Chimpanzees act as ‘engineers’, choosing materials to make tools based on structural and mechanical properties ScienceDaily (Kevin W)
The sudden, surprising rise of beard transplants: ‘This industry is a wild west’ Guardian (Terry F)
Updated physical model helps reconstruct sudden, dramatic sea level rise after last ice age PhysOrg (Chuck L)
Why physics today stands on the wings of angels and demons aeon
6.7-magnitude earthquake hits off New Zealand’s South Island Straits Times
#COVID-19/Pandemics
Best piece I’ve read on Covid’s impact on the brain:
“Scientists have found that those who have had Covid are more likely to have elevated levels in their blood of the same proteins that are prevalent in people with Alzheimer’s disease.” #LongCovid pic.twitter.com/m63BwPEjo1
— charlos (@loscharlos) March 24, 2025
Scientists Tested a DIY Air Cleaner – And It Beat Expensive Filters SciTech Daily (Chuck L)
Climate/Environment
Conflicts Over Water Are on the Rise Statista
China?
China calls for global business to ‘resist protectionism’ as American executives gather in Beijing CNN
TSMC making a risky bet on MAGA Asia Times (Kevin W)
Africa
If 70 people in Palestine were beheaded, quite rightly, you’d have heard about it.
If 70 people at Pride were murdered, quite rightly, you’d have heard about it.
70 Christians were beheaded in Congo recently. Did you hear about it? pic.twitter.com/FgWkcGS7RA
— Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) March 25, 2025
An exception that proves the rule: The country where beheadings and jihadi violence are rife – but nobody is talking about it Independent
European Disunion
Europe’s Anti-Democratic Militarization Compact Magazine (Micael T)
Europe’s “military coup” Thomas Fazi
Greenland’s government hits back at Donald Trump over US visit to Arctic island Financial Times. Kevin W: “Trump has said that Denmark is not a good ally.”
We can’t conjure up shelters in a crisis Aftonbladet via machine translation. Micael T: “So you choose between dying from artillery or choking to death in a shelter. Neoliberal fantasy camp.”
Old Blighty
Councils and NHS could face millions in extra costs due to disability benefit cuts Guardian
Israel v. The Resistance
🚨Israel just bombed the Red Cross in Gaza
There is NOT a single redline left that Israel hasn’t crossed; not a single international law it hasn’t already obliterated…
Yet the EU is still pretending Israel hasn’t even violated “article 2” on respect for human rights! pic.twitter.com/ve4ecE4Vjc
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) March 24, 2025
World ignores calls ‘to stop the madness’ as Israel kills dozens in attacks Aljazeera
Report: Netanyahu Demanded the IDF Bomb Homes Without Intelligence Antiwar.com (Kevin W)
Jordan proposes exiling 3,000 Hamas members from Gaza to end Israel’s war Middle East Eye (Kevin W)
Iran Deploys Missile Systems on Disputed Gulf Islands Amid Rising Tensions Kurdistan24
Iran: No ‘direct’ talks under maximum pressure; onus on US to change policy PressTV
New Not-So-Cold War
No statement from latest round of talks in Saudi Arabia. 40 minutes with Ukraine, which = a one-way communication. 12 hours of US-Russia negotiations. Team so tired they will make their statement tomorrow.
You may not have heard of Yevgeny Primakov. But in Moscow’s corridors of power, his ideas are very much alive — and shaping how Russia is engaging the United States right now. 🧵
As US-Russia talks grind on, one thing is clear: the Kremlin is not looking for a reset. It’s not… pic.twitter.com/7brG6pCB13
— Brian McDonald (@27khv) March 24, 2025
Turkiye
What’s Erdogan’s end game with Imamoglu’s arrest? Middle East Eye
This is Turkey.
If 1/10th of this happened in Russia, Iran, or China Western media would call it a revolution and demand the regime change of "the dictator" but they seem silent right now since Erdogan is sending oil to Western colony Zionistan. pic.twitter.com/AAgHZXFHGQ
— Hassan Mafi (@thatdayin1992) March 24, 2025
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
DNA of 15 Million People For Sale In 23andMe Bankruptcy 404media
You know that generative AI browser assistant extension is probably beaming everything to the cloud, right? The Register. I do not do extensions at all, on the assumption they are spyware. General rule: if something is free, you are the product.
Imperial Collapse Watch
Regime Change in the West? London Review of Books (Anthony L). Today’s must read.
BREAKING: The Trump admin accidentally texted a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, from The Atlantic, their top-secret war plans on Yemen.
Texts are below between Vance and Hegseth, in which the journalist was included.
Imagine if Biden did this! So incompetent. pic.twitter.com/CGIkNq0iNX
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) March 24, 2025
The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans Atlantic
Publish the Leaked Trump Texts Ken Klippenstein
Mike Johnson says Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth shouldn’t be disciplined over war plans Signal chat The Hill. If this was Russia or any reasonably run country, the outcome would be very different.
* * *
Trump 2.0
A pretty hard core conservative reader has volunteered that he thinks Trump was kept on a fairly short leash during the campaign and is now wildly out of control and Musk is really in charge (which said contact does not see as good). This reader has noticed a pattern he suggests we hoist into a regular feature: “Red Hat Distraction of the Day.” Conservative media has been hyping daily news bright shiny objects like the F-47 (so we really need a F-35 2.0?) to cheer up the base and divert attention to the increasingly MAGA-betraying policies of Team Trump. Can you help provide sightings?
Dr. Oz and the Plot Against Medicare DropSite. Important.
The ‘Golden Dome’ Scam Daniel Larison
GOP senators warn Trump agenda will be slowed by internal divisions The Hill
They helped Trump take back the White House. The rewards have come swiftly. CNN (Kevin W)
Pentagon chief offers choice between war and defense RT (Kevin W)
Trump says countries that purchase oil from Venezuela will pay 25% tariff on any trade with U.S. CNBC (Kevin W)
Buying the vote MuskWatch
JFK files: CIA contaminated sugar destined for USSR RT (Kevin W)
DOGE
Elon Musk Disguises IRS Building As Tesla Dealership So Democrats Will Burn It Down Babylon Bee (Chuck L)
Tax revenue could drop by 10 percent amid turmoil at IRS Washington Post
DeJoy stepping down as USPS postmaster general immediately Axios (Kevin W)
Immigration
Judges Rip Trump Officials Over Deportation Flights Wall Street Journal
US treated Nazis better during WWII than Trump treated deported Venezuelan migrants: Federal judge Anadolu Agency
Police State Watch
How the Iraq War turbocharged police militarization Stephen Semler
‘Record’ payout for world’s longest-serving death row inmate BBC
Our No Longer Free Press
Anti-Zionist, But Not Anti-Semitic Larry Johnson. The fact that he wrote this suggests he is getting more pushback.
Meta considers charging for ad-free Facebook and Instagram in the UK BBC (Kevin W)
Mr. Market Is Moody
Diverging US Economic Data Begs the Question: Is a Slowdown Coming? Bloomberg
AI
#TheDeepSeekEffect DeepSeek-V3 now runs at 20 tokens per second on Mac Studio, and that's a nightmare for OpenAI | VentureBeat https://t.co/MIMk8n41Z7
— Paul Triolo (@pstAsiatech) March 25, 2025
The Phony Comforts of AI Optimism Ed Zitron
The Bezzle
White House Says Gold Reserves May Be Used to Purchase Bitcoin Benzinga. Paul R: “Am I on a drug trip or what? This can’t possibly be real.”
Tesla’s Europe sales collapse as anti-Musk backlash grows Politico (Kevin W)
Tesla sales drop 35% in San Diego County Fox5SanDiego
Tesla Stock Value and Elon’s Power in DC JD Lindeberg. Way too kind to Team Dem…
Guillotine Watch
America’s rich scramble to open Swiss bank accounts over Trump fears Telegraph
Class Warfare
There’s a Stock Exchange for Lawsuits Bloomberg (Micael T)
Antidote du jour (via):
And a bonus (Chuck L):
2. The prophecy has been fulfilled pic.twitter.com/cCXxTSoMqs
— Wolf of X (@tradingMaxiSL) March 12, 2025
A second bonus:
Not now Linda, I’m working.. 😂 pic.twitter.com/O3urYK7Jp7
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) March 24, 2025
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Is there any info on anything unusual about the death of former D.A. Jessica Aber?
