirator in public. That protects you and others, and is also a normalizing social signal. But there are tens of thousands of papers on the topic, too many for an individual to process.
Half-a-decade Lambert kept the charts a-coming, and toward the end my familiarity was so high I’d take them at the glance. Our protocols are in place, so whether there was a peak translated into risk in public places, a simple modulation of behavior. New waves are not much News, but the stimulus is a reminder, Do Not Get Complacent. However,
Sarah Kendzior : I’ve started rationing reality: as Shirley Jackson noted, too much of it makes you insane.
If your username checks out:
Ambrit: The backgrounds, if I remember correctly, were by Philip DeGuard. His work was pure impressionism meets deconstructionism.
The hidden world of LOONEY TUNES background art
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a50tAXNvUE8
Lovely little short on the background artists. Obviously, I love Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies 😁
Thank you for that link! Who knew Looney Toons could be a child’s introduction to great art.
I guess I can’t consider the time I spent watching them a waste at all. LOL
The hope is that the International Court of Justice will see all this matrial.
Eat a burrito and help collapse the empire’s financial system!!! Can’t afford takeout? Here’s an installment plan for you!!!. We all know where this is headed ….. Burrito Default Swaps, Burrito Backed Securities, Collateralized Burrito Obligations, etc.
I had thought things in America would come to a head with the Orange Man singing “Don’t Cry for Me, America”, but I failed to consider a throng of burrito lovers simultaneously defaulting on their AAA rated obligations. It won’t be long before someone considers adding a couple of meme coins into the mix to “over collateralize” the most toxic tranches.
Tonight’s homework for aspiring Investment Bankers is : how do you hedge the exposure to this new “cutting edge” security?
I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
Wimpy
Genius! Hamburger futures!
I haven’t seen the Popeye cartoons in decades, but I’m very doubtful that Wimpy ever paid anybody.
Maybe none of the cartoons happens on Tuesday.
Way ahead of his time…
Did some body say Popeye? The cartoons started in 1933 but I think the first appearance of Bluto was in the 1930 movie The Big Trail when Tyron Power Sr. played Red Flake, the trail boss.
I really laughed too hard at this…
Kamala Harris emerges as clear frontrunner for 2028 Democratic Party nomination Mint
So Democrats want Vance to be President in 2028.
Stock market blues, 2025 edition. Well talking heads from the CNBC are all too unhappy with all this negativity, primarily such negative vibes being directed from the Trump administration. Unlike the first term of Hair Trump, when touting S&P successes was a continuing theme.
We’re not in Trading Places territory* though for my half glass empty opinion, it seems to be a period of lull and lollygagging whilst one impatiently waits for the next administration hammer to drop circa April 2. Also, the quarter is ending on March 31 so by mid April we’ll get real data on the past few months from quite a few meaningful sectors and industries. I don’t buy what the tariff pontificating Commerce Secretary wishes to sell but it ain’t just me. Then again I don’t think leprechauns are real or all that lucky either!
*Failing a global apocalypse or a faulty futures report on orange juice, but others mileage may vary.
Just keep the machines on.
Margin call Gentlemen
https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=trading+places+turn+those+machines+back+on
“Trump wants a ‘Golden Dome’ capable of defending the entire US: ‘Strategically, it doesn’t make any sense’ ”
OK, we are back in the 80s again with confrontations against Russians, nuclear threats – and a new Star Wars program. So ‘Trump has repeatedly insisted the US needs a missile defense program similar to Israel’s Iron Dome.’ First consider the differences. Israel’s border is only in the low hundreds of miles in length so there is not much area to defend. Now the continental US alone has a total of 5,525 miles (8,891 km) of border so that is going to require a massive networked defense system so the two countries cannot be compared. And should it be mentioned that Iranian missiles made it through the Iron Dome causing it to be nicknamed the Iron Colander? At the heart of this is a dream. Once the US was immune to attack because it had an ocean on each side and friendly neighbours to the north and south. But missiles put an end to this meaning that though the US could nuke other countries, some of those other countries could nuke the US in turn. So there is this dream that if only the US develop a sort of force field around it, it could do whatever it wanted to do any nobody could hit back like it was before WW2. That was what Reagan’s Star Wars program was all about and so it is with Trump’s Golden Dome.
Why doesn’t Trump just contract The Jedi to protect America? So much easier and they likely would refuse to be paid so less expensive, too. And personally I for one don’t really believe Yoda is dead. Reagan had the right idea with his “Star Wars” plan. He just tried to implement it in the wrong way.
Even back in the 1980s, the “Star Wars” defense theory was pretty much shot full of holes. The test systems never worked well enough to be certified as being actually “protective” of the Continental US. Back then, the main proponents of the “Star Wars” program were the Paleo Neoliberals, and the Technocrats. Both of those groups partook more of the characteristics of cults than rational thinkers. The same can be said of today’s “New Star Wars” promoters.
Roughly speaking, items such as the “Star Wars” project fall under the classification of “Wunderwaffen.” They offer a ‘quick fix’ for what are really long term and difficult to address problems. Just as rational observers say that “A Government is not a Business,” so too one can say that “War is not just Equipment.”
To this end, it is instructional to observe that ‘Techno’ is not human. Thus, ‘Technobros’ fail the Turing Test.
Back in “Ye Goode Olde Dayes,” psychopaths, sociopaths, and many of those further along ‘the Spectrum’ were institutionalized. This was both to “help” the afflicted, and to “protect” society. Now, the formerly institutionalized are managing the Institutions that underlie the functioning of our society. Is it any wonder then that we see chaos and madness all around us today? The Inmates are running the Asylum.
Stay safe. Remain vigilant.
I remember getting a tour of the Massachusetts Cape Cod area during the Reagan Star Wars era.
I was informed that a lot of the vacation homes were now owned by academics who made good money on Star Wars consulting.
So Reagan Star Wars was good for some in liberal Mass.
It is hard for change to occur when the money is flowing.
This is a plot from an old movie called king of hearts with Alan bates. During world war ll a town in Italy is taken over by the inmates of an insane asylum. When the Allie’s show up, they think the town is normal.
I remember that film showing at the Saturday Midnight Show in a small theatre on Magazine Street in New Orleans. The campus art film series was good as well. 16mm prints shown in a smaller auditorium on campus, often on a Thursday night.
Oh my, King of Hearts, ages ago at Cento Cedar Cinema San Francisco…
https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/1947
That figure of 5,525 miles doesn’t include coastline. And if you add in the 51st state and Greenland…
That’s a lot of territory to try to defend. Maybe if he waits until the 23rd century he can adopt deflector screens, phasers and photon torpedoes to defend America with.
You mean Red, White, and Blueland
.
Wouldn’t be funny if the Inatsisartut – the Greenland Parliament – sent the sponsor of that bill one of their own saying that they want to re-designate the United States as South-West Greenland.
I say, go big or go home. Make ‘Golden Dome’ on Mars.
Too many people took Star Trek seriously. And the Jetsons.. Now I’m being hypocritical because I am still upset that I do not have a Rosie the Robot. I mean a Roomba just doesn’t cut it, when you could have a robot Hazel.
But I’m at least aware of the discrepancies between the fictional and the possible. The next thing we know they will have Melania on the front lawn of the White House casting Protego Maxima. At least that illusion won’t cost us billions.
Nano Zeitgeist Report.
I looked up the Red Panda from the antidote at the top of the screen to clarify something before I posted a comment.
Ten minutes later, the background screenshot for my desktop computer is switched to a photo of a Red Panda. Too close to the mark to be coincidence.
Re. the comments above about digital media taking over the information sphere; digital media are becoming literally impossible to watch. (Before you post well meaning advice; I already use several a- b——s. Some sites, such as Yahoo Mail{!!!!} are now interfering with my access to email with “Terms of Service” warnings and time limits on access to my email queue.) There are so many ads, pop-ups, banner ads, and interruptions in the middle of presentations now that I find myself reducing the amount of time I spend online. The sheer chaos and confusion online now have to have some deleterious effect on one’s mental health.
I have always been a book hoarder. Now I have a rational reason to defend the practice. I’m trying to preserve civilization.
Stay safe.
Boomers are in big trouble if the stock market keeps sliding Business Insider
Not this boomer. I got out of stocks and decided to put an equal amount into real estate, now essentially my new and improved 401K…if not really that legally. I now have a home that the internet says goes up in value almost every month and generates a nice rental income. Caveat – a prolonged stock slump would likely affect me however.
Smith and the Classicals had a term for that: rentiers. They didn’t like them. Just saying. I’m not saying I wouldn’t do what you’ve done if I wanted to protect a retirement income I’ll probably never live to receive.
But I wouldn’t boast about it.
Well, maybe you didn’t have friends who lived in Boston’s South End decades ago. I did. When young, I’d visit them at their condo’s before we went out clubbing together. They’d brag how the condos they retained as investments before they upgraded to their new bigger condo, was like an ATM machine. The rent flowed and increased. Always. Money in their pockets every month.
I’ve now moved to Knoxville. The same thing is happening just on a smaller scale. I’m not going to let that boat sail past me a second time.
So do I proudly boast? To paraphrase a movie line…”Abso-f&ck’n-lutely.”
I’ve found a way to mitigate the Fed’s stock market put and am proud of it. Only regret is, I should have done so sooner instead of later.
Comparing backgrounds is very tiresome. I was born in a literal slum (at home, back to back Victorian issue with no bathroom in Nottingham).
I went on to present to senior members of the UK govt in Whitehall in 2009. I knew that I could sell out and get into property but I chose to try to improve health care. 11pm conference calls were daily occurrence because my two collaborators were based West coast Canada and Sydney.
I didn’t succeed but proud that I tried. I put myself above anyone who boasts about being a rentier. If even the high priest of right wing economics thought I was a drain on society then I’d be rethinking life.
Isn’t it about time that we all stopped “putting” ourselves “above” each other, no matter on what terms?
What’s the difference between a rentier who draws income from the stock market and one who draws income from a rental property?
Nobody needs to be in the stock market.
One thing I dislike about leftists is all the lefter-than-thou games they like to play.
Yes, it was a smart move to put money in real estate, good for you. The problem is we have a real shortage of affordable homes, because of a storm of factors like the 08 storm, the covid hiccup, builders building only ‘luxury’, and rentiers large and small snapping up and holding most of the housing inventory, and jacking up rents because they can. Young couples locked out of the market are not impressed.
“The problem is we have a real shortage of affordable homes…” What does that have to with my investment house? I rented it in comparative record time in part because firstly I attended with detail and diligence to fixing repairing and upgrading what needed to be, then listing it $400 less than a similar to identical house around the corner in the same HOA, which was owned by a real estate broker. She ended up lowering her asking rent twice until it matched mine…and likely lost 2 to 3 months rent vs myself. Both the various contractors AND listing agents repeatedly complimented me saying “tenants really appreciate landlords who attend to repairs promptly”. In other words, I contribute to affordable housing. Listing agents said my investment home received the greatest traffic amongst all their listing’s by far.
Perhaps you should have led with that. As an academic who mixed with academic marketers for 20 years this makes you sound much more socially responsible. Just a thought.
“Perhaps you should have led with that.” Why? That would have completely changed the subject of my post.
As a fellow small fry when it comes to owning a home or single family residence intended for rental, I’d encourage the capability to maintain your dwelling whilst keeping up with the recent and likely continuing increase in maintenance, repairs upkeep and insurance. I never wanted a real estate empire of my own so my effort at doing this for the past 19 years has remained in one sole property. Reaching the point in time where I give serious consideration to sell and shuffle onto something newer.
It isn’t always rainbows or unicorns, and I keep a watchful eye to correct and repair items as soon I’m informed of it. There are indeed approaches that can work for each party.
I have neighbors who did just that with the houses on either side of them. When age and bad health got the best of them after having the same tenants for more than a decade, the tenants ended up buying those houses at a reasonable price.
That’s in contrast to the typical types of landlords who own properties here. There are few holdovers from pre-’08 period around here, but those that remain are generally scummy slumlords who don’t maintain their properties. The new corporate style around here still seems aimed at scamming. A house gets transferred from one LLC to another while wildly escalating in price at each transfer even though there’s been no improvement of the property. We’ll see if they stop paying taxes like they did the last time.
So there are landlords and there are landlords. I appreciate your approach to the practice.
Very Interesting comments to my circumstances especially the age and bad health issue. I thought about that. I am healthy and vigorous 60+ now. Now, it works financially. But I wiil become old and lose my health. When I get too old and loss my health, I told my ex-husband 24 years my junior, that he inherents my properties. I work in home Healthcare since I relocated to Tennessee and I see folks near the end of their life and how it affects their lives and property. That will be me someday. That’s when I pass it onto him. Someone I still love. That helps make it all worth it.
aye. thats what cousin is moving up here to do.
buy cheap property, build a decent house on it, and rent it for less than the old school local slumlords.
i reckon thats god’s work, right there.
if i had actually inherited anything from my dad(pretended pretty well to be a rich guy, but had blown my grandad’s fortune 20 years before)…thats what i would have done.
im to be the local fixer dude…know who the neighbors are, what precinct its in, and am to be introducing him to the more ethical and decent local players.
theres land out here, outside of odious city rules, thats been on the market forever…but aint listed.
i know where the water is, and can look at a place and tell him if its likely to have it, given geology.
he pays well, too,lol…inherited (like i did) our grandads’ philosophy of treating yer workers well, so they love you…develops loyalty, etc.
so his arrival is looking to be a boon for me, too.
If residential renting is so great, why are there laws preventing you from using so-called “passive losses” for income tax AGI?
Eh, Mom & Pop landlords are usually the first to sink, even if they aren’t leveraged. Unlike stocks it requires upkeep and maintenance on the part of the retail owner. The purpose is to have a balanced portfolio so that downturns in the equity markets are an opportunity instead of suffocating.
Good luck. Hope your outcomes match your confidence.
Well, my friends in Boston South End were neither Mom & Pops nor did they sink.
Listening to the way the term ‘boomers’ is used in the media sounds like the term is not only about age but also about class: ‘boomers’ as the minority of that post-wwII birth generation that went to college, got credentials and good jobs and rode the upward mobility escalator. The term is often used as an age + class shorthand. I seldom hear the term used in a way that suggests the poor or the working class or the ‘right sized’ out of jobs are part of the ‘boomers’ the in the speakers’ or authors’ minds. No. It’s the successful and important politicians, academics, business people, and professionals, of a certain age that are being referenced.
Substitute “middle class” for boomers. I imagine most everybody is “in big trouble” these days whatever the market decides to do.
I agree. I wish the MSM would report it that way.
Yep. I suspect the term stuck because they happened to be a large age cohort. There are indeed a lot of that cohort who live in the terrible conditions you describe.
You don’t see “Generation X” much in news items or social media discourse, despite the fact we are even more bifurcated by class. Why? Because we’re a smaller segment of society. We don’t matter (in population terms).
The way “boomers” is used in articles like this makes it easier to create a divide between younger and older people for political purposes. Like the Republican politician who said we shouldn’t be paying for medical care for sick old people because it was their “poor lifestyle choices” that made them sick. But, yes, the image projected is that all boomers (which I’ll say are all people conceived between V-E day and Kennedy’s assassination) are sitting on big stock portfolios, when, just like the American people overall, it’s a not large minority of boomers that have any kind of stock portfolio big enough to be worth taking note of. And most of those portfolios were built after the bipartisan push to get rid of defined benefits (pensions) and turn everyone into investors (401-Ks), which was nothing we asked for but something forced on us (like the privatized Medicare Part D, Medicare Advantage, and Obamacare). The uniparty will use every possible tactic to divide us against each other as they’re picking our pockets.
The early Boomers cohort I know have started to slowly shuffle off this mortal coil, fading away with various maladies, especially strokes, and thereafter dementia. It’s not pretty and something very disturbing that I’ve noticed is that most are not given any funeral or memorial service these days. Just immediate family. And always cremation, even a Jewish (albeit secular) friend, which shocked me. I don’t know if it’s Covid but these are not expected passings. An era is closing in a very weird way.
Yeah I see that too. As a Gen X person who’s had a heart condition from birth I’m also clock watching. Had my will drawn up 2 months ago.
In the special requests letter I demanded no funeral or memorial service (main will dictates cremation). As far as I’m concerned (particularly with regard to the weird increase in insularity mentioned on this site) my legacy is my textbook. No more, no less.
Which Boomers? I hate these articles, with a taint of generational warfare.
What’s clear to me is that Mayo Pete is past his sell by date. I’ll take cold comfort in that.
He does do a good impersonation of O speechifying. / ;)
Religion desk.
Papa Francesco leaves Gemelli hospital to convalesce back in Vatican City
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdMVNHQUn6E
I think that he’s doing this just to annoy the conservatives (like JD Vance and his nutcase spiritual advisors) who had him dead, in the grave, and were organizing the antipasti at the Conclave.
As a bad Catholic and a bad Buddhist, I have a certain respect for Pope Francis, who has been consistently against the wars / slaughters in Ukraine-Russia and Palestine-Israel. Supposedly, he calls the pastor of the Catholic church in Gaza every evening to check on him. And there are plenty of rumors that Francis has kept up a dialogue with Russian diplomats.
Here in the Chocolate City, where all the major churches belong to Mary, the Mother of God, the ethic is similar to that of Francis — after all, he is of Piedmontese descent and has cousins here.
I have also learned to monitor / comprehend / puzzle out the relation between Catholicism as an emanation of Italian culture, and Italian culture as an emanation of Roman culture and Catholic practice. Like Shinto, with its eight million gods, Italy is the land of eight million saints and apparitions — and who knows what the Etruscans were up to, religiously, with their interpretation of lightning bolts.
When Papa Francesco eventually falls off his perch, just wait for Trump and Vance to start demanding that an American bishop be made the next Pope. Can the Papal State be sanctioned? :)
iirc, Vatican City/Holy See was not recognized by the USA until the Reagan administration. Something to do with the conspiracy around Lincoln’s assassination and general Catholic hatred. So I guess the answer is yes.
Kennedy was RC and society got over that.
However the increasing power of certain sects like Southern Baptists might make the USA more “emphatic” in supporting certain types of cardinals. Interesting times ahead.
As a very much ex catholic, I’ve found it hard not to respect him – he has undoubtedly stalled – for now – the rapid decline of the Church, and he seems profoundly decent and he has skilfully put a lid on the worst excesses of the Church hierarchy. Even my very deeply conservative catholic American relatives like him.
A couple of months ago I had a fun time watching the film Conclave in the cinema with my very atheist best Chinese buddy – I spent half the film whispering in her ear trying to answer her questions about what was going on. It’s always enlightening to have to explain sometime from scratch to someone who genuinely doesn’t know (‘those tasty looking white wafers represent bread, which represents Gods body, and the wine…..’)
You’re lucky that when you explained to her about the wafers representing bread and the wine that she did not ask ‘But isn’t that ritualistic cannibalism?’
i have had that conversation so many times. i make sure to tell them the cannibalism is ok because it’s consensual.
and the wafers are NOT tasty.
Eat his body, drink his blood
And we’ll sing a song of love.
Vatican II ditty from my youth.
matt:
“i make sure to tell them the cannibalism is ok because it’s consensual.”
You have a great future ahead of you as a theologian.
Armin Meiwes tried that defense.
As kids, we used to call communion wafers “Jeez-Its”. For the non-USA crowd, it’s a reference to the Cheez-It brand of snack food.
I remember serving Catholic Mass as an altar boy in elementary school.
It was a different view seeing people I knew sticking their tongues out for the priest to deposit the wafer. The altar boy held a platen? under the parishioner’s face, ostensibly to catch fallen host crumbs, so the altar boy had a good view.
It was a good way to go to church service, one got to ring bells, walk around the sacristy, provide water and wine to the priest a couple of times in the service, spout some Latin, light candles and smell incense (funerals).
Much more interesting that sitting/kneeling in a pew.
One can move away from a religion, but the memories remain.
> ‘those tasty looking white wafers represent bread, which represents Gods body …’
Fellow ‘very much ex catholic’ here. There at the cinema, in medias res as it were, this was surely adequate and for an ex catholic it is a perfectly reasonable explanation. No need to shock your Chinese friend — and maybe some uninformed readers here at NC — by telling her that for True Believers, there is no representation involved; that through the miracle of Transubstantiation those wafers are in fact the body of Christ — and if you don’t believe that with all your heart you are simply not a proper catholic.
Yes, the idea is that the Eucharist is transformed as a “mystery” into the “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Christ.
Luther rejected transubstantiation as a human add-on when the “Word of God” alone was all that was required. Accused by his Roman enemies of being a heretic when it came to the Real Presence because of his rejection of transubstantiation, Luther legendarily knelt on the stone church floor and licked every drop of spilled wine from it when there was a mishap during communion.
As for the practice of taking the wafer on the tongue or common cup, as one who has been on the delivering end, it’s an insane practice, but it’s become a matter of faith to some.
I too have respect for him for the same reasons even if not feeling Catholic from when I was a teenager. A sea change from previous Catholic Terminators. You can see he is a human being, and quite probably a decent one, not detached from the realities of the world.
PlutoniumKun: Ever the diplomat, “As a very much ex catholic, I’ve found it hard not to respect him.”
I am roughly in the same religio-theologico zone as you are.
Yet the problem with Catholicism, if it is a problem, is that like every great religion — Buddhism, Shinto, Islam — it is also a culture. You mention being able to explain the doctrinal side of Conclave.
I have been in the same boat — explaining to friends, especially those from the U.S. non-liturgical churches: “Oh, that’s Saint Lawrence being toasted on the grill. And, yep, Saint Lucy is the one with the eyeballs. And there is Saint Agatha with her breasts on a plate.”
And as Es S Cetera mentions below, people like J.D. Vance want to get into the Catholic church because they perceive it as a hierarchy they can exploit, when, in fact, it is a big buzzing mess of a thing. Like the Oracle at Delphi.
St. Lawrence: Turn me over. I’m done on this side.
St. Denis: Hey, look. I’m holding my head in my hands.
Only some-time-Catholics would find these efunny, no doubt…. :P
I did find it funny that overwhelming majority of my friends (without any design) are ex-Catholics. The culture thing, even across national-cultural boundaries, is a real factor.
In a sign that I’m still not an “ex-“Catholic, despite all the apperances, I never give a straight answer about transsubstantiation (something that my more genuinely ex-Catholic friends humrously exploit often). They think, rightly, I suppose my circuitous and likely completely cloudcuckooland, non-answers very funny. No doubt not-ever-Catholics would find this utterly baffling.
Perhaps another way to explain this to your buddy is that the wafers are identifying as the body of Christ, and anyone who questions this is being waferphobic. So the Church had a ~ 2000 year headstart on IDpol!
Zing!!!!
The Catholic church itself is quietly undergoing a reformation under his leadership. He didn’t start it, of course, I would put the start at John Paul II or Benedict XVI, but under Francis we’ve seen an overhauling of the curia (allowing women, for example, in leadership roles), overhauling Vatican finances, instituting radical anti-corruption reforms, a sexual abuse reporting hotline and procedures for dealing with reports (priests are automatically removed and replaced during investigation). Suddenly we see a rise in altar-girls supplementing altar-boys, and we see many more women EMHC’s. We see Catholic women preaching online (CatholicWomenPreach.org), we see the possibility of a strike if one of the takeaways of the Synod of Synodalities, namely allowing women to preach, isn’t implemented.
With Laudato Si he’s turned the church toward a more caregiving attitude of the planet (much like his namesake saint, but also, like the very first gardener (God)). We see the rise of Catholic climate change groups.
With Fratelli Tutti he’s changed the role of the church toward pastoral care rather than Pharisiac judgement.
With Fiducia Supplicans he’s radically altered the Church stance toward the LGBT community, even (non-liturgical) blessing same-sex couples.
Elsewhere, during one of his earlier encyclicals, he quietly reversed the excommunication of women for having abortions, instead emphasizing the need to care for them, bring them back to the church.
All of the above are reasons why some so-called Catholics unfamiliar with the history and saints of their own church, like Vance, would want to see his demise.
Agreed. Refused to go to funeral of great aunt who was a nun. She SAID all the stuff you report as to why he is great. However never accepted me as gay.
She is emblematic of a rather powerful branch (centred on USA and parts of Africa) who don’t really like pope Francis.
I’m so glad I rejected RC church by age 12….. and not least because a bunch of local priests wanted me as their plaything. I’ll say that to a jury if necessary….. everyone knows what the east Midlands RC church is like.
I’m a not very good Catholic myself, and Francis is about as good a Pope as I can remember in my lifetime, the other stand out being the unfortunately abbreviated tenure of John Paul I.
re: 25 Movies That Define Chinese Cinema Forbes
Lulu Wang has no place there – besides that is an US indie production (I guess this was purely a gender thing without her no female director being in the list I think(?) but Forbes not saying it out loud). Artistically an insult to Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige or Wong Kar-Wai. And if one title is missing it´s “2046”.
Since you had asked about the return of Wolf Hall it premieres tonight on PBS for those of us in the USA. I’m very much looking forward to it.
Thanks!
I haven´t had the time yet but Season 1 at least is available via library in Berlin.
I am of course not eligible for PBS as S2 is concerned.
That all of this is still happening 8 years later is of course remarkable.
p.s. I am currently seeing Damian Lewis in “A Spy Among Friends”. I am early in. Not yet sure. I am a bit pissed over Ben Macintyre who is holding sway over tha mass of great material and manages to get productions invovled who for whatever reason fuck it up. I haven´t haven´t seen “SAS Rogue Heroes” yet. I still keep up my hopes even though screenwriter Knight is not what he once was. Too greedy?
edit: sorry for the many typing errors. Had to take a call.
We saw this movie when it came out and it was fantastic. Highly recommend. I love Chinese cinema.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Day%27s_Journey_into_Night_(2018_film)
I cannot do politics yet today. Lampocteis cruentiventer is a ctenophore (comb jelly, not closely related to jellyfish). There is good evidence that ctenophores were the first truly multicellular animals. Deep down in the biology nerdisphere is also good evidence they have an opening at both ends of their digestive tracts, which is revolutionary. Another episode in “Life is Astonishing.”
Now, back to politics, where “astonishing” continues to plumb the depths of human depravity.
Ahh, politics. You mean the other type of bottom feeders. And I swear that those lights looked like synapses going off in sequence.
Eight rows of beating cilia (ctene = comb) that are iridescent when light is shining on them. I’ve seen many in the Pacific Northwest of North America but nothing like this one.
Any theories out there about some of the Ediacaran fauna being ctenophores? They are so weird looking…
Great question! They may predate the Ediacaran according to the master evolutionary clock, which is quite good I think, but are unlikely to have left any fossil evidence because they are very soft. There are a few Edicaran fossils that look like bioluminescent sea pens (Pennatulacea) but a paleontologist friend says they are different from the Edicaran fossils.
What do we say about that “Unitree”…
Magnus comes later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus,_Robot_Fighter
So, war satellites in space and drones on the ground and in the sea. The new war technologies.
Temporarily, drones have given smaller countries an effective weapon against the hegemon.
But armed satellites will belong to the big boys.
My guess is that armed satellites are seen as the strategy for the US to regain control of weaponry in every domain: land, sea, air, space. And as part of the strategy robots are being developed to operate in space as part of the space war. No spacesuits needed.
Still early days but the plans have most likely been in place for a few years, because of what has been built already by US funded contractors.
Here is a new entrant: “This agile 200-kilogram class “space first responder” can deploy within 24 hours of launch and operate within 10 kilometres of target satellites, combining enhanced autonomous capabilities with Solstice OS (Space Machines AI-driven orbital operating system) to deliver a dynamic, adaptive space presence” https://asiapacificdefencereporter.com/space-machines-company-unveils-optimus-viper/
Glenn Greenwald. From the Archives. Talking with David Talbot. from 2023. utube, ~47+ minutes.
FROM THE ARCHIVES: David Talbot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1bbdOgIzrI
Thanks for this. Talbot’s books on Dulles (discussed here) and also on RFK after the assassination of his brother (‘Brothers’) are very good.
On the subject of the recent document releases, there is a nice article on the Schlesinger memo posted at MofA by James DiEugenio. DiEugenio is one of the best researchers on the Kennedy assassination in my opinion; he was the screenwriter for Oliver Stone’s recent documentary on the subject. Most of these documents have been released previously with redactions, so there is unlikely to be any big surprises. But like the Schlesinger memo, there are some significant redactions that have now been restored.
Here’s the DiEugenio essay:
https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-schlesinger-memo-jfk-v-cia
Thanks for the link.
re: Palestine solidarity documentary
‘The Encampments,’ Macklemore-Produced Doc About Columbia University Gaza Solidarity Movement, Reveals U.S. Release Date and First-Look Images
https://variety.com/2025/film/global/the-encampments-doc-columbia-university-protests-us-release-1236342054/
I say, this would not be featured this openly with Democrats still in WH and supporting the genocide.
Variety via CPH:Dox in Copenhagen siding with Columbia protesters possible only now with Trump. Now (almost) everything is allowed to be addressed critically. (i.e. Ukraine is still not. But that´s another topic…)
“(…)
Watermelon Pictures has announced a March 28 theatrical launch at the Angelika Film Center in New York, with a nationwide theatrical expansion to follow. “The Encampments” features Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil (pictured below), a recent Columbia graduate who was detained earlier this month by federal immigration agents in New York as part of Trump’s crackdown on students who have protested against the war in Gaza. A judge has ordered the Trump administration not to deport Khalil pending a legal fight over his detention.
(…)”
Re “but why has the camp continued to grow for months?”, well now, hmm, ok, maybe, just maybe, because everyday more and more people are joining the ranks of the homeless?
Every one of us is just one or two short steps from living in the park.
“Trump says ‘contract’ being drafted on ‘dividing up’ land in Ukraine war”
I’m calling this as Trump trying to obscure the picture of what is going on with his typical bs way of talking. People will read this and say haw, haw, he thinks it all a real estate deal when it is actually about the security of different countries. But then you read this section-
‘Trump proposed the U.S. take ownership of some of Ukraine’s power plants as a way of providing protection in the future. “American ownership of those plants would be the best protection for that infrastructure and support for Ukrainian energy infrastructure,” national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a joint statement after Trump’s one-hour call with Zelensky.’
So when you think about it, isn’t this Trump sneaking through the back door security guarantees for the Ukraine? And how the US will then be fully embedded in the affairs of that country? And that means that the US will never get out of that country?
I see no difference between how the U.S. would react to someone blowing up anything some U.S. citizen or company “owns” in Stalin’s SSR than it reacts to someone killing U.S. personnel in Odessa.
The burden of grabbing Zelenski’s bacon is beyond US capacity.
Gotta buy the F-47.
Who will tell Trump you can not get there?
On the aircraft or Kiev
The Hill article is refreshing to read but seems too late. That and the op-ed by Antonio Delgado ‘It’s Time to say Goodbye to our Neoliberal era’.
A few more articles like that might be a signal change but it’s way too slow. Trump hysteria is still ongoing even as it’s completely ineffective at stopping him.
My political instincts are still to drown the party and try to rebirth progressive anti-elite populism. In their scorched Earth campaign, Democrats have done their best to discredit that idea as well.
Even as they fall apart, Democrats punch wildly and destroy what few grassroots opposition and worker’s organization that can still form. Hand the far right the country on a silver platter with no opposition…
They are our enemies.
“M1 Abrams Tank Was Smacked with a Reality Check in Ukraine War”
Not for the first time either. The Abrams is a design going back nearly half century and though there is talk about trying to develop a new tank, it remains just that – talk. The present Abrams tanks should be fitted with cope cages based on lessons from the Ukraine but have seen nothing in this area happening. This article tries to talk the Abrams up saying that it was only in the Ukraine that it has experienced major problems but that is not true. Twenty years ago those Abrams were experiencing all sorts of problems in Iraq-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams#Iraq_War
The 25 Movies That Define Chinese Cinema Forbes article missed a real gem: “To Live”. Someone may have already mentioned it, but it is incredible.
Thank you! One of my all-time favorites. As is/was Gong Li, the most beautiful woman who ever lived.
How Los Angeles Is Getting Scorched by Its Homeless Problem RealClearInvestigations
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As per the article, nobody in charge wants to talk about homeless fires getting out of control in the Big Smokes and causing mayhem-these people have led careless lives, so no real surprise…
…how do we fix the situation?
To solve homelessness one would have to attack the whole FIRE sector and bring real estate prices down to what regular people could afford. Without rent control, or heavily taxing everyone who owns multiple properties as investment vehicles, the only option is to move people into vacant properties regardless of the ownership. We really need something like in the 30’s, when tenant unions made it impossible to evict renters from apartment buildings, or the penny auctions that gave homesteads back to the foreclosed, or the widespread assaults on eviction judges and sheriffs. But as this current system creates and requires widespread poverty, the homeless population will continue to grow.
I was disappointed by Ana Kasparian’s article, she never suggests any solutions to poverty, only fear mongering and criminalizing people who have no power over the economic system that threw them overboard. She never interviews any homeless people, and judging by her constant barrage of unfounded assumptions, she doesn’t even know any homeless people, even though they’re a sizable part of the LA population. But she must understand that people who are discarded by a society and who are relegated into a second-class citizenship shouldn’t show any loyalty or respect to that society. If you had no place to live and everyone treated you like an pariah, wouldn’t you burn things down?
Affordable housing for the 40% or more of the homeless that work plus the rest of those who have income from social security and the like followed by the building of housing for everyone else?
But I am told that this is crazy commie talk…
Not in Los Angeles. Two weeks after a huge calamity like those fires, all is forgotten and life goes on. I went through one (the Old Topanga Canyon-Malibu Fire, 1992), and the scale of those incidents is indescribable.
The solutions are available, viz Singapore and Vienna — the state must return to building public housing, and LOTS of it …
Came across this…
(Yes, THAT Mitch McConnell)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7g3NAEOU4k
1990 Mitch McConnell Senate Campaign Ad Running On Healthcare After His Polio Scare
If I were a Bezos, Ellison or Zuckerberg I’d be worried that Elon is now the Don’s favorite snugglebunny and I’d be asking myself what could be done to ensure I wouldn’t be sucking hind teat.
The Donald has let everyone know that he wants his bust on Mt Rushmore, a wonderful idea, however it’s not just about enhancing the retirements of a few decision makers, Congress would get involved which would delay things forever.
The answer is simple, buy a Mountain with similar geology and re name it the REAL MT RUSHMORE, which will let everyone know that the so called original is the FAKE Mt Rushmore.
Clearly the Donald’s Bust should be front and center, flanked by busts of lesser Presidents like George Washington and William McKinley.
It should also be twice the size of the other busts and gilded with 24 Karat Gold to emphasize that Trump is the GREATEST PRESIDENT EVER!!!
USA!, USA!, USA!
Why buy one then you can just grab one? I suggest Olympus Mons – it’s the YUGEST one in the whole solar system. I am 100% in favor of using taxpayer funds to send Trump and pal there to get started on it right away.
Musical accompaniment, just because I like the song.
This guy is beginning to annoy me but he got it right a few years ago about Mars:
1. Goto mars
2. Die.
Hey Elon watch this
RE: Trump hangs sword of Damocles over the American legal system
I am not a fan of ransacking the legal system, but I don’t remember Politico being so concerned when it was Biden and the Democrats finding “novel” ways to use lawfare to go after the Donald – they still haven’t tired of noting the “34 felonies” brought about through jerry-rigged jurisprudence, turning an accounting entry using an antiquating dropdown menu into the crime of the century.
Several months ago just after the election, I was at the dinner table with a US Congressperson who was very frightened that Trump might turn the legal system against the Democrats. My better half turned to this elected official and said “Isn’t that what the Democrats did to Trump over the last few years?”. The Congressperson was a little taken aback, hearing this question coming from a liberal, but one not afflicted with TDS. “Well I suppose that’s one way to look at it” was the reply, with zero recognition of the inherent hypocrisy of it all.
On the one hand I of course agree – on the other the question will come up whether or not the Trump Admin. attacks now are a qualitative shift compared to what the Dems did .
I have the impression the jury is still out.
Besides as to what matters probably the most – will 80% of the population by 2028 be as bad off as they were before 2025? I would be very surprised if not.
“Unseen heroes in a petri dish”: these new viruses massively combat climate change now Sustainability Times
BS reporting all over again. Starting with the illustration of coronavirus-like thingies which have nothing to do with the ocean viruses studied by M. Sullivan and colleagues. Go to the original article, which is very interesting and shows that many ocean viruses contain many “borrowed” bacterial genes involved in many metabolic routes and probably use these to divert the metabolism of their bacterial hosts to the interest of the virus.
From this to seeing viruses as the “metabolic” saviours of the world there are several thousands of bridges we could be sold before. And all made thanks to AI!!! Disneylandish reporting here.
It’s on like Donkey Kong: The Canadian federal election has been called for April 28. Carney leads in the polls by only a couple of points.
What are the odds that both Labour (UK) and the Democrat Party (US) send “action teams” to Canada to ‘assist’ their political BFFs?
Transnationalism is going big lately.
It seems the UK doesn’t have to send an action team because the first thing Carney did when he became Prime Minister was to head right over the Atlantic and meet with his classmate Starmer, the King, and Macron. To receive his marching orders, I presume. Next stop, Goldman Sachs.
IIRC it is illegal. Elections Canada and the RCMP might not be amused.
Yes, but Transnationals care nothing for “individual nation states” and their laws. Everything is “Hidden Hand” and the “Mandate of Finance” to them.
True but it can be difficult to campaign from a jail cell and everyone from your citizen on the street to the head of Elections Canada is likely to be on the look-out and have the RCMP on speed-dial.
when i see one of “those people” in jail,i’ll throw a frelling party.
cuzthataintgonnahappen,lol.
ill throw a party anyways, because thats how i roll, and get through this torrential nonsense, but still
It’s Canada amfortas. Think of it as Austin with good French cuisine.
I read that Canada ‘outsourced’ their homelessness. They call it Detroit.
I’m really curious as to how this plays out. I totally understand the Canadian existential threat and how Carney represents the “ultimate insider who can protect them”.
Yet I also saw the desire for change. This might turn out to be similar to the British 1992 election. We had “change” (Major not Thatcher) but elected same party to the lower house. It rapidly went downhill for Major and in retrospect many Tories regretted that win, given what happened in 1997.
It is going to be interesting. Carney has a “new face” advantage versus Poilievre and I suspect a fair number of Canadians see Poilievre as a bit like Trump in his policies and for that matter some of his supporters. Currently being like Donald Trump is not a vote-getter in Canada.
Poilievre’s campaign has been mainly “Hate Trudeau” and, oops, Trudeau is gone and Poilievre has almost no time to retool his campaign. It’s a short election campaign, thirty-six days from counting from today.
As opposed to this, Carney has never fought a campaign in his life.
It will be interesting to see how many votes Poilievre gets in Alberta. See what percent of Albertans are Canadian and what percent are Maganadian.
“Hate Trudeau” and, oops, Trudeau is gone”
Yes, I saw a report on Poilievre’s recent campaign speech two days ago. The headline was, “I’m tough! says Poilievre.” I kid you not.
Rick Salutin (Toronto Star, 22 Dec 2023) wrote that “…the NDP is a spent force. I don’t know if they should fold into the Liberals but it would at least make sense of their existence. They’d become the left wing of the Liberals, like Sanders for the Democrats and as Corbyn was for British Labour.”
He has been a life long supporter of the NDP. This gives some indication of the Carney “wave” which will not lift NDP boats as they vote across Canada to keep Poilievre out of power. On cable (CBC and CTV) political programmes, weekdays, the paid Conservatives commentators were giddy prior to Trudeau’s resignation. It was a done deal – Poilievre was shoe-in. Immediately after Freeland crucified Trudeau, the Party let her know as she was trounced by Carney that she too was toast. She was/is a boring, pedantic and accident prone Deputy Leader. And Freeland was rewarded accordingly in the leadership contest. The Conservative commentators currently (since Carney won handily) let slip every now and then that Poilievre is past his best buy date. Satirically referred as Skippy (15 year history on that epithet) the Conservatives are letting it be known that Skippy is finished and clearly he is no longer now or will be a political force in the future. In Quebec historically a technocrat leader at the federal level is preferred to lip readers: come on down Poilievre. Quebecois as a rule prefer a winner, to a loser – Poilievre. The NDP is going to get crushed and may not get Official Party status. Singh’s (NDP leader) vocabulary is watered social democracy and slides into PM McKenzie King’s (PM in 1920s-1940s) assessment of the NDP as “Liberals in a hurry”. This why the Liberals will crush the NDP and humiliate the Conservatives again. Rudderless and unprincipled, Poilievre is about to be handed his backside.
Ginger Goodwin
I don’t relish the prospect of handing either the perennially arrogant Liberals nor the Poilievre infected Conservatives a majority mandate — I would prefer another minority government.
Who’s Going to Unite Europe on Defense?
I would frame the question in a different way. Instead of asking who I would ask what. There are instances in which a common approach might, and i say might with some doubts, truly result in consensus for good reason among most, if not all EU countries. The article mentions satellite intelligence and it is mentioned in the White Paper as the last point of the ReArm project. It should really be the first. IMO, European countries, because the “NATO dividend”, “peace dividend” or whatever is called have mostly relied on the US for this function (probably the US wanted this because it gave them leverage). This is IMO, the easiest starting point for cooperation between EU countries: sharing intelligence and all that. Yet, UvdL couldn’t help herself and wanted to create an instrument to help more deliveries to Ukraine. Any project involving “joint purchases” of a single EU country plus Ukraine would almost certainly be passed through the ReArm scheme automatically and this was probably the main objective of the project. My guess is that many countries are not wanting to spend any more in Ukraine even if the gates of debt ceilings are broken into pieces. UvdL may believe the contrary but probably most are starting to gather that this is a waste of everything.
Absent the Americans, when has a European entity of 27 countries ever functioned as a unitary political actor? I foresee fractiousness …
” Has Trump caused the establishment Democratic Party to implode?” . . . by ‘Douglas MacKinnon’ . . .
Douglas MacKinnon? What Douglas MacKinnon? Which Douglas MacKinnon?
THIS Douglas MacKinnon? –> ” thehill.com · opinion · white-houseThe bully who pulls the levers of Trump’s mind never learns
Dec 4, 2021 · Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant”
A White House writer for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush is going to offer insights about the “Democratic Party” and its “implosion”?
Bill Clinton was an evil deadly enemy of the working class. So was Barak Obama. Just like Ronald Reagan was.
Was this an article put here to test whether we were paying attention?
Same as the article about ” No Decency in the Democrats”?
Wow. This guy, Douglas MacKinnon, is f**king dumb. (a former White House and Pentagon official; that explain it I guess)
Wait, what? Prior to Trump any of this mattered? Such concern is not in evidence. Convenient to blame the failure of the Democrat Party to win the latest presidential election as being solely about Trump breaking liberal Democrat brains. Definitely not about a concerted policy to avoid any material benefits for the working class; and there’s overwhelming evidence of this.
No, he is actually very smart. He is concern trolling and hoping to get the Dems of all flavors re-defending and re-investing in their beloved Clinton, Obama, etc.
As Admiral Somebody said in some Star Wars movie-or-other . . . ” It’s a trap!”
It’s amazing that it took this long for such an obvious measure to be put into place by the Dems. One might have thought this would have gone up on day one.
Better yet would be a daily broadcast of some kind highlighting “what DOGE did today.” Not only factual information, but interviews with workers and families publicizing the human cost to American citizens. This would be easy and cheap to produce and could become a great organizing tool if handled well.
DOGE seems like it could be made very unpopular, and threaten to drag Trump down along with it.
How about Harris doing a weekly “Homeless encampment campfireside chat?”
That would make her the “New FDR” the Democrat Party Faithful need and want.
Her problem would be in trying to “square the circle” between the New Deal idealism and the Predatory Capitalism bottom line.
Who can two masters serve?
Pitching a cool idea for a situation comedy series?
“White House Flippers.”
When Obama was on the campaign trail for his first term, he said, among many other things, that “we need to protect our whistleblowers.” His documented record, of which this article only a part, demonstrates that he betrayed that promise. If I were a whistleblower, I would think long and hard before trusting the dems with information.
Good afternoon. I have been camping in the back country since Friday. Back in civilization now.
My big insight while on retreat from 24×7 media was that I came up with a fun new name to describe Silicon Valley’s AI:
Encyclopedia Shittanica.
Time to take a bath now.
Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts (NY Times via archive.ph)
I noticed earlier there’s a post making the rounds either on Twitter or Reddit suggesting people sign up for a brokerage account at RobinHood or elsewhere and buy LEAP puts on Telsa to try to crash the stock. Wiser minds on Twitter pointed out that this is just gonna lose people buying puts money. Short interest and dealer delta hedging is complex enough, I don’t entirely follow either the intended outcome or the actual mechanics as to why this will fail. Would need to study in greater detail.
Being short stock in general is a tough way to make money. Stocks tend to go up over time. You have to be correct in both direction and time to not get smoked.
Interesting attempt at financial warfare, though.
Blunt force boycotts and campaigns might be the way for non-rich financial layfolk to go.
Would be an interesting NC-post: “Beginner´s Guide to Ruin Stock Companies”.
But then how to decide which are benign which are not.
As Brecht wrote in the Threepenny Opera:
“Was ist ein Dietrich gegen eine Aktie? Was ist ein Einbruch in eine Bank gegen die Gründung einer Bank? Was ist die Ermordung eines Mannes gegen die Anstellung eines Mannes?”
/
“What is a lock pick compared to a stock? What is breaking into a bank compared to founding a bank? What is murdering a man compared to hiring a man?”
p.s. Or as they like to put it nowadays “Today Brecht would be reading naked capitalism”
It might be easier to decide which are most malignant and target them first and worst.
Tesla ( and all other things Musk) are fulminant elonomas and should be deleted first and soonest.
Killing Tesla may be the key to Musk’s power. Killing Tesla may start killing Musk’s other businesses through a falling domino wave of rolling bankruptcies and liquidations. Would that make DOGE weak enough for intestine-releasing flank attacks? Worth trying and finding out.
The other silicon techbro companies are also very malignant and worthy of extinction. Facebook, etc.
Amazon is like a huge mass of army ants crawling over the landscape. But it would be much harder to kill. Perhaps it can be shrunken down a little.
Perhaps another way to look at it is . . . which large and famous stock share companies are most fragile to pressure? Which can be stock-price collapsed the deepest and hardest? Which would have the most panic-run-inducing effect on the stock markets? Which would terrorise the traditional overclass into deciding that Trump and DOGE have to be removed from office and from power with as much “extreme prejudice” as is required?
I suspect the big digital social media-tech companies are too big to kill. Their users are too addicted to ever stop using. But one thing their users COULD do is THIS . . . boycott every single company that advertises on any digitech company until no advertiser dares to advertise on any digitech company anywhere. That would at least degrade and attrit their revenue streams, hence their stockshares, hence their power.
Son of Zeitgeist Report.
Spring is “officially” here in the rancid underbelly of the North American Deep South.
I was out back snipping off some spinach leaves for din dins and a ruby throated hummingbird mistook me for a plant and hovered right in front of my face, maybe two foot distance, for about ten seconds. It then slipped sideways and snapped up a flying insect, then another, and another. After that it was off to the azalea bushes on the side of the house, which are flowering, to search for nectar.
I am heartened to see that Nature is doing its best to keep the World on an even keel.
Stay safe and get outdoors for the Spring!
Thank you for this lovely spring story, ambrit. I had something similar happen to me years ago when I was standing within a foot of a hummer feeder I was getting ready to refill. All of a sudden, a hummer came to the feeder and then came straight over to me. Within about 1-2 inches of my body, it helicoptered up and down my front while I watched in amazement. I happened to be wearing a floral shirt which fooled the little guy for a few precious-to-me moments.
It is amazing to experience. It reminded me that now was the time to wash out and refill the hummingbird feeders around the house, we have three at present.
I have been lucky enough to hang a feeder on the front porch and have the birds become acostomed enough to my presence, sitting in the porch swing, that they will feed with me close by. Try it. It takes a week or two, but they will come to consider you a part of the scenery. Then watch them fight over the feeders! They chirp and do arial acrobatic “fights” to establish ‘ownership’ of the food sources. Keep watch and you will soon have their feeding times figured out. Sometimes, one or two will perch in a bush or tree nearby to keep an eye on “their” feeder.
If I am “preaching to the choir,” I beg your pardon.
Stay safe. Keep watching the skies!
That must have been an amazing experience and one that money cannot buy you. One for the deep memory files to be thought of from time to time.
It truly is. It’s up there with the time I inadvertently swam with a dolphin off of Miami Beach.
It may not have mistaken you for a plant. It may have considered you a very interesting large animal and was satisfying its curiosity.
Last year I was sitting in my tiny little yardlet ( yardette?) and a hummingbird flew to 3 feet away from the left side of my face and looked at me for several seconds, then flew to 3 feet away from the right side of my face and looked at me for several seconds, and then flew away. It felt clear to me that it was looking “at” me and not as a plant.
The Democrats Are Losing the Social Media Wars. This Young Socialist Is Changing That.
Zohran Mamdani may not win his election, but he could offer a strategy to the left.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/03/22/zohran-mamdani-mayor-democratic-socialist-new-york-00225213
Hilarious. Sort of. Jimmy Dore. utube, ~10 minutes.
Democrats Targeting Other Democrats’ Teslas Is Tanking Workers’ Pension Funds!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpFEyttm124
Um… what’s the word?… ****ers?
“What’s the frequency Elon?”
I am willing to take the hit to my pension fund involved in exterminating Tesla from the face of the earth if it gives me the actual greater benefit of actually living to see Tesla exterminated from the face of the earth.
Tesla/Musk’s existence destroys more value for us all then Tesla/Musk stock “creates” in our pension funds.
Bernie tweeted what?
Bernie Sanders: The Left Should NOT Run As Democrats Anymore w/ Matt Taibbi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8wzO8qNORY