This Wildcat Helped Create the House Cat and Is Now at Risk Because of It ZME Science
Ranchers may have to relearn how to fight an old enemy — the New World screwworm Harvest Public Media
Blind Man Builds Fully Adaptive Skatepark for Visually Impaired and Disabled Skateboarders Laughing Squid
Ahmedabad plane crash: Air India’s Boeing 787 with 242 on board crashes minutes after takeoff from Ahmedabad airport Indian Express
Climate/Environment
Explainer: How human-caused aerosols are ‘masking’ global warming Carbon Brief
Scientists warn against attempts to change definition of ‘forever chemicals’ The Guardian
Pandemics
COVID-19 may Enduringly Impact Cognitive Performance and Brain Haemodynamics in Undergraduate Students Brain, Behavior, and Immunity
These posts are rapidly increasing. It’s devastating. Where is public health, medicine? pic.twitter.com/GdFnB2tDsx
— Dr Kelly Jones 🦋cleanairclassrooms (@DrPops3) June 10, 2025
Minnesota’s unique Long COVID program retains funding following advocacy The Sick Times
Water
Kabul at risk of becoming first modern city to run out of water, report warns The Guardian (resilc)
China?
US-China framework of agreed-upon measures; Zhangjiajie trash; AUKUS blowing up? Sinocism
China Puts Six-Month Limit on Its Ease of Rare-Earth Export Licenses WSJ
HOW PRESIDENT TRUMP BULLIED CHINA INTO TARIFF NEGOTIATIONS Foreign Policy in Focus
Pingshan Factory Fire: How Unpaid Wages Spark Tragedy and Unions Stay Silent China Labour Bulletin
China plans to turn Shenzhen into AI and aviation hub amid US sanctions South China Morning Post
***
China’s Chokehold on This Obscure Mineral Threatens the West’s Militaries New York Times
Chinese rare earth minerals produced through forced labor: Rights groupThe Hill
How America can fast-track critical metals production—and disrupt the leverage China just used Fortune
US Critical Materials, Idaho National Laboratory partner to build rare earth processing plant Mining
India
India’s $80 billion coal-power boom is running short of water Reuters
Syraqistan
Israeli Forces Slaughter 120 Palestinians in Gaza, Including Dozens Near Aid Site Antiwar
A new satellite imagery analysis by Dr. He Yin of Kent State University shows that nearly all of Gaza’s crops, tree cover and grassland have been damaged in Israel’s invasion — devastation that some have said should be prosecuted as “ecocide.” pic.twitter.com/7KHlr7Igec
— Evan Hill (@evanhill) June 11, 2025
EXCLUSIVE: American Security Contractor Unloads On US-Israeli ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ Zeteo
Exclusive: USAID encouraged outgoing staff to apply for jobs at secretive Gaza-focused foundation All-Source Intelligence
Israel places two activists from Gaza-bound aid ship in solitary confinement TRT
Overcoming the New Fascist Genocidal Salute, the US Veto: Use the Precedents of 1956 and Apartheid South Africa Sam Husseini
***
US-UK issuing rare warnings, evacuations in the Middle East Responsible Statecraft
Iran warns US bases across region in range, will strike if provoked Al Mayadeen
Is Donald Trump Starting World War III with Iran? Larry Johnson
Exclusive: US mobilization aims to force key negotiating terms on Iran Al Mayadeen
Iran Claims Historic Espionage Coup Against Israel. Is It a Bluff or Is It Real? Drop Site
1
The first unofficial details of the documents and information obtained from #Israel by #Iran. It’s truly shocking. Read more…
– Tel Aviv’s dangerous four-year roadmap in the nuclear field
– Nuclear military industry facilities, bases, infrastructure and processes👇— Mohammad Ghaderi | محمد قادری (@ghaderi62) June 10, 2025
European Disunion
The kids are all right: What Germany’s conservative turn means for Europe European Council on Foreign Relations
Germany Wants to Rewrite its Holocaust History Hauntologies by Elia Ayoub
Old Blighty
Britain has nukes. But apparently Putin’s invading unless Keir Starmer guts the NHS Brian McDonald
New Not-So-Cold War
KREMLIN WAITING GAME — HOW TO UNDERSTAND TRUMP’S TACTICS AND PLAY THEM BACK AT HIM John Helmer
Spies and ties: The quiet war for Russia’s business elite RT
Russia bringing in de facto visa regime for Central Asia nationals, say critics Intellinews
Russia’s Newest Icebreaking Tanker Reaches Arctic Mega Project ‘Vostok Oil’ For First Time gCaptain
Secret British plans to ‘defeat entire Russian Black Fleet’ revealed in leaks The Grayzone
“Liberation Day”
US consumer prices rise moderately; tariffs expected to fan inflation Reuters
Trump 2.0
Fearing Trump action, US nonprofits seek shelter in the UK Semafor
GitHub is Leaking Trump’s Plans to ‘Accelerate’ AI Across Government 404 Media
Democrats en déshabillé
Gov. Polis’ veto of rent-fixing ban is more than a policy failure The Economic Populist
Good Billionaires Gone Bad . . . Gone Good Again? Left Notes
MAHA
RFK Jr. announces 8 appointees to CDC vaccine panel—they’re not good Ars Technica
5 food power players have strong ties to the MAHA movement STAT
Antitrust
so basically meta is buying scale ai, but below a threshold to trigger reviews etc pic.twitter.com/0Uj5lZBmjQ
— Nathan Benaich (@nathanbenaich) June 10, 2025
Wars Come Home
PATRICK LAWRENCE: For Whom the Drones Buzz Consortium News
Pam Bondi: “After the October 7 anniversary, they added new drinks to the menu. One was ‘Sweet Sinwar’ in honor, of tribute to the leader of Hamas … You can’t do that. And so we’ve sued them and we’re gonna stop this from happening. And anywhere in the country, if you do this,… pic.twitter.com/VQVIBmqenL
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 11, 2025
Police State Watch
As Marines arrive in L.A., military experts raise concerns: ‘This could spiral out of control’ Los Angeles Times
Gov. Greg Abbott sends Texas National Guard to sites of planned immigration protests Texas Tribune
Local Police Join ICE Deportation Force in Record Numbers Despite Warnings Program Lacks Oversight ProPublica (Robin)
***
‘IAM Max’: Machinists Rally for Member Detained by ICE Labor Notes
Trump Has Put a Target on SEIU, and the Labor Movement Is Fighting Back IN These Times
They followed the government’s rules. ICE held them anyway LAist
NEW: @MiamiHerald reports that a 17-year-old migrant child – found living in a shed after ICE deported his mother, and who is a suspected victim of labor trafficking – was taken out of a Florida foster care facility in handcuffs and shackles and turned over to ICE. pic.twitter.com/j685pn6uA2
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) June 11, 2025
ICE’s War on Home London Review of Books
***
Activism, Uncensored: The LA Riots Racket News
Healthcare?
Private Equity, UnitedHealth Take a Huge Loss as Oregon Bans Corporate Control of Doctors BIG by Matt Stoller
International Yard Sale: UnitedHealth to Say Adiós to Latin American Subsidiary HEALTH CARE un-covered
“Woke” Watch
Why Anti-Trans Campaigns Keep Returning to the Politics of Meat Sentient
Fossil fuel billionaires are bankrolling the anti-trans movement HEATED
Imperial Collapse Watch
US Navy backs right to repair after $13B carrier crew left half-fed by contractor-locked ovens The Register
Troubled Constellation Frigate Is Now At Least 759 Metric Tons Overweight The War Zone
The origins of human-centered design Can We Still Govern?
Politics Without Purpose. Aurelien, Trying to Understand the World
The 420
REEFER MADNESS RETURNS TO TEXAS WITH DAN PATRICK’S THC BAN Texas Observer
Was Rex Cauble Really the Cowboy Mafia’s Drug-Smuggling Kingpin? D Magazine
Silicon Valley
Never Forget What They’ve Done Edward Zitron
Guillotine Watch
Rituals of humiliation The Anti-Empire Project
Class Warfare
The Other Americans The Nation. “Where can the overworked and unhoused go?”
Rip Brian, the isolated vocals of Sloop John B, 1:17 sounds like the gates of heaven opening. pic.twitter.com/QZfa6abcpb
— Flip 🤠 (@Fliptheflipflop) June 11, 2025
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“Exclusive: US mobilization aims to force key negotiating terms on Iran’
My guess is that even if Iran declared that they were willing to get rid of nuclear enrichment, that within weeks Trump would come back demanding that Iran also give up its missiles program as well. That was one of the reasons that Trump pulled out of the original nuke deal – so that it could be renegotiated by him but with their missiles on the table among other things. Someone like that is never satisfied until they can squeeze out every single concession and asset that they can.
Why not their oil, as in the alleged strategic minerals in Trump’s Ukraine?
(Or is it Biden, or Clinton’s Ukraine?)
Exhausting times
The problem is that anyone from our elites think such empty gestures can do what forty years of economic and semi-kinetic warfare didn’t. Just put out couple of strongly worded tweets, draw down people from Iraq consulate and proton – Iran is ready to capitulate!
War has been building up inside the middle east
For oh I don’t know how long
I don’t know why
But I keep thinking
Something’s bound to go wrong
But he looks in our eyes
And makes me realize
And he says “Don’t worry Bibi”
Don’t worry Bibi
Don’t worry Bibi
Everything will turn out alright
Don’t worry Bibi
Don’t worry Bibi
Don’t worry Bibi
I guess he should’ve kept his mouth shut
When he started to brag about shooting under par
But can’t back down now because
He pushed the other guys too far
He makes hell come alive
And makes me wanna derive
When he says “Don’t worry Bibi”
Don’t worry Bibi
Don’t worry Bibi
Everything will turn out alright
Don’t worry Bibi
Don’t worry Bibi
Don’t worry Bibi
He told me “Bibi, when you erase Iran today
Just take along my approval too
And if you knew how much Israel owned us
Bibi nothing could go wrong with you”
Oh what he does to me
When he makes overtures to he
And he says “Don’t worry Bibi”
Don’t worry Bibi
Don’t worry Bibi
Everything will turn out alright
Don’t worry Bibi
Don’t worry Bibi
Don’t worry Bibi
Don’t Worry Baby, by the Beach Boys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQWTneirnPc
Timely and Excellent. Help me Rambo…
Yes! The other old hit by The Beachboys, “Help Me Rambo.”
as McCain quipped,
Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Ir annnn, oh bomb Ira aaan, Bomb Ira aaan…
Re Long COVID. Yep I have improved enough at two distinct points to feel at 80%. First time I got set back after trying to be good and doing audiotyping in oncology at the hospital when they were so short staffed.
Second time relatively recently and like the person quoted, didn’t get obvious infection (unlike first time when I caught it at work and they quit giving me shifts, probably given my reputation and fear I’d say who’d been allegedly spreading it).
I’m now officially under the Long COVID service….so maybe they expect me to say “so thankful you haven’t just told me to go die”. Meanwhile friend near Manchester has the new variant…..VERY nasty. If get it heart probably will decide that’s your last time buddy. Can’t say I care that much, given we live in stupidest timeline.
I am quite worried about the new variant. Getting it would be ‘last time buddy’ for me too with my incurable cancer. I’m on my way out of this Vale of Tears anyway but a nasty COVID infection is not my chosen path to Glory Land ( going quietly in my sleep would be my preference ).
My dilemma right now: I have a bad tooth that needs attention. I also need new glasses ( mine are pre-COVID era and broken beyond repair ). Do I risk getting COVID at the dentist or optometrist office, or do I decide with the time I have left, just forget about the tooth and the glasses? I am thinking ‘forget about it’ is the best answer. I know that neither my dentist nor my optometrist are particularly COVID cautious and my insurance will not pay for better ones. Paying out of pocket to go somewhere safer is impossible for me.
So sorry to hear that. Yeah I want my heart to just fail in my sleep one day. Having collaborated with end-of-life clinician for one of my Aussie studies (which then became a chapter in the book) I have made it clear – NO INTERVENTIONS & DNR.
I today booked appt with optometrist…..mainly because my vision is fluctuating (which some other Long COVID people have experienced) and this guy is the regional specialist. He was polite enough to indulge dad and me when we were adamant we should get 2nd pair of specs 1 dioptre too weak for our close up work, to stop deterioration in our myopia, despite there being no evidence base at the time. Then he congratulated me when the East Asian studies showed we were right. I need his opinion because I suspect vascular damage from the COVID.
I refuse to see a dentist. Went 6 years in Sydney without seeing one and on return to UK was told my teeth were fine. So sod those money grabbing covid-lax gits.
Also a cancer patient, and like you was avoiding the dentist for fear of what a maskless visit could entail.
After years, a badly chipped tooth forced my hand. So I called up my dentist’s office, and asked a) for the first appointment of the day, and b) to set up my HEPA filter in the exam room and run it for 15 minutes (i.e., six air changes) before the exam. He was agreeable, and said he’d wear an N95 while I was in the office.
After prepping with Enovid (nasal spray), I went in for the work several weeks ago and seem no worse for wear, COVID-wise. Don’t know if I was just lucky, or if the precautions helped generate that outcome.
YMMV.
Thank you! I was hoping someone at NC would have experienced a similar situation and could give me advice. You have been extremely helpful. My tooth has become quite painful in the last week so I really need to get it attended to. I have been in a quandary about what to do.
I’m glad you were able to have your dental work done and came through it without getting COVID. May you continue to be safe. Best wishes.
I was going to suggest first thing in the morning as well. If the examination rooms are poorly ventilated (which a lot of them are) then any airborne virus can hang around for a long time, particularly if one of the clinical staff is sick. Going early in the morning means that hasn’t had much time to happen yet.
You can also check for evidence of frequent illness among clinical staff (sometimes they’ll notify these on social media or just say they are short staffed). They are the ones most at risk from poor ventilation in exam rooms, so if they’re getting sick a lot then it can be a sign that ventilation is bad. Older buildings are often less well ventilated, and rooms that feel close or stuffy or heat up with more people in them are another tell.
If it’s a thing you only do once and it doesn’t involve many other people, it would sit fairly low on the risk scale that I use. The ventilation seems like the main wild card that you can try and mitigate.
Lena, this will not help you if you need a new prescription, but if you just need to replace broken glasses and have your old prescription, we have been ordering glasses from Zenni optical for years. Very affordable compared to previous orders through optometrist offices, though I haven’t ordered since the tariff circus kicked off.
Have thought about buying glasses online Lena? If you can get your optometrist to send you a copy of your old script, you can order using the form on the website. Found one site with frames starting at around $5AUD, and lenses from $8AUD.
I’m accessing the site from Oz, but assume it works the same in the US. (Although US health insurers may have got in the way).
I know we’re not supposed to promote commercial outlets, but search online for “zelool”
I would echo this. Plus prices for identical glasses vary by whole degrees of magnitude (UK vs AUS vs Singapore vs Indonesia in descending order).
I only realised the degree of price gouging when I started investigating new specs in Sydney and Singapore. For a typical pair of spectacles, halve the price when buying in AUS compared to UK. Halve again when buying in Singapore. I was TOLD halve again when buying in Indonesia but since Singapore was my typical stopoff on Kangaroo route the Sg prices were all fantastic enough. But I know you can get even cheaper from them if you have your prescription and go online…. the thing you lose out on is the fitting service (which can be surprisingly important but understandably might not be a priority for you).
I inexplicably lost my glasses in the lie-flat business class seat on BA flying to Japan. We were detained at least half an hour after everybody else disembarked because protocol demanded they find them (which is interesting, this was well before Li-ion battery dangers were widely publicised and my glass were just metal) but after ripping the seat apart they still could not find them and let us go!
I thought I would be screwed without them because I am very blind. But I had prescription sunglasses with me and the hotel directed me to the optician over the road and they copied my prescription and I had a new pair of glasses for half the price of the UK in just an hour or two!
Even Japan in 2006 was cheaper than UK optometry!
drummer in my band, long ago, was an optometrist/lens grinder guy…and he told me….this is more than 30 years ago, mind you…that all the frames come from the same conglomerate, who had bought out all their competitors and become a global monopoly for eyeglass and sunglass frames.
he told me even the cheap readers one finds on a rack at walmart…the frames are from that bunch.
i do not remember the name of the company, but his tale bubbles up in my mind every time i even think about eyeglasses.
That would be Luxottica, Amfortas. The Wikipedia article is worth a look.
Big old factories in the middle of nowhere up Alpine valleys in Italy. They are quite a surprise as you drive around.
Hi Lena, I haven’t yet received my death row sentence, but after myocarditis from Moderna and nigh eighty years of chronic bronchitis, I’ve now gone 5.3 years without a cold or a sniffle after starting to religiously use my DIY povidone iodine nasal spray. (Thanks, Lambert: 4 ml 10% OTC PI in a 40 ml OTC saline nasal spray yields a 1% solution. I’ve gone to 2% but that can irritate.)
I have an incipient dental infection, and am feeling confident in PI. Of course, N+1, and YMMV. And yes, Zenni works.
Whoops, N=1
When I go to the dentist I use Xlear nasal spray before and after (available at Walgreens) and a blob of nasal neosporin (per a Yale study; google Yale covid neosporin nasal) and I take a claritin. My dentist takes no covid precautions and I’ve had some prolonged dental stuff done and I haven’t caught it yet. I’m very sorry about the tooth; dental stuff is pretty miserable.
Thank you all for your help. I appreciate it. NC commenters are the smartest people around. Good looking, too!
Wondering to whom Lena is referring since some of us have public profiles ;-)
Regarding “The origins of human-centered design,” all design by humans has been human-centered since humans started designing things. The only thing unchanged, and that will never change, is that some designers are morons.
The unstated assumption with ‘human-centered design’ is that they are talking about the end-user human, whereas for a very long time, the human that designs were focused on was the pointy haired bean-counter running the factory floor.
That was only a short time in terms of human history. Except for the last 100 years or so, tools have been made by the humans that used them. However ergonomics were sacrificed or overlooked due to material and process availability. If you look around there are a lot of innovative and well designed tools on the market for the discerning craftsman.
Rex Kruger (?) runs a youtube channel of carpentry, and he sometimes has an episode of an interesting (and always superior) antique tool he has found. I’ve found them interesting because it turns out that the people who made their own tools of the craft actually knew what they were doing.
I also once saw a video by an enthusiast of old clothing. I think she had detailed replicas of lower class woman wear from the 17th century to WW1 (or so). And just for the fun of it, she toiled on her little garden wearing an age matching set of garments and tools – and realized quickly that the two really went together well – as if the garments were designed for using the contemporary tools and vice versa.
I wonder if that could have been Ruth Goodman, the historian on Victorian Farm and other UK programmes where they live in period fashion on camera? It sounds just like her!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Goodman
one of the only home and garden shows ive actually enjoyed,lol.
Ana Edie(sp-2), of “Solviva”, is my hero as far as organic radical farming goes.
True, William, but the PLU (people like us) problem tends to intrude. People who envision and design products and services start out producing something that they would find easy and enjoyable to use. It’s a lot of work to modify the design process to take account of a specific category of users who are not like you.
If you were setting out to design a new widget, what steps would you include to take account of people you’ve never met who live somewhere you’ve never been, and have had a different education and life experience?
What I found interesting about that article – the opening anecdote was about B-17 bombers – that is human-centered design originally started on massive machines designed to drop thousands of pounds of explosives on humans.
Semper Fi
(melody borrowed from Anthem Of The Marine Corps)
(Well, a few hundred Marines are out of their comfortable barracks at Camp Pendleton, and sleeping in tents in downtown LA. Not all of them are happy about invading America.)
Though we’d much prefer Bermuda
That is not where we will be
We are Petey Hegseth’s cattle
Sent to guard LAPD
Petey has the right to be dumb
But as far as we have seen
There’s no way he is entitled
To send us off to that scene
One day he says we’ll fight the Chinese
On the beaches of Taiwan
Then it’s immigrants we’re gonna chase
Everywhere and Anyone
Who put us gyrenes in Petey’s hands?
There are laws this contravenes
Taking orders from that drunken slob—
We prefer to clean latrines
While the wealthy few may hate the poor
Who must serve them their hors d’oeuvres
Calling out the Corps with drum and fife
Is some crap we don’t deserve
For the mess hall smells like gravy
And the desert’s blooming green . . .
Next week Pete will be discarded
And stop bothering Marines!
It looks like, according to the National Weather Service, that it will rain on the Marines and everyone else, except Trump’s plastic box sheltered minions, during the Big Beautiful Parade this Saturday.
https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=38.8921&lon=-77.0199
My band of soaks, my den of dissolutes
My southern charm, almost as good as Newt’s
My band of whores (no, no, no, no, not tonight)
Spend their lives in my sin bin
The Donkey Show homing in
They fly through my doors
And they crawl out on all fours
Welcome, Congressman, sit yourself down
And meet the best orator in town
As for the rest, all of them crooks:
Known for insider trading and cooking the books
Seldom do you see
Honest men like me
A gent of godly intent
Who’s content to be
Speaker of the House, doling out the charm
Ready with a handshake and an open palm
Tells a religious tale, makes a little stir
Hoi Polloi appreciate a bon-viveur
Glad to do a friend a favor
Doesn’t cost him to be Clark Kent nice
But nothing gets you nothing
Everything has got a little price!
Speaker of the House, keeper of the zoo
Ready to relieve them of a law or two
Turning decorum into whine, making them wait
Passing a Big Beautiful Bill when they can’t see straight
Everybody loves an overseer
Everybody’s bosom friend
He does whatever pleases
Jesus! Won’t he bleed ’em in the end!
Speaker of the House, quick to catch yer eye
Never was a passerby to pass him by
Servant of the dogma, confidant to the great
Super man and Donald’s mate!
Everybody’s boon companion
Congress chaperone
But lock up your democracy
Jesus! Won’t he skin laws to the bone!
Speaker of the House? Isn’t worth my spit!
Comforter of the Commander in Chief and lifelong shit!
Cunning little brain, regular guy vacant stare
Thinks he’s quite a dandy but there’s not much there
What a cruel trick of nature landed me with such a louse
God knows how I’ve lasted living with this bastard in the House!
Master of the House, from Les Miserables
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VALfpc-dJ7s
“Is Donald Trump Starting World War III with Iran?”
No doubt the neocons are whispering into his ear that knocking Iran over will be easy. That you only have to kick the front door in and the whole edifice will fall down. And after they give in, a treaty can be imposed on them like what was done with Russia in the 90s. His name will be in the history books as the President that finally solved the Iran problem after nearly half a century of failure. And he might even buy this. But what if. What if the Russians decide that as it was only the US that made possible the Ukrainian attack on their nuclear triad, that they slip into Iran better radars, maybe a few interceptors and arm them with extra long-range missiles. It will be a big surprise. Or maybe they will tell Trump that as they have signed a military treaty with Iran, that that country will not stand alone so maybe he should back the hell off.
Or maybe it’s just his latest psy-op. As I believe Yves has said Trump is all tactics and no strategy. In chess this can win if you are really good at tactics. It’s doubtful that Trump plays chess.
https://scheerpost.com/2025/06/12/israel-starts-bombing-iran/
Good, I found the potassium iodide tablets. Now to make some glow in the dark popcorn, mix a good stiff drink, sit back, and enjoy the end of the world.
If one were to mix languages when it comes to naming beverages, Sweet Sin War translates to ‘Sweet Without War’.
The Big Lebowski – Hey, careful man, there’s a beverage here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaQ78nVn4sc
Between all of the articles on rare earths and water, it reminded me of a piece of data I read about a few weeks ago. The NYS budget this year has awarded the Onondaga County Water Authority $100M dollars towards the expansion of its water drawn off Lake Ontario. As it turns out, the now under construction Micron memory chip facility is estimated to need 100% of the water currently being pumped from Lake Ontario which is why the authority now needs to more than double its pumping capacity. The Micron facility is going to use somewhere around 35M gallons of water per day. I was shocked by the volume.
Can’t Micron, oh I don’t know, maybe build themselves a big lake and just keep on recirculating that same water again and again after filtering it? Any contract that NYS signs had damn well better have a clause that says that in case of a drought, that they are NOT obliged to continue supplying the same volume of water as normal. About twenty years ago there was a State wide drought where I live and water levels on our main dam were dropping inexorably. But, the water mob had signed a contract to pump water to a wealthy coastal region without such a clause in place. So while water levels were still dropping, they had to pump water to the dam in this coastal region. The dam there was so full that one weekend they asked the people in that area to wash their cars, water their gardens, and anything else to use up water as their dam was so full it was ready to overflow. This in the middle of a State wide drought mind. If the rains had no come back, I’m not sure what would have happened.
I’d suspect indirectly that most of it will be recycled as what isn’t evaporated will be treated and discharged which will flow back to Lake Ontario. Plus Lake Ontario is one of the Great Lakes so we aren’t talking about any pumping volumes that will drain that lake.
That aside, I just can’t get over the volume of water it’s going to need. The OCWA serves 4 or 5 counties in central NY providing water to almost 100k residential homes.
most of it will be recycled, it isn’t a daily draw. the impact is not as severe as the headlines imply. and all of the water will stay in the basin.
Ceertainly will be a net plus for the region….unless Upstate wants its future to be farms and the shopping stop for Canadians.
if people complain about this….then family blog…Upstate might as well revert to fallow fields and be a tourist trap, and big hiking trail
There is $20B of public money heading into this project. Last year after the $6B in federal CHIPS act was formally committed, Micron announced a program of billions in share buybacks.
The OCWA dedicated pipeline is 48″ in diameter and has 50M Gallon daily capacity, doubling its current line. The line will cost $500M. Yes, some water is recycled, but over 5M gallons are wastewater. The effluent contains “trade secrets” and reportedly both Micron and the county don’t even know what is in the witch’s brew. The public waste water treatment plant will cost $200M.
It is worth noting the heritage of the county’s namesake Onondaga Lake was the most polluted body of water in the US. It remains too poisoned for swimming or fishing 40 years after the chemical plants closed and $750M in “remediation”. Fish in Lake Ontario can be eaten only once a month. Micron will undoubtedly make it worse. The plant will be built on hundreds of acres of wetlands.
Micron will consume 500MW of electricity, more than VT & NH combined. It is an enormous baseload draw. NYS marginal electricity pricing is locational… what does that do for residential and commercial electricity pricing in the region, especially given the all-electric future of the state’s energy policy? Hochul believes in the small modular reactor fairies, which will suck up tens of billions more in public money to replace the 55 yo nuclear plants on Lake Ontario.
The notion that a chip fab is going to change the economy and opportunities in upstate New York is fanciful. Micron’s $20B in public funding should be contrasted with the continuing deindustrialization of the region. Crucible Specialty Metals just closed; it was owned by PE after being bankrupted in the GFC and free trade. A French firm bought it for its patents. Used to employ 1500. Carrier employed 9000 (same as Micron claims by 2040); it went to Mexico and China. New Process Gear was a UAW plant with 4500, gone to Mexico. The list seems endless.
Corporate welfare isn’t the solution. Micron will create far more problems.
To complement the Aurelien essay, I would recommend (with tongs, though) this 40 minute interview with Simon Case, former Cabinet Secretary, on (cough) GB News.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y_RwtOVDWp4
The days of Sir Humphrey taking his secrets to the grave or at least the Athenaeum are long gone!
There’s a lot of delusion about Russia and the Ukraine and the role of economic immigration but, if you ride those bits out, the overall discussion could be an NC post. Perhaps finally the centre cannot hold?
Thank you.
You recently mentioned Aberdonian ancestors.
I am a descendant of http://www.rampantscotland.com/clans/blclanfarquharson.htm.
For a moment I thought we might be related (!) but our Aberdonian ancestors are instead a sept of the Haldanes (presumably the ones of Gleneagles, since they are nearest to Deeside). The family arms is a spurred boot, with the ambiguous motto “Suffer!”….
We have a lovely friend called Farquhar as a first name from close to Braemar and I’ve been to Braemar Castle for the Highland Games. That’s about the limit of my Scottishness. I must have been to Ulster more often. My sister-in-law lives in Dundee so between Dundee and Aberdeen is most familiar, the rest of Scotland is rather a mystery. I have driven up the A1 to the Highlands and to Fort William and then Glasgow via the coast but I have seen nothing of the various islands or Lowlands or the Flow Country. The brother-in-kaw has a place on Harris.
Oops, got truncated.
The brother-in-law has a place on Harris at the very end of “the longest cul-de-sac in Europe”, thirty odd miles of single track road with no branches, ending in a sea cliff, and with about thirty people living along it. Needless to say, I have not visited yet!
Thank you.
Hi Colonel, off topic, but you have mentioned from time to time, the special privileges Ukrainian refugees especially school age children are getting in Blighty. Did you see this pleading piece in today’s MI6 house journal, aka The Guardian, demanding they get free school meals as well? Would be interested in your mum’s take on this. I guess getting dropped off at the school gates in a top of the range Merc, Porche, BMW etc., is not enough, those gas guzzlers cant be cheap to run.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/11/ukrainian-pupils-taking-refuge-in-the-uk-should-get-free-school-meals
John
Thank you, John.
Just spoke to mum. She’s puzzled by that editorial and thinks it depends on the local authority.
The Thames valley authorities fund everything at state and private schools.
The children rarely board. They tend to go to day schools and don’t need to pay for anything, including extras like music and fencing (activities Ukrainians enjoy in particular).
Thanks Colonel, it gets curiouser and curiouser. I would have expected the same rules that apply to eligibility for support benefits in general to apply. Even the 2 child benefit cap, or maybe not for Ukrainians.
Thank you, John.
We talked again. Mum is still puzzled.
Local authorities have some discretion over spending. Some of the Ukrainian budget falls under that authority.
A generation ago, Buckinghamshire funded horse riding lessons for middle class housewives, but not IT lessons for, say, single mums wishing to build a future.
Revenant: The days of Sir Humphrey taking his secrets to the grave or at least the Athenaeum are long gone!
I am deeply unimpressed, putting it politely. The point of Sir Humphrey was that, whatever else he was, he was most competent at what he did. Case, conversely, is a hypocritical, conceited tw*t — and, worse than that, incompetent. Back in the real world….
“Case was … Permanent Secretary to Prime Minister Boris Johnson from May to September 2020 … From January 2016 to May 2017, Case served under David Cameron and Theresa May as Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Case
Further: ‘In July 2020 in messages between Case and Sir Mark Sedwill, Case wrote, “I’ve never seen people less well-equipped to run a country”. Case wrote to Sedwill: “At this rate I will struggle to last six months. These people are so mad … just madly self-defeating.”
And yet —
‘In August 2020 Case was chosen by Prime Minister Boris Johnson as Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service, succeeding Mark Sedwill on 9 September 2020, the youngest Cabinet Secretary to date.’
So if ‘Britain’s broken’ as he’s so happy to chat about on TV now, he should know. Because it’s during the 14 year tenure of the mob which he was so happily served that the major part of the damage was done.
Indeed. He didn’t reflect well on his office. But that’s rather the point.
And to hear him agree so quickly with the saloon bar wisdom of the country going to the dogs and mount no Establishment defence of the current order is even more astonishing. Perhaps the saloon bar and Simon Case, like the stopped clock, are right twice a day….
“Ranchers may have to relearn how to fight an old enemy — the New World screwworm”
The smart thing to do would be to spend the money to once more eradicate these things in cooperation with Mexico at least. But I don’t think that the present government would consider doing that and is more likely to look for “free market” solutions instead. Government led actions are bad, m’kay? Thing is, if it started spreading into the US in a big way, wouldn’t that kill any cattle exports?
Judging by how avian flu was used as a pretext to induce artificial scarcity and gouge egg prices, I don’t think we’re going to do much about screwworm.
Texas is such a backwards place.
They are going to ban THC….. well goodie for them.
They are going to deport illegals….(I liked the telling by a mexican american person of how their family didn’t cross the border…. the border crossed them)
They are going to let ELON the doge bag, have his company town and beach….
They are going to ban abortion
they have deiced all children must learn the bible…
texas is a joke.
And the problem with texas is it is full of texans who vote to earn the right to be a joke…
There is no hope for texas…. sucks for the sane people still there. You are in hostile territory.
The crazies run the asylum..
“The crazies run the asylum..”
This actually applies to all of America. Texas is in the spotlight because, as the saying goes; “Things are bigger in Texas.”
And then they’ll brag about their “freedom”
It is mind boggling.
When the businesses start begging for workers, like what happened in Alabama, this madness will cease. Laws will be ignored, and the cheap labor will come back.
And that did not take long.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/12/trump-immigration-migrant-farmers-hotel-workers-deported/84166061007/
So who are we deporting Mr. President? Only the people from industries that you didn’t hear from?
I immediately checked on the state of affairs across the Red River – a hop, skip, and jump away:
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/state/2025/05/04/delta-8-synthetic-thc-oklahoma-legal-loopholes/83391032007/
Why Oklahoma officials want to crack down on hemp’s unregulated THC loophole
Some coordination?
What if Russia times its retaliation against the US/Ukraine with the outbreak of the US/Israel/Iran war? Is that likely?
I have wondered if the timing of operation spiderweb was intended to deplete Russian weapons cache, from their retaliation.
‘Mohammad Ghaderi | محمد قادری
@ghaderi62
Jun 10
The first unofficial details of the documents and information obtained from #Israel by #Iran. It’s truly shocking. Read more…
– Tel Aviv’s dangerous four-year roadmap in the nuclear field
– Nuclear military industry facilities, bases, infrastructure and processes👇’
For those who want to read some of the juicy details, try this link-
https://xcancel.com/ghaderi62/status/1932439431170113933
It sems like “human rights activist and migration expert” thinks that migrating to Russia is a human right.
Yea right, it has nothing to do with all the terrorist atacks.
I have no idea who these “experts” are, but I have a hunch that they all are a part of the NGO crowd, that Brian Berletic is constantly talking about. On a positive note, this yellow themed site never fails to deliver the press quality matching its colour.
Would you believe that Ms. Chupik is a citizen of Uzbekistan, who in 2006 fled to Russia and claimed refugee status. September 2021 that status, for reasons not mentioned, was stripped from her and she was deported to Armenia, from where she apparently moved to USA.
She’s heading a “Russian” human rights organization (according to the Western Media) which was founded in Tashkent and is currently registered in USA. No red flags there at all, no sirree!
Of course, while jesting, we should not forget that Russian treatment of the Central Asian migrants is far from perfect. While some of that may have to do with the huge imbalance between the importance of this vise-free (partly seasonal) immigration to the Central Asian economics and the way Russia is snubbed in these states, there is a long term undercurrent of real, well, not necessarily racism but certainly of prejudice towards the чёрный (black) or чу́рка (dummy) [I met the first one in the early 80’s] in Russian society.
The discussion of war with Iran leaves me flabbergasted — unless it’s just a negotiating tactic to enforce concessions.
Leaving aside the fact that I don’t support the war, I don’t see how it’s the optimal imperialist strategy. Though Iran cannot defeat the USA, it can severely damage it. It can wreck Israel, destroy whichever US bases are used to help the attack, and mine the straits of hormuz thus also sending the price of oil to … $500/barrel? I don’t even know. Would gas at the pump cost $15/gallon? I guess they might release some work-from-home orders during the crisis, or not.
It also seems obvious to me — though I’m just an ignorant prole — that fighting a three front war against Russia, Iran, and eventually China is not the optimal strategy. But I don’t think that’s what they’re doing. I think that the plan is to fight a two-front war against Iran and Russia, win those wars, and use the spoils of victory to subjugate China. That overall strategy makes sense if you ignore a few dozen variables.
I am trying to make sense of this strategy, it requires several assumptions, here goes.
1) Iran is actually quite weak. They don’t have that many good missiles. They might shoot down one or two Israeli air bases, an airport, and then they’ll be out of missiles and be a sitting duck. Admittedly, I have no idea how many missiles they have. Does anybody?
2) If the West succeeds in conquering Russia and Iran, China’s reaction will be to submit a diplomatic statement to the United Nations condemning the attacks, and demanding a diplomatic resolution.
3) Once the looting of Iranian and Russian natural resources begins, the Dow Jones can go to 200,000, and Israel can expand across the entirety of Syria and Lebanon, and even parts of Iraq.
4) Profit.
How many missiles does Iran have? A lot-
https://www.iranwatch.org/our-publications/weapon-program-background-report/table-irans-missile-arsenal
Enough to send Israel back into the Bronze age where they should fit in nicely.
Kev, did you take a look at the details in that chart?
If that stuff is truly what the Iranians have for a deterrent, then they’re in trouble:
1. Most of the missiles are short-range, in the strategic sense. To be sure, there are many valuable targets near to Iran, in the Gulf region, but nothing that would deter the Americans, if they were bent on war. A deterrent is also compromised, when it largely depends on a menace posed to neutral parties.
2. Most of the missiles are inaccurate, with a Circular Error Probable that considerably exceeds the effective blast radius of a conventional explosive.
3. None of them carry much payload.
4. Most types are liquid-fuelled, which usually means that they cannot be maintained in a launch-ready state.
For God’s sake, the Scud is to missiles what the T-55 is to tanks. Certainly, modernized versions can be still be found in service, around the world. But they’re junk.
Frankly, unless the Iranians have an adequate supply of compact nuclear warheads, then I would expect that their ballistic missile arsenal, as presented, would prove to be of little more than nuisance value, in the military sense.
The trouble is that the Iranians, like the Houthis and Hezbollah, haven’t actually hit anything of consequence in their missile displays. If even one of the previous strikes had caused damage that had a severe impact on Israeli society, either of military significance or energy/food/water compromised, then Israel would be much more wary of attacking now. But just having fired a bunch of drones and missiles that don’t do real damage (are shot down or don’t hit near anything of strategic value) is, if anything, an encouragement for Israel to keep escalating. That allows the neocons to sell Trump on 100% support for whatever Netanyahu does.
I seem to recall that a few years ago — maybe when Soleimani was assassinated? — the Iranians responded with a surgical set of missile strikes that showed they 1) knew exactly where the sensitive locations were in an Israeli military base, and 2) had the precision to take them out without even disturbing the stuff next door. IIRC, the Israelis were deterred from any further immediate mischief.
A similar thing seemed to happen less than a year ago when Netanyahu openly bragged in the US that the Israelis were about to make an audacious kill shot right into the heart of Iran. Instead the Iranians instantly stripped away the cover for the invading force, inducing the Israelis to turn right around and abandon the attack.
I’m sure there are others here who can recall the details of both these events better than I can, but I wouldn’t underestimate the Iranians’ ability to fight and win.
Don’t forget that the main purpose of most of those drones involved with any strategic attack is to overwhelm the defending missile batteries with false targets so as to deplete the defensive missile arsenal. Then the real killers appear. This can soon become a cat and mouse game. Are the first waves of armaments the heavy-duty bruisers, or not? Either way, waves of relatively cheap drones confuse and exhaust the defenders. That is their main purpose.
Now, just imagine the damage some precision guided missiles could do if Iran really does have detailed inside knowledge of the Israeli atomic infrastructure. There goes Dimona!
Well, if the attack going on right now doesn’t get a maximum and effrective retaliation, Iran is basically toast, the next Libya. So they better have something besides bluff going for them.
It was only last year when Iranian missiles slammed into a coupla major Israeli air bases and the Israelis could not stop them at all. And at that the Iranians were not using their best missiles and had given Israel and her allies advanced notice of that attack so that there would be no escalation. It must have put the wind up the Israelis as there was no major counter attack. Well, there was one but Iranian defenses detected them and the Israeli mission had to be mostly scrubbed after they had fired off a few missiles for pride’s sake-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2024_Iranian_strikes_against_Israel#Strikes
I’d been wondering about this for the past year.
Militarily speaking, I don’t think israel was any more successful fighting the Hizb’ullah than it did the time before. But that’s not how we remember things that unfolded over past year. This is because Israel was able to achieve a political victory over Hizb’ullah. I think what happened wound up demonstrating that Hizb’ullah, in the end, is a political organization with a militia, not the other way around. While the political leadership and military leadership may have been kept apart, it was the political leadership that was able to leverage the militia’s battlefield successes into political success. The political leadership was, in turn, rooted in place by the well-organized political infrastructure that organized and mobilized its supporters and provided service. Both of these, it turned out, were vulnerable to Israeli attacks. The former via determined IDF bombing attacks and the latter via pager terror attack. Without the political leadership or organization, Hizb’ullah could not convert its military successes into political advantage the way they could in the past, I would guess (I’ll confess that I don’t have special insights into Levantine politics.)
So I would guess that, if Israel does attack Iran, they’d think that they can paralyze Iran politically and diplomatically and take advantage of that to steal a (politico-diplomatic) punch. Obviously, I see many problems with this sort of logic. Hizb’ullah was, after all, just a faction in labyrinthine Lebanese politics and largely a pariah without a “major” backer other than Iran on the diplomatic scene–in the sense that even adversaries of the West would not deal with it directly. The considerable poltical skills of Nasrallah had to be a factor of immense import in keeping Hizb’ullah a major player in the region. Iran, on the other hand, is a major sovereign state, engaged in formal diplomatic pacts (although how far they actually go seems mysterious to me yet) with global powers. It is not dependent on some highly skilled politicians to carve out its place on a crowded table. It literally owns its table. (And, for what it is worth, Iranian politicians do not appear to be the kind of skilled operators the way Nasrallah was–but that means that it really is raw power of Iranian state, not political maneuverings, that undergirds Iran.)
FWIW, I would say that Iranian political leadership is likely far more vulnerable than its nuclear sites, and if I were Israelis who think that they learned the lessons from fighting Hizb’ullah over the past year, they would be the preferred target. But how important are particular persons in the Iranian goverment anyways? Unlike Nasrallah, who became a key and, possibly, indispensable (at least in the medium term–which can be along time when everything seemed/seems to change every week) political actor in Lebanon after all these years, there seems no one who is quite that important in Iran. A decapitation strike would not do much to weaken Iran, it seems to me. Rather, it would just make Iran mad, I’d think.
Thoughts?
Fwiw, this seems to be exactly what Israel is doing….
I think the assassination of Sulemaini and probably Raisi affected Iran’s inablilty to stop the Syrian debacle. Russian inaction and the regime change competence of the US (Imran Khan in Pakistan, Dilma rouseff , what’s his name in Tanzania dying, that guy that’s in charge in Armenia… ) were also required along with Turkey and Israel. Individuals do matter but aren’t the only thing that matters. Agree about Nasrullah. Waiting to see how Iran responds. Was only surprised because gas prices didn’t rise beforehand.
Brian Berletic, in a recent New Atlas YT commentary, compactly summarized US foreign policy as “division of labor” (Europe takes responsibility for conflict with Russia) and “strategic sequencing” (US deals with China first, then with other adversaries).
I don’t recall what his views are on tensions with Iran. It does seem like a gigantic “can of worms”. One questions the sanity of those eager to open it.
I think it has to be understood that that for Trump, as for most of Washington, attacking Iran is just something you do, not something that has actual consequences. Any cool appraisal of those consequences would suggest that an attack is not worth it, but that conclusion is not acceptable, because that would imply that there are things the US cannot do, which is unacceptable in turn. Therefore there can be no adverse consequences, whatever reality may subsequently dictate.
I suspect that Washington now understands that the war with Russia is lost, and that a war with China would be suicidal. Iran therefore is all that’s left, and reality has to be twisted into such a configuration that it makes such a war sound reasonable. For what it’s worth, Johnson may be right, but nations do the same things when an attack is expected by others.
…that conclusion is not acceptable, because that would imply that there are things the US cannot do, which is unacceptable in turn. Therefore there can be no adverse consequences, whatever reality may subsequently dictate.
The Dream Palace of the Americans.
Aurelien:
You say: “Any cool appraisal of those consequences would suggest that an attack is not worth it, but that conclusion is not acceptable, because that would imply that there are things the US cannot do, which is unacceptable in turn.”
Recall how much of U.S. culture and administration pretty much runs on Walt Disney’s fantasies:
[JIMINY CRICKET]
When you wish upon a star
Makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires
Will come to you
If your heart is in your dream
No request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star
As dreamers do
You are putting it politely. I will be more direct:
Do not underestimate the sheer infantilism of the U.S. elites.
The Italian version is that Pinocchio grabs a wooden hammer and squashes this cricket
Perhaps, for trump, Iran is not the last thing left, but instead, all of the USA might be his for the taking. Always thought, at least for the last several years, that trump, being the fool that he is, would like nothing better than to war against those parts of america that have always treated trump like the fool that he is. Los Angeles would be the prime example. And stephen miller, the ghoul-faced fellow whose wife has run off with the richest man in the world, seems to have been the staff member who has ignited the War on Los Angeles. Trump seems to have always needed this sort of agent. Miller stands to be the second coming of roy cohn. What a pairing, the Psycopath and the Other Psychopath.
my immediate response was wondering if anything would actually happen, or if trump admin would just use iran 2 distract from protests at home (immigration, palestine, protests planned for the 14th). iran very much did announce a new nuclear enrichment site so this isn’t one of those “us lying about iran” moments. (i chronically err on the side of “nothing happens” and need to work on that.) but i do think that it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in messaging at home and how the trump admin could use the threat of iran as a way to attack protestors for being anti-american. potentially. idk.
Stoller on Oregon and restrictions on private equity in medicine is worth a read. As he eventually admits the bill–which doesn’t even kick in for three years–will do little to take the capitalism out of medicine since hospitals can still buy and regulate medical practices. And of course the doctors themselves are business people who may face little competition.
From China’s Chokehold on This Obscure Mineral Threatens the West’s Militaries
Isn’t capitalism great?
(bold mine)
Of course we need a national stockpile of these, but having statist intervention would be anathema.
You could never accuse anyone in Washington of having foresight.
Although we’re using this in the F-35, which is a broken weapons platform anyway, so the Chinese could maybe just let Lockheed have samarium.
Why? Did Obama forget his own “pivot” to Asia, which the Chinese found antagonistic. None one thought there could be a response from China?
“Chinese rare earth minerals produced through forced labor: Rights group”
I note that they are not protesting at the use of child miners in Africa so that we can have the minerals for mobile phones. Got curious about this Global Rights Compliance mob and it looks like from their website that they are just another NGO. On their drop down menu for Where We Work, they have two categories – Ukraine and Global. Seriously. They even have a link titled ‘GRC Conducted a First Mock War Crimes Trial in Ukraine’. I guess that they are doing a bit of moonlighting and are diversifying by going after China now. But it’s nice, well paid work if you can get it-
https://globalrightscompliance.com/
Might well be a CIA-adjacent organization. There are any of those out there targeting China and Russia.
From the above link > Germany Wants to Rewrite its Holocaust History Hauntologies by Elia Ayoub
Amazing. Who needs AfD racists when we’ve got Merz?
“Frankly, we have imported antisemitism with the big numbers of migrants
Does he claim that this goes back to Hitler?
No, it is a big dig at the Turks.
Döner Kebab boycott in preparation?
“Troubled Constellation Frigate Is Now At Least 759 Metric Tons Overweight”
It’s a dog’s breakfast. They took an French-Italian design and used it as a basis for the Constellation class ships. But instead of settling on a design and building it, they went for concurrency where they were re-designing it as they built it. And of course they had to pack more and more features into it to make it better than ever. Now it is overweight which is playing hell with that ship’s performance when it will be fully underway. And I suspect that in the end they will get a ship that can only do part of what it was built for and so maybe they will not build many or perhaps like the LCCs, retire them earlier.
This is a very common problem: a system balances numerous constraints, in a trade-off that undergoes several iterations and adaptations until reaching a stable design that fulfils the requirements.
Hence, taking an existing design and modifying it to introduce new features, change requirements, or replace some crucial subsystem is rarely going to work. Experienced engineers know better than going this way, which almost inevitably leads to boondoggles. Of course, this would have meant taking the French-Italian frigate as it is and substituting a minimum of components (e.g. communications) — and that can already cause some headaches.
As another example in the military realm, but for a completely different type of equipment: the Spanish and Austrians cooperated to design and manufacture an AFV — the ASCOD, called Pizarro in Spain, and Ulan in Austria. It works fairly well. The British took the ASCOD as a basis, which they then went on to modify copiously for their own Ajax AFV. The result has proven unusable.
Given that the existing design already is a “multi-purpose” a.k.a. a compromise-or-compromises, or “jack of all trades, master of none” and thus basically over-priced under-achiever, it’s not really a surprise that “improving” on that has lead to a failure.
It seems that for the price of, say, 8 multi-purpose frigates one could get at least 12 specialized frigates and very likely much better capabilities, more firepower, more staying power and a fleet that can take bigger risks.
But on a powerpoint I’m sure the multi-purpose frigates look just right for the freedom of navigation tasks and hunting pirates. Gunboat diplomacy and police work.
The larger question in my mind is why we are even planning to build frigates right now, or indeed any surface ships? Seems like breeding horses prior to the start of World War 1.
Much or most of the weaponry on current surface ships is defensive, either to protect the ship itself or the bigger ships that the ship is supposed to be protecting. To me, that says everyone realizes that these ships are going to come under immediate attack by an opponent and will likely be sunk in short order (this is usually the outcome in the US military’s war game simulations). At best they might get off a few offensive missiles before being sunk, but that essentially makes them kamakazi ships, which I don’t think is anyone’s plan.
The Navy has the reputation of being the most hidebound of the military branches. It’s very easy to believe that.
Germany had more horses in WWII than in WWI, so breeding horses was a thing for much longer than one might think.
Frigates are missile carriers. Even Zircon missiles can’t just move around by themselves, and have to be loaded onto frigates of Admiral Gorshkov class (and submarines, and trucks).
I realize this is minor in the scheme of things, but I cannot begin to describe how much my newsfeed version of the Newsweek headline about Trump commenting on Brian Wilson’s death sticks in my craw. It cut Trump’s quote down to the word genius thus making it a slam about “genius” Brian Wilson. Whoever edited it is both an insulting idiot and has a case TDS.
Besides the fact that Wilson is recognized throughout the music industry as a genius, this was a time when thin skinned Trump actually let a grievance go. His actual post was correctly laudatory even though Wilson very publicly denounced a Beach Boys appearance at a Trump fund raiser back in 2020.
I admit this kind of petty stupid behavior is common, but in the last week I also got to watch a whole lot of “artists” and theater lovers be unable to rise above politics, acting like spoiler brats. Between getting annoying about Tom Felton being at the Tonys, there were social media tantrums after Nicole Scherzinger won a Tony because she once had a MAGA hat and is reported to have supported Trump at one point. (If she ever openly endorsed Trump, I haven’t seen it.) I guess I have become touchy about people who should know better and profess an open community who decide to behave as badly or worse than most of the people they rail against.
And I love Wilson’s music and admire what it took for him to battle mental illness and abuse to create it. He was not a weapon.
Re.B Wilson.
Hearing the magical ‘God only knows’ for the first time as a working class 16 year old oik in the Summer of ’66 tapped a rich vein of nostalgia for me .As a counterpoint to the old saw “Nostalgia is not what it used to be” I checked out the mid August UK top 40 for 1966.
God almighty ; Beatles – Eleanor Rugby, Ike and Tina – River Deep – Kinks-Sunny Afternoon.Small Faces – All or Nothing.Dylan – I want you,The Orb – Too soon to know.Percy Sledge -When a man loves a woman.Hollies- Bus Stop and for the older generation, Jim Reeves- Distant Drums and Sinatra – Strangers in the Night and on and on.
Beat that!
Musically and in many other ways we really were blessed.Myself and 2 pals paid 13 pounds for an all found week’s holiday in August at a Butlins Holiday camp in Clacton.
Young bucks away from home for the first time trying to discover if a Butlins Holiday camp would live up to its reputation as a licensed brothel.(No!)
However we shared some wonderful adventures and memories.Tragically one of my two pals died in 1967. Over the past 60 years Mr Wilson’s composition always drags me back to 66 and we are young again and our pal Barney lives.Thank you Mr Wilson.
RIP Brian Wilson. His music has been with me my whole life. I bought my first 45 RPM single in 1964 when I was in the 7th grade. Thank You Brian for the sound track to this life.
My brothers and I also loved the Beach Boys. So much that when the Beatles came out, it took me about 2 years to finally admit that yes, I guess the Beatles are a better band than the Beach Boys. They had such great voices and blending of voices.
We revered the Beatles but our middle America boomer suburban cohort identified with the Beach Boys. Too young to drive, yet we embraced car culture (‘Shut Down’) first then oddly, surf culture. Before manufactured skateboards appeared we made our own from roller skates and what we could find. An apartment-sized ironing board was premier. Paved hills and sloped strip mall walkways were our Waimea Bays. White Levis, Madras hoodies, beat up low top Converse. Even my father liked ‘Misirlou’.
Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys have been part of my entire life as well. I remember dancing with my best friend and her brothers to Beach Boys songs playing on a portable record player in her family’s basement. I must have been about 6 years old at the time. I always loved their music and the clear, pure sound of their voices. Beautiful and timeless, shining like a perfect summer day, they will never grow old.
When Brian Wilson Met John Lennon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AShQAqCq_zM
RIP Brian, and thank you.
re the nation…
Georgia min wage is $5.15/hr, lower than the federal $7.25 which is pathetic in its own right but apparently doesn’t apply to all workers. Where have all those fighting for you dems been on this issue?
Failed state, and I don’t just mean georgia…
To make matters worse, the last time the Federal minimum went up is in 2009, but it wasn’t due to the dems. It was a bill that passed under GWB in 2006 which incrementally raised it over several years to $7.25 in 2009. This is the longest stretch of time since the Federal minimum wage was enacted into law that it has remained the same. Thanks, democrats.
How is it legal for Georgia’s minimum wage to be lower than the federal minimum wage? What occupations in Georgia are paid $5.15 per hour?
The Electronic Intifada is live:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXvvCOjdgjI
Presently is Francesca Albanese whose thinking is always precise and expression is keen.
From Traci Derwin on utube, ~12+ minutes
The Lucrative Business Behind the LA RIOTS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Caw_5TvyWoA
Re: Ahmedebad plane crash
I know its too early to be jumping to conclusions, but watching the video of the take-off and crash (it’s on telegram) it is hard to see how such a catastrophe could be pilot error. It looks like the plane started to take off normally, got maybe a couple hundred feet off the ground, then simply descended until it made terminal contact with the ground.
The weather looked fine. If this turns out to be another Boeing safety and/or engineering screw-up then every single FAA staff member should be summarily fired and Boeing’s board of directors sent to that maximum security prison in El Salvador.
Air India have had a big transformation and lots of personnel churn over the past few years since Tata took over. It could also be maintenance issues. I’ve flown in and out of Ahmedabad a few times recently and it’s occasionally crowded with planes lining up on the way out. Very sad day for Air India, all the passengers and their families.
I agree. It looks like the plane never achieved the lift necessary to remain airborne after taking off. This is not an unknown problem in the panoply of takeoff crashes. Could be a problem with one or more engines, or perhaps the plane was misconfigured for takeoff (e.g. the flaps were not extended). This can also happen if there is ice buildup on the wings, though I assume this is not an issue in India.
The fact that the pilots got off of mayday call before crashing also seems significant to me. This was a fairly slow-moving disaster and not a sudden complete surprise. We can imagine they belatedly realized they were sinking after takeoff and could not understand why in the time available.
A terrible tragedy in spite of the specifics of what happened.
The Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner appeared to not achieve sufficient thrust as it lumbered down nearly the full length of an 11,000-foot runway, a distance that should have been more than enough to take off, said Bob Mann, head of aviation consultant RW Mann & Co.
This take from Air India Plane Crash Draws Attention to Flaps and Landing Gear, BBG
787 is a twinjet, although with two enormous turbofans. Now that 747 is retired, there is no quadjet civilian airliner in production. I wonder if this accident will raise questions about retiring the quadjets….
It appears that the pilot made a number of errors, including lifting off prematurely (there was plenty of runway available to gain speed before liftoff). As is always advised, wait for the full investigation.
Some various sources I’ve read since my original post indicate the following possibilities:
+ Flaps not extended
+ “Dirty” jet fuel (Wouldn’t this affect other planes that refueled at the same airport, though?
+ Both engines failed (game over)
+ One engine failed, pilot shut down the wrong one (the bad one)
As for the premature takeoff rumor, it turned out to be false based on video evidence and the fact that the flight tracking web page cited by the Internet sleuths suffered from poor sampling (the last transponder fix on the runway was before the plane took off the ground).
<" every single FAA staff member should be summarily fired"
Do you work for DOGE?
There could very well be an engineering or construction issue. We won't have much insight into that until we get the FDR read-out.
If it turns out to be a pilot issue do we fire every single Air India staff member?
My comment was aimed at the FAA for recklessly kowtowing to Boeing at every turn, prioritizing shareholders over their legal duty to prioritize safety.
They probably didn’t have anything to do with this particular disaster, so my hot take was probably unwarranted.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed it for it’s here-in-timeness. For fun, here is the FAA’s up to date org chart, from their website. Quick take, there are two vacancies, Associate Administrator for Airports (ARP), and Director, Airport Safety & Standards (AAS), and, from the look of it, leaving just two people in Airport Administration.
Keep in mind as well that the FAA has oversight authority over Boeing’s engineering and QA practices. As regulators, they should maintain an arms-length relationship with Boeing.
Their lack of due diligence, along with delegating authority back to Boeing (not keeping an arms-length relationship with the entity they’re supposed to oversee; conflict of interest!), may have contributed to the MAX disasters. If this one turns out to be another engineering screw-up by BA, then heads should roll at the FAA (the leaders, not the rank-and-file).
Yes, well documented on these pages over the years now. The problem is these people don’t play. Going against them (and I don’t know who. Somebody’s killing whistleblowers.) comes with risk.
I remember when Boeing made planes that flew reliably and didn’t fall out of the air. Of course this was before important people stopped flying commercially. Once they almost all flew on their own private jets the safety of commercial air flights began diminishing. Making all commercial pilots get the covid vaccines probably didn’t help.
Thanks for the article on the Afro-asiatic wildcat. A good place to see one is Satara rest camp in Kruger National Park where one has made its home and become quite tame. During a 5-day stay last year, it visited our bbq fire every evening in the hope of receiving a tasty treat. This rest camp also used to have a resident Scops owl which slept in the same tree each day. It’s probably not there anymore. But the rest camps in Kruger are fantastic places if birds are your thing.
Local Police Join ICE Deportation Force in Record Numbers Despite Warnings Program Lacks Oversight -ProPublica
Depending on how long it all continues, I wonder about the effects on other parts of the world.
Thinking about how much the USA has served as sort of a release valve – absorbing the embattled and discontented from other countries in many instances.
This can also be utilized as an easy way to frame America as “Enemy of the World.” Foreign politicos will not be slow to capitalize on this “own goal” by America.
The various dictators and oligarchies in the Americas have used the United States as a safety valve and the remittances of their citizens to their native countries have also been a economic necessity; that the many extremely corrupt and violent regimes were supported by the United States often in support of American businesses, which use the cheap, often semi enslaved, workers both in the local countries and in the United States, is interesting.
The United States depends on illegal and cheap labor from countries that depend on the money sent back home by those laborers. Interesting times.
Many foreign politicos have tight border restrictions and immigration laws of their own.
And especially with wars in progress and brewing…paranoia ….
Keeps happening: Flights Briefly Grounded at Boston’s Logan Airport After JetBlue Plane Rolls Off Runway
COVID, is that you?
It takes a good person with a billion bucks to stop a bad person with a billion bucks? We are in trouble.
rare earth minerals becoming more of a thing is exciting for me personally because my separations class last semester did a unit on rare earth mineral separation! (maybe the degree is useful after all lol.)
what they do is grind up the ore containing rare earth minerals, then mix them in water with this hydrophobic substance that binds to the rare earth particles. this forms a hydrophobic and hydrophillic phase. then they bubble up air so that the particles float to the top and can be separated out.
there are also some methods that use selective precipitation where they add some substance that binds with the desired minerals, and then they precipitate out the bottom instead of the top. the version of this im most familiar with is struvite precipitation in wastewater for nitrogen capture where they add phosphorous to wastewater to precipitate out struvite, which can act as a fertilizer.
theres a bunch of other methods but the hydrophobic-hydrophillic method was what we covered in my class.
Hell yeah, bro.
Thanks for sharing!
ruhtroh
NYT
Live Updates: Lawmakers Enraged After Senator Is Pushed to Floor and Handcuffed
Handcuffing a US Senator.
double ruhtroh
NYT
Israel Launches Attack on Iran as Tehran Scrambles Jets
How did they get there without US assistance?
How long till Trump demands that Iran not attack Israel back to help the cause of “negotiations.”
The Zionist Entity delenda est…
Ramping up the distraction from the starvation of the Gazans.
This timeline making me nervous. Photos from the NY Post look like residential areas.
Assassinate scientists at their homes? It wouldn’t be the first time. The nuclear facilities are underground as I understand it.
They brought down apartment buildings used by the Iran military. Head of Revolutionary Guard and a general reported dead.
Alastair Crooke says the Iran nuclear enrichment facilities–which he has visited–are beyond the reach of any bunker buster bombs and in any case scattered widely.
https://www.rt.com/news/619058-israel-strikes-iran-updates/
source for above
++ Noted and there is more.
Iran apparently has no counter-espionage capabilities. Israeli spies operate widely throughout the country and provide the necessary intelligence for the assassination strikes. If Israel wishes to do so they likely can assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader.
I offered my source to try to keep this in the realm of facts.
Secret British plans to ‘defeat entire Russian Black Fleet’ revealed in leaks – The Grayzone
Some music to listen to while you read that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9FzgsF2T-s/
Sly Stone died. Everyday People
Iran seemingly never learns. Israel assassinates its leaders with impunity. Despite all of the warnings key Iranian officials went about business as usual, and then were snuffed out. Like taking candy from a baby. Iran apparently has no useful air defenses either. Are there any adults in Tehran, or have they all been compromised by Israel and the US intelligence agencies?
Huh? The American people never learn of the subterfuge of their Elites.
From the Guardian:
Defence minister Israel Katz said Israel was at a “critical juncture” in its campaign against Iran.
“This is a defining moment in the history of the State of Israel and in the history of the Jewish people,” Katz said in a statement.
I suspect it is the defining moment in the destruction of Israel and the US will have some very difficult choices to make. I hope it doesn’t but my bet is that it will make the stupid choice because that is the American way, and we will watch the American Empire unravel as it faces four major powers, three of them in possession of nuclear weapons, and none of whom have any reason reason to wish America well.
Does Israel have enough nukes to kill 100 million people?
Without destroying themselves that is.
Guess we’ll know more soon.
The true Zionists are religious fanatics. They care not for death. They will be gathered into the bosom of Abraham when they do go. That is the creed.
Their nuclear response strategy is named after Samson after all. He gladly died for the glory of his ba’al.
A Bronze Age society armed with nukes. The rest follows organically.
Paradise will not be had if the prophecy is not fulfilled and the space ship lands over the holy city – its that rusted on mate. Not that every religion/mythology from every corner of the planet forever has had the same sorts making life hard for others ….
Yet in this case we have a historical perspective of the one generalissimo that was considered the ***real*** first coming and how that all panned out. Prostrated before his conquer and left to live unlike others as a slave.
Yet one ponders all the wars and costs over decades, just to arrive here now, meanwhile everyone not in the top 20% is being crammed down. Results are more social dysfunction, less family formation, more political authoritarianism/zealotry, less democracy, just so a few billionaires out of 300M+ Americans can maintain status.
I am pretty much down with Jeffrey Sachs and Richard Wolff on the historical/macro without all the NC level details.
Cyrus the Great must be spinning in his tomb. Mabye he shouldn’t have liberated the Jews from the Babylonian captivity after all….
Not Bronze Age. Not even Stone Age. Pre-human mutant cannibals from Hell.
I might be off here, but isn’t their dislike for compulsory service at odds with caring not about death?
I have recently heard from what I held as a conscience source that the Zionist Entity has 90 Thermos.
There are metrics and I don’t want to pursue them as to how many that number could kill.
The World is inflicted.
Link?
Iran/Persia have been around for thousands of years. Israel is still far away from one hundred, and I would not bet on it getting there. Shortsighted people are, well, shortsighted.
Its interesting to note the Israeli strike came after the leak by Iran over some intel documents.
And an CIA analyst did the leaking.
Opportunism, or a spook who finally got fed up with the Zionist entity ?
Having once been in the bear pit[tm], all I can say is at this moment its 52 card pickup after some decades of smiley poker … made even more surreal than a Kubrick movie …
The lines drawn in the past set the stage – what Sachs said about the English Empire and now a thousand blooms are upon us all …
Dominion is a hell of a drug it seems for any ethnic/religious group ….
Well, now we know why Tulsi Gabbard made a serious video presentation about the consequences of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that MSNBC chose to mock.
fwiw:
Israel strikes Iran overnight
IRGC chief confirmed dead
by Tom Griffin
Jun 13, 2025
https://intelligencehistory.substack.com/p/israel-strikes-iran-overnight
Israel’s long-threatened attack on Iran materialised overnight. Targets for conventional strikes included nuclear facilities and senior regime officials.
A senior Mossad official has also told Barak Ravid of Axios that the agency had undertaken ‘a series of covert sabotage operations deep inside Iran’.. ‘..aimed at damaging Iran’s strategic missile sites and its air defense capabilities.’
It remains to be seen what that means, but it’s been obvious from past operations like the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July that Israel is able to procure significant human intelligence from inside Iran. The killing of IRGC commander Hossein Salami tonight has sparked speculation that the Israeli strikes are a regime change operation and not simply an attack on the Iranian nuclear programme. The possible involvement of domestic opponents in Israeli intelligence networks will only compound those fears on the part of Iranian leaders.
Iran has pledged swift retaliation but its regional network of alliances is much diminished. Hamas has been overthrown in Gaza, Assad has fallen in Syria, and Hezbollah is gravely weakened in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen remain unbowed, and the situation in Iraq will also bear watching, not least because of the US bases there.
The US has publicly distanced itself from Israel’s strike, but many will assume that the attack could not have happened without US acquiescence. Israel has pre-empted US-Iranian nuclear negotiations that were due to resume on Sunday. Iranian retaliation could yet kill them off outright and strengthen the advocates of direct US military intervention.
It is an unenviable set of options for the Iranian regime, but as in the previous more limited round of strikes in October, political weakness on all sides is an aggravating factor. It is difficult to ignore the fact that the attack came after a day in which Prime Minister Netanyahu faced a vote to dissolve the Knesset, although Israeli experts insist that the strikes would not have happened without a military rationale signed off by the IDF Staff.
There is little doubt that Iran’s nuclear programme has advanced since President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA Agreement in 2018. The decision now looks more fateful then ever.
Hollywood giants Disney and Universal have filed a joint lawsuit against artificial intelligence firm Midjourney, accusing it of large-scale copyright infringement.
https://www.rt.com/pop-culture/619000-hollywood-studios-sue-ai-startup/
Never thought I’d be hoping Disney wins a court case, but here we are.
I sense them companies will be using AI to put pressure internally on their own workforce. It´s already happening. But if unions do not act now decisively it´s gonna be a shitshow in 10 years.
Netflix already was playing out one group against the other paying most people ridiculous amounts with 100% buyouts and what not. With AI that exploitative culture will be facilitated.
So the fight will be removed from the public stage where courts are involved to an extent and state law into corporations and 100% controlled by corporate law and outside public scrutiny all shrowded in secrecy protected by NDAs etc.
I remember having read about the sterilized-fly eradication of screwworm decades ago when this was a more current thing. A restoration of sterile male screwworm fly production would be a good thing.
But many programs eradicated by the current Magapublican Regime in Blue Zones were also a good thing.
If the Democrats were lessons-learned capable, they would take the lesson that to get restoration of good things in their zones, they will have to hold good things in Magapublican zones hostage. Until all the cancelled funding is restored and all the fired federal personnel are rehired and their civil service protections restored, the Democrat electeds should do everything they can to prevent a restoration of the sterilized screwworm production program.
Either everybody should have good things, or nobody should have good things. There should be no compromise with Magapublicans on any item whatsoever until the Magapublicans decide to compromise with Blue Zonians on Blue Zonian terms. And if that can’t be achieved, then the country should be divided into Magastan and Blue Zonia. That would be the “national divorce” which Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has called for.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/marjorie-taylor-greene-calls-national-divorce-liberal-conservative-sta-rcna71464
Separately, I remember reading some decades ago in a book called The Longhorns by J. Frank Dobie that the old feral Texas Longhorn cattle were somewhat screwworm resistant based on the mother cows’ behavior of licking off all possible wounds or compromise sites on their newborn calves. If my memory is correct, then relict microherds of Longhorn cattle still being kept alive by hobbyists and devotees should be studied to see if this behavior-based screwworm resistance is really a thing. ( In the spirit of Thai honeybees being varroa mite resistant because the Thai bees chase and kill any varroa mites they see on eachother. These two links make it seem new, but I remember reading about Thai bees years ago).
https://entomologytoday.org/2022/02/24/social-apoptosis-varroa-mite-resistance-honey-bees/
https://civileats.com/2025/06/11/honey-bees-learn-to-fight-deadly-varroa-mites/
The Beach Boys started as a “boy band”, but slowly became a new musical instrument that only Brian Wilson could compose for. The late 60s stuff is really amazing.