I did see mention of her in a tweet today-
‘ADAM
@AdameMedia
Mar 23
Did lsraeI assasinate ANOTHER inconvenient US politician?
Former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Jessica Aber, was found dead in her bed yesterday.
She spent years exposing an Israeli plot to illegally bring Israelis into the U.S. with fraudulent visas.’
https://xcancel.com/AdameMedia/status/1903959275518435813#m
hm
thanks
as a DA she was involved in action against all kinds of nasty people.
And then: she also prosecuted a CIA whistleblower over Iran I think.
CBS allegedly quoted family saying something about illness…
One hopes the very best medical analysts are involved in seeing whether the illness was natural or induced. Or natural but artificially helped along.
If Israel is getting a reputation for remotely assassinating inconveniently effective opponents, then other people hating such an attorney general for their own other reasons could arrange her death in the confidence that israel would get accused. ” Look what Israel did!” Since the dead whistleblowers-against-Boeing were not involved in any counter-Israel activities, the name “Israel” has not come up in their cases.
Washington Post says family and friends knew she had a long-standing health problem, and doesn’t tell us what it was out of respect for her privacy. This seems probable to me.
‘Buitengebieden
@buitengebieden
Follow
Not now Linda, I’m working.. 😂’
Somebody should have told that dog that you shouldn’t have any romances at work.
When I found the beard story, in some ways I was unsurprised. I’ve told this before but many years ago so for newbies here it is again. I used to go to gay men only resorts in Gran Canaria, Spain. Back in those days Sildenafil (Viagra) could be bought over the counter at the pharmacy. On one particularly memorable holiday (for the LULz) a Sexual Health Consultant, his hubby and I talked shop a lot round the pool.
One of the other guys strutted out one morning and said his “bit of trade” from the night before told him “Wow you were hard all night”. The proper doctor and I exchanged a glance with an unspoken “are you going to tell him or am I”. I ended up telling him, “So you’re off to the Emergency Dept then?”
“Why?”. “That’s a priapism and when you stay hard for too long the tissues begin to degrade. Did you buy Viagra at the pharmacy next door?”
Blood drained from his face (and, I hope from other areas). “Yes.”
“What dose?”
“100mg”.
“WTF? That’s what they give 90 year olds. You are in serious trouble. Even 25mg should be taken under doctor’s orders and a doc who is satisfied it is OK for you.”
Didn’t see the guy for rest of the day but next day he was very quiet. The proper STI doctor asked him if he’d read the instructions. “No, they were all in Spanish”. Sigh. Men.
When I read the beard transplant story, I wondered what would happen if pubic hair came back into fashion and if we will be reading stories of pubic hair transplants (shudder). Maybe they should think about bringing back Victorian mustaches again instead-
https://thepenningtonedition.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/the-19th-century-mustache/
Nothing like a good set of mutton chops.
I find the whole body hair thing hilarious these days. I’m very hairy (sorry for the TMI). I learnt from painful experience that shaving can cause a lot of very painful and sometimes infected ingrown hairs. So I just use electric clippers to “stay tidy”.
My face is the only area I have to be really really careful with. I grew a beard (the one and only time) when living in Sweden (ha!) and hated it. Because of my blepharitis I must clean my eyes daily so shaving is also added to the routine…..I have a 5 O’Clock shadow by 2pm so daily shaving is imperative.
The whole beards is trendy thing makes me laugh. It’ll be gone again within 10 years. Plus it’ll be used by future generations to age you and laugh at you, just like 1980s mullets etc. Wear whatever suits you best and stick with it. Don’t try for things your body ain’t designed for.
LOL! I’m a scoutmaster for my son’s troop so I’m around teen boys often. Well I’m amazed at how often the current crop of teen boys talk about mullets and who might be ready to get one. I can only shake my head and laugh.
oh dear. I know 1980s and 1990s nostalgia is a thiing,particularly in movies etc. But THAT?!
Have you warned them? ;-)
Mullets, the fictional character Kenny Powers is sporting a most excellent version of one on the series Eastbound and Down….that TV series was doing a smaller rerun I guess on TruTv I think it was.
Happened to accidentally tune into the first episode yesterday evening, where the pitching career takes a nosedive and now Kenny is a substitute teacher. I grew up in the possible hey day, mid to late 80s, for mullets as a running theme, in eastern NC!
I thought that mullets were fishes.
The Rev Kev:
One wonders if the merkin will become fashionable.
I kinda like those Victorian mustaches that stuck out the sides like pointed needles myself. :)
Make Merkins Great Again!
“You may not have heard of Yevgeny Primakov.”
How old is McDonald, 12?
Ys. I think the American public is 12 years old.
re: Perry Anderson
“The most influential and intelligent mass periodical in the capitalist world, functioning at times as a semi-official adviser to it, the Economist magazine in London”
Wasn´t ECONOMIST always the outlet for those who think they are important and think they know, while FT is for those who actually are important and do know.
Who is reading the ECONOMIST?
The article is very good stuff. A nice summary of political developments, in itself a narrative, which makes sense and has much explanatory problem. Long, so one can forgive stuff that might (should) have been included such as the regressive and basically useless neoliberal approach to climate change, a failure with far greater consequences than we usually assume and with potential to accelerate regime change. The author affirms that there is not available a new coherent framework to replace the neoliberal thinking. I disagree on this. What if the problem is that it is difficult to find it in the neoliberal chaos? It is probably fragmented and it hasn’t yet developed in a political movement. Difficult to break TINA.
Great article indeed.
Mike Johnson says Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth shouldn’t be disciplined over war plans Signal chat The Hill. If this was Russia or any reasonably run country, the outcome would be very different.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When Godwins-threads lose
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(magazine)
Watching that clown Hegseth yesterday trying to pin the blame on Goldberg, was quite something~
>Watching that clown Hegseth yesterday trying to pin the blame on Goldberg, was quite something~
Amen. Going to the text above in the links , yes, imagine the republican outrage if this had happened with the Biden admin.
I think Trump should sh**can someone ASAP and then let people complain to if he fired the right person or not. Trump could at least say he did something about it.
One can wonder if it was intended for a different Goldberg and “auto fill ” did its thing.
Hope Trump doesn’t have the nuclear launch codes in auto fill mode.
That was my thought too – who is the other J Goldberg it was intended for.
Either that, or the leak was intentional and Goldberg continues to do his job for the establishment as a useful idiot.
If Goldberg were inadvertently connected to a sensitive chat with extremely sensitive information a proper action would be immediately shut his device off and deliver it to nearest FBI office to start trying to limit the breach.
That said there are secure means to communicate sensitive data. It requires both approved SW and certified HW.
Goldberg had neither. Seems this encryption was used in relevant offices in the previous administration.
Maybe Goldberg was in ‘it” during the past.
You have to wonder what would have happened if Silicon Valley Bank depositors weren’t made whole in 2023, what would have transpired?
Oh sure, they’d get the max of $250k per as per FDIC, but that’s it under the law, that we so cavalierly broke.
The whole being in bed with Trump and then calling the shots, would have been a lot different.
I wonder how things would be now if team blue hadn’t cheated the 2020 general, Trump gets his second term and times out. One thing we would have avoided is Biden.
I kinda think it would have been better if Trump had won in 2020. Plenty of people on here remarked that he was pretty ineffectual. During his 4 years out of power he, unfortunately, assembled a team of vaguely competent people. If he’d got his 2nd term in 2020 I think governmental deadlock would have continued and nothing really awful would have happened.
The Trump team does seem to be very well prepared this time around. Not really sure who is lurking in the background, but they do have an agenda!
Yeah, isn’t it great that the Democrat party managed to push Trump and Musk together! If there had been no Russiagate, I suspect Trump would have been satisfied talking about JFK docs and building his wall during his first term, and not have done much damage.
But no, we had to have Russiagate to turn him into a martyr, and then another four years of lawfare to keep him in the public eye after he was already toast.
First time around he had no power base, and no ideas – I think he was genuinely surprised he won. This time he does have more power and a chip on his shoulder – nice work Democrats!
Did team blue cheat the 2020 general? Or is that statement an example of “making shit up”?
I don’t think they cheated. At least, enough to change the result, if there were shananigans. Observations of counts are getting closer to UK levels. There is very little left of my home country I can be proud of, but the process of how we do our General Elections is one.
Givens
Obscene amounts of money fueling elections.
Elected officials at the highest level openly corrupt, see insider trading for instance.
Seth Rich
Boeing
Ukraine/Gaza
Russiagate
In this environment would not cheating be the rule?
For specifics on the very questionable election result in GA, see VoterGA.
Tiabbi’s latest on his racket news substack has a list of particulars, starting with the 2000 election and the SC Bush v. Gore decision.
It’s a mostly paywalled article so I won’t link.
Jockeying has always been the rule. Hardball has always been the rule. Cheating here and there has always been the rule. But since the 2000 election these things have gone into overdrive. Lawfare, ballot access denial, challenging votes, etc.
Yeah I was referring to actual cheating re vote counting.
I’m totally with you both about pre voting shenanigans.
DNA of 15 Million People For Sale In 23andMe Bankruptcy – I have a huge problem with this story because it makes it seem like your anonymized genetic data is worth so much more than the data people give to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
If this data was so valuable they would be able to get more than $0.70 a share. Wojcicki offered to buy the company in February for $2.53 a share. Whoopsie.
IMHO, Wojcicki is the hero of the story. She has long been fighting for personalized medicine, but the drug companies though they would be able to use genetics to develop one off drugs based on finding the “magic gene” for several different illnesses. She has also been trying to buy the company to keep this its focus and she resigned so she would be able to buy the company. I think she sees the true value of the company.
Geneticists always knew that most disease are polygenic and the personalized medicine is the only way forward with diseases like Long COVID and ME/CFS.
Thank you! All good points.
From ZDNet about 23andMe:
Home Tech Security
How to delete your 23andMe data and why you should do it now
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-delete-your-23andme-data-and-why-you-should-do-it-now/
and from TechCrunch:
23andMe faces an uncertain future — so does your genetic data
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/24/23andme-faces-an-uncertain-future-so-does-your-genetic-data/
‘Brian Krassenstein
@krassenstein
18h
BREAKING: The Trump admin accidentally texted a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, from The Atlantic, their top-secret war plans on Yemen.
Texts are below between Vance and Hegseth, in which the journalist was included.’
On the news tonight I saw more of that exchange and I don’t know if it is because they hate Europe so much or did not want the truth be said out loud but the Trump Cabinet is really deluded. Let me explain. That whole exchange started when Hegseth said that as only 3% of US trade goes through that Gulf and 40% is European, that he did not think that they should be fighting there. And that is when the European hate started with them agreeing that the Europeans are a bunch of free-loaders and the US should be charging them for the US Navy operation in the area or extracting a lot of economic concessions. Are they kidding or deluded? This isn’t about Europe. It is about Israel. Yemen has said that it is all about Israel so shouldn’t Vance and Hegseth be demanding that those free-loaders in Israel pay them for all these cost instead? But it seems that it is verboten the country that must not be named as being the cause of Yemen’s stance. if Israel wasn’t doing genocide, Yemen would not care about ships passing them by. One final point. Hegseth was asked by reporters if this exchange actually was real or not but he forcefully denied it which goes to show you what a liar he is.
I wonder who the actual JeffGoldberg is that they were including in this thread?
Probably a reference to Emmanuel Goldstein, a perennial villain in the Political Users Manual “1984.”
“We have always been at war with the North Central Middle East.”
This is real question no one is asking. This isn’t like a misdelivered envelope. Too many questions to ask about who they were trying to add, and why they would have been representing. Why was Jeff a contact in the first place? At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, there’s a faint wiff of something intentional about all of this. I rate it a low possibility still, but not a zero.
I think the same thing was done to all the MSM to test their loyalty. Unfortunately, The Atlantic seems to have failed.
There are a lot of CIA assets in the top-level journalism world. Craig Timberg, who ran the PropOrNot hit piece at the Washington Post, per other Post reporters second hand, was believed to be one. Jamal Khashoggi was almost certainly one.
Spot on!
Charlie Stadtlander, director of external communications for the New York Times joined the paper directly from the National Security Agency, where he served as head of public affairs.
Asha Rangappa
Rangappa is a lawyer and a former FBI agent and her husband Andrew Dodd was also an FBI agent. She’s known for her editorials in reputed magazines, namely, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and many more.
James Gagliano (employed by FBI) (Law Enforcement Analyst on CNN) and has also been featured on the New York Times.
To name a few. One confirming link: https://biographyhost.com/p/asha-rangappa.html
Thank you, Yves.
When dad worked in Riyadh, 1992 – 2015, he had a colleague who had “served” in Afghanistan with Khashoggi and the leader. All came from Jeddah and had spent time in the US either side of that escapade.
Dad often read the anglophone Saudi News. Khashoggi was editor. Dad’s colleague often remarked that Khashoggi “had never left service”, usually when he / his editorials opposed reforms under King Abdullah and MbS.
Khashoggi’s fate was sealed when he took sides on behalf of Uncle Sam in the dynastic intrigue and voiced opposition to the young man in a hurry.
Two DC based friends (from work) suggest Jim Sciutto, too.
Goldberg is one of the most important neocons in the media – one of the Democrat/liberal faction of neocons. Maybe he was accidentally left the list from Andrew Sullivan’s DNI days. This is only partial sarcasm, given this administration’s obvious amateurism in many (most?) areas. Goldberg is an ardent Zionist, so he was definitely not doing this because he was opposed to their Middle East policies. But he is also an anti-Trump Atlanticist, so perhaps is was the anti-Europe stuff that motivated him.
The only thing I am sure of is that Goldberg did not expose this leak because of his sincere patriotic concern about national security.
The first thing you do when a leak is suspected is shut the device down, and do not make statements.
You don’t want the value of the leak broadcast about.
The responsibility of the Israelis shall never be discussed. Try even referring to it indirectly in a comment on a NYT article. It won’t be published. It is behind everything, it is responsible for nothing.
To bad it wasn’t Naked Capitalism that was included in the secret group chat. We would be reading the entire transcript of the chat this morning.
Ken Klippenstien helpfully re-centers things in his piece. I have a few more thoughts on it, which I spent the morning typing up, and which you can find on my substack. I think the fact that it is about Israel is assumed by all involved in that conversation, and so didn’t need to be said. There are some interesting timeline aspects to this story which, had Goldberg or anyone else wanted to focus on instead of the impropriety of using Signal, could have been explored in the detail they deserve.
Also, interestingly, while some headlines claim “bipartisan” outrage (Guardian), I have yet to see any quotes but from the D side demanding Waltz’s head on a platter. It may not be decided yet, over at 1600, and the Ds going nuts about it could give them the political space to keep him, if they don’t think its a hanging offense.
Vicky Cookies. Thanks for the comment and for the link to your Substack article.
I have a bone to pick, though: Even if Goldberg is a former volunteer Israeli prison guard, that doesn’t guarantee that he is not a journalist. You hint that he should have backed out of the list. My journalist instincts would have been to egg everyone on: “Hey, guys, how do we involve the Ukies?” As I download and download the pearls of wisdom….
The strange thing about the exchange is this business of “free-loaders” and wanting to be reimbursed for cleaning up the sea lanes. First, these guys don’t seem to get it that the U S of A has been reliant for years on trade deficits (enhanced by neoliberalism), by cooperative allies in U.S. “adventures” (thinking all the way back, oh, to Iran and Mossedegh, and for hiding U.S. huggermugger — Gladio and all that mess.
If these are the new feudal overlords ushering in the Endarkenment, they should be less focused on the chump change.
PS: This is also why upper-middle-class white boys are such a stitch: They want to brawl (supposedly), and they want daddy to give them the money to do so. Sheesh.
Thanks for reading! I didn’t intend to suggest that Goldberg should have backed out; I was trying to highlight the severely limited nature of his muckraking. In his own words, from a different Atlantic meta-article: “Unfortunately, in our society today—we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries—there’s too much preemptive obeying for my taste”. His chest-thumping sounds hollow to me.
I toyed with writing about that protection-racket thinking, which is disturbing. We do seem to have endured an intellectual erosion at the top, maybe rotting from the head down, as even the Atlantic has written about recently. They just don’t see that they’re a part of it – they can’t smell themselves.
Wowsers, Vicky Cookies. At your suggestion, I read Ken Klippenstein’s article. Goldberg isn’t a journalist — but what he is, I am not sure that I can describe. Director of marketing for toothless media? Intern in the Department of War?
Per Klippenstein: ‘ “I will not quote from this … or from certain other subsequent texts,” the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote of the Trump administration messages to which he was privy. “The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility.” ‘
And then Goldberg analyses how emojis are used in the exchange.
These self-described Warriors are exchanging emojis to look like tough guys? What would Epaminondas say?
Bernhard at MoA suspects this may be part of intentional psyop. To be honest, upon hearing that the “journalist” in question was Jeffrey Goldberg, I thought the same.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/03/was-this-leak-accidental-or-is-it-pro-war-psyops.html#more
As did I. I recommend Bernhard’s informed speculation here. I also recommend the article by Nathan Robinson he links to, with the title ‘The Worst Magazine in the World.’
I believe it was Vance offering a meek push back. Greenwald was on this last night. Circa 26:30
https://rumble.com/v6r57we-system-update-show-428.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
Taibbi and Kirn. ATW. no paywall. utube. ~1hr 55minutes+
America This Week, Monday Night Livestream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdG8aXYoDe4
Walter is getting increasingly unhinged and hard to listen to. He barely lets Matt get a word in before he starts Waltsplaining how the security cam footage was too cinematograhically charged to be anything other than part of an orchestrated attack on innocent oligarchs by shadowy ‘liberal’ forces.
I really enjoy Walter’s take on various points.
Agree. Kirn is so full of himself that he has to talk over Taiibi almost all the time. I suppose people like that he is outspoken. Their takes are predictable. I quit watching them some time ago. Just not worth my time.
If these two were a team of radio announcers calling sports games Matt would be the play-by-play guy and Walter would be the color commentator guy. imo. Which I enjoy. / ;)
Wasn´t he referring to the Law&Order shots? (But may be I am mixing things up )
Red Hat Distraction of the Day:
A painting of the President that has been hanging in the Colorado state house for 5 years, all of the sudden becomes an issue yesterday, coincidence?
Yeah this whole story made me go “WTF?”
It’s weird. It’s not like the painting is obviously insulting like the Gina Rinhart one.
I really don’t get WTF is going on…..beyond a very simplistic attack on Colorado Dems…….which won’t work because it was their Repubs who did all this…..
I promise you as an Aussie – Gina Reinhart needs to be insulted in every conceivable way and form.
oh as a half Aussie I agree! It’s just that that painting of Trump doesn’t (to me anyway) seem disrespectful in the way the infamous one of Gina Rinehart is…..
I’m officially puzzled!
It probably didn’t make Trump look tough enough and heroic enough for Trump’s taste. It made Trump look like somebody’s dentist.
What we have learned is that Trump is awfully sensitive. Not just very, but awfully. Perhaps the right kind of visual ( or otherwise) insults spreading throughout the culture could make Trump unhinged enough that his keepers are embarrassed into Article 25-ing him.
I would suggest taking the famous poop emoji
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=Awrhct4Z1eJncAIAU0pXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=poop+emoji+image&fr=sfp
and altering it to look like Donald Trump, but still be recognizable as the poop emoji.
It could be the trumpoop emoji. If enough millions were made and spread around, Trummp would eventually see one.
Also, someone could make and sell little Trumpoop emoji shaped hats, with the letters MAPA on them. MAPA standing for Make America Polluted Again. Maybe Trump would see those too, if enough millions of people bought enough millions of them.
Our favourite is MAGA–Make America Go Away! by Canadians
I think the painting of Gina Rinehart captured the soul of the mining magnate: ugly and twisted, like the activities in the Hancock Prospecting and of billionaires in general.
Lol, maybe it’s seeing it on my screen, IMO it’s an awful painting. So is the one of Obama by the same artist. Here’s CNN on it, Trump’s portrait to be taken down at Colorado Capitol after president claimed it was ‘distorted’. This para caught my eye, “Initially, people objected to artist Sarah Boardman’s depiction of Trump as “nonconfrontational” and “thoughtful” in the portrait, according to an interview with Colorado Times Recorder from the time.” So the Dems didn’t like it because it made him look “adult”.
Our country is run by children.
Good sighting!!!
Yeah…. I’m now looking at the internet to see if “other stuff” is kicking off that the MSM is ignoring. (I do acknowledge that people better schooled in art on here have criticised the painting but know I am under-qualified.
When it comes to music it is a different matter…. the Tierce Picarde drives me insane and was hated by people like Mozart.
So we are well advised to look at the wider picture.
Re that admin chat leak–with Bidenexit euphoria fading one must admit that Trump is looking worse by the day. Interesting that Vance did not want to start bombing Yemen–at least not now–with Waltz and the others in favor. Allowing Bibi to crank up the slaughter again was also a big mistake. On the Ukraine front Putin must be wondering if he can trust the fickle Trump to honor any deal.
Or he should be wondering that. Chaos is not a plan.
But some people do consider it to be a ladder. Trump creates chaos with his wild, demented statements and while people are losing their minds over it, people like Musk are in the background doing the real work of pillaging the US government for profit and personal gain.
And also dismantling it to bring in the new Dark Enlightenment Technate Dispensation.
“Putin must be wondering if he can trust the fickle Trump to honor any deal”
My guess is that it’s been many a long year since Putin moved from wondering to knowing for sure. недоговороспособны* as they say in Moscow.
*Not agreement-capable
Jimmy Dore. utube, ~16+ minutes.
Democrats Targeting Other Democrats’ Teslas Is Tanking Workers’ Pension Funds!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpFEyttm124
I don’t know about you, but I think Dore is really hit and miss these days…mostly miss. I think the guys at Due Dissidence have a better take on this story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfUzGMo2ZbY
Thanks for the link.
“White House Says Gold Reserves May Be Used to Purchase Bitcoin”
I have to confess to thinking of the possibilities of what would happen if this idiotic scheme were carried out. As of 2020, the US Bullion Depository at Fort Knox holds approximately 4,583 metric tons which is a helluva lot of weight to transport, much less steal. But if all that bullion were converted to Bitcoin, why then a modern-day Goldfinger would only need a USB stick to whisk all that wealth away in their pocket.
Bonus points if Goldfinger got back to his secret lair only to discover that the USB stick that he used was corrupted irrevocably.
Midas well go ahead and do it…
He did have that certain touch.
You certainly put your goldfinger on it.
If Goldfinger had pulled it off, he would be giving everybody the goldfinger.
heh heh heh, what a stupid idea. Our country is run by children.
Better than him holding out a finger and saying:” Pull my finger.”
And way better than “Smell my finger.”
All that glitters and shines, like a disco era dance lighting globe. Surprised there’s no mention of the classic Van Halen track “Jump”…
Just go ahead and Dump….Might as well Pump and Dump…
They won’t be converting the gold into bitcoin via a sale of gold. As I understand it they are pulling a page out of the Kennedy administration (if I recall correctly)… Back then there was a concern about hitting the debt ceiling and having a fight with Congress, so the administration has the Treasury issue gold certificates backed by the Ft Knox gold that were then deposited at the FED to offset some of the debt that counted towards the debt ceiling. Those certificates are still on the books of the FED, but priced at $60 an ounce. So, the current Trump administration idea is to take those certificates back and destroy them and issue new ones at the current market rate of gold. Then spend the proceeds on bitcoin. The gold will never leave Ft Knox and the gold certificates will never leave the FED. However, they get to spend more government money without having to issue government debt. This is what so called smart elite people think up when they actually don’t understand how government spending really works.
According to this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WGCAL
“The gold certificate account reflects the receipts issued to the Reserve Banks by the Treasury against its gold holdings. In return, the Reserve Banks issue an equal value of credits to the general account of the Treasury, computed at the statutory price of $42.22 per troy ounce. Because nearly all of the gold held by the Treasury has been monetized in this fashion, the Federal Reserve Banks’ gold certificate account of $11 billion represents the nation’s entire official gold stock”
as shown on the Fed’s weekly H.4.1 report.
Thanks for the actual numbers on the current certificates. I was just going off memory from an article I read about a week ago and my memory isn’t what it used to be. Anyhow, part of the bitcoin law is to recall/replace those certificates with new ones at the current price of gold.
I really hope they do it.
To watch a sovereign govt caught in a pyramid style coin would be hilarious.
I don’t wan’t to glorify the real economic harm to the populus but such an event would inevitably lead to “leaders on sticks” which for the purposes of the algorithm I won’t say nore about but you get the picture.
PS a friend was VERY grateful when I told him to get out of bitcoin. He admitted he got out just in time……no major loss but no benefit. If he’d stayed in he’d be in real trouble.
Re: Red Hat Distraction of the Day
A quick perusal of the FoxNews website provides a few bite sized distractions.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pam-bondi-threatens-prosecution-amid-doges-findings-about-fraud-were-coming-after-you
https://www.foxnews.com/media/hunter-bidens-ex-business-partner-reveals-conversation-trump-reportedly-includes-pardon
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/doge-honing-federal-consulting-contracts-wants-waste-identified
I don’t have an opinion on the premise, but agree that we are daily served up distractions. A part of that is it’s how our media makes money these days.
The major issues are kind of stable, the war in Ukraine and Gaza- years here. The climate, healthcare. growing income inequality. We have had time to develop cogent policy responses to all of these issues.
So it’s almost a trap for a hapless government – sure life is very precarious now and has been which we won’t address but look a squirrel! With lasers! Not sure they have an option. Outside of addressing these longstanding issues.
First link assumes Fraud Fraud Fraud on a massive scale although the DOGE crew has zero findings.
Third like relies on an audience who believes that federal contracts don’t have routine review and milestones and benchmarking built in. The best possible case for this nonsense is that the scorecards can be matched against prior reports and any minor discrepancies flagged as fraud so the contract can be canceled.
Remember the original distraction from the tech bros- using phrases like “move fast and break things” as excuse for BS.
“US treated Nazis better during WWII than Trump treated deported Venezuelan migrants: Federal judge”
My grandparents lived across from a POW camp filled with Germans in WW2. They were there because that part of Wisconsin had the most Germanophones and it was easier to hire guards, provide medical care, etc. The camp was on the grounds of the airport, in the military section. They would see the prisoners taking fresh air out their living room window. It was well known that they were occasionally allowed out for evenings in town, to drink beer and socialize. When I was a child, the barracks were still there. Surreal.
Compare that treatment to the kind that Japanese-American citizens received in internment camps during ww2. The olympic music festival, in Quilcene, Wa., used to be held on land confiscated from a Japanese-American farmer.
At issue here is that naturalization laws generally precluded Asian immigrants from becoming US citizens, thus would be considered “enemy aliens” subject to internment. Various sources all state “two thirds of internees were citizens” without ever giving a source, and I think it is complicated as to how many of these 2/3rds were Nisei minors of Issei. Also unmentioned is the practice of sending Nisei sons to Japan to study, and about 10,000 of these Nisei were in Japan in 1941.
Thanks for sharing that. An example of terrible behaviour by the RAF and the USAAF towards their own men was the battle for Caen in Normandy.
I learnt all about it at the Peace Museum in Normandy as part of an orchestra trip. It was obviously terrible. I was aged 15. Then next time we visited my grandparents (dad’s side) I told my grand-dad what I learnt. He said “oh yeah I know”. Then proceeded to tell me his wartime experiences, He was part of the army there. Saw his two best mates decapitated by bombs dropped by the allies when they got frustrated that the Brits had not taken Caen on schedule.
My grandad’s behaviour towards his kids (like my dad) suddenly made sense. He had profound PTSD. When in the 1990s he was dying of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and due to lack of oxygen, raved and talked about stuff, my dad was amazed to learn about his father’s wartime experiences. When he told me I simply said “yeah, I know, so what?” Turns out I was the first person my grandad ever opened up to regarding WW2. Very humbling.
“Summer of my German Soldier” was on our curriculum when I was a kid. I’m presuming that it got swept away by cultural-Ed.D. forces over the years along with a lot of other books that were written in the 1970s.
https://search.brave.com/search?q=summer+of+my+german+solder
theres a section of brady, texas that is known as “The POW Camp”. similar situation…lots of descendants of the german freethinker settlers of the texas hill country.
theres no marker that ive ever seen…and that section of brady is where the government housing is, today.
There’s quite a bit of distortion of history in that piece, though…
1) German POWs were not, for most part, Nazis, although, admittedly, many US officials thought they were amd inadvertently gave the real Nazis tools to exert far more influence than they should have.
2) US treatment of POWs were constrsined by il Geneva Coventions ii) the fact that Germany held many US POWs who could be subject to mistreatment in retaliation iii) that POWs (at least enlisted POWs) could be and were subject to forced labor and US wanted healthy and satosfied POW workers.
Treatment of POWs held in US fell off the cliff once the war was over (no meat in their meals etc) as consitions i and ii no longer applied. Those held in Europe and German civilians were much worse, at least for the early phase of occupation. I get annoyed when people erroneously misrepresent history as product of pure goodwill (and, of course, in tbis case, the judge is treating it as if it’s freely given “goodwill” towards the “wrong kind of people” when it was as much a set of legal requirements combined with practical considerations.
“4,000 ~ 1,000,000 deaths” — historians’ mileage does certainly vary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinwiesenlager
Consider the use of “Enemy Aliens Act” to intern German-Americans during WWI.
My Dad was an MP guarding German POW’s. Late in the war.
They were good soldiers, disciplined and were brought to farms to labor under minimal guard.
He said some of them were captured in North Africa in 1943, were used to the routine.
I know how that primate feels what with the cold weather hanging on here in New England. I’m nearly out of fire wood, again!
“Europe’s Anti-Democratic Militarization”.
The fact that in this continent where in just 15 years we’ve been through an economic recession, a global pandemic and now a not-so-far-out-anymore possibility of a full scale war that will be brought upon as TINA to Europe’s societies, without the necessary consent, is dazzling and just mind boggling at this point. I guess here is where we say “Please fasten your seatbelts” ?
More likely BOHICA.
…here is where we say “Please fasten your seatbelts”
An 1848-type moment, for better and worse? One wonders whether the UK gets included this time around.
(Last time around, the Chartist reforms there acted as a pressure valve that released some of the social ferment when revolution exploded across much of the continent. This time, Brexit may serve as a similar release mechanism. Or not — we shall see.)
It is more like the antithesis of 1848…
and the Euro crisis was never fixed, just kicked down the road.
For all the hate that random peeps like to scorn on the USD, the Pound Sterling and/or the Euro will implode first
Shiny Little GroupChat with No OpSec Cops
Melody: “The Little Surrey with the Fringe on Top” from the Musical “Oklahoma” by Rodgers and Hammerstein
Chicks better duck and kids better scurry
When we bomb their town in a flurry
When we take them out in a hurry
From a GroupChat app
Watch that rubble bounce in the desert
When we blow billions with no effort
Nosy folks in the chat now have entered
While we double-tap!
The encryption’s strong, the victims are brown, the clearance is light as a feather
With no controls you can slide right in, in case there’s a change in the weather!
Drop them bombs on camels and burros
JD’s not real down to save euros
Invite all your friends who are journos
Cause our OpSec’s slop!
In our shiny little Group Chat brought by Steve Witkoff!
[Congress not invited; you’d really love to take a ride in it!]
Chicks better duck and kids better scurry
When we bomb their town in a flurry
When we take them out in a hurry
From a GroupChat app
Watch that rubble bounce in the desert
When we blow billions with no effort
Nosy folks in the chat now have entered
While we double-tap!
The encryption’s strong, the victims are brown, the clearance is light as a feather
With no controls you can slide right in, in case there’s a change in the weather!
Drop them bombs on camels and burros
JD’s not real down to save euros
Invite all your friends who are journos
Cause our OpSec’s slop!
In our shiny little Group Chat brought by Steve Witkoff!
In our shiny little Group Chat with no OpSec cops!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIG_GVE-KiE
as a meat-lover, *sigh* yet another study pointing to the seemingly unimpeachable evidence of eating less meat (TMAOs) and factory food than the median American.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-03570-5#Sec4 via
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14533993/Scientists-diet-wards-11-diseases-dementia-study-plantbased.html
Was the meat in question artisan goodmeat? Or factory junkmeat?
likely doesn’t matter, as when you digestmeat (especially red meat) you get TMAO in your body.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tmao
A question which I don’t see covered is…is a lifetime of steak tartare or boiled beef better than a well-done steak? (does cooking method affect TMAO generation) and/or as you suggest is grass-fed beef = less TMAO? (guessing no, but who knows?)
Artisan meat, if grass/pasture fed, contains more unsaturated ( possibly anti-inflamation-ogenic) fatty acids produced by the plants and accumulated by the animals eating them. If those unsaturated fatty acids are working against the inflamation processes involved in raising cardiovascular disease risk, they might directly counter the risk-rate rises coming from the TMAO which I suppose would be just as prevalent in the grassfed meat as in the corn/soy/etc. fed factory junkmeat.
I get beef from a local farm called Vestergard Farm when they bring any beef to our farmers market. I get the pieces used to make stock/etc. I notice that the fat rising from it does not firm up like I would expect beef fat to do. It stays as soft as slightly-melted soft-serv icecream even at 60 degrees ( which is what I have my home set at during winter.) And after sitting a few days, some genuine liquid oil begins to separate from that so-soft grassfed beef fat. That oil is genuinely beef oil, which I would not have imagined existing before getting this particular beef.
And the higher price of this eco-ethical grassfed beef lowers my consumption through rationing-by-price.
Per article, they tracked “100,000 Americans in their 50s for over 30 years“. Thinking back 30 years ago, I doubt you could have *found* 100k Americans eating artisan goodmeat, so the question kinda answers itself. I doubt you could round up that many today who weren’t in the 1%, which would introduce all kinds of other wealth related confounders. But also, the health benefits in the article were focused on eating fresh fruits and veg, so while avoiding junkmeat might dodge some of the worst negatives, it’s likely not getting you any of the positives either.
And on review – see Ann’s comment below before you think you’re buying “goodmeat”.
I am reading your comment just after posting a nested subcomment which appears just above your comment. I can see and taste the evidence that I am indeed buying goodmeat when I buy it from Vestergard Farms here at my farmers market. https://www.vestergaardfarms.com/
I realize that at least a hundred million Americans are not in any position to buy eco-ethical artisan grassfed beef. Not those on very low incomes or those living in food junkyards. But what about the other 200 million? Do they also have “no choice” and “no access” to goodmeat?
And Ann just below is writing about mainstream corporate junkmeat. It is possible to avoid that and know you are avoiding it.
Oh, and . . . the subcomment I have placed just above your comment talks a little about the actual health good from goodmeat and my speculative guess as to a reason for that. See my example of soft-at-room-temperature beef fat from which some actual liquid beef oil separated after a couple of days of standing undisturbed.
Yeah, about that meat study. Every year when I taught nursing students I invited a guest lecturer to speak to them about beef. He held the endowed chair for sustainable beef production at the university here. He was from Alberta and the son of a veterinarian who left practice to start an elk farm. That endevour collapsed with chronic wasting disease and he went into the feed lot business. John grew up helping his dad in the feed lot.
He told the students what happens to all the beef you buy from the supermarket. The calves begin life on ranches run by “cow-calf operators”. They run around on grass, drink milk and play with their friends. They are vaccinated for things like black leg, but otherwise left alone. Then in the fall the calves are all rounded up. The males are castrated and all of the calves are given five (yes, five) estrogen implants into each ear, males and females alike, for a total of ten for each calf. This makes them gain a lot of wweight and more fat on less feed. Then they are sent to feed lots where they never again see a blade of grass. There the are fed a mixture of cotton seed meal (cotton plants are GMO), chicken byproducts (feathers, feet, heads, guts) soybean meal (GMO), wheat and barley straw, antibiotics, and sometimes hay, but not always. They stand outside without shelter for a few months through the winter in pure manure. They become so sick with metabolic acidosis that they slaughter them just before they die from it because that’s when the meat has the most marbled fat.
So all these studies that show how bad beef is for you are based on this kind of beef. And don’t get me started on pork. Do you really wonder why it’s bad to eat the meat of an animal that has been soaking in estrogen and GMO feed and chicken parts for months? Do you really wonder why young men look like they do these days when they and their parents ate this meat for their entire lives?
Ann,
Thanks for your detailed comment. There’a a lot to learn for the people who blindly believe stuff that they read (propaganda).
Yes, it’s possible to get good beef. Further on to my comment above, John also told my students every year in his lecture about his journey as an academic. His position includes a requirement to educate local ranchers on the latest research. He began by giving presentations to cattlemen’s association meetings all over the province. He told them that we can’t continue to produce beef the way we do now. His suggestion was to buy slow growing breeds like Scottish Highlands and keep them on grass for two years before slaughter. He was met with cold stares.
One day at one of these presentations, a local rancher finally spoke up. He said, “Dr. Church, with all due respect, there is a better way. Come to my ranch and I’ll show you.” John took him up on the offer and went to see his operation. Here is how it works. Their cows are very large dual purpose breeds (dual purpose = bred for both beef and milk). He has mostly Simmental, from Switzerland. These are huge cows with stout horns. He breeds them to calve just in time to be moved to a spring pasture, and then to a monstrous 1 square mile high alpine pasture for the summer. They move their cows and calves around on horseback.
These are not your wimpy Herefords and Angus cows. These cows know the mountains. The cows are dual purpose so they do not stop producing milk in late summer. They keep producing milk until you take away their calf. They bring the herd down from the mountains in October. About every other year they will lose a cow-calf pair to wolves* but for the most part these cows can hold off a pack of wolves.
So these calves eat grass and alpine forbs all summer and part of fall, plus they are drinking milk the entire time. When they are brought down the calves are so big they have to get down on their knees to suck milk, like goat kids do. They weigh about 800 pounds. Then they are immediately sent to slaughter. No grain, no hay.
I buy this beef. It’s so soft, like veal, because of the milk. The calves have had a good life, but a short one, about 7 months. No transporting, no hormones, no antibiotics. Very little fat.
Not all ranchers can do this, but if you want to have the best beef, I recommend it.
*I was explaining all this to a new neighbour of ours last fall. I told him about the wolves and he said, with a gleam in his eye, “Why don’t they go up there and shoot the wolves?” He moved here from the Greater Vancouver Area and he loves to kill things. I told him, “You never want to shoot the wolves up there. The majority of their diet is ungulates, deer, elk, moose and whatever else they can get their mouths around. If you kill the wolves, the ungulates will multiply like crazy and they will eat all the grass and browse and there will be none for your cattle. You’ll also get chronic wasting disease moving in because of the overcrowding.” His face fell, “I guess that makes sense.”
Chronic wasting disease has just this year moved into B.C. from Alberta, but it’s just over the border at the present time. It’s not in cattle here yet, just mule deer and white tailed deer.
‘Brian McDonald
@27khv
You may not have heard of Yevgeny Primakov. But in Moscow’s corridors of power, his ideas are very much alive — and shaping how Russia is engaging the United States right now. 🧵’
I did note this bit-
‘At the same time, Moscow is deepening ties with China, hedging with Indiai, and engaging the Global South. But crucially, it avoids formal alliances. No junior partner status. No ideological camps. This is diplomacy in the Primakov mold.’
I guess that explains why Russia and China have never signed a treaty together or a mutual defence pact. Probably suits China as well. It is a de facto pact but nothing that can be pointed to in the form of a treaty.
The idiots in the Indian Administration still believe that they can play both sides!
Honorary Lambert link about Corsi and Rosenthal and applications of their box.
#COVID-19/Pandemics
Twitter clutter relief:
What we know about covid impacts on your brain – Bloomberg
“Scientists are worried that persisting cognitive issues may signal a coming surge of dementia and other mental conditions”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-09-13/does-covid-lead-to-dementia-here-s-what-the-virus-may-have-done-to-your-brain
Here you go, Now that wasn’t so hard and it looks better. Comments welcome Privacy Badger works great. Highly recommended.
“Anti-Zionist, But Not Anti-Semitic”
Good thing that Larry C. Johnson isn’t at Columbia University as under the new Trump-imposed rules he would be found guilty of antisemitism straight away. The First Amendment? What’s that?
for any fans of non-traditional stock market indicators….yesterday, I had to explain to an octogenarian relative the “pattern-day trade rule” as he triggered it recently and got a letter from Schwab.
dunno if this is bullish or bearish….have to think about it. But from the date stamp on the letter, he perfectly bottom-ticked the March lows, lol
According to Laith Marouf, who was a guest on Garland Nixon’s livestream this morning, Hamdan Ballal was lynched to near death. He was then arrested.
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/24/g-s1-55600/hamdan-ballal-palestinian-no-other-land-filmmaker-attacked-susiya
In ‘the only democracy in the Middle east’, even though it sounds like the deep South of the 19th century. But at least the deep South didn’t have dedicated torture prisons or guards so keen on anal rape as defended in the Israeli parliament.
From anecdotal evidence collected over the years, I can assert that, with a very few exceptions, such as the Club Fed prisons, all Southern prisons were and are dedicated to torture. Anal rape is part of the curriculum of all male prisons, worldwide.
Few nations, however, make this official policy.
“Welcome to Cell Block D. Here’s your tube of lube. Or do you want to fight it out?” (When in doubt, always fight. Even when you know you are going to lose.)
{I worked with an older man on a big jobsite who had been a County Prison guard in an unnamed county in Mississippi. He had some stories to tell. One included a suspicious death that was “officially” classified as a suicide.}
Stay safe. Stay out of jail.
>>>Few nations, however, make this official policy.
And this single thing is the most disturbing part of Israel. I have read plenty of horrible things especially of the 20th century, but this openness the Israelis have of what they are doing is profoundly different, and I fear that they are a doomed nation because of this corruption of their minds and souls.
There is an old saying that goes: “You become that which you hate.”
Unfortunately, (and I will speak in ellipses here,) the Chosen of Yahwe have become the National Socialists who tried to ‘eliminate’ them a century ago.
Terran human nature is universal. No exceptions.
I’ve been thinking this but didn’t say it out loud because you get into trouble…….
But yeah. I’m hoping British Jewish leaders speak up against Zionism…….but no luck so far.
Torture always was and still is ramoant in the US prison system.
Dr. Oz and the Plot Against Medicare
Excellent article, Clear and complete. However I believe it did miss one big cost imposed on traditional Medicare recipients. Like any insurance plan, premiums are based on number of enrollees. With Medicare advantage lowering the number of traditional Medicare enrollees premiums rise more than they would without Medicare Advantage members siphoning off their premiums. Resulting in a lower pool of insured Traditional Medicare Members. I suspect this results in substantial higher costs overtime.
No, this is incorrect. The rates for health insurance no way, no how depend on the number in the pool, provided it is not so small so as ot impede underwriting. That is not the case for Traditional Medicare. Its pool, for a VERY VERY VERY long time, will be way way bigger than any Medicare Advantage pool, since many of those pools are actually not very big (my parents were in one for the HMO of the University of Alabama med school/hospital system).
And what determine the rates for those pools are the expected level of health issues (which for pools like Medicare and Medicare Advantage which don’t allow underwriting or charing extra for age or pre-existing conditions) are age, gender, ZIP code (a proxy for income). Hopefully readers can provide more input on how Medicare and Medicare Advantage set rates.
So move to a low income zip code just before hitting 65 to help reduce the medicare premium assessment…
My personal experience is that Medicare part B rates are set based on your prior year’s income.
Then there’s this:
“The Social Security Act (SSA) includes a provision that holds most Social Security beneficiaries harmless from increases in the Medicare Part B premium that exceed the dollar amount of the increase in their Social Security checks. Affected beneficiaries’ Part B premiums are reduced to ensure that their Social Security checks do not decline from one year to the next. In a typical year, the hold-harmless provision affects a small fraction of beneficiaries and has a limited impact on program finances. However, in a scenario where Medicare Part B premiums increase but Social Security benefits do not, such as in 2010 and 2011, the effects of the hold-harmless provision are larger and more complex.
If there were to be no Social Security COLA in 2016, Medicare Part B premiums would be affected in two ways. For about 70% of Part B participants, the hold-harmless provision would prevent their Part B premiums from increasing, so their Social Security checks would remain the same. For the other 30% of beneficiaries, the hold-harmless provision would not apply. These individuals would shoulder the entire beneficiary share of the increase in Part B costs.”
Yves, Appreciate the info and correction. In quotation marks you have Medicare and Medicare Advantage don’t allow underwriting or charging extra for age or pre existing conditions, Before that you say what determines the rates for these pools is the expected level of health issues. Am I missing something or do I see some contradiction here? Forgive me in advance if I am being obtuse. My wife is female and a few years older than myself, I unfortunately male, so my life expectancy should be less. We are both on the highest level (Commonly referred to as the little old lady plans”), As there is no copay and only a small yearly premium. Her policy is slightly higher, And I was advised this was because her pool would no longer be accepting new members and increase more rapidly. This is why I was advised to choose the lower of the two. Her premium continues to rise at a faster rate than my own. Hence my confusion. Perhaps I was misinformed. Understanding the intricacies of Medicare can be difficult. Thx..
Dr Oz is clearly a sell-out. He invented one thing then made a career out of it and a bunch of stuff that is blatantly wrong.
If you have an example of him presenting as his “first and most important piece” on his show that echoes something from a meta-analysis or something that is not shown in one but has an interesting multimodal distribution as shown in a published article then shout out, please.
>Pentagon chief offers choice between war and defense
Renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War is a really good idea. Does anyone believe that the U.S. military exists to defend the U.S., not to fight wars overseas?
The Navy Dept was separated from the War Dept in 1798 due to the complexity of the shipbuilding program. Doubt they would want to go back.
“BREAKING: The Trump admin accidentally texted a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, from The Atlantic, their top-secret war plans on Yemen. ”
This article lists of people who were on the chat:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/25/yemen-war-plans-what-did-trump-aides-leak-to-the-atlantic-in-signal-chat
“An individual identified as Joe Kent, which is the name of Trump’s nominee to run the National Counterterrorism Center.”
He’s a nominee. Does he even have a security clearance?
‘Rules? We don’t need no steenkin’ rules.’
Yes, that’s the point. I expect that all throughout the Trump Administration they use Signal to keep messages from being archived as government actions. I don’t know, but using a SCIF for a meeting might create a record of an event, if (definitely!) not of its contents. The idea of the Trump Administration is to destroy government, so there will be a strong preference for not creating government records or communicating within government systems. I expect they are using Signal for that purpose in many departments now.
Kind of like having a private server in your basement bathroom? That you can wipe clean, with a cloth, like every few weeks. Some things just never change.
And I noticed in a little video-blat findable on reddit that Gabbard has been testifying to a Senator and apparently claimed that “no classified information was released in any of these texts”. So the Senator asked her to go ahead and share all that information with him and the hearing room right then and there if it was not classified. And she went silent and said nothing further. That Senator really should have spent the rest of his time saying nothing and let the cameras record her staying silent after being asked to ‘share it with us if it is so very unclassified’. That would have made his point with a little dramatic effect. Instead, he could only bear three or so seconds of silence before he had to end the pain of his own silent mind by talking again.
I suspect that Gabbard may come to regret her agreeing to work anywhere near to with-Trump.
She will end up being just one more person who discovers that if you step in the dogtrump, you get dogtrump on your shoes.
I’m thinking a bit bigger here. Mz. Gabbard is angling to be a member of the Junta that “saves the Nation” from whatever is coming along.
“BREAKING: The Trump admin accidentally texted a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, from The Atlantic, their top-secret war plans on Yemen. ”
https://nypost.com/2025/03/24/us-news/trump-national-security-team-messaged-plans-for-yemen-strikes-to-atlantic-editor-in-chief/
Joe Kent, the nominee? Does he even have a security clearance?
The war in the Ukraine has shown that shelters aren’t that much needed beyond the frontline, as long as Russia is your enemy. If Sweden plans on fighting USA instead, that’s another ballgame.
I wouldn’t expect Russia to do a Special Military Operation in Sweden but wage war. The Swedes would die in droves from a combination of choking in useless shelters and Iskanders, Kinzhals, Oreshniks.
But this kind of thoughts are verboten in Sweden, whence all these stupid ideas about taking all money out of the welfare state and give it away to a few weapons industry oligarchs.
Primakov is still fondly remembered in Russia. Curiously, I’ve noticed he was fairly well regarded by people from across the political spectrum, including those who very much disagreed with him (though excluding some liberal fanatics, for whom anti-Americanism was as heretical as criticising the free market economy). He gave the impression of basic decency and integrity that is rare in politics, moreso in our 90s. He was probably most famous for ordering his plane, then en route to America, to turn around in response to the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, which is seen as a symbolic event signalling the beginning of the end of our rapprochement with the West.
He was also a plausible presidential candidate of the patriotic centre-left back in 1999, but Yeltsin and the people around him went to great lengths to undermine him politically in order to promote Putin (a more securely Yeltsinite figure with broadly similar – security background, stabilising and patriotic image – but then less impressive credentials) instead, ultimately keeping Primakov from running. Of course that appears to have backfired in the end, since Putin ended up gradually adopting much of Primakov’s outlook.
Thank you for this comment, Daniil. It was during Bill Clinton’s reign of error that I was becoming aware that all was not as the media were telling me. Hence, I’d not heard of Primakov, and I appreciate your adding to my growing pool of knowledge with respect to Russia.
Adding, in 1996 I went back to Jackson, Mississippi, to visit my mother, and due to fortuitous coincidence, I was privileged to see the grand Palaces of St. Petersburg exhibit. The how and why the exhibit occurred in Jackson is detailed in the linked article. Of note is that the exhibit came to Jackson and went straight back to Russia with no other u.s. locations on the itinerary.
Thanks, I’ve never heard of this before. The 90s were a very strange time here, when seemingly anything was possible, good or bad – of course, when it was the bad that came true, it tended to outshine the good. The cultural and personal contacts with the West were generally among what I’d consider the good parts of the 90s, though. The higher-level political and economic contacts, meanwhile, were typically somewhere between useless and disastrous.
Thanks, Daniil. What I heard most about Russia during the 90s is the bad, of course. Then came that marvelous exhibit, which, I think, most in the u.s. didn’t know about. I think close to 600,000 tickets were sold, so the word got out to some fortunate few.
I remember going to Athens in the late 90s, at the time we were being told in the US that the destruction of the former Yugoslavia was necessary because of the awful (insert bad ethnic group du jour). I also remember a documentary showing Milosevic’s ouster, which was moistly peaceful, and taking it as legit.
In Athens, there were posters of Bill Clinton’s face with a bullseye on his forehead put up everywhere. That was an eye opener.
Time to crank up the Red Hat Distraction Generator:
US consumer confidence tumbles for the 4th consecutive month to a 12-year low
On a lighter note (surely, I jest): Perry Anderson’s essay, “Regime Change…,” is worth your while.
The man is 86 years old and still writes with economy and authority. More power to him.
And I agree with his diagnoses and conclusions. Note the distinction between neoliberalism and populism (and not “populism” as a dirty word). Note his criticism that the Left these days is only against things, when the Left was once for things (better distribution of wealth, enhanced social services, education, leisure activities of genuine interest) and had an idea that society could be improved.
PS: I often gauge these kinds of pieces from the Anglosphere by how well the writer deals with the Italian reality. Perry Anderson gets Italian politics right — and Italian politics are no great mystery, except to the vast majority of the Anglosphere chattering class — and his essay is very sound indeed. Recommended.
The antidote of the day reminds me of Bernie’s mittens. AKA monkey see (or told) monkey do.
About the article ” Tesla Stock Value and Elon’s Power in DC ” , I don’t mind that it is way too king to team Dem if it is true and useful about the other things. And if it true and useful about the current fragility of Tesla, then if offers a vision of a realistic chance for a big-enough movement to be able to tear Tesla all the way down and destroy it completely enough to force Musk into “margin call” territory and move on to the forced disgorgement or destruction of twitterX.
And the “what to do” advice is very good. The ” call your represtentatives every day” part can make you feel like you are doing something, which is good for morale. And the rest of the advice . . . ” join a Telsa Takedown Protest, plan a garden for this summer, and get outside to maintain the energy and mindset needed to practice virtue.” offer actual things to do with your raised morale which can have an actual impact on actual events.
I wonder how many minds would be focused if some people tried creating and running for office under a Revenge Party, called exactly that. The Revenge Party. Its little masthead slogans could be written as white-letter acronyms on a little red hat.
MMP. MTP. MTAP.
Make Musk Pay.
Make Trump Pay.
Make Them All Pay.
It’s a strange world.
Here in the USA you can be deported or have your degree revoked for condemning the “Ethnic Cleansing” of one group of Semites ( Palestinians) by another group of Semites (Israeli’s) because doing so is Anti- Semitic.
This makes sense because FREEDOM!
Or maybe bad drugs.
Indeed I never “got” the anti-semitic slur once I studied the history……it doesn’t make sense.
Or because Money. ( sshhh, don’t tell. ) / ;)
re: “Red Hat Distraction of the Day.”
I don’t know. Seems like old school bigwigs in both parties hate T. (This comment isn’t an endorsement of T.) Considering the standard operating procedure of the uniparty, this Red Hat Distraction Day idea sounds like the uniparty fomenting a new cold war here at home among the little people – the Red Hat people are MAGA and MAGA is the little people on the GOP side, imo. Blue MAGA is the little people on the Dem side. You little people get angry with each other instead of uniting on one or two issues to push back against the oligarchy in both parties; you little people keep Distracted with outrage toward other little people while we, the uniparty work to pick your pockets while pretending we aren’t doing that. / ha (too cynical?)
re: Ukraine Johnson
Anyone with more detailed info on what Aaron Maté has featured here? It´s paywalled and I actually haven´t run across this detail anywhere else:
“Boris Johnson admits that Ukrainian extremists undermined peace in Ukraine. But as a Ukrainian negotiator’s overlooked account reveals, they received a key helping hand from Johnson and the US.”
Turley’s latest.
“A New World Order With European Values”: The Unholy Union of Globalism and Anti-Free Speech Measures
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/03/24/a-new-world-order-with-european-values-the-unholy-union-of-globalism-and-anti-free-speech-measures/#more-229965
Frum getting copied on US war plans for Yemen shows amateur hubris at play with dangerous toys.
Diverging US Economic Data Begs the Question: Is a Slowdown Coming? – Bloomberg
“Diverging US Economic Data”…has there been any other type for the longest time?
“Councils and NHS could face millions in extra costs due to disability benefit cuts Guardian”
Starmer is such a silly prat that you wonder how someone so feckless could possibly. . . then have to recognize how many preceded him. But I think that the bigger story behind this pathetic story is that this is how neoliberalism USUALLY works. Dismantling institutional frameworks usually means waste and the object is never to make things more efficient (though that’s the excuse) but to make someone money. Usually a well-placed crony. A brief go-through of requisite steps make this clear:
1) Introduce new/additional element, usually a business person with little or no experience of project or current trajectory
2) Let them train a predatory eye on process, with an eye first to profiting from it
3) Let them make their intervention, for which there’s always at least some waste, starting with the human impacts
4) Survive start-up hiccups and complications
5) Deliver product
6) Ruthlessly fiddle it for continuing extractive purposes
7) Continue to politic for more of same, with complicity of “public” officials
Of course we can improve govt delivery of services; we can improve everything. But people who care about people should be continually scrutinizing and talking aloud about what govt does–in collective fashion on all our behalf.
The cult of the businessperson and his/her/their incredible efficiency, worthiness to intervene, has always been laughable on its face. Study after study shows that the key to successful business practice is to appropriate other people’s tech and ideas, find cheaper or more attractive commercial ways to package them, and to ruthlessly push–bullheadedly push–sometimes over long periods, to implement them.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-mike-johnson-floats-eliminating-federal-courts-rcna197986
Speaker Mike Johnson floats eliminating federal courts as GOP ramps up attacks on judges
Republican lawmakers are setting their sights on the judiciary following court rulings that have halted Trump’s agenda